READ: If You Could Question God? by Panache Desai
April 18, 2012 by Panache Desai
Filed under •-Feature, Conceptions of God, Insights, Mindfulness, Personal Growth, Spiritual Guidance, Spiritual Retreats, Spiritual teachers, Spirituality
I received a thought-provoking email that I would like to share with you… someone wrote and asked: If I could ask God three questions… what would they be?
My mind immediately jumped to questions like: Who killed John F. Kennedy? Did you really make Mickey Rourke in your own image? And do you think Morgan Freeman does a good job of playing you in movies?
Then, after spending some time getting in touch with the deeper meaning of what I was being asked, I came to a surprising conclusion… I honestly don’t feel compelled to ask God anything!
At first I was honestly and deeply surprised by this revelation. The conversation in my head went a little like this: “Come on Panache… if given the chance, you really wouldn’t ask the most omnipotent being in all creation about anything? No questions at all? ”
No, I really wouldn’t. Not about the past. Not about what is unfolding right now. Not about what is going to happen in the future.
The simple truth is this. The daily interaction I have with God has shifted dramatically as I have progressed along my vibrational journey. As my own vibrational density is lovingly integrated I’ve reached deeper levels of internal harmony. Rather than questioning how life is unfolding, I simply say “thank you.”
My daily practice is one of gratitude.
From my vantage point, I have humbly witnessed that life is about trusting in the experiences I am having. Rather than getting caught up in what ifs, I chose to focus on where I am right now. If this moment is exactly where God wants me to be then who am I not to embrace and accept what’s unfolding? It is all a Divine journey and in truth I’m just along for the ride.
When you reach the point where you can accept that all that is transpiring TODAY is leading you to a greater TOMORROW, something shifts. The profound recognition and loving acceptance that you are whole and complete is unveiled. And with this realization there is nothing more you need to know.
Indeed, at this level of conscious awareness the only question left to ask is, “What’s for dinner?”
Panache Desai is an inspirational visionary and contemporary spiritual master whose gift of vibrational transformation has inspired and shifted the lives of tens of thousands. He shares eternal truths, inspirational insights, and vibrational tools to create the life of your dreams. Panache is a modern-day avatar who acts as a direct link to Divine consciousness empowering people of all ages, economic and educational backgrounds to transform their lives by connecting them with their limitless Divine nature. Young, hip and funny, Panache brings his global community together weekly via LIVE webcasting.
Read more from VividLife.me bloggers:
SCHMALTZING MY WAY TO GOD by Jeff Brown
On my spiritual journey, I searched for God everywhere: the yoga studio, the holistic workshop circuit, the shiatsu mat. A well-practiced head tripper, I hunted for God in my thoughts, somehow certain that God would arise in the form of a concept. During my materialistic phases, I imagined God a slick car, large house, a Hugo Boss suit, as though God himself wore Gucci. And for some time, I looked for God on the skyways of self-avoidance, mistaking the short-term benefits of the ungrounded bliss trip for enlightenment itself. I went down this road for some time, seemingly joyous on the outside, but a bubbling cauldron of unresolved feelings and memories in the deep within.
God is IN the People by Jeff Brown
At the heart of Soulshaping is a profound faith in the human experience, in the karmic significance of our personal identity. This stands in real contrast to some of the detachment models that are gaining favor in Western culture. These models present true-path as something distinct from the emotional body, as though our usual self-identifications are inherently inauthentic, as though our physical forms are inferior. At the extremes, they seem to suggest that God made a mistake when she placed us in human bodies. These models worry me and present an image of heightened consciousness that often feels more robotic than human, more heady than hearty.
READ: SCHMALTZING MY WAY TO GOD by Jeff Brown
March 22, 2012 by Jeff Brown
Filed under •-Feature, Conceptions of God, Enlightenment, Spiritual Guidance, Spiritual teachers, Spirituality
On my spiritual journey, I searched for God everywhere: the yoga studio, the holistic workshop circuit, the shiatsu mat. A well-practiced head tripper, I hunted for God in my thoughts, somehow certain that God would arise in the form of a concept. During my materialistic phases, I imagined God a slick car, large house, a Hugo Boss suit, as though God himself wore Gucci. And for some time, I looked for God on the skyways of self-avoidance, mistaking the short-term benefits of the ungrounded bliss trip for enlightenment itself. I went down this road for some time, seemingly joyous on the outside, but a bubbling cauldron of unresolved feelings and memories in the deep within.
I looked everywhere, but in my heart. Conditioned as an armoured male warrior, it never occurred to me that God could arise through the feeling heart. I had grown up in a warring family, and adapted my consciousness to the battleground before me. Through my well-defended lens, opening my heart was a dangerous path, one that threatened to distract me from my necessary vigilance. When I opened my heart too wide, I was vulnerable to attack from warring factions. When my first intimate relationships threatened to open my heart, I fled them. The closer we got to bridging the heart with the genitals, the faster I ran. With no template to stand in the heart-fire, I preferred the safe confines of my lone wolf lair to the perils of vulnerability.
Consistent with my conditioning, I studied to become a criminal trial lawyer. Shortly after being called to the bar, I delayed the start to my law practice. Something in the deep within had another agenda for my path. As part of my process, I went to the courtroom to watch trials and consider my life’s direction. It was here that the first chinks in my armour appeared. Images of old suffering began to flood my courtroom visits—my mother’s unhappy face, my father’s acts of violence, hiding under my bed while the battles raged. As I sat focused at the back of the courtroom, tears poured out of my eyes and drenched my warrior armour at will. My inner world soon became like a series of beaver dams, each with more painful memories lying in wait behind it. Every time I cleared one dam away, another wave of feeling arose. The heart, it spoke.
Thereafter, I returned to my habitual range of e-motion, the armoured way of being that I knew so well. But something had shifted. There was a crack in my armour where the heart got through. Oddly enough, the crack revealed itself at the video store where I found myself repeatedly renting sentimental love stories- Serendipity, Out of Africa, Horse Whisperer- in an effort to crack my heart back open. I would lie down on my couch and watch the same schmaltzy film like a mantra, crying a little deeper with each viewing. I dared tell no one, but I loved it.
Oftentimes, my schmaltzy movies took me places well beyond my imaginings. Like a depth charge, they chiselled away at the walls of my emotional holdings, shaking my heart-strings loose. The more I chiselled, the more profound my experience of the moment. As I wept, little doors flung open, inviting me deeper into unity consciousness. As the schmaltz opened the gateway to my heart, the Godself stepped on through, revealing himself a little bit more with every deepening. Sentimentality wasn’t just a release, it was a gateway to divinity. By emptying the vessel, I had unknowingly created space for God to enter. In these moments, I saw no distinction between the emotional and the spiritual bodies. It was all God.
As my spiritual journey unfolded, schmaltzy films became my spiritual practice. An elixir for whatever blocked me, I would creep back to the couch whenever I needed to re-open. When I would come back from a difficult work day, the couch. When I got lost in over-analytic patterns, the couch. When life disappointed me, the couch. Pouring a little schmaltz on my wounds now and then re-started my heart. As it turns out, it wasn’t beginner’s mind I sought. It was beginner’s heart- the freshness of appreciation that comes through the open heart. I didn’t want to wait until my deathbed to finally wake up, safe in the knowledge that my vulnerability was time-limited. I wanted to wake up now.
In the presence of another, I touched the heights of this practice. Just before she died, my 90 year old grandmother and I would watch sentimental movies together. Our hearts opened in unison, crying like babies at sentimental endings. Where before I saw my Bubbi as a silly romantic, I now saw her for who she really was- a paragon of enheartened courage. A sentimentalist to the core of her being, she knew that vulnerability was not a sign of weakness, but a sign of life. Better hurt than hardened.
Schmaltz has been given a bad name for far too long. Leaving aside its etymological origins as chicken fat, it is often characterized as excessive or banal sentimentality. As a rule, we don’t bow to schmaltz as a path to God. We throw it in the trash with the rest of the gooey stuff. Its’ negative characterization reflects a long-established cultural tendency to diminish the value of the awakened heart. This pattern was birthed in a survivalist landscape, one where repressing emotions was deemed necessary to social protection and structure building. Better to survive by our wits than risk the wild beast of deep feeling. How much we have sacrificed to build a foundation for our eventual re-opening.
It is high time that we honoured the high and deep feelings of the awakened heart. Enlightenment is not a head trip, its’ a heart trip, gusts of God blowing through the portal of the heart, the aortic love valve merging with the love that courses through the universal vein. Through an enheartened lens, schmaltz is God’s door opener. It is his release valve, his armour buster, his healing balm, his saving grace. For those of us who have forgotten how to feel, schmaltz excavates our holdings and brings us back to life. At their heart, repressed emotions are unactualized spiritual lessons. If we want to expand our spiritual consciousness, we have to shake our heart tree often. Opening the heart unlocks the heart of the universe, and we see what is always before us.
As we shift from survivalism to authenticity as our operating principle, a penchant for schmaltz will serve us well. Although the world rewards insensitivity with the spoils of war, it takes more chutzpah to surrender than to numb. This is not a weakened form of surrender, but one that is emblazoned with courage. Most recently, I have turned to schmaltz whenever my love relationship goes awry. Like a call back to the Godself, I watch Serendipity whenever my heart threatens to close. By the time John and Sarah lock eyes again on the ice rink, I am again dancing with the Godself. No need to meditate to find God, just lay on the couch with a box of Kleenex and she will come.
~A former criminal lawyer and psychotherapist, Jeff Brown is the author of “Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation,” recently published by North Atlantic Books. Endorsed by authors Elizabeth Lesser and Ram Dass, “Soulshaping” is Brown’s autobiography — an inner travelogue of his journey from archetypal male warrior to a more surrendered path. You can connect with his work at www.soulshaping.com
Read more from VividLife.me bloggers:
God is IN the People by Jeff Brown
God is IN the People: An excerpt from ‘Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation’ At the heart of Soulshaping is a profound faith in the human experience, in the karmic significance of our personal identity. This stands in real contrast to some of the detachment models that are gaining favor in Western culture. These models present true-path as something distinct from the emotional body, as though our usual self-identifications are inherently inauthentic, as though our physical forms are inferior. At the extremes, they seem to suggest that God made a mistake when she placed us in human bodies. These models worry me and present an image of heightened consciousness that often feels more robotic than human, more heady than hearty.
6 Reasons Why Meditation Appears So Difficult by Ed and Deb Shapiro
We were teaching a meditation program in North Wales, in the UK, in a quiet backwater near the hills. It was a peaceful day, everyone was happily seated, and we had just rung the gong to begin the morning session when a motorbike started revving right outside the window. It was a loud and annoying noise that continued – stopping and starting –while the owner did repair work. It reminded us how, in England, church bells can ring all day and during meditation retreats we would often be confronted with the question: how do you stop the bell? Answer: become the bell!
READ: Tantra Alchemy ~ The meeting of Contradictions by Mahasatvaa Ananda Sarita
The world we live in is made of contradictory elements. Night and Day, summer and winter, male and female, earth and sky, sex and spirit, the list is endless. There is a wonderful story in the Hindu tradition, that Brahma, (The source from where everything comes and to where everything returns) was all-alone, and feeling bored in infinite space. He created a divine play of opposite polarities in order to amuse himself. The name used for this divine play, is Leela.
First, Brahma created a cow, and then turned himself into a bull and began chasing the cow. The cow, in trying to escape from the bull, transformed herself into a deer. The bull then transformed himself into a stag and chased the deer. The deer, in running away from the amorous advances of the stag, transformed herself into a snake, and so on. In this way, through the courtship play of many species, our dual world came into being. And of course, as part of this scenario, we search for our other half, endeavoring to return to the original state of oneness.
I love this story, because it expresses the playfulness inherent in all of life and yet indicates the great alchemical secret of existence. If we wish to lift the veil and discover the essence of life, we simply need to bring opposites together, and in so doing, will discover Brahma hidden behind the apparent duality.
When practicing techniques of Tantra meditation, we are offered the opportunity to know the source of life through our own direct experience, and it is surprisingly easy to do so.
Awareness acts as the catalyst for the experience of Wholeness. This is so, because the smallest particles of matter that make up our physical reality, respond dramatically to the power of intent. Science has recently discovered what mystics have been saying for millennia, that physical reality is shaped by thought. As we think, so God actualizes.
The more aware we are, the closer we come to the creator. In fact, we become co-creators. This brings with it great responsibility. It means that whatever we intend, will happen. When you apply this quality of powerful, aware presence to bringing opposite polarities together, the result will be an instantaneous merging into the Godhead, or Brahma, which is described in Tantric terminology as orgasm with the universe. When we are divided, we remain weak. When we are whole, we become extremely powerful. We discover our Godliness.
The ability to merge opposite polarities is inherent in every human being. We come from oneness, and will return to oneness. It is our source of being. In fact, the experience of oneness is no further away than our nose. Tantric meditations are designed in such a way as to support us in experiencing our original nature, easily and naturally. Spiritual attainment is demystified and made simple and accessible to all. Our own bodies and all of physical life is recognized as the microcosm of the macrocosm.
Next Article (15)
SEX, LOVE AND SPIRIT
Sarita is a world renowned Tantra master and mystic offering courses and retreats across the globe. Having received a direct transmission from Osho, she is true to the spiritual essence of Tantra and leads us on the path to self realisation. At the same time she takes care to help us transcend the psychological blockages that we carry as a result of our cultural background and past experiences. She is also a master healer, author and consultant. website: http://www.tantra-essence.com
Read more from VividLife.me bloggers:
Tantra and the Divine Feminine by Mahasatvaa Ananda Sarita
In the last 2000 years or so, women have been considered to be the weaker sex in much of the so-called civilized world. In actual fact, women have simply forgotten how to access their own power, the Divine feminine. In Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, he says: “The valley spirit never dies It is named the mysterious female And the doorway of the mysterious female Is the base from which heaven and earth spring It is there within us all the while Draw upon it as you will It never runs dry.”
Tantra and the Divine Masculine by Mahasatvaa Ananda Sarita
The Divine Masculine is a timely subject for 2012, as this is the year when the old world transmutes into a new world, according to the famous Maya predictions. Bring it on! The old world has been dominated primarily by an imbalanced masculine, which shows itself in the number of wars and general raping of planetary resources. This has happened because the masculine has been divorced from the feminine for a few thousand years, and by so doing has gone into a fevered testosterone fueled orgy of competition and destruction. I am by no means saying,…
READ: God is IN the People by Jeff Brown
February 24, 2012 by Jeff Brown
Filed under •-Feature, Conceptions of God, Enlightenment, Love, Spiritual Guidance, Spiritual teachers, Spirituality
God is IN the People: An excerpt from ‘Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation’
At the heart of Soulshaping is a profound faith in the human experience, in the karmic significance of our personal identity. This stands in real contrast to some of the detachment models that are gaining favor in Western culture. These models present true-path as something distinct from the emotional body, as though our usual self-identifications are inherently inauthentic, as though our physical forms are inferior. At the extremes, they seem to suggest that God made a mistake when she placed us in human bodies. These models worry me and present an image of heightened consciousness that often feels more robotic than human, more heady than hearty.
Soulshaping is not a detachment model. It is an immersion model. It is about jumping into life, immersing ourselves in our feelings and experiences in an effort to learn what we need to expand our soul’s consciousness. It is about “feeling” God, not “thinking” God. It is about honoring our personal identity and our physical form as not only the “vessel” for the soul, but as the embodiment of the soul as well. Embodied spirituality.
To be sure, there are times when detachment is necessary: when the suffering is too much, when we need a peek into a vaster reality. Indeed we are far more than our monkey mind, our neurotic attachments, our linear lens. But to live in perpetual detachment is to miss the moment altogether. It is to trip out of the body that carries the karmic seeds for our transformation. It is to leave Earth before our time.
The most inclusive answer is to work on eradicating our misguided notions of “I” until our notions of I-ness become directly linked to who we really are, to a conscious awareness of our soul-scriptures for this lifetime. To do this we may have to become initially effective at detachment techniques. But then, when we are ready, we come back down to Earth and work with what lives inside us. This means learning how to cultivate our bodies as gardens of truth. This means calling ourselves on our detachment from our shadow. This means doing the often-difficult work to clear our emotional debris and gain control over our relational patterns. We clear our emotional debris because it creates space inside for our authentic self to emerge, and also because inherent in those feelings and memories are the lessons we need to grow in our spirituality. Our thoughts are only illusions when they do not reflect who we really are, our emotions only wasteful when we are not seeing them all the way through to the spiritual lessons they contain.
When we are aligned with our authenticity, our feelings and thoughts become instruments of true-path, direct expressions of our highest intentions. In this more authentic state, we become much more effective at attracting what we want from a universe that is only interested in authentic expansion. Nothing feigned will do.
Our humanness is the “I” of the soul needle. It is our soul clay. It is the heart of our magnificence. God is in our humanness, God is in our connectiveness, God is in our broken hearts, God is in the people. I-God.
A former criminal lawyer and psychotherapist, Jeff Brown is the author of “Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation,” recently published by North Atlantic Books. Endorsed by authors Elizabeth Lesser and Ram Dass, “Soulshaping” is Brown’s autobiography — an inner travelogue of his journey from archetypal male warrior to a more surrendered path. You can connect with his work at www.soulshaping.com
Read more from VividLife.me bloggers:
YOU ARE SACRED PURPOSE by Jeff Brown
You are Sacred Purpose. You are not your shame, your fears, your addictions, your games, your guilt, the internalized remnants of negative messaging… You are not your resistance to your true path … You are not your self-doubt… You are not your self-distraction patterns. You are not your escape hatches… you are not your pessimism about a life of meaning and purpose. You are not here merely to survive and endure.
Are You Out of Your Mind? by Ed and Deb Shapiro
One of the most insulting things someone can say to us is, “Are you out of your mind?” implying we somehow mistaken or even crazy. But what if it is actually the coolest thing we could say? What if being out of our mind means we are not disturbed by the madness of our mind and are more in touch with our feelings, heart, and freedom?
READ: Time and Disease by John Cali
January 19, 2012 by John Cali
Filed under •-Headline, Conceptions of God, Deities, spirits, and mythic beings, Health & Well-being, Personal Growth, Spiritual Guidance, Spirituality
John Cali
Spirit often gives me spontaneous messages, even when I have not intended to channel. Typically those messages are very short, and usually only for my personal benefit, not for the public.
However, Spirit obviously did not intend this message, given me in the pre-dawn darkness of a cold Sunday morning, only for my personal benefit.
Here’s Spirit.
Spirit
Linear time does not exist in the nonphysical world of Spirit. Neither God nor the angels experience time.
Therefore, they see neither cause nor effect. There is no cause or effect. There is only experience.
Humans need the concept of linear time to navigate the physical world. But beyond that time has no reality.
So what humans perceive as cause and effect is simply a matter of focus — what they are focusing on is what they will experience. While cause and effect may appear real to human eyes, it is not. It is simply each human creating his or her experience by what they focus on.
As many, including us, have said, you get what you focus on, or think about, most of your waking hours.
So what does all this mean in the context of disease or illness?
Well, if there is no cause, no effect, then what is perceived as cause and what is perceived as effect are simply a matter of where you are focusing, and what you are choosing to experience.
If you have a disease, no matter how minor or major, you can heal yourself simply by removing your focus from the condition.
However, for that to be effective, you have to let go of the old notion of cause and effect. Your disease has no cause, except for the attention you’ve given it.
When you’ve removed your attention from it and placed your attention on health and wellness, the disease will vanish and you will experience health and wellness.
This does not have to take a long time, although it may. It can be instantaneous because, remember, in the world of Spirit, there is no time.
The disease you wish to be free from, and the health you wish to experience, both exist now, in this present moment. The present moment is the only “unit of time,” if you will, that matters. Everything that has ever existed or will ever exist, exists now.
So you can have either disease or health. Both are literally at your fingertips. Focus only on what you want. Think about only what you want. The choice is yours.
But the choice for health is much easier to make when you stay aligned with your higher selves, your spirit selves. Then you will make all your choices from the timeless perspective of Spirit.
*****************************
After I transcribed and read Spirit’s words, I realized the message could be controversial, with folks responding positively and negatively. And I realized there’s more to say on this topic than we’ve said here today. So I’d be very interested in your thoughts. Please comment below.
A freelance writer and publisher since 1986, John’s focus is spirituality and channelling. He communicates with a group of spirit guides, known simply as Spirit. In 1996 John started publishing a newsletter, now known as the John Cali’s Spirit Speaks Newsletter. In 2008 John was one of the six channels featured in the documentary film, Tuning In. He’s currently working on a book with his spirit guides, Real Answers to Life’s Pesky Questions: Conversations With Spirit, Book 1. In addition to his writing, John also does spiritual counseling. His mission in this work with Spirit is to help people live their lives with greater joy and abundance. John, originally from western New York State, now lives in a remote area of northwestern Wyoming, just outside Yellowstone National Park. Contact information: Website:http://www.greatwesternpublishing.org Email: john@greatwesternpublishing.org Twitter:http://twitter.com/johncali Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/johncali4
Read more from VividLife.me bloggers:
The Road to Real Peace by John Cali
Inner peace is an issue people often discuss with us, usually because they’re wondering how they can find it in their lives. I realize it can be challenging to find and maintain inner peace in the midst of the increasingly dramatic and frequent changes in our world today. Read more…
The Meaning and History of Tantra
Part of my mission in teaching Tantra is to clear up misconceptions about it. When I moved to Europe in 1999, having spent 26 years in India, I was amazed to find out that most people seemed to believe that Tantra was all about sex and promiscuity with a few feathers and some incense thrown in for good measure. The general public still carry such concepts, and some even think that Tantra is a code word for a massage with a ‘happy ending.’ I offer here a little reality check. Read on…
