Wars on Earth are initiated in Heaven

About a month back, one of my Kabbalah teachers stated that wars on earth are initiated in Heaven, (as opposed to in the psychological or physical universes ; see my blog posts 'The Four Universes' and 'A Spiritual Cosmology'.)

I have taken a little while to think about this. My teacher was referring, among other things, to the role of Providence, something I’ve already touched on in this blog (see 'Vegetable, Animal and Human People'.) Wars ‘stir up’ ‘vegetable’ people, affording them opportunities to become’ animal’ or ‘human’ people. They move populations around, face them with new situations, speed up the introduction of new technology, and test the mettle of all those involved. Like natural disasters, they provide opportunities for acts of courage and love, and not just towards our family or our comrades, but towards our enemies as well.

And of course, wars are responsible for terrible suffering and loss.

How I long sometimes for the God of my childhood, for ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ (his smashing things up in the Temple in anger was swiftly glossed over). God did not start wars, humans did, in strict disobedience of Him. God was Love.

Of course ‘he’ is, and a whole lot more.

Even as a child I knew that there was something awry with the view of God that my Sunday School teachers were giving me. So a lot of evil might be down to humans using their free will, but what about the natural world? Did it become red in tooth and claw because Eve ate the apple and, if so, wasn’t that a bit ‘unfair’ on animals? Furthermore, if God cared so much, why didn’t He intervene more to stop really terrible things? But it didn’t matter because, when we died, we would all go to heaven and live in bliss and splendour for ever and ever, so that was all right then.

It was via James Hillman’s writings, such as his book ‘The Soul’s Code’ that I first became aware of just how ruthless the soul can be in pursuit of its Divine purpose, and what it can put its various earthly incarnations through in the process. When I came to study Kabbalah I learned that existence in its fullness is manifested between the two opposing poles of mercy AND severity (force and form, see my blog post 'A Spiritual Cosmology') The aim of the kabbalist is to help to keep these two poles balanced, to proceed in consciousness back up through the universes, using a path centred between the two poles, to reunite again at one with the Divine, bringing with us all our experiences of those realms. And while we make our journey upwards, we act to ‘bring down’ the freedom and glory and Divinity of the upper universes to this material one.

Each incarnation is an adventure. Don’t get too attached to it, or anything in it because, like a dream, it will all dissolve. Throughout this life, and many others, you’ll win some, you’ll lose some. It is all simply a process which you can use to become more and more fully human, wiser, more loving, more aware of who you really are. Like childbirth, it’s going to hurt and, yes, you’ll voluntarily go through the whole thing again.

Betwixt and Between

In my last but one post, ‘Mr. James’ Best Friend’, I commented on the convoluted lengths that materialists, i.e. those who believe in physical existence only , are prepared to go to in order to ‘explain away’ certain phenomena.

This leads me onto another personal gripe. I sometimes get very frustrated with the media for acting as if there are only two camps to choose from e.g. science OR religion; evolution OR creationism etc. etc. Furthermore there is often an assumption that if you ‘believe’ in evolution, you don’t believe in anything but scientific materialism.

Like many people, I think the evidence for the evolution of species is overwhelming. I do however have some questions around the mechanisms by which evolution happens, or the circumstances in which evolution of particular types takes place, (which are all to do with ‘What came first, the chicken or the egg?’ type questions.) For scientists like Richard Dawkins, who wrote ‘The God Delusion’, I am committing the heresy of wondering if the laws of nature are as fixed, and if the universe and evolution are as accidental or as mechanistic as he claims. Of course, if you’ve read my other posts you will know that I don’t think they are. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in evolution.

And I also ‘believe in’ the first chapter of Genesis, but as ‘mythos’ not ‘logos’. Nowadays if we refer to something as a ‘myth’ we are usually saying that it isn’t true, but in fact myths are designed to represent truths which are too deep for individual words, via images and stories. Music can do the same, especially when it comes to demonstrating and representing emotions that are hard to put into words.

As a student of Kabbalah, I take the ‘seven days of creation’ story to represent the creation of the spiritual universe out of the Divine. There is a second creation story in Genesis chapter 2 (starting about half way through verse 4 - the New Jerusalem Bible sets this out very clearly) which represents the creation of the psychological universe (the universe of mind) out of the spiritual. Finally the physical universe comes about in Chapter 3 v.21 when Adam and Eve leave Eden (yet another name for the universe of mind), putting on suits of skin;-  I wrote about this process of universes emerging from one another in ‘A Spiritual Cosmology'.

Only a few hundred years ago, many religious people would have been amazed to learn that vast swathes of Christians in the future would be interpreting Genesis literally, and believe the world was created in 7 days. For a start they would point out that there are, in fact, two creation stories in Genesis, as I have pointed out above. I sometimes wonder if this is why a lot of learned people thought that it would be dangerous to translate the bible into everyday languages that everybody would be able to read for themselves….and start to take literally!

But basically it comes down to the big question which is completely outside of science’s remit (though try telling that to Dawkins or even Stephen Hawking) why is there something, rather than nothing?

Oh,- one last thing... I do tend to grind my teeth when scientists (Freud and Hawking included) announce, as if they know, that there is no life after death, but that some of us are too weak, too afraid of dying to face up to that. I think the possibility that there IS something after death also takes real courage to face.

Which Tribe is Yours?

I’ve written before about three different kinds of people – vegetable, animal, and human, - see 'Vegetable, Animal and Human People' and 'Are you Potentially Human?'

All three are present in most cultures (or collective value systems,) that is, you’ll find examples of vegetable, animal, and human people wherever you are or whenever you are.

There are however some interesting theories about how cultures evolve. It would appear that, over time, if a culture is going to change, it will do so in a certain and predictable way.

The idea of cultures evolving is heavily influenced by the work of Clare Graves, and his successors, such as Don Beck and Chris Cowan(Cowan and Todorovic 2005, Beck and Cowan 1996). Now better known as ‘Spiral Dynamics’, these theories are concerned with the innate values of any collective, and how they develop.  Applying Graves and similar theories, Wilber (2001) suggests the following stages  of development, or evolution:

• Cultures, as we understand them, begin as survivalistic, and are preoccupied all day everyday with the practicalities of staying alive. If these evolve, they will evolve into
• Cultures which have developed magical thinking. These cultures are animistic, and very concerned with ‘kin spirits’. Such cultures ‘have a name for every bend in the river, but not for the river itself’. These tribal cultures develop in turn into  
•  Exploitative power seeking cultures, sometimes known as warrior cultures, as represented in the Iliad and the Odyssey, (but also represented today in street gangs, and several City organisations) in which strength takes priority over justice. These eventually become
•  Law ruled cultures, usually referred to as ‘traditional’, or ‘people of the book’ (the Torah, the Ten Commandments, the Koran for example). In organisations these tend to be bureaucracies which emphasise formal procedures. In turn, these evolve into
• Materialistic and rational cultures, usually referred to as ‘modern’, and ‘achievement orientated’. Empirical science takes pride of place, and there is talk of ‘conquering nature’. These evolve into
• Pluralistic cultures, which are often referred to as ‘postmodern’ and relativistic. Nature is cared for, rather than there to be ‘conquered’. All people are equal and all values are relative.
• Flex-flow cultures, the first stage at which a society or community can appreciate all the stages that it has been through, and what it has gained from each of them, rather than denigrating them as ‘inferior’. This level or stage, and the stages above which will not be referred to here (as being beyond most collectives’ experience at the moment,) are also often referred to as ‘Integral’ or post-post-modern.

Each stage is necessary to the stages that follow, and none can ever be ‘skipped’. A society or community successfully moving from traditional to modern will not abandon the rule of law, but will subject that law to rational analysis before legitimising it.  All stages, even the highest we know of at present, have their weaknesses, dangers and paradoxes, the resolution of which is what usually forces a culture or community on to the next stage (Beck and Cowan 1996, McIntosh 2007).

Research undertaken independently to the work of Graves, Beck or Cowan, and apparently with no knowledge of it, by Ray (Ray and Anderson2000) identified three cultural sub groups within the USA, which Ray called the Traditionals, the Moderns and the Cultural Creatives, with the latter being the last to emerge to a significant degree (in the 1970s.) These three groups correspond with Spiral Dynamics’ traditional, modern and postmodern/pluralist stages.

As I mentioned earlier, vegetable, animal and human people exist at all stages, though a number of human people have come to a sticky end in tribal, warrior and traditional cultures; think crucifixion, shot to death, burned alive etc.

How lucky are those of us who live now and in liberal, democratic regimes??

So, having established if you’re a vegetable, animal or human person, which of these cultures would you most feel at home in? And what culture, overall, do you think you’re actually living in?

There is a really good application of these stages by Paul Smith to religion, specifically the organised Christian Church on the Integral Life site here. I think you could easily apply the same sort of analysis to any organised religion.

Your opinions and thoughts, as always, would be welcome.

Mr James' Best Friend

In the Sunday Times Culture Section a couple of weeks back, there was a review of Oliver Sacks’ latest   book “Hallucinations”. Oliver Sacks is the physician and neurologist who famously wrote “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat”.

The reviewer, James McConnachie, summarises the various categories of hallucinations to which Sacks refers, as well as the possible causes. Throughout the book Sacks stresses that the “phantoms are born in our brains” and refers to sensory deprivation, drugs, migraines and stimulation of different parts of the brain as being among the causes.

This is all fascinating and I would personally go out and buy the book, except it would be a bit like buying a book on how a car engine works when one is much more interested in who made the car, who drives the car, and how and why.  What does it mean that there are cars with engines that function the way they do?

According to the review, one of Sacks’ blind patients ‘sees’ “children in bright eastern costumes, walking endlessly up and down stairs. Fascinatingly, her eyes dart here and there, as if she is watching a real event; people who merely imagine visual scenes do not do this.” “One migraineur described seeing writing on a wall that was too far away to read; yet on walking up to the wall he was able to read the text aloud.”

I have absolutely no doubt that one can bring about the sense of a “shadow-person” by electrically stimulating the left temporoparietal junction in the brain as Sacks reports but, as the reviewer notes at the end of his article, it does not consider whether all these ‘causes’ are “simply creating conditions in which we are able to see beyond our accustomed reality.” 

In other words, much as opening our eyes enables us to see, stimulating certain brain junctions enables us to sense presences that we cannot when they are  unstimulated.

I think it would be unfair to hold this against Mr. Sacks. He is only interested in the mechanics of hallucinations. The consideration of why our senses are ordinarily restricted, and what it is exactly that we perceive when some of those restrictions are lifted, is rather a different book.

And maybe some people are born with irregularities in their brains that enable them to see and hear things (and/or smell, taste and feel them)which most of us can't. 

The great early psychologist, William James, made a pact with his best friend that the first of them to die would come back and tell the other about the afterlife. The best friend died first, and James waited in vain for a visit. Are we to conclude from this that the afterlife does not exist?  

Personally, I conclude nothing of the sort but, in my imagination, I envisage James’ best friend, disembodied, jumping up and down in front of him and desperately trying to let James know he was there. But for 

"those who have eyes to see, let them see.” Because not everybody has the ‘equipment’ working to see such things (and think how distracting it would be if we all could) it does not mean such things do not exist.

(For those who have not read my earlier posts about how the mind brings about the brain, rather than the other way around, see my post ‘A Spiritual Cosmology’ at http://seekerinthfoothills.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/i-intend-to-be-little-bolder-and.html.

For a brief account of an attempt to increase my own capacity to see things most people don't, see my post 'Psychic Phemomena' at http://seekerinthfoothills.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/psychic-phenomena.html.)

Are You Potentially Human?

In my last but one post ‘Vegetable, Animal and Human People’ I wondered aloud how one could tell which of these one is.

Since then, I think I may have found a way for finding out if I'm potentially fully human!

The psychologist Oliver Burkeman mentioned some important research in his newspaper column last week. As part of this research, people were asked to choose between the two following options.

Either:

a)      A smaller rise in income, leaving them wealthier than those around them;

Or

b)      A larger rise in income, with others receiving even more.

If answer b) to you seems obvious, and furthermore would give you considerable pleasure, even if nobody else ever finds out you’re responsible for their extra wealth, I want to be your friend!

I have previously blogged about the Higher Self in 'The Human Being'. Discussing the Higher Self’s indifference to the ego’s seeming preference, not only to have lots of things, and/or power, but for others to see it has lots of things or power, a friend remarked that within his particular community, masculinity was judged by the car you were driving; i.e. the more expensive it is, the better provider for your family you must be, and therefore the more of a man you are. There are some illogicalities in this – a man’s money might have all gone on the car, rather than on his family for example. However, a flash car seems to be one of the main things by which a man is judged. A ‘merely’ adequate car with efficient fuel use would not cut the mustard.

So, could I suggest that one way of identifying oneself as a vegetable person is by wanting to keep up with the average level of possessions in one’s community, even if that's more than one needs. One way of identifying ourselves as animal people might be that we only feel worthwhile or happy if we have something more in the way of possessions or power or fame than our peers. This not the only way of identifying ourselves as 'animal' though.

In the research to which Burkeman refers it was found that ‘many people’ (he does not say how many) would choose option a) above, rather than b). Frustratingly, he does not say whether the respondents thought their choice would be broadcast. I think I know a few animal people who would choose option b) ‘because it’s the right thing to do’ but would not be particularly happy in that choice.

Burkeman suggests that, to make our lives easier, we ‘comparison-proof’ our lives, for example, be seem to be consciously ‘opting out’. In a way I guess this is what aiming to identify with your Higher Self rather than your ego is all about. And when by meditation, contemplation, prayer and/or practising living a good life, you get to the point where you  would joyfully choose option b) over a) you and everybody around you is in a win-win situation.

OK. So I’ve a little way to go then….

'Out of the body' in a different way

In my post ‘Vegetable, Animal and Human People’ I spoke about the importance of gaining greater awareness of your soul. Today I’m contemplating how many of us (oh ok, me) need to be more aware of our bodies.

In the series of meditations I’m doing at the moment (I’m using Headspace), there is an emphasis of staying aware of the body as much as possible while awake. At the moment the meditation is requiring only that I am aware of my body whenever I go from sitting to standing, or vice-versa, or from movement to stillness. I have been trying to do this for over a week now, and haven’t succeeded even once.

A few days ago, my close friend and yoga teacher, Lorraine, advised me to check, just before I got out of bed each morning, which nostril I was breathing the most strongly through. If it were the left, then I should put my left foot on the floor first; if the right nostril, then the right foot first. She advised this would help to keep me aware of my body throughout the rest of the day as well.

I’ve not succeeded in even managing that yet either!!

I am so unaware of my body generally that, when I take my clothes off each night I always find new bruises, and have no idea how I got them. And I’ve nothing against physical exercise, except I find it so boring, unless it involves dancing, or is yoga, where you have to use your head as well. (The fibromyalgia is ruling out such exercise at the moment anyway.)

Spiritual advisers often tell us that we should pay full attention to what we are doing, including physical tasks, and I do understand why they say that. It is spiritually good practice to 'stay in the moment'. But I dislike doing any sort of housework or manual work unless there’s something absorbing on the radio, or I can follow a particularly interesting train of thought, (in which case, pen and paper have to be nearby as well.) I could not bear the tedium of such work otherwise. I know that other people manage to train themselves to get satisfaction out of feeling their muscles working while doing such tasks, or take pleasure in the finished results. I’ve somehow missed out on both.

However, we are embodied creatures, not just brains moving around with our bodies hanging beneath us, as Ken Wilber once said. I have a feeling this might be something he knows about, as a philosopher, i.e. a worker with his head. He advises all to include physical exercise in their daily spiritual practice.

I wonder if singing counts?

Vegetable, Animal and Human People

According to at least one version of the kabbalah (see Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi’s book “The Way of Kabbalah”), people can be classified as ‘vegetable’, ‘animal’, or human. (My friend Francine, on reading this, asked, ‘What about us minerals??’ Unfortunately, there’s no such classification….!)

It does seem to be a rather insulting way of labelling people, but it is worth thinking about these classifications, even while emphasising that all people are aspects of the Absolute Ground of All Being, or ‘God’ for short, and all of equal value.

The term ‘vegetable people’ is used to describe those whose main concern is with the outer world, and conforming to their ‘tribe’. They eat, grow, reproduce and die. A predictable, safe life is the main priority. After death, vegetable people tend to be re-born very quickly, often into the same society.

‘Animal people’, while also needing to eat, grow, reproduce (and die), seek more from life such as becoming rich and/or powerful and/or famous, even if there is risk involved. These people leave more of a mark, often as leaders. Nevertheless they are still slaves to their own egos, ids andsuperegos.

Human people are those who are less identified with their egos, and are further along the way to achieving their full potential as a human being. They direct their lives from a place that oversees and directs their ego, superego and the id. Furthermore, from this level of consciousness they are also in touch with their own souls. This is something I have already written about in ‘The Human Being’ and earlier, in ‘A Spiritual Cosmology and the Problem of Suffering’.

I have been contemplating for some time where I might be in this scheme. I think, like a lot of people, I might slide back and forth between ‘animal’ and ‘human’. It is only now, when I have the time and the inclination to regularly meditate, pray, and go to Kabbalah meetings, that I feel I am more than just occasionally in touch with my soul. Singing in a choir helps in this endeavour as well, though I hadn’t anticipated that before I joined one.

I have also come across the belief that Providence only works for individuals once they have achieved ‘human’ status. Until a person reaches that level they are simply subjected to ‘general Providence’.  General Providence affects people en masse. Providence as you would expect provides. It makes things possible and makes the necessary resources available, either for entire populations, or for individual people who have ‘become human’.

My own observations however suggest that Providence works for individuals who are not yet in touch with their souls in order to actually help with that process, though I suppose It has to see potential in that person. I’ve written about how I think this happened to me in my post ‘So What Now?’. My worry is, in this profoundly materialistic age, that many people just don’t see the many opportunities offered to get in touch with their souls. Especially when so many people no longer entertain the idea they have one.

I would be very interested in other people's ideas and experiences.

Hungry Ghosts

In my last post I wrote about a course I attended at the College for Psychic Studies. Today I want to write about something that happened soon after, which alerted me to the dangers of ‘hungry ghosts’. JoeFisher had written about this, in an excellent book of the same name, but at the time I had not read it, more’s the pity.

At the aforementioned course I met somebody who claimed to channel a discarnate spirit (a dead person), one who advised and guided him. I have to say that, at the time, in the early eighties, there seemed to be quite a few of these discarnate visionary spirits around (for some reason, a lot of them were native Americans or hailed from Atlantis), many of them having written books via their incarnate (i.e. alive) contacts. They were able to give information about the true nature of reality and, thanks to their ability to access the Akashic records as discarnates, tell living humans about themselves and their histories, including past lives, and even advise on their futures.

My contact, call him Mr. S, belonged to a group of people who had chosen to follow Mr. S’s  ‘spiritual guide’ (you can see immediately the confusion here between the spiritual and the psychic.) The spiritual guide would take over Mr. S and talk through him. It was possible to book an hour with Mr. S to talk to his spiritual guide and ask for advice. This I did. Well, why not? (I was in my twenties, had an impossibly tangled and unsatisfactory love life at the time, and wasn’t sure I’d chosen the right career.)

The appointment was to take place on the other side of the country, involving a 3 hour drive each way. Although the day of that appointment dawned bright and sunny, by the time I had reached the distant hills within which Mr.S lived, it was raining heavily, and I had a pounding sick headache. When I arrived I discovered there had been some mix- up with the time, Mr. S was out, and I had an hour to wait. During this time my headache got worse, despite my taking pain killers. The weather was foul now, with thunder and lightning, and I could not see the apparently wonderful and legendary views  possessed by the house at which I had arrived.

When Mr. S arrived he was preoccupied and rather bad tempered. He had been trying to sort out problems that his group were having with the magnificent property in which we were now sitting, and where they all lived. Mr. S's spirit guide had directed the group to buy it, but it was turning out to be horribly expensive, and draining the group of its funds.   However, we eventually settled down, Mr. S successfully summoned his guide and within seconds the atmosphere in that small room changed dramatically. Mr. S went into a sort of trance, and began speaking in an entirely different voice.

Do you know, I can hardly remember a thing that he said? I kept waiting for the guide to get to the point, and tell me something interesting, but it was all rather vague, with nothing particular to myself, except for an observation that I had failed miserably in my previous life, and that was dogging my present life and holding me back.

I paid the (quite high) fee and left, now feeling emotionally down as well as in physical pain with my headache. I got lost in the erratic and winding lanes leading away from the house, and it was raining so hard now that my car’s windscreen wipers could not cope. Then, to cap it all, in the middle of nowhere, the car suddenly stalled and refused to go a foot further. Without an umbrella or even a decent coat, I had to get out and search for the nearest landline, (this was long, long before I had a mobile phone) to call the AA.

I finally came across an isolated house and knocked on the door, which was eventually opened by a young man, who allowed me to come in to use the household’s phone. It was in a room where three more youths were cleaning and polishing shotguns. I rang the AA, and got back to the car as quickly as I could. The AA turned up, but by then the car started up perfectly by itself. As I drove further away from the house the skies began to clear, as did my headache. I don’t think I’ve been more grateful to get back to my home.

Since then I have learnt much more about people who don’t move on to where they are supposed to after death. Sometimes their ‘essence’ has indeed moved on, but the personalities they had grown during that particular life don’t (by 'personality' I mean the matrix of desires, drives and characteristics that have developed at what is the  'ego' level of a person according to the kabbalistic scheme. ) They don’t want to leave. They try to continue to live through people who are actually still alive. Being dead gives them access to some information the living don’t have, and they use this to try to appear somehow superior to their live hosts. But they are no wiser than you or me, possibly less so. Many seem to claim to have been people they weren't. In his book ‘Hungry Ghosts’ Joe Fisher describes in much more detail the damage that these discarnate beings can cause. As to letting them take control of your body; at the psychic level  most of the greatest spiritual teachers (e.g. Jesus, Buddha) maintain that this is is a pretty unhygienic thing to do, and warn against it.

It is better to avoid all such contact with dead people you haven't known personally (and probably quite a few you have.) You would exercise extreme caution, I hope, having contact with dead and decaying bodies, for obvious reasons; and the same sort of caution should be extended to having contact with discarnate and decaying dead personalities. (Personalities decay and break up, just like physical bodies. though in some cases considerably more slowly, even after the essence of a person is long gone.) This applies also to Ouija boards. Health wise, you might just as well go and dig about in the local cemetery. I would go on here to describe the problems that a  young, female relative of mine had after playing about with a Ouija board, and attracting the attention of a very lascivious, raucously male ghost. But hey, midnight strikes. Time for bed.

---

Psychic Phenomena

Like the last post, this post isn’t about spirituality, but it is about non materiality again. In my own mind, I am very clear about the difference between the parapsychological (e.g. the paranormal) and the spiritual. The Kabbalistic ‘map’ of reality makes it quite clear that the parapsychological and the spiritual emanate from different worlds within existence.

Furthermore spiritual teachers have always warned seekers in pursuit of God not to get side tracked by paranormal phenomena from the psychological world. However, I am returning to the ‘psychic’ in this post because, firstly, it concerns the non- material world (as does the spiritual) and, secondly, the last post generated produced a spike in the number of visits to the blog..

So I thought I would record a couple of interesting experiences I had some decades back when I attended a weekend course in exploring one’s own psychic abilities run by the College for Psychic Studies in Kensington, London.

The first experience I’m going to re-tell took place half way through the morning of the first day. Half of us sat in a circle, facing outwards, and the other half stood behind us, moving from person to person, attempting to sense the boundary of each of the sitters’ astral bodies. I don’t know whether, in Kabbalistic terms, this would be the etheric body, which is the energetic counterpart of the physical body, or a person’s psychological presence (or maybe even something else.) One would feel for the presence of this astral body by starting with one’s hands wide either side of the sitter’s head and then bringing one’s hands slowly until they met some very slight resistance.

On some people this boundary was very clear (though I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess as to what was actually being felt.)  However, what really struck me was the way that the people standing behind me seem to affect my mood and emotions as they carried out the exercise trying to feel for my own astral body. With most people I felt this only faintly, but with one person I was able to tell when he had come into contact with whatever energy body was there, and furthermore, as he did so, my mood elevated considerably. I suddenly felt light, happy and full of energy. It was extremely marked.

I surreptitiously stole a glance at him as he moved on to the next person, and there was nothing about him to look at that might suggest somebody out of the ordinary. He told me later that he had not felt any particular emotion when we were partnered. I honestly can’t remember what happened when our positions were reversed, but from that day onwards I did become much more aware that there were some people who can lift your spirits just by standing close to you and others (there are rather more of these) who can completely drain you, emotionally. When feeling psychologically delicate, it became important to seek out the former and avoid the latter!

The next experience I want to relate is decidedly stranger. It was the last exercise of the course. Out of view of the rest of the group we each went into a room and placed an object which had been on our person (apart from large objects of clothing!) in a large velvet bag. Then that bag was brought back into the main room, and each of us drew an object out of it. We wouldn’t know who that object belonged to, but we had to hold it, to see if it would ‘tell’ us something about its owner. All we had to do was observe the object and hold it in our attention.

Almost immediately the thought popped into my mind that something ‘behind’ me was of significance. I mentally asked ‘in the next room?’, but then my attention seemed to be taken back further behind me. Shepherd’s Bush? Notting Hill? No, further west. Swindon? Bath? Cornwall? No, still didn’t feel right. The Atlantic? New York? No. California? Bingo! It felt like the mental equivalent of potting a billiard ball.  There was something of significance in California to the owner of this pen. It turned out that the owner of the pen was leaving that very evening to go to California, to stay with his spiritual guru.

About half the people in the group obtained similar results, and this was after only one weekend.

I haven’t particularly pursued this sort of training because I want to put any time available into spiritual rather than psychic pursuits. Furthermore I think you have to be psychologically extremely healthy to continue down that route, and at the time I definitely wasn’t, and knew it. However, in our modern society I think some sort of balance could be regained if such ‘sensitivity training’ could be extended to many more appropriate people.

Interestingly, another psychic experience came out of this group which taught me quite a bit about not getting involved in what might be the sewers of the psychological world unless you absolutely have to. I will write about this in my next post. It is an area where the spiritual and the psychic are constantly confused. Again, in our society’s tendency to officially ignore the non- material, the ignorance in this area has been responsible for a lot of unnecessary suffering.

"The Sense Of Being Stared At"

There is a lot that I’m grateful to Ken Wilber and Integralism for, but I’m particularly grateful for his pointing out that there are two types of non- rational thinking.

The first type is pre-rational and can be seen in small children who have not yet learnt to think rationally. It can also be seen in adults who choose to over-ride rationality when their emotions are running powerfully counter to rational thought. Further, there are deeply traditional societies where it is customary to deny or ignore rationality to ensure that things continue as they always have, (though this is sometimes to do with keeping power and wealth in the hands of the same type or gender of people, and could be seen to be quite rational from their point of view!)

The other type of non-rationality is what Wilber calls ‘trans-rational’. Quantum physics is an example of this. Rationally, quantum physicists should not get the results they get. Nobody has yet satisfactorily explained why they do. But the fact is that they do, and these non- rational results are so reliable that quantum engineers use them as the basis for formulae and inventions that work.

It is amazing what we have been trained not to think about, and how often we refuse to believe the evidence of our own experience, because it does not fit with material rationality, as currently defined. Rupert Sheldrake, of Cambridge University, has done many experiments over the years to prove that humans and animals have ways of knowing what’s going on with others that cannot be rationally explained. He has written many books about the results of these experiments, such as ‘The Sense of Being Stared At’.

I have had many of these trans-rational experiences myself. The one that has particularly stuck with me happened a few years ago. I was doing the washing up at the time, not thinking about very much in particular when, as a complete non sequitur, I suddenly had the thought that if my parents were to die at the same time (they were both healthily alive at that point) there would be all sorts of practical problems, and all sorts of things my brother and I hadn’t got around to asking them, or telling them, for that matter. I made a note on my ‘to do’ list and then carried on.

 A few days later I discovered that, at the time that thought had popped into my head, my parents had been travelling in a car, finding themselves facing another car overtaking coming the other way at speed and in their lane. Both my parents had thought that ‘this was it’. Luckily it wasn’t, but I believe I had picked up on my mother’s emotions at that point. 

Furthermore, this wasn’t a one off situation, just a particularly dramatic one. Although we lived 70 miles from each other, and only spoke once a week on the phone, I was usually aware if my mother was in a particularly extreme mood – it would just come to me, whatever I was doing.

Of course, if you want to communicate at distance, a telephone is rather more reliable. But I do wish that more research was being done on what Rupert Sheldrake calls ‘morphic resonance’- the information fields that seem to connect humans, and animals, regardless of distance; not necessarily as an aid to winning wars, or conquering outer space, which I believe the USA and the Soviet Union have experimented with, but more as a way of understanding the human condition.

Ken Wilber also pointed out that Freud tended to view anything non rational as pre-rational, and Jung tended to view everything non rational as trans-rational. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber#Pre.2Ftrans_fallacy)  As such, both these great men  have actually muddied the waters rather, and it would be good for everyone if the difference was more clearly understood.

Another Seeker

Well souled and healed! I didn't think of that, Joe Delaney did (but I wish it had been me.)

I have been enjoying watching two of Joe's presentations on YouTube. These are the second and third talks he gave out of a series of three. Unfortunately the first wasn't recorded, but he re-caps the main points from that talk at the beginning of the second. You can see them at:

Talk 2
and then
Talk 3

IMHO, Joe has humour, knowledge and insight. Enjoy

The Human Being

This post builds on my posts of 10 October (A Spiritual Cosmology) and 28 October (Four Universes).Firstly it is a diagram showing how the pillars of 'Force' and 'Form', referred to in 'A Spiritual Cosmology' relate to the four universes which are described in, appropriately, the post called 'Four Universes'. (The diagram will not make much sense if you haven't read those two earlier posts.)

Secondly, this is a diagram of every individual human being. We are each made up of these four universes, though many of us don't pay much attention to anything beyond the physical universe and the lower half of the psychological universe (i.e. the lower half of the universe of 'mind', the universe which psychology addresses) and so we get buffeted about by our ids, egos and superegos.

The aim of personal evolution (or spiritual development) is to situate the place from where we observe and act as far up those four universes as possible

For example, as the diagram below sets out, a person's ego, which is the point from which most people see their world and make their decisions, is located in the psychological (i.e. mind/mental) aspect of a person, in the area which 'overlaps' with that person's physical body. A person can however, usually with some work, see the world from a more authentic sense of self, sometimes referred to as the 'Higher Self'. This vantage point exists 'further up' (i.e. closer to God) and is shown in the diagram at the mid point of a person's psychological (mind/mental) aspect.

Operating from the place of this Higher Self, a person can successfully and constructively integrate the impulses coming up from the id, ego and superego and down from the soul. A person's soul, as shown in the diagram, occupies the place where his/her psychological and spiritual aspects overlap. An even higher Self, our Christ Self, the Messiah, exists 'in the middle' of our spiritual aspect. Some Gnostic Christians say that Christ's second coming happens every time one us realises the Christ presence in ourselves.

I shall write more about the implications of this in a later post, called 'Vegetable, Animal and Human People'.

The Four Universes

Oh dear; it seems that my fifth blog (A Spiritual Cosmology) left some people feeling more confused than they were before. In this post, therefore, I will try to make what I was attempting to say a little clearer…

I was taught at Sunday School that there was Earth, Heaven and Hell. You lived on Earth, and when you died, you went to Heaven or Hell. Heaven seemed to be somewhere 'up there' beyond the stars, and hell was 'down there'.

Then I came across the following saying by a mystic (I paraphrase): "Why do people ask where the soul goes when a person dies? It doesn't have to go anywhere, it's already there." I found this puzzling, but then I realised that maybe it was like asking where the body goes when you wake up from dreams. It doesn't go anywhere - it's been there, all along, in bed, while your mind was off all over the place, imagining all sorts of scenarios. All that happens when you wake up is a change of consciousness - in this case from dreaming to waking. This is somewhat like changing channels on a TV; one minute you're on one frequency, the next you're on another. I suppose that one way of describing spiritual development is that you become capable of experiencing finer and finer "frequencies". 

What I am going to describe now is not something I have pulled out of thin air. The scheme of things I set out below is often referred to as 'the perennial philosophy', because mystics from all religions, and from many different times and places, have experienced this reality for themselves. Details might differ, but the 'great chain of being' that I'm going to try to explain does not vary in its overall order or principles: the Absolute brings a Divine universe into existence, which in turn produces a spiritual universe (made of denser 'stuff'/energy). In turn the spiritual universe produces a mental universe (the universe of mind), again denser than its predecessor, and which in turn produces the most dense universe of all- the universe with the most 'rules' and conditions- the physical universe.

While we're alive, most of us identify with the densest frequency, that of physical matter. We think that the body is us. Materialist scientists say that the mind is just a result of electrical activity in the physical brain. What the perennial philosophy states is that it's actually the other way around. The world of mind is responsible for the material world. Something has to exist 'in mind' before it can exist physically. You and I existed as mind before we took on bodies. As far as I can tell, once we've 'incarnated' as a physical body, most of us are firmly attached to it. 

Others, however, claim to have 'OBE's - out of the body experiences. I know one person who claimed that she used this ability to see over people's heads at the theatre (she just 'rose up' out of her body, and her ability to see 'rose up' as well.) However, it did make her epilepsy much worse. I have since read a suggestion that epilepsy might be the result of the mind not being seated as securely in the physical brain as most people's. 

I personally believe, from various experiences I've had, and that other people have described, that our higher minds are capable of roaming free all over the place while we're asleep, though most don't go very far. We do not remember a thing about it in the morning, any more than we can remember former lives, or being newly born. Spiritual 'adepts' (of which the philosopher KenWilber claims to be one - see his book 'One Taste') can stay conscious even during sleep, and they do remember.

There has also been a lot of argument about 'NDE's - near death experiences, where people who have physically died (i.e. are brain dead) are somehow resuscitated, and can describe what had been going on around them while they were dead. Materialists will say that this is all down to the brain producing all sorts of chemicals to reassure itself as it dies. But it seems much simpler to me just to accept that the mind survives physical death, and to remember that if you are with someone when they die, they can see and hear you, before they move on to the next part of their particular journey.

So, to summarise, the mind pre-exists the body. And according to the perennial philosophy, spirit pre-exists mind. (In the Kabbalic version of the perennial philosophy, what you would think of traditionally as your individual soul exists where spirit overlaps with your particular mind. See the diagram above, and the diagram is the next post 'The Human Being'.) The important thing is that you can use your higher mental functions (the ones that do more than make your brain work properly by, e.g. firing up your central nervous system) to access the spiritual universe, and indeed the Divine universe. An example of a higher mental function is your imagination, which is used in visualisation, creative activities and so on.

As I've said before, I think the most useful thing we can do is line up our own will with Divine Will. This is difficult if nobody's ever told you about the existence of Divine Will; (I've talked about the practices that help to line up 'will' with 'Will', in earlier posts). One thing that needs to be said here is that, across these four universes, distance cannot be measured by miles or any similar unit; distance is measured by degree of similarity. The more 'spiritual' you are, the closer to the spiritual universe you become, i.e. to lining yourself up on the same frequency. Personally, I don't think it's a good idea to line up solely with the dense physical body (though it seems as if many people have,) given the temporary nature of that physical body. 

According to the perennial philosophy, our souls are not trapped in the physical body until we die. Our souls continue to exist in the spiritual realm even while we inhabit a physical body. If our souls are not getting the sort of stimulation and sustenance they need, they withdraw back to exist purely in the spiritual realm again, leaving behind a body and mind working purely on 'automatic', i.e. one which is soul-less. I personally believe, though, our soul will come back if we start showing an interest in it. We can be 're-souled'.

Honouring the gods

Life, like a pantheon of jealous gods (take the ancient Greek or Roman Gods for example) makes many and conflicting demands upon us. To deal with these conflicting demands it helps to view these gods and goddesses as representative of the deep urges embedded within us.   

According to certain psychotherapies these urges, mostly unconscious, are an integral part of our soul. Many of us feel a void at the middle of our existence because we have become disconnected from, or 'educated' away from, these urges. Others feel torn by conflicting urges.

Writers like Thomas Moore (see his book ‘Care of the Soul’) concentrate on what these dilemmas can tell us about what our soul needs. (Transpersonal psychotherapies are particularly concerned with this.  Therapies like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, NLP and hypnotherapy, while extremely effective and useful in their place, are more concerned with alleviating symptoms.) So rather than see envy, for example, as a feeling that we have to overcome and conquer, it would be better if we stepped back for a while and consider what our soul is attempting to resolve, or gain, or draw our attention to.  To begin with, such a step allows us to detach from the envy. Secondly, it can remove the guilt and denial that stops us from exploring these feelings in the depth needed. When we are attached to something we see as unpleasant, unworthy, or shameful, we tend to deny it, which precludes working constructively with it.

Envy, like all emotions, exists for a reason. All emotions, even those deemed unworthy or dangerous, or which are banned by one of the ten commandments,  are indicators that we are paying insufficient attention to something of importance.

If we accept from the start that our emotional and spiritual lives are, by nature, contradictory and paradoxical, we are in a better position to deal with the problems that this throws up. This goes further.

We may think, for example, that all we need is a healthy relationship, somebody to love us who treats us properly, and consider ourselves bereft and incomplete, without this. But, deep down, when we reflect, we know that to love, to experience security in the affections of some-one we love in return, is to risk. Who knows what life might throw up to tear us apart? Or what we might be called upon to sacrifice for this relationship? When I was a counsellor, I had many clients who declared that all they wanted was to love and be loved. But further investigation revealed that that their feelings were actually very ambiguous. This is understandable. Having discovered the conflict, those clients could then go on to make a conscious decision about how much they were prepared to risk, and the price they were prepared, or not, to pay.

And it goes further.

Our soul needs to find some way to hold and honour all the paradoxes within us. Our soul knows that to love is to risk. It wants to expand and hold within itself the dichotomies and the paradoxes. Take for example the demands of two very powerful gods; between Apollo – rational, sober, constructive, light, male, yang; and Dionysus – intuitive, intoxicated, destructive, dark, female, yin.  Consider also that our soul needs to honour both Aphrodite - sexual, sensuous - and Artemis - pure, asexual.  If we repress one, if we ignore it and do not give it the attention and/or the respect it demands, and do not examine it as a signpost to an area of emotional or spiritual inattention/lack of respect, it may well destroy us.  Greek, Roman, Viking and many other mythologies abound in stories of how destructive the gods and goddesses can be if they’re not receiving the attention or respect they think is their due.

 “'In every corner of my soul stands an altar to a different god.” (Fernando Pessoa). If we can accept this, that with every impulse that we have there will be a conflicting impulse, and that in every impulse there is the seed of its own opposite (see the yin/yang symbol,) perhaps of its own destruction, we would not feel so short-changed by our lives. Indeed, we could use that very fact to enrich our immortal souls. 

Full Circle: 'Thou', It, I, 'Thou'

When I was a child it was common in the UK, where I live, to have Christian assemblies at school each morning, with the singing of hymns, and the saying of prayers. I also went to Sunday School and then Church. So I was very familiar from the start with the practice of addressing God in the second person, albeit in archaic language, using Thou and Thine, instead of You and Yours. The God I grew up with was personal, to everyone. The word for that, I know now, is immanent.

Then of course I became a teenager, questioning and querying, and came across the point of view that whatever 'being' had created such a vast universe, in which our planet is a tiny, tiny speck, there was absolutely no reason why that entity should be the least bit interested in us, let alone in whether we allowed women to be priests, or banned people from having sex with some-one of the same gender. God became something it would be daft to address as 'you'. God, if it existed, was 'it', in the third person. For a while for me God became a remote and transcendent entity, which left the question, debated by humanists, agnostics and aetheists for centuries, how do we decide what 'good' or a moral life is, if God has nothing to do with it? The universe also suddenly seemed a very cold and meaningless place. Reading the French existentialists (one of them in the actual French, thanks to it being in my A-level French curriculum.) intensified that feeling. Not really a good thing if you're prone to depression anyway.

But then I came across mysticism and panentheism (the latter being the belief that God is everything in the material universe, and a lot more besides.) This made it clear why so many mystics down the ages have insisted that they were God - some being put to death for it. I've already gone into more detail about this in a post called 'A Spiritual Cosmology'. As I say there, God is the origin of everything, including you and me. We are made out of God. You and I are God. So God moved into the 'first person' grammatically

As regards getting our moral code from God, if we are God, then can we decide our own morality? (Is this where Aleister Crowley's suggestion "Do whatever thou wilt" comes from?)   In our post-modern society, where all values are equal, we are having a particular problem with this one.

Also referring to God in the first person made praying difficult. In praying to God I was praying to myself,  which felt extremely wrong. So I prayed to my 'Higher Self',- my more authentic self, beyond my everyday self which is mired in my ego, and pushed around by my id and superego. There was quite a debate on this in the Integral community, a lot of whose members are Buddhists so, being agnostic -because it's unimportant whether there is a God or not- don't have this problem (though a lot of them pray to Buddha, and other Buddhist saints.) You can see part of this debate at http://integrallife.com/member/david-sunfellow/blog/2nd-person-god-active-force-our-lives though it helps if you know something about 'spiral dynamics' to understand the significance of the colours being referred to. See http://integrallife.com/integral-post/overview-integral-theory

Basically the argument for a 'second person view of God' i.e. referring to God as 'you', is that while we are centred in our egos, and most of us are most of the time, it is more appropriate to envisage God as 'other', though it's not actually true. This helps to keep the ego in check, which  paradoxically helps us to remember who we really are.(God.)

This doesn't solve the morality problem immediately, but down the millenia mystics have reassured us time and time again that one can define as good anything that brings us closer to 'God', i.e. to the spiritual and Divine aspects of existence, and experience suggests that the golden rule is the absolute foundation of that.

While talking about prayer, I remember reading somewhere that many prayers don't 'get heard' anyway, because angels are the relay transmitters, boosting the signal so that prayers can reach the spiritual and Divine worlds (which of course is the spiritual and Divine aspects of ourselves) from which they can be answered. Angels originate and exist in the psychological/mental zone (and archangels originate and exist in the spiritual realm) so they simply don't hear prayers that are purely about materialistic things!!! I am intrigued by this concept, seemingly made up of a mixture of metaphor, allegory and metaphysics- and am still pondering its inner meaning; but basically the mystics are agreed that you don't need to pray for anything because God already knows what you need. I've said a bit more about this in my post on this blog entitled 'Daily Practice'.

I've also decided to continue referring to God as 'Thou' in my prayers, as a way of acknowledging that the 'second person' to whom I am praying is not any old person.

I'd be intrigued to know others' experience of these first person, second person, and third person views of God.

On Suffering

At the end of my last posting, David Birkett commented “I'm interested in your view of creation and the universe as regards those people born or cast into desperate circumstances.” Actually he and I discussed this question in bed that night, because he’s my husband, (we certainly know how to have fun). I thought that I would put the essence of what we discussed in this post, and invite others’ views.

Firstly, on a practical note, the exercises I described in my last post, done regularly, are designed to make it less likely that you generate more self- imposed suffering. Furthermore, when suffering occurs, you will be better able to deal with it. Fewer things will be interpreted by you as ‘suffering’, and are more likely to be interpreted as a learning experience instead. You also become psychologically and spiritually more resilient. I can vouch for that, personally.

But why should there be suffering in existence in the first place? And why does it seem to be doled out so unfairly? Why couldn’t an omnipotent God create a suffering-free world in the first place?

To begin with, I would like to refer readers to my second post of 10 October 2012 ("A spiritual cosmology and the problem of evil"). This is my own working hypothesis, but who am I to know the mind of God?? I’m reminded of God’s answer to Job, in the book of the Old Testament Bible of the same name. Job is a good man, and yet God stands by while he loses everything, including his family, and suffers horrible illnesses, while his previous neighbours and friends come to the conclusion that he could not have been the good man that they had thought, to be suffering like this. In the end Job turns on God and demands “WHY?” God yells back “WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION ME? Where you there when I created the world?” 

There are a number of eastern religions that are no more puzzled by the existence of suffering in a world where there is also joy, than they are at the fact there is dark as well as light. A single glance at the apparently infinite variety of creation might assure one that this is a universe which is exploring every conceivable possibility. The Buddha famously declared, as his ‘first truth’, that life IS suffering, and he searched hard to find a way to avoid being reborn into existence. Sufis (Muslim mystics) have been known to refer to this world as a ‘vale of suffering’, and both Kaballah and Sufi mystics tell tales of souls begging God not to be sent down to Earth to incarnate. But go they must.

Whatever’s going on, suffering seems to be essential to the process.  A few years ago there was a programme shown on TV called ‘Where was God during the Tsunami?’ which interviewed the priests, rabbis, imans etc. of various religions about why they thought God allowed suffering. I remember a Catholic priest saying that ‘God must have cried as he pushed the button to bring about creation’ because he knew the suffering that would ensue.

As well as there being stories within mystical traditions about less courageous souls not wanting to incarnate on Earth, there are also stories of souls who actually volunteer to enter into lives that will be full of suffering. There seems to be two reasons why they do this; firstly, to learn more quickly, and so make their way back up involution more quickly (again, see my second post on 10^th October) and, secondly, to ‘work off’ other people’s negative ‘karma’. 

The theory behind karma is that every action we take out of free will has consequences for the state of our soul. Some actions will make it lighter, so it advances back up the ladder to the Divine. Others will make it heavier, pulling it down into purgatory, and maybe even into a self- inflicted hell.  (Nobody gets sent to hell. We send ourselves there.) My husband particularly likes the theory about volunteering to undergo suffering in order to help others. Not only does it give his suffering meaning, but allows him to feel quite noble as well.

I desist from reminding him that his suffering might also be the result of misdeeds in past lives, which now need to be balanced up! Seriously, this particular theory is used in some societies as an excuse not to feel sorry for or even to help people who are suffering, or coping with desperate circumstances, and even to add to their suffering. I hardly need point out that this is not compassionate behaviour.

Christianity has a particularly interesting and rewarding take on suffering. Not only do Christians know that God experiences suffering, through becoming human Himself and suffering one of those most agonising deaths that can happen to a creature; but also that an inestimable amount of everyone’s karma was paid off as a result of His doing so, so we can all avoid hell if we so choose.

I hope I do not appear to be taking this subject too lightly to anyone undergoing suffering at the moment. To put it even more personally: as an endogenous depressive (I don’t need things outside of myself to make me depressed, I just don’t have enough serotonin to cope with everyday life) I have had prolonged episodes when I am terrified every time my husband or son leaves the house, in case they have an accident, and I never see them alive again.

You may consider this an unreasonable terror, but for me it was real, and almost unliveable with. I can appreciate the suffering of people who have good reason to fear they will never see a loved one again. Susan Jeffers wrote a book called ‘Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway’ in which she proposed that it’s not fear of actual suffering that frightens us, it’s the fear of not being able to cope with that suffering. Her book underlines the need for courage to live this life fully. In another of her books ‘End the Struggle and Dance with Life’ (where do they get these titles???) she suggests the following prayer that I have now incorporated into my everyday practice:

“Dear God, I trust that no matter what happens in my life, it is for my highest good. And no matter what happens in the lives of those I love, it is for their highest good. From all things that are put before us, we shall become stronger and more loving people. I am grateful for all the opportunity and beauty you put into my life. And in all that I do, I shall seek to be a channel for your love.”

Daily practice

There are those who can see some sense in what I’ve written in my first five posts, but who do not have time to read the books I’ve recommended in yesterday’s post, and who are more interested in what this means for them on a day to day basis, i.e. what action can be taken in their everyday lives.

Each tradition has very definite guidelines and ‘rules’ for this – the Ten Commandments, the Eightfold Path, and so on, but if it’s of any help, I have set out here the daily practice that I have evolved for myself, honed from many traditions. I would love to know what others are doing – please let me know.

First thing in the morning, - very first thing,-  I repeat the positive affirmation “I am loved, I am worthy, I am safe, I am free” several times, and then again whenever I remember to do so throughout the day.

Having affirmed this, first thing, the Christian’s Lord’s Prayer is a good set up for the day:

“Our heavenly parent (your ‘spiritual’ parents or, if you like, you at your most perfect level. The main thing about this entity to which you are praying, whether it be male or female, both or neither, is that it is wholly wise, understanding and compassionate, and has nothing but bottomless unconditional love for you. Don’t let any interlopers worm their way in here.)

Hallowed be Thy name (you intend to worship only that which is the begetter of the universe, with what that means, rather than any other person, thing, idea or ambition. I’ve kept the archaic language and capitalisation here because it lifts the prayer out of the ordinary mundane world.)

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (you are asking to be a channel for what God would like to be happening on Earth.)

Give us this day our daily bread (self- explanatory, plus you’re asking for what you need, rather than what you want, as we are often blind to the fact that if our wants were satisfied it would not always be in our own best interests.)

And forgive us for what we’ve done wrong, as we forgive those who’ve done us wrong (what goes around comes around. Anyway, holding on to a grudge weighs you down, psychologically and spiritually. This doesn’t mean that you mustn’t take loving compassionate action to try to ensure the wrong does not occur again – both those committed by you and by others against you.)

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (This is acknowledging that we can’t keep out of trouble without Divine/spiritual help, and that we’re also trusting that God knows what’s beyond us, and won’t push us beyond what we can cope with.)

For Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory (as it should be, lesser entities just mess these things up when they try to pretend this isn’t the way things are.)

Forever and ever. So be it”

It’s important that you concentrate hard on what you’re saying as you recite this prayer.

I then usually round off my morning ritual running through the list of divine qualities I want to be channelling that day e.g. wisdom, compassion, understanding, patience, generosity, peace; and specifically requesting Divine help with that.

I then put a mark on the back of my hand or choose a specific piece of jewellery that will regularly catch my eye throughout the day. When it does I do a quick review of how I have been ‘manifesting’ the qualities I chose that morning, and if there’s anything I need to do as a result of that review.

At some point during the day I meditate for 20 minutes. I happen to use the ‘GetSomeHeadspace’ application, but that does cost money. Plus there are loads of places on the net, and thousands of books that’ll tell you how to do it. Very many people claim that this is the most necessary activity on a spiritual quest. In my opinion, it does help to peel your ego away from your more authentic self, which it is often smothering. This enables your more authentic self (the one more in touch with your Divine origins) to get a handle on the caprices of your ego, and id, and superego come to that. Always remembering of course that all three of them (ego, id and superego) are only trying, within their limited means, to do their best for you. They make great servants but terrible masters.

Now I’m unemployed, I also devote some time to extra prayers and spiritual exercises and contemplations during the day. The ones I currently use are from ‘Open Mind, Open Heart’ and ‘What We May Be’ (see my last posting) and also from Tau Malachi’s books ‘Living Gnosis’ and ‘Gnosis of the Cosmic Christ’. These exercises in these last two books can also be found on the Sophian tradition website I mentioned in my last post.

I’ve found it very important to end the day with prayer as well. It’s a good idea to list all the things you’ve been grateful for that day (e.g. the roof over your head, the food you’ve eaten, the old friend who got back in touch), then to pray for others (both of these are actually for your own spiritual and psychological good) and, finally, to identify the issues and problems you are having trouble with, or are experiencing anxiety about (this is more for your own clarity, the Divine of course has no need to be told) and then, consciously turn them over to this Higher Power. It can see all sorts of angles and wrinkles and possible solutions that you can’t, will be thinking more in the longer term, and what would be good for others as well. I cannot tell you what a help this last prayer has been to me over the years.

If at any point during these rituals you begin to feel gratitude and awe – not an unusual occurrence – direct these feelings ‘upwards’ (spiritually) to whatever you’re envisioning as God, in order to share them. In religious parlance this is known as devotion, and can open all sorts of interesting doors.

As said earlier, I would love to know what others do.

Sources for further exploration

If anybody is interested in anything I've written so far, there is a wealth of further information out there. I tend to go for the type that turns up in books,- real material books,- so that I can write all over them.

I would most strongly recommend reading "What We May Be" by Piero Ferrucci. In fact, if I were in government, every household would receive a free copy of this book. Half an hour at the beginning of each school day would be given over to reading it and trying some of the exercises it recommends. In fact, if there's only one book you read in the rest of your life, make sure it's this one. Not that I've any strong feelings one way or another.

If you then want to go on, and read up further, try Karen Armstrong's "The Case for God". This woman is brilliant, and very readable (though not as readable as "What We May Be")

I would also recommend Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi's "The Way of Kabbalah", He has written several books with very similar titles, but I think that this is definitely the best one to start with.

Another favourite - the book that started me off down this track to begin with- is Kenneth Walker's "Gurdjieff, A Study of His Teachings".

After that, Christians would probably appreciate Father Thomas Keating's "Open Mind, Open Heart"
and Muslims might like Idries Shah's "The Sufis" though you don't have to be a Christian or Muslim to appreciate either or both..

For the intellectually adventurous (and possibly masochistic) I would recommend Jenny Wade's "Changes of Mind", as well as Ken Wilber's "No Boundary" and "Integral Spirituality"

Some websites which might lead you to interesting discoveries are as follows:

http://integrallife.com/

http://www.kabbalahsociety.org/

http://www.sophian.org/index.html

What books and websites would others recommend?

A spiritual cosmology, and the problem of evil

[Advance postscript: Some people have told me that they found the following post confusing. If that applies to you, I've tried to clarify it further in my posts on 28 October 'The Four Universes' and 29 October 'The Human Being'.]

I intend to be a little bolder, and considerably more provocative in this post, and tackle the question that has been thrown up for millennia by the critics of the Christian/Jewish/Muslim God, which can be formulated as follows:

Why is there evil in a universe created by an omnipotent, loving God? Either God is omnipotent, or loving. The existence of evil suggests God cannot be both.

In order to respond to this perfectly rational question, we must think the practically unthinkable, for human brains anyway. This is that the entity/ground of all being/”absolute” responsible for anything existing (–and I’m talking about all levels of existence here: Divine, spiritual, psychological and physical-) in other words, the prime cause that needs no cause itself- is nothing, i.e. no- thing that we could possibly imagine. We can only describe it by what it is not, and that includes any adjective we can think of. Those adjectives/labels include ‘omnipotent’ and ‘loving’. It is impossible to describe the entity that is responsible for existence in any way, let alone apply words like ‘loving’ or ‘omnipotent’.

However, as I have already suggested, there are several levels of existence between the material/physical universe that most of us are familiar with, and the ‘ground of all being/”Absolute”’, and all of those levels the original entity gave birth to (parthenogenetically!), or rather, is continually giving birth to.

You can envisage it like this:

         Or like this:                                        

Several mystical traditions have it that the first universe to emerge from this “Absolute”, which is referred to as the ’Divine universe’, is beyond ordinary human comprehension. However, this Divine universe in turn produced out of itself the ‘spiritual universe’. At the head of this spiritual universe is the Being we can think of as the Creator God. So, to clarify, the ’Creator God’, referred to in the first verses of Genesis, is an aspect of the original “Absolute” and the original ‘Divine universe’.

In western Kabbalah and Gnostic Christian Kabbalah, the “Absolute” that calls forth from itself the Divine universe is referred to as ‘Ayin En Sof’ (‘endless nothing-ness’) and in at least one version of eastern Vedanta the concept is referred to as ‘Brahman’. The Creator God on the other hand is the ‘Keter of Beriyah’ and the ‘Tiferet of Azilut’ (the Crown of spirituality and the Truth of the Divine’) in Kabbalah; and as Brahma -without the final ‘n’- in Vedanta.  

    

Those who have had direct experience of this Creator God do report feelings of absolute bliss, peace, understanding, wisdom, compassion belonging-ness and one-ness with It in Its presence. (Not all of them are able to bring these attributes back with them.) (In fact not all of them come back and some, who are not sufficiently prepared, go happily mad.)

So, in answer to the original question set out above, my own thoughts on this is that the Creator God had to work within the ‘rules’ already set out by the ‘“Absolute” nothing-ness’ when it initiated all existence out of itself. The Creator God could not make 2 plus 2 equal 5, for example. Similarly it could not make an edible omelette without breaking eggs, just as you can’t build a comfortable, civilised town without having sewers in place. Thus the Creator God could not ‘choose’ to create a universe without what we think of as evil and suffering.

There is also the question of balancing ‘force’ and ‘form’, both of which are needed to make a multi- dimensional universe. On the side of force you have: expansive tendencies, creative impulses, revelation and wisdom. On the side of form you have: tendencies to contract and pull in, limitation and definition (e.g. structure), contemplation of what has been revealed, and understanding. (‘Understanding’ balances and channels ‘wisdom ‘ – this is a huge area that I’ll return to in future blogs.)

 As is the nature of any dynamic process, these two sides, force and form, can go out of balance, even before humankind started running around acting out of free will and often in opposition to God’s will. As I said in my last blog, too much force and the universe will go spiralling outwards and out of existence; too much form, and the universe would be too uncomfortable to be lived in (possibly disappearing up its own fundament). Between these two sides runs a ‘pillar’ holding the balance. In this strand of creation are will, grace, compassion and truth.

So, to re-cap: The Creator God not only brought the spiritual universe into existence out of itself (the exact process being described allegorically in the first chapter of Genesis), it also formed, out of the spiritual universe, the psychological universe (sometimes referred to as the astral or mental universe), from which the spiritual universe can be accessed; and from there (the psychological universe) made the physical universe, from which the psychological world can be accessed. It’s what brains were made for….

So Darwin was right, but only gave part of the picture. We are evolving back up our original involution.  The brain might act as a vehicle for the mind in evolution, but the whole body came about as a vehicle for the mind in involution.

Every human being has a physical, psychological, spiritual and divine aspect, because we are ultimately made out of the stuff the Divine universe. (What a lovely thought:  our bodies are made of stardust, literally, and both our bodies and inner selves are made of stuff that is, in its essence, Divine.) We all have immediate access to the physical and psychological worlds on being born. We have access to our spiritual and Divine selves by making our way up that central pillar of truth, compassion, grace and will. We do this through meditation, contemplation, prayer and appropriate action. [There is more about this in a later post called 'The Human Being'.]

There. I hope I’ve now put a stop to over 4,000 years of people asking such a pesky question…

[As mentioned earlier, if this isn't clear, have a look at the posts of 28 and 29 October.]