Uplifting

I watched a movie last night. The Big Blue. a French movie about a deep see diver who dived deep into the ocean without an oxygen tank, just him with the one breath of air he took before he dived in…

Now, this type of movie is not my favorite type of movie, what made me watch it is Dr David Hawkins’ recommendation.

In his book, Power vs. Force he says that the movie calibrates at 700 on a logarithmic scale of 1 to 1000.

Einstein only calibrates at 499…

So I went out, and searched for it. Lots of opportunities to download pirated versions, I chose to buy the movie used… hey, if I am going to use it to move my own consciousness up the scale, might as well be high minded, right?

I watched the movie, and I didn’t understand it. In the end, the hero chooses to go back into the depth of the sea instead of staying with his pregnant girl-friend.

I wanted to look it up on google, maybe I misunderstood… but instead, in my sleep, it came to me: above a certain level in consciousness, where people rarely get, life is like deep down in the see. Rare thoughts, if any, dreamlike, you feel drunk with bliss. At least according to Dr. David Hawkins. He lives there, he says.

That is the world of the endless, the world of the soul. No wonder the ego, the always hurrying, always concerned, always opinionating ego drowns the few words the soul would say… no wonder our lives is so far removed from that dreamy, blissful state.

Then another part of the movie popped into my memory: the doctor says that at the depth these divers descended to, at 500 feet, the oxygen is so compressed, it doesn’t have the energy to lift these people up.

Lift them up…when they are the deepest in the water, where their souls are the freest, their body is the least able to uplift… the diver says, “at that level you need a really good reason to want to come back.”

I don’t like choosing. If you know me, you know that one of my favorite sayings is “have your cake and eat it too.” Choosing, for me, is like cutting off your arm, your legs, your head?

So how can you uplift your soul and not damage your body? How can you, on demand, elevate your soul? Be, at least a little bit, in that blissful domain of no worries and no concerns, in that domain of all knowing, in that domain of all-loving?

In the day-to-day, dog-eat-dog world, it can be near impossible. In that world, joy has to have a reason, and lasts for mere seconds. In that world loving is a deal: I love you and you love me. You break your word: too bad, the deal is off.

Then I thought that appreciation and gratitude are the instant shoe-lifts for your soul.

Don’t believe me? Try it. Attempt to be grateful, for anything, for a moment. You’ll experience a sudden elevation in your state. If you can.

If your vibration level is too low, it may take many attempts. At first you’ll want to appreciate something that you can see that you have a reason to. After enough practice, you’ll be able to appreciate and be grateful for its own sake.

Another book I read recently says: one can start to elevate themselves from slavery and poverty the moment they start noticing and appreciating beauty.

As I am sitting here, in front of my panorama window overlooking a valley in Syracuse, NY, with the streaked sky that looks like my hair when I get up: no two hairs go in the same direction… with the few yellow leaves still clinging to the bare branches of the trees, with the silence of the fall crisp air, my heart fills with gratitude. My eyes well up and I experience instant take-off.

A lift from the mundane to the dominion of the sacred.

If this were taught in schools, the world’s population’s vibration would rise from the current 207 into the late 200’s or maybe into the 300’s. And guess what can’t live in that rarefied world? Thoughts of greed, murder, abuse. Just like most people would die at even 100 feet deep in the ocean…

It takes practice. And it takes a liberation of the soul.

Is it worth it? Yes, take it from me. I have managed to go from wretched to a mostly happy, mostly pleasant individual. Now, that’s something. How did I do that? Exactly how I am telling you… with gratitude and appreciation. And with pulling responsibility towards me… but that will be the topic of another article… You can wait, right? You have work to do. You need to appreciate the world around you, the people, the sky, your cat, your food, your beauty.

Now go, start. Start today!

Freedom

I went to sleep at 4:30 am last night. I was reading a book that was fascinating, riveting, and I could not put it down until it came to some conclusion. Then I got up at 8:30 this morning to finish it. The conclusion was even more stunning than the whole book.

The book, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is a documentary thriller about viruses that come out of the African rain forests and kill people, like aids, like ebola and its different strains.

The book says that the viruses that are on the border of alive/not alive are millions or billions of years old parasites and that their behavior is entirely selfish and they come up as a reaction to the elimination of the rain forests and the overpopulation of the planet by human parasites.

I nodded as I read it. Human beings, like viruses, like parasites, only care about their host a little bit, but for the most part they only care about themselves. They use their environment to make more of themselves, whether that destroys the host or not.

I don’t have a TV, but from time to time, when I am forced to check my yahoo mail online, I am exposed to the “news.” I always regret that I watched any of it, it is all very depressing.

Yesterday I saw the story of this mother of a 13-year old with Hodgkins sarcoma,  who didn’t want “traditional” (aka money hungry, it is good for my doctors’ pocket book) medicine, and now the police force is after him. And hearing the tone of voice of the anchorwoman who completely agreed with the judge that she didn’t have the right to decide, blah, blah, blah.

Jim Humble discovered a new use for an old substance, sodium chlorite, the cheap desinfector that has been used for ages to clean floors, walls, water, but after his unusual inspiration can be used to kill parasites, bad bacteria, fungus like candida albicans and viruses inside your body and even inside your cells. He calls his activated sodium chlorite the “miracle mineral supplement” because if he called it anything else, he would get killed. Literally. He is also forced to live out of the country.

So what the heck am I trying to say, and why is the title of this post “Freedom?”

Good question. Let’s get to it.

Freedom. Here is what the dictionary has to say

1: the quality or state of being free: as

a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action

b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence

c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous <freedom from care>

d: ease, facility <spoke the language with freedom>

e: the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken <answered with freedom>

f: improper familiarity g: boldness of conception or execution h: unrestricted use <gave him the freedom of their home> 2 a: a political right b: franchise, privilege

synonyms freedom, liberty, license mean the power or condition of acting without compulsion. freedom has a broad range of application from total absence of restraint to merely a sense of not being unduly hampered or frustrated <freedom of the press>. liberty suggests release from former restraint or compulsion <the released prisoner had difficulty adjusting to his new liberty>. license implies freedom specially granted or conceded and may connote an abuse of freedom <freedom without responsibility may degenerate into license>.

In my mind freedom is a lot less complicated. You can have or lack freedom from something, and you can have or lack freedom for something that you want.

One of human beings’ slavery is wanting and desiring for the self alone. In that regard we are a lot like the virus that has 7 protein molecules, no brain, no signs of aliveness without a host. I we talked and I told you that you behave like a virus: your whole life is about getting what you want and you don’t care about anyone else, you would be very offended. Right? But chances are that I would be right, very high percentage of the time, to a very high degree.

You see, I think that human beings evolved to have the three levels of brain, and free will, to be a lot more intelligent than we are at this point of human development. I have read that Kabbalah says that there is a need for only 10 human beings reach the level of consciousness concurrently (I mean living at the same time, arriving there and being there at the same time) for a critical mass where all of humanity suddenly evolves, in spite of themselves, to the higher consciousness where live isn’t about “what’s in it for me” but about “what’s in it for you”.

And in spite of the fact that hundreds of spiritual teachers, gurus, disciplines are around, there hasn’t been any time in human history that there were ten individuals at the same time who arrived to this level. Because this level is really like being pregnant: you can’t be a little bit pregnant, almost pregnant, somewhat pregnant. You are either pregnant or you aren’t.

But as long as human beings aren’t even interested in the “symptoms” of being a slave to selfishness, there is hardly any chance for us to get to that level.

According to Kabbalah we have some 240 years to straighten out our acts by out own volition, or method number two, the learning through suffering enters the picture, where you either learn or you perish.

Some 2,000 years ago there was a famous Kabbalist, Rabbi Akiva who had 25 thousand students. Many of those studies day and night, and were thought to be on a high level of connection, a high level of consciousness.

But when a deadly plague came, like the Black Plague, or the Aids epidemic, only five of them survived. Rabbi Akiva had a rude awakening: he realized that all the knowledge in the world doesn’t elevate you, unless you base your whole life on the basis of “love your neighbor as yourself.” Which is what’s missing… and with it freedom is missing, and slavery reigns “supreme.”

shall I get rid of the bad or shall I pile on the good?

Get rid of the bad or take superfood? bandits or preachers

The age old question of any spiritual or self-help movement is: shall I get rid of the bad or shall I pile on the good?

If you look at health advertisements, the main line is: take stuff to pile on the good.

What does this say to you? For most people that means, that is what they should do. Look at the proliferation of superfoods, acai, etc. and tell me if this isn’t so.

But “who” is directing the main line? Who’s voice is trumpeted through all media? The Light or the Opponent? Of course it is the Opponent, the darkness, the ego part. But why would the ego part be so interested in you thinking that all you need to do is add some more goodies to your life, and everything will be all right?

I am going to use a little story here to drive the answer home. Imagine a that 100 righteous men are locked up by 100 bandits. The bandits beat up the righteous men every night. The light of the righteous men is dimmer by the day. The world is getting darker by the minute. This is your life: your health, your wealth, your relationships… I am not talking about an imaginary scenario: this is your life!

You have a choice: will you send in troops to strengthen the righteous men or will you send in troops with weapons to get rid of the bandits? Will you try to offset all the bad stuff you do and think with some good acts, or will you kill off the bad stuff?

Eating superfoods is like trying to fatten the righteous men, they will die from the daily beatings anyway. But the sellers make an incredible profit in the meantime.

The smart answer is: decimate or kill off the bandits.  i.e. stop doing what is killing you and what supports the darkness.

And this is what Kabbalah teaches, exactly. Its whole foundation is to make choices, moment to moment, to stop feeding the ego and listen to the soul. You can’t do both. At any moment, you are either in light or in darkness.

When you are hurting others, indulge, or feel jealousy, greed, anger, however justified, your world is all dark. Every moment you share, your world is all light.

Just like stealing money and giving 10% of it to charity wouldn’t make your world light, overindulging in bad stuff and then taking a multi-vitamin is all dark. Superfood are great when you have already stopped what’s killing you.

You need to cut out the bad, like the bandits in our story.

I wish I had known this before. I am paying the price now.

But you see, it’s never too late. Killing the bandits takes a moment. Even if it is your last.

Feel Well To Do Well Part 3

drownI spent 1-3 hours with a very negative person for seven months in the very near past. I hated about 60-70 percent of every conversation. My attitude was that there is an opportunity lurking there, and I’d find it. That attitude was encouraged by my teachers.

At the end of the seven months I noticed that my financial situation had started to go south when I started that relationship. I was now at a point when I was not going to be able to pay my rent…

A normally hidden thought at that point surfaced in this person’s speaking, and I realized that they were my enemy, and a downer all along. They were in it for what was in it for them, and made sure there was nothing in it for me. They didn’t like me, didn’t care for me, compared me with themselves and they always came out on top, thought it unfare that I would make more money than them.

In that moment of clarity I saw that in those seven months I had handed over the control over my thoughts and life to this person, and it was time to take it back.

I also noticed that it had been a pattern in my life. I could see that there was my desire to “lift up” other people, even if they weren’t particularly interested. I call that caretaking in another post of mine… (Studies show that when a higher vibration person tries to lift up the vibration of another person, instead of the desired outcome, the lowest common denominator wins. Other studies show that in sado-masochistic relationship the real control is in the hand of the masochist, not the sadist, like it seems on the surface.)

You notice that you are not energized by the relationship. You notice that your health, your energy level, your self-love, your connection with your purpose is getting weaker and harder to maintain.

In hindsight the same thing happened with my male cat. He wanted food, he wanted shelter (when he wanted it), but he didn’t want me. He didn’t choose me.

When I look at my relationships (male/female) I see the pattern: it begins with me relentlessly pursuing a stable and steady connection where I am the contributor/giver, thus I have the upper hand. They begrudgingly protecting their right to maintain independence. I increase the pressure. At some point we are best friends. I continue the domination with giving and giving and giving. At some point I catch myself, and break off the relationship.

That’s been the movie of my life. Quite disgusting, if you ask me. And makes for a lonely, unfulfilled life.

Luckily to me, this time I had my eyes open and my fingers pointing at myself. This time I have taken 100% responsibility for my part in this mess.

This fact, having taken responsibility for my role as a director/writer of this movie, I have given myself a chance to write and direct movies that are more fulfilling and satisfying than this repeated nightmarish ego-driven script.

Since the awakening and breakoff, my financial situation is looking up, I am more in touch with my soul’s desire and things unpredictable and delicious are starting to show up in my space.

Feel Well To Do Well — Part 2

lose-weight is an image you dont want to evokeYou get what you focus on. Focus = attention paid.

Now that is a good news/bad news situation, if there has ever been one.

Because you create your reality, and you create it with your words (what you focus on) you can seriously mis-create.

Let’s take weight, for example.

I used to be skinny. I mean skinny!

I ate what I ate, and had no thoughts about my weight or the lack of it.

Then I heard about healthy eating, and started to concentrate on “healthy” food. Guess what happened? I started to pack the weight on, and went from 96 lbs to 165 lbs in a few weeks, no kidding.

Even today, when I forget about my weight, or eating healthy, or what’s good for me, etc. I slim down. The moment I start to concentrate on some new health and energy diet, I pack it on. It takes only taking my attention and focus off the topic and I become normal.

It is like a fine tuned, well oiled machine. You can play with it. The Universe is exceptionally responsive. It’s easier to see on issues that are not pressing. Why?

Because all thoughts matter, not just your conscious thoughts. And you are only aware of 1% [note]Muscle testing has shown that only 1% of your thoughts are conscious and the 99% is totally unconscious. That is the area of what you don’t know you don’t know. Being able to influence your unconscious thoughts is the purpose of many self-improvement programs, meditation, hypnosis, different audio programs with hidden messages [/note] of your thoughts, the others happen while you are busy with other things. Bummer, right? Serious bummer.

So when you experiment, Continue reading “Feel Well To Do Well — Part 2”