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Thread: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Quote Posted by Ikarusion (here)
    this damn ego reaches far and wide.
    Yes, but I'd also say thank goodness for the ego. It takes us, indeed ultimately just about compels us, toward the transcendence not only of itself but ultimately it shows us how we may also transcend the cosmos itself. How "far out" is that!

    Really the ego is an illusion, a construct, a fiction. But what an illusion. How masterfully it fools us. I've mentioned before that, being illusory, the ego is really just a vehicle for certain higher forces than itself. E.g., see post #1393:
    https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...pes#post766198

    Our ego, which is every moment implicitly boasting of freedom, is in fact at every moment the slave, the toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in this vast multiverse.


    And if we didn't have the ego to show us how unsatisfactory and unfulfilled the ordinary kind of mind, and heart, and will, are, I doubt we would as quickly appreciate the need to search with all our might for a higher kind of mind, and heart, somewhere deeper inside us. These higher kinds being no longer the agents of separation. And to appreciate the desirability of accessing and experiencing non-duality and integrating it into our lives even within the world of polarities that we live in.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Quote Posted by Ikarusion (here)
    very interesting. thank you. sneaky ego.

    can we do pranayama to counter the negative influences of longer fasts on our bodies?
    can we do some other practice to unify our different (mental, emotional etc.) bodies?
    Pranayama, as best I understand, is basically the (Hatha Yoga) practice of waking up and unleashing the energy that's "normally" lying dormant in the physical body. As this energy gets physically released more and more fully, it links the individual more and more fully to higher planes, to progressively higher levels of consciousness. The ever more increasing levels of physical energy in the body in effect "tempt", or provide more and more energy for, higher-level bodies than just the physical to operate through the individual; and even bodiless expressions of (that individual's) formerly dormant consciousness.

    Pranayama does, however, use one aid other than its physical exercises and postures. It also uses something mental --namely, a mantra. This is necessary to take one beyond the physical. Also, mantras utilize sound, even if that's something one does silently, and just repeatedly imagines the sound. The interesting thing about light and sound, though, is that they aren't just electromagnetic (and hence fifth-dimensional), but they also have higher "octaves" at many higher planes -- "Light" and "Sound", all the way to Source.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    One necessary requirement for accessing at least the level that the Higher Mind, or soul, or Jivatman, or Big Mind, is on, is that you need to abandon any seeking for personal gain or thrills through such an experience. This is apparently one point where many Westerners hugely stumble these days, but it's an absolutely essential point. If you try to access (even the beginning of) the lowest of the formless regions through any kind of (egoic, or robotic or hypnotic technique, or drug-related, or technology-related) force at all, then you may accidentally get some kind of experience but it may well be a distorted and in many ways unwholesome one, and certainly it will usually be risky. And in the end, "Whoever tries to save his soul will lose it," unfortunately.

    Paradoxically, it's only through you giving up any quest for gaining experience that it becomes possible for your HM (or even the Divine dormant within you) to use you. Period. And then perhaps the higher part will give you higher experiences freely as a kind of fringe benefit. And maybe ever so much bliss and inner peace, eventually. You have to put yourself into the hands of your HM, and to do it safely too. Meditation, by the way, is altogether a training in how to do this safely, how to let go of being what seems to be "you" in favor of a higher version of you that lies deeper within, but initially seems like it's "not-you". It's safe to make that jump during meditation (provided that meditation's being done correctly, e.g. not while you're intoxicated, nor starting from an ungrounded state).

    So, you need to surrender to that particular "blank" tthat's within you and more deeply you. You need to have an attitude of letting it fully flow through you and use you for service to the whole. To letting it use you basically as it determines -- though you need to be alert to picking up the ball too. Any technique, other than going "blank" in the right sort of way, will be service to (egoic) self. And therefore just won't work here. I'm afraid it doesn't matter how hard you try or intend, or how often you practice, without such surrender.

    The exercise in post #24: https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post586384 provides you with a very quick (and very safe) way to rise up beyond the physical, emotional, memory, and mental planes to the HM planes in twenty seconds or thirty seconds or so. I've found that pretty much every sane person of a "New Age" or "spiritual" bent seems quite able to do this. (But note my subsequent discussions around May 2013 with AwakeInADream, who initially was going into his head and therefore doing this exercise incorrectly, at first.) Notice that the exercise involves "going blank" and holding that state of "blankness", and looking for whatever higher "energy" comes down out of that "blankness" and takes on a mental and maybe also emotional form as it descends to you in the physical world.

    Please notice also the warning I offered in a recent post: https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post933397
    This was a warning regarding listening to any voices in the astral or mental other than your own. This also requires some further discussion of the question of how does one reconcile surrender with being more truly and fully (the Higher) you. I'll cover that in another post shortly.

    Does anyone have any comments or issues about surrender or your experience of the exercise from post #24?
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 27th March 2015 at 02:41.
    Above all, always refuse to cut your life in two: nonduality/duality, matter/Spirit, etc
    A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom. ~ J. Krishnamurti
    (True, deep) stillness is the way.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    I think how to safe surrender (if thatīs not a paradox) is a legit question

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Quote Posted by wegge (here)
    I think how to safe surrender (if thatīs not a paradox) is a legit question
    Yes indeed, wegge. I appreciate your point about "if it's a legit question" regarding the assumption that it's possible to surrender. What needs to be surrendered is a less authentic "you", that has to allow itself to get replaced by a truer "you". That more authentic "you" doesn't do any surrendering, but the only way it can manifest and take over your life is through that more false version of yourself surrendering to it.

    From the point of view of that truer "you", it hasn't had to do any surrendering. Rather, it's establishing its sovereignty at last. Then, later, this better version of "you" will also need to surrender to a "you" that's truer still. The ground keeps getting cut right out from under your feet.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    What does it mean to be continually and permanently, or almost continually and permanently, in touch with one's soul, one's HM, to experience it as present all the time? It may be useful to you if I describe some of the things this question has involved for me at various points in my life. This is so central to living a life that is truly spiritual.

    In this thread I've already talked a little about bliss and about ways to achieve it. But in my experience nothing is more central and essential to the experience of the soul's presence than the experience of bliss. I guess I initially learnt some significant things about bliss when close to my sixteenth birthday I began to have experiences of the first three Divine worlds, and continued to have them at least now and then on weekends. This involved going to higher planes than those of the soul or Higher Mind, namely, the Divine or universal planes. While one is on such planes, one directly experiences that one literally is God, or Source. And even though one doesn't continue to experience that after one has left such planes, the experience is so much more vivid and real than any other, that one knows that one's essence or deeper nature must be Divine, even if most of the time for now it remains in a potential rather than an actualized state.

    As time went on it became ever clearer to me why the Zen masters and others insisted that having those kinds of enlightenment experiences was just the very beginning step of the true spiritual journey. Intensive self-reflection and intensive detached self re-viewing was also needed, including the facing and "outing" of one's dark side.

    Quite a few years later I became very interested in finding a way to remove unhappiness from my life, permanently. I had become convinced this must be possible. And although at that time I had mistakenly conceived this as requiring the escape from having to live in the physical world, I tried various spiritual or self-reflective practices as potential means of such escape. The practice which eventually worked the best was that of feeling the aliveness [see post #114] https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post606494

    After nine years of my continually practicing the feeling of the aliveness, one day I noticed I had somehow become incapable of feeling boredom any longer. It seems most people feel at least some boredom now and then during the day in relation to their work or to some chores that need doing. But now, no matter what I did I couldn't bring boredom into it even if I wanted to. It seemed amazing. Once this had permanently taken hold, I reflected on what had changed in me to perhaps bring this about. I observed that I had somehow learnt not to be boring inwardly. So, there was no longer any inner dialogue going on that created boredom, either for me or for others. That was over eighteen years ago.

    Two years later I started to notice that I sometimes could go for whole days at a time without desire or expectations. (By which I mean that I still wanted essential needs, such as a nutritious meal when I was hungry. But beyond such basic things I felt strongly that I needed nothing further -- nothing that supposedly would "make me happy".) Rather quickly, this developed into a permanent detachment from desire and expectations. For about two years, I then experienced a life that seemed to be quite free of unhappiness, at least at a conscious level. Then that honeymoon ended, but I still found it left me able to kind of consciously bring bliss in to any situation quite quickly, however unpleasant that situation might be. After all, as I've said, desire is the very root of the ego. So, what better way to diminish the ego's hold than to take away its biggest gun? Also, letting go of all your desires and expectations, at least temporarily, brings you enormously expanded, gigantic freedom. Plus it gets rid of so much needless worrying. And it gives you a "neutrality" where you don't care about what solution you prefer to some problem: now, you can clearly look at all your options impartially, and even see some out of left field. So liberating, and so good for getting insight into the best thing to do in a given situation.

    Bliss now became something that was continually there, or else I'd notice it wasn't present so I'd consciously bring it in. Bliss became normal to me, part of the furniture. Many people didn't understand this, because many notice after a while that something about me is different. Sometimes they put it down to my supposedly having an optimistic nature, or to my for some reason supposedly loving my work. This also has something to do with also being masterful at total acceptance, or totally allowing everything to be exactly as it is. One still feels pain or stress, but usually the bliss is much stronger than the pain or stress. As I've said in a previous post, now you don't usually need to wince at pain.

    I suspect not everyone goes through the same stages in the same order as I did. But another breakthrough, that I experienced about nine years ago, was that in half an hour I energetically and utterly in every way cancelled out all, or nearly all, of the judgments on myself that I had put there at the time of my birth. Everyone places such judgments on themselves at their birth. Normally those self-judgments get formed, or re-formed, directly as a result of the life review the individual did usually on the next day after their death from their most recent previous lifetime. It's very, very important to reach the point where you can dissolve or get rid of your prime self-judgments. Otherwise you may well be making them again at the end of your current life. Also, everyone needs to become very good at liking themselves, in a genuine and sensible way, and in forgiving themselves, but without denying their responsibility.

    These are only some of the things that life with the permanent presence of the soul, the HM, has involved. I wanted to describe them to give readers some picture that the presence of the soul doesn't just mean having a wise consciousness one can communicate with or be filled with love by.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 30th March 2015 at 01:37.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    TH...new here lots of reading to catch up with the thread. Just beginning to connect with my HS and have been attempting OB following early morning deep meditations, just for a week or so. Looking forward to getting out and about in the higher demensions. Eager to see the other side, prepare for the next experience!

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Hi, Daisy, and may I warmly welcome you to the Forum. My understanding is that when a person is meditating properly/deeply they're already in some higher dimension but it would often take considerable experience and certain skills or special help (i.e. from positive OB beings) before the person could be clearly and precisely aware of where they really are at such a time. But I don't myself see that as so important. The main thing, as I see it, is learning to identify and surrender to that which is (benevolently) higher within you. More and more. The inner journey, and discovering that the entire universe, and all Truth, is inside you if you go through that "gate" fully enough.

    It's such a long, long journey for everyone to clear away the "fog" that comes from their own baggage and stops them from "seeing" the higher planes clearly. Not that the "scenery" is really important, because for me, at least, it's more mostly about "feeling" (but as distinct from emotions) and about understanding in new ways. Also, it's easy to read a paragraph in seconds that may summarize the results of over half a lifetime of progress. It's something else to then go through maybe half a lifetime of working on your own development before you get there yourself. Patience is necessary at certain stages and various times. Not to mention persistence.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    TH. Thank you for your dedication to this thread. As I read, I learn so very much. Your spiritual journey has been vast and I love that you are eager and willing to share all that you know with Avalonians. Trying the early exercises. When I looked down at my feet I was a soldier in heavy boots. I am kind of faking it till I make it. During meditation I am visiting with my children, grandchildren and friends. There has been some positive feedback...seeing a friend in a blue dress. I have been searching in a fashion since the seventies...TM, Silva Mind Control, reading, reading. Your search makes me look like a slacker! I must say that now in my seventies, I love my life. It has been quite a ride and I am experiencing some detachment. I trust that my HS will help me. She always has. When I pay attention and set my intention the way is clear.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Hi TH,
    on my regular visits to your deep and wonderful thread, I came across this quote:
    ""Here's a secret about Alzheimers. I happen to know that everyone who has Alzheimers eventually becomes an expert astral traveler, not to mention a daily visitor to greatly expanded realms of consciousness.""
    I had a similar thought, ever since my mother immersed into this state of mind. Just one thought among many assumptions I had, trying to grasp what was happening. You seem to 'know'. Could you explain in a little more detail what you mean with: "I happen to know". A description of personal experiences would help me immensely.

    Bliss to you, my friend.
    Reinhard
    The very moment the caterpillar thought the world would end, it turned into a butterfly.
    Laotse

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    I'm familiar with Alzheimers because my mother had it, and also because I later spent six months working with and observing people with Alzheimers as part of my social work degree. (When my mother initially got it, I hadn't heard of Alzheimers, and I was living in another city and the internet hadn't started yet, so it was about five years before I knew what she had.)

    Firstly, a very well-known puzzle in the social work literature is why so very few individuals commit suicide in the early stages of the disease, shortly after they realize they've got it and what that implies. Most professionals acknowledge that they can find no satisfactory answer, at all. But consider that even in the early stages the individual experiences extensive "disorientation", and that studies of what that disorientation is specifically like reveal that the individual believes they're mostly in some other kind of world. In fact, that other kind of world turns out to be exactly like some level of the astral. The orthodox view is that this is just delusion on the patient's part. But my own experience, both with my mother and with the others I've observed, has been that they don't seem to lose their strength of consciousness, but rather they transfer it more and more into life in some OB world(s). Clairvoyants more psychic than myself also confirm that this is the case. After death there's no need to give former Alzheimers patients any special help to get their consciousness back, because at death they have full normal consciousness.

    If you observe Alzheimers patients at a hostel for older people, who are at an early stage of Alzheimers, you can hardly fail to notice how happy and content most of them look while they're doing nothing, or virtually nothing. Although they'll probably be receiving daily doses of tranquilizer and anti-depresssant drugs, that doesn't fully explain why such people clearly seemed, to me, to have a contentment coming from somewhere else. That contentment actually seemed to clearly transcend, and even counter, the zombie-like effects of such drugs. This is not to deny, though, that Alzheimers sufferers also usually go through periodic weeping and grief for what they have lost.

    Also, in the six months before she died my mother would regularly visit me OB at night, seeking help to deal with her depression and fear regarding death. Although she was very clairvoyant, she very firmly believed that when you die, that's the end. But it was obvious that in the astral/mental at such times she fully possessed a normal level of consciousness, not a weakened or deluded or zombified consciousness at all.

    I appreciate that at a physical level the lives of Alzheimers sufferers look more and more miserable, Reinhard. But that's not the full picture of what's going on. And I can assure you that the astral worlds, all being at a higher level than the physical, are much more joyful to experience than life in the physical world is. The Alzheimers patients are all having a great time while they're in the astral -- though maybe the physical seems all the more tough to deal with to them by contrast.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 2nd April 2015 at 00:29.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Quote Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
    You absolutely have to learn how to watch your everyday self without any judging. Like a scientist looking at the results of an experiment. Except, when you're watching your everyday self the results of that "experiment" are usually surprising. Very surprising. If you can laugh at yourself, at the junk your everyday self initially and for some time just keeps coming up with, on and on, that's great. That's being the observer -- of your everyday level.
    i keep making myself laugh at these automatic responses i come up with at certain situations or when thinking about people and things. often i immediately recognize how silly and especially egoistic my responses are. as soon as i take on a different point of view the house of cards falls apart, which sometimes even gets me to laugh out loud.

    i remain rather silent though to egoistic responses of other people. well, sometimes i try to make a comparison like "well, then i cant help about being like this and that either. its simply the way i am". alas, it appears rare in my memory that the other person actually notices how flawed our arguments are. but i keep trying to apply this gentle kind of guidance instead of saying things directly.

    Quote Posted by animovado (here)
    I wrote a question beneath it and because I'm not capable to translate it satisfyingly into english, I like to post it in my native language.

    "Ich Schattenbaum, ich Schattentraum -
    welch' Grund umschliesst die Wurzeln?"
    "i shadowtree, i shadowtree, -
    what reason encloses the roots?" - puh, that is kinda tough to get through the same way. please dont take offence at my attempt.
    Last edited by Ikarusion; 2nd April 2015 at 10:27.
    ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ
    Your ego is not your amigo (!)

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Quote Posted by Ikarusion (here)

    Quote Posted by animovado (here)
    I wrote a question beneath it and because I'm not capable to translate it satisfyingly into english, I like to post it in my native language.

    "Ich Schattenbaum, ich Schattentraum -
    welch' Grund umschliesst die Wurzeln?"
    "i shadowtree, i shadowtree, -
    what reason encloses the roots?" - puh, that is kinda tough to get through the same way. please dont take offence at my attempt.
    Thank you for trying, Ikarusion.

    I like to give myself a try.

    "I'm a shadow tree, a shadowy dream -
    in which ground my roots are based in?"

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Quote Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
    This is not to deny, though, that Alzheimers sufferers also usually go through periodic weeping and grief for what they have lost.
    Do you think this is coming from the consciousness of the physical body, knowing that the spirit is not often at home anymore?

    While the spirit is disconnected, we're mostly left to interact with the consciousness of that physical body, aren't we?

    Think it's possible for the spirit to give instructions to the body? :-) Sort of like, "Be good until I get back." I know some travelers have learned how to program the body like that, to do things while they are out.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Quote Posted by Joe Akulis (here)

    While the spirit is disconnected, we're mostly left to interact with the consciousness of that physical body, aren't we?

    Think it's possible for the spirit to give instructions to the body? :-) Sort of like, "Be good until I get back." I know some travelers have learned how to program the body like that, to do things while they are out.
    Certainly, as you imply, Joe, the individual with Alzheimers will come to be in greater contact and communication with their HM than they would ever most likely have been before the onset of the disease. And also certainly, the HM has too positive and too broad an outlook to linger in a state of grief for any significant time. It follows that yes, as you imply, the grief would belong to the body-consciousness and the ego, and not to the HM. But since the individual still possesses a body and that body has now become an exceptional burden, it would take a very exceptional individual not to be bothered very much, at times, by the grief or frustration at bearing such a physical handicap. On the other hand, the individual will also be "absent" from their body for ever longer periods as the disease progresses. And the HM is "God" in the body-consciousness's eyes, so yes, it could quite possibly "program" the body to behave in a certain way while the HM explores other planes.

    The ancient Eastern tradition, and the Indian tradition to this day, has been that one draws away from the common or conventional existence and loosens one's ties to it. The traditional Eastern ideal is that one purchases wealth of spirit by an impoverishment of one's human activities, the inner freedom by an outer death. If he gains God, he loses life, or if he turns
    his efforts outward to conquer life, he is in danger of losing God, so the theory goes. But this is of course an escape from life. On the other hand, the individual with Alzheimers finds themselves living in partial withdrawal from the physical world, and more and more so, not by choice but in spite of any wish they may have to the contrary.

    This raises questions such as whether to truly go beyond a plane of existence we need to go through "death" to that plane. It also reminds us of the necessity to understand just what the call of the beyond means. Does it culminate in full-on impersonality, and if so, how do we get to such a point?

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    [QUOTE=TraineeHuman;949130]
    Quote Posted by Joe Akulis (here)
    This raises questions such as whether to truly go beyond a plane of existence we need to go through "death" to that plane.
    Yes, that is another interesting question that I've been pondering recently. Seems like it could be true for the first couple planes inward at least. The things I've read over the years give me the impression that most people, when this physical body dies, are reverting back to an "energy body" which separates and moves about at the speed of thought in the next inward realm of consciousness. A place which you have helped to shed a lot of light on with this thread.

    I've wondered if there's a certain stage that is reached when we also shed that energy body, like a death from that astral plane or something like that. Not sure what we revert back to if that's what eventually happens. I'd be very curious to know how we "inhabit" that second plane, inward beyond the first one. Probably not very easy to conceptualize at this level.

    It also raises the question about coming back. When we leave this physical body, many of us take some time to rest and recover, then examine and study, and then gear up for another return, to take on another physical incarnation. I've wondered if there could be a similar dynamic for the next layer inward. Like leaving your energy body, returning to the next layer inward, and then after a time coming back. Could be that this is when we return to our higher self and re-integrate and become aware of all the other experience we've gained. I bet that's like what the Michael channelings talked about with regard to a causal entity, or something like that. Then after that higher being has gained enough experience it eventually takes those 1000 lifetimes and goes through a kind of death at that level, and becomes aware of how it was really a part of another being that has lots of those balls of 1000-lifetime experiences to it.

    :-)

    Seriously rambling at this point. I'm probably trying to make a square peg from this layer of consciousness (the nature of physical incarnation) fit into a round hole in the next. But it sure is fun to think about. Gives me something to do while I continue to examine and work on myself.

    Much love to all reading this thread.

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    Germany Avalon Member Reinhard's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Thank your very much, TH, for your concise and deep answer. I learned a lot....again.
    Reinhard


    Quote Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
    I'm familiar with Alzheimers because my mother had it, and also because I later spent six months working with and observing people with Alzheimers as part of my social work degree. (When my mother initially got it, I hadn't heard of Alzheimers, and I was living in another city and the internet hadn't started yet, so it was about five years before I knew what she had.)

    Firstly, a very well-known puzzle in the social work literature is why so very few individuals commit suicide in the early stages of the disease, shortly after they realize they've got it and what that implies. Most professionals acknowledge that they can find no satisfactory answer, at all. But consider that even in the early stages the individual experiences extensive "disorientation", and that studies of what that disorientation is specifically like reveal that the individual believes they're mostly in some other kind of world. In fact, that other kind of world turns out to be exactly like some level of the astral. The orthodox view is that this is just delusion on the patient's part. But my own experience, both with my mother and with the others I've observed, has been that they don't seem to lose their strength of consciousness, but rather they transfer it more and more into life in some OB world(s). Clairvoyants more psychic than myself also confirm that this is the case. After death there's no need to give former Alzheimers patients any special help to get their consciousness back, because at death they have full normal consciousness.

    If you observe Alzheimers patients at a hostel for older people, who are at an early stage of Alzheimers, you can hardly fail to notice how happy and content most of them look while they're doing nothing, or virtually nothing. Although they'll probably be receiving daily doses of tranquilizer and anti-depresssant drugs, that doesn't fully explain why such people clearly seemed, to me, to have a contentment coming from somewhere else. That contentment actually seemed to clearly transcend, and even counter, the zombie-like effects of such drugs. This is not to deny, though, that Alzheimers sufferers also usually go through periodic weeping and grief for what they have lost.

    Also, in the six months before she died my mother would regularly visit me OB at night, seeking help to deal with her depression and fear regarding death. Although she was very clairvoyant, she very firmly believed that when you die, that's the end. But it was obvious that in the astral/mental at such times she fully possessed a normal level of consciousness, not a weakened or deluded or zombified consciousness at all.

    I appreciate that at a physical level the lives of Alzheimers sufferers look more and more miserable, Reinhard. But that's not the full picture of what's going on. And I can assure you that the astral worlds, all being at a higher level than the physical, are much more joyful to experience than life in the physical world is. The Alzheimers patients are all having a great time while they're in the astral -- though maybe the physical seems all the more tough to deal with to them by contrast.
    The very moment the caterpillar thought the world would end, it turned into a butterfly.
    Laotse

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Quote Posted by Joe Akulis (here)
    The things I've read over the years give me the impression that most people, when this physical body dies, are reverting back to an "energy body" which separates and moves about at the speed of thought in the next inward realm of consciousness. ...

    I've wondered if there's a certain stage that is reached when we also shed that energy body, like a death from that astral plane or something like that. Not sure what we revert back to if that's what eventually happens. I'd be very curious to know how we "inhabit" that second plane, inward beyond the first one. Probably not very easy to conceptualize at this level.

    It also raises the question about coming back. When we leave this physical body, many of us take some time to rest and recover, then examine and study, and then gear up for another return, to take on another physical incarnation. I've wondered if there could be a similar dynamic for the next layer inward. Like leaving your energy body, returning to the next layer inward, and then after a time coming back. Could be that this is when we return to our higher self and re-integrate and become aware of all the other experience we've gained. I bet that's like what the Michael channelings talked about with regard to a causal entity, or something like that. Then after that higher being has gained enough experience it eventually takes those 1000 lifetimes and goes through a kind of death at that level, and becomes aware of how it was really a part of another being that has lots of those balls of 1000-lifetime experiences to it.
    Ideally, at the time of physical death we should totally let go of and cut loose both our astral/emotional/magnetic body and our mental/electric body, as I've mentioned before. Neither of these is our "soul". Neither, as well, is our "causal" or "etheric" or "upper mental" body our soul. Well, actually this is a small part of the soul/HM, namely, it's the form which the HM takes on in order to communicate better with the above lower parts of ourselves and with our body-consciousness and cells. But the soul as a whole is intrinsically formless, and if we don't part with our "causal body" then we cut ourselves off from access to the infinite side of our being. (If we manage to cut loose the "causal body", then certainly no other being, including a past personality of our own, is able to interfere with us or manipulate us in any way whatsoever, unless it's with our full and conscious consent.)

    Some individuals -- probably under 10% -- don't allow their astral/emotional body to separate from them at any point after death, and these addicts to drama then get reincarnated quickly and miss out on much that's desirable in the between-lives state.

    In practice, nearly everyone seems to retain some degree of attachment to the mental bodies (their own "personalities") from some of their more recent incarnations. I guess this is because they consider that this is a way of accessing some of the wisdom gained from their past lifetimes. This is unfortunate, and it's a failure to trust in their own HM's wisdom. A complicating issue here is that some major side of one's most recent lifetime will have been an attempt to resolve or set right some issue from a previous lifetime. Unfortunately, while we're alive in any physical lifetime most of us don't make it a practice to place our biggest problems in the "hands" of our HM for it to find a solution for us -- which we need to adopt and act on once it comes. Because of this, we then don't resolve that issue properly in this lifetime either, and in this way there'll often be a chain of maybe twenty lifetimes all because of a lack of surrender to one's HM.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 7th April 2015 at 11:46.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Quote Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
    In some ways I'm reminded of her a little by the central character in a wonderful and hilarious movie that another member, Love, recently posted in another thread. I don't watch movies these days, because there's normally so much fantasy in them I lose interest long before the end.

    But this movie is so full of "wall-to-wall" truth, that fact alone in my opinion says a great deal about the effects of the ego's neverending fantasizing as we see it in our society. I'm posting it in this thread too, just in case anyone has missed out on watching it as yet.
    this sounds interesting. unfortunately though, the movie appears to be deleted.
    do you remember the name of it?

    thanks and regards,
    ika
    ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ
    Your ego is not your amigo (!)

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Ika, the film's title is La Belle Verte. It's French, and its title translates to something like "The Beautiful Greenery".

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