Spiritual Path

As I say in my book “You are on a spiritual path whether you know it, intend it, admit it or not.”  We are all on a spiritual path.  A major part of my path is to change the world by spreading the Love I was shown during my Near-Death-Experience.  I have been doing that for years but now there is a change afoot and I do not know what that change is.  I am impatient and I am fond of clarity so the uncertainty bothers me.  My path has always been on a “need to know”, so I suspect that I’ll know when the time is right!  I write this to re-assure myself."...would you say all of humanity is on a spiritual path?  Absolutely.  It's a beautiful thought, Emmanuel.  The entire universe is a beautiful thought."  (Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton)

 

Holistic Healing

  For the last day I have spent much of the time focused on the feeling of unconditional love and reflecting on the power/force those thoughts contain for physical, emotional and spiritual well being and healing.  As far as my physical healing I focus on God, love and harmony with all things, direct that feeling into my hands and send it wherever I need healing.  I can feel the shift in energy and assume healing is taking place.  I get miraculous result which are really just an expansion of what is commonly called “the placebo effect” There is a lot of power/force there which is frequently not recognized.

Silence

A great deal of what I do daily  requires a high level of focus and concentration, even the muscular control of walking or eating.  If my focus on walking is broken by being surprised by something or having my attention drawn away, I stumble and occasionally even fall.  Similar things happen with my other activities, which is why I value silence so highly.  Silence around me enables me to easily focus on the thoughts or activities at hand, even unconditional love or other internal emotions.  I prefer to not have noisy distractions around me.  “When a peaceful silence lay over all, and the night had run half of her swift course, down from the heavens, from the royal throne, leapt your all powerful word.” (the book of Wisdom 18:14, 15)

 

Love

  I mentioned the other day that my goal is to change the world one person at a time.”  Right now many decisions are made out of fear, resulting in separation, aggression and defensiveness.  I am promoting a shift to acting out of love, resulting in connection, understanding and compassion.  I do not know what that will look like precisely since everyone is different and the loving approach is to honor and support that difference.  The shift I envision would benefit all people and everything on earth.  I am one man but I will do what I can each day.  “We shall never succeed in stopping war until we have a human society permeated with persons who practice a way of life which removes and abolishes the grounds and occasions of war, and at the same time matures and ripens a spirit of mutual understanding and personal cooperation.”  (Rufus Jones)

Connection

  When I go to a recovery meetings I can feel the presence of the other people because of their energy fields, it’s easy and, often, very pleasant sometimes chaotic or sad.  Today is a Saturday when I meet face to face with someone and we talk about recovery for an hour or so and I feel that connection.  I also feel that connection when I talk one-on-one over the phone, though the connection is less present so I have to work at it a bit.  I find the connection very meaningful and fulfilling.  For some reason, which I don’t fully understand, I do not get that connection during Zoom meetings.  Fortunately, I suspect, we will begin in-person meetings at some point.  For now it is good to know about the connection.

Being At Peace

  I am still searching for a new path, looking for that familiar feeling of inspiration for some sort of activities directed at my overall goal of “changing the world one person at a time”.  I continue with my own healing work and I have begun my journaling again and will begin revising my website to include more about the “unseen” aspects of reality — Sound like enough, but I am impatient.  I am seldom satisfied and always looking to do more.  I think it’s time to be at peace with what I am doing.  “You create a path of your own by looking within yourself and listening to your soul, cultivating your own ways of experiencing the sacred, and then practicing it.  Practicing until you make it a song that sings you.” (Sue Monk Kidd)

Gratitude

  Today is Thanksgiving, a good day to feel gratitude — and I do.  I am seventy-two and I have to wonder how that happened!  I have encountered numerous physical, emotional and spiritual difficulties during those years, together with the methods of overcoming those problems.  I was led to the solutions during periods of meditation and contemplation.  I am grateful for the solutions and the difficulties that led me to them.  Those difficulties began with being raised in a loveless, non-spiritual, somewhat abusive alcoholic home followed by hypertrophy and a chronic prostate infection in my teen years.  Since then I have experienced my own alcoholism, drug addiction, a mal-functioning heart valve, my disability, pre-cancerous (possibly cancerous) conditions, a lung problem and an underperforming thyroid.  Meditation and God have led me to at least partial solutions to all of those problems.  I have overcome the physical problems to the extent that doctors re-diagnose me since the original diagnosis could not have been correct.  I am seventy-two, retired, married for thirty-eight years and experience happiness and joy regularly.  Not bad!

Path With Heart

  My overall goal continues to be changing the world one person at a time.  I am pushing for a shift away from behaviors or attitudes stemming from fear/aggression toward those coming from love/spirituality,  My actual paths and actions have revolved around this goal for years and it has always been “a path with heart” — I feel good about following it.  At the present time my activities are directed at the “unseen realm” of the energy field around each of us.  My behaviors, actions and attitudes have all been influenced by this field and now I am attempting to do the same for others, with Love, joy, compassion and acceptance as my guide.  “Anything is one of a million paths (un camino entre cantidades de caminos).  Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that a path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks.  My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you (Don Juan as quoted by Carlos Castaneda)

Responsible Citizen

  Yesterday I spent some time listening to N.P.R. and then read some in the “Washington Post” and, as expected, I felt a bit depressed and anxious at the state of the world and some of the things people are doing.  I was being a “responsible citizen” in keeping up with the news.  The presentation was balanced, logical and evidence based.  As is my usual practice I also chose to meditate on peace, love, God and eternity and, of course, felt much better realizing that, in the eternal sense, the world was fine.  To me, being that responsible citizen includes the meditative perspective and spreading peace and love in everything I do.  “To understand better the value of silence in daily life, and its relation to this spiritual transformation for which we yearn, it is useful first to consider the limitation of language, of words.  It is next useful to contemplate the limitations of logical reasoning.” (Seeger)

Godly Actions

  In the process of my daily activities and especially when approaching something new, as I described yesterday I always check in with God and the universe in general to make sure that the action/activity is motivated by love.  The activity I am approaching has to satisfy each of the three questions (Would I do this in front of God; Is it really my responsibility; Is this a loving act).  In addition, the actions I take are generally aimed at serving others, not selfish.  “The fruits of the Spirit [tests if leadings are divine in origin] have been translated as ‘love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control’” (Galatians 5:23 NJB) p 5