The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

[TraineeHuman]

A member has written to me asking what is the best thing to do when all hell breaks loose whenever one decides to "go for it". He says he has decided to do that many times, and always with the same result. I'd really like to invite anyone reading this to offer any possibly useful insight or anecdote from their own experience. And I'm impressed to hear that this member has "gone for it" many times.

Certainly, of course, when all hell strikes one stays aware as best one can, in whatever ways one can. One simply watches. One watches whatever happens. One faces it, instead of denying whatever is happening. If it's sending you temporarily insane, then fine, you're temporarily insane. Let's play the insane "game" just for now. You just accept whatever happens -- without letting it make a total victim of you. I guess if things fall apart, you'll be a victim in some way. But the real you is formless, is one with Stillness. The more you can bring in even a hint of Stillness, the less strongly victimised you can be, by anything.

This is such a huge topic, and there are so many different things to say in response. That's one reason I would love to hear others' accounts or ideas about what going through hell has meant for them -- from the positive view, of doing it successfully. And please don't feel you need to agree with me, at all.

But let's not mince words, either. The truth as I see it is, the deeper the level of Heaven that you aspire to reach, the deeper the level of hell you simply have to go through, but awake, as alert as possible. There's no shortcut, I guess. You can't somehow put a handkerchief wrapped tight over your nose and avoid copping the bad smell. This is not for the weak. This isn't masochism, either. We need to ensure that our suffering is as intelligent as possible. Maybe the member is asking how does one do that?

But we need to see how huge are the forces within ourselves that make us dulled and dishonest and oh so comfortable with gloom and stupidity. And ever so offended at Light's intrusion. We need to feel the viciousness of the battle between our shadow and Light. This whole topic has much in common with that of the shadow self. Only when you scratch your shadow does it begin to scratch back, with sharp nails. Push harder, and it does its best to strangle you if it can, even though it lurks forever in the cracks and the dark spots inside you where you can't ever reach it.

In short, then, one basic principle that I believe applies here is that you can only rise as far as you're willing to stoop. One needs to know this, and learn to be OK with it, and not let it get one down. Are you willing to lose everything, psychologically, and kind of fall into the great nothingness which is the Stillness, where, paradoxically, you have everything? Am I making any sense at all at this point?

And are we eternal beings not here in this physical world to transform it, to spiritualize the heavy mud?

[powessy]

Hello TH

I would like to tell some bits of my own personal experience regarding “all hell breaks loose” perhaps to better create an overall image of where I have come from and where I think things are heading.
First of all my mind has formed some ridged lines in the sand from years of conditioning it to things I have seen and perceived regarding, religion, morals, emotions and my other experiences that lie beyond this reality. I am an atheist have been and will always be. I follow strict morals formed through truths I have found within myself these attributes are non-challengeable and backed by a life time of reasoning. Though emotions are not my strong point, I test all things said analytically seeking how they were said prior to acting upon them this process insures how I will act upon these stimuli. As for my other experiences I have had them for as long as I can remember. The reason I am telling of these things is because if it weren’t for my firmness in life, I feel the trip would have been a hundred times harder.

I am unsure what trip this person is trying to take, but I do know one must insure they are prepared to let go of everything they thought they were and surrender your deepest darkest thoughts to move forward. Your soul will not judge you, but it does want you to let go of the things that hold you back from being all you can be. When I realized Powessy’s ascension within me I was unprepared to have all my thoughts gone through, this has caused me to rethink everything about my life and how he might view them, and whether or not he will agree with my sand drawn lines. I was so wrapped up in creating excuses and trying to evade these thoughts, I started to fall off the balance beam I have walked upon my whole life. The thing I came to realize is that he is not here to judge me but to help me remove all the things that are holding me back. So yea if hell is realizing I am not perfect, that I do have many flaws and sharing your life’s views with another(my soul) then I landed hard onto the bottom floor, and if heaven is letting go of those things and realizing the beauty within myself and others then I have ascended nearly to the top. I still find it hard to accept certain things, love others or silence my mind but he keeps removing walls, so who knows anything is possible in time.

The only other advice I can tell him is to be strong, find balance often and never compromise your morals. I find balance by imagining two lines moving upward, coming together at the top with a ball bouncing back and forth across an imaginary line in the center. When You start off the ball will bounce back and forth in the widest area always moving back and forth the goal is to get it to the top as you start to settle within, and finally reaching a point of stillness as the ball comes to rest in the peak. The sides represent the release of the things holding you back, and the center line represents your center of balance.

Good luck to you.

[chocolate]

~~~

Greetings everyone,

In the light of my very recent personal explorations, and looking back at them, I decided to stop here shortly not to give advice ( I sense it to be too early for me to do that ), but rather to share an observation. But before that I wanted to say that although TraineeHuman and Powessy seem to think they have some differences in their understanding of the process ( OBEs, terms and conditions that go together with some sort of a spiritual path and so on ), while reading their posts I saw that they have more overlapping areas in their understanding than anyone else I have noticed writing here. Or that is how it looks from where I stand right now.

I was having a conversation yesterday with a close friend, and we somehow touched on the same subject as presented in TH's post above. We were talking about Tarot Cards ( as interpretations / readings ) and 'life's journey', because my friend was constantly complaining about a lot of events 'not happening' in his life. The more we talked the more I realized that he is in fact very close to the real reason why he feels stagnant in life, which of course I would never say openly since it should be the person's choice to look at that area and divine his truths, but never putting enough of himself and some critical thought into why the situation looks the way it does currently.
The fact is, the more I tried to say what I think in a very polite and obscure way, but still, I tries, the more my friend kept pushing the conversation in one specific direction. And even when we reached a subject he was interested in, as the Tarot cars as reading life tools, I tried to give a practical advice and information that is already available on internet, so in case someone is indeed interested it is there ready to be accessed. And than came the realization that we all go about life in pretty much the same way.
We often lack the determination to explore in depth areas that appear to interest us and to be of importance at the same time.
And I am not saying this as if I want to judge anyone, I have had moments of exactly the same appearing ( still have them on occasion ) over and over again. That is what was happening to my friend. He is a lovely person, and he has been through a lot, but he does lack the necessary inquisitive mind and the ability to drop his seemingly sound understanding of what life is all about and how things go. I tried to help, and as a result I only hope he would take a few hints here and there.

I know it has been important for me to listen to my inner voice in the most difficult and also the most important moments of my life, but I have 'been made' that way, or I have developed myself in that way with time. And from this current point of view, the only thing I can say is that when something/someone/etc. does interest us or challenge us, we should also have the proper grounding and balance to go and explore it further, steadily, but not superficially.

To help the person asking the question of what to do 'when all hell breaks loose' and why he/she encounters the same over and over again, I would simply ask

If one decides to go for it, then why stop at the gates of hell, or at the seemingly difficult choice or situation without putting it to the test? Why not go further? After all, we know ( I hope most of us do ) that we don't die in the widely understood and promoted way -- in other words there is no death as such, only moments of what I would call supreme clarity -- why are we still afraid of taking each and every next step?
It seems to me we sometimes get discourage by what would look like 'hell'. But what if we just see the situation from a very narrow and limiter point of view. What if what appears as 'hell' is something different altogether?

I can share some more on this topic, but I would rather not do that just yet. I only decided to give some extra encouragement to someone who is obviously interested in exploration, but encountering some drawbacks.

And don't misunderstand me, I am definitely not as experienced in this as TH or Powessy, but as a female person decided I could add a bit of a different taste to the conversation.

~~~

TraineeHuman has a very interesting line in his signature, whenever that signature appears. It goes in pretty much this way:

'There is no teaching, only learning'.

I would say, that is the perfect answer and advice anyone could ever get. The question one could ask himself in times of difficulties would be why stop at the gates?



~~~

[TraineeHuman]

A hell obviously isn't something you ever go looking for. It's something that turns up in your life when you're -- er -- ready. It's always a "guardian of the threshold", that you need to answer to before it will let you progress upwards to the next level of freedom or consciousness. The higher the level of spiritual unfoldment you decide you want to reach to, the more the "opposite pole" of the correspondingly deep level of hell suddenly rears its head before you.

At a certain stage this can be not just at your own individual level, and not just at someone else's individual level in your life, but also at the level of humanity as a whole -- or the archetypal levels Jung wrote about. If you want to go far enough, you'll have to bear such levels of suffering also, and learn to integrate them and dissolve them within yourself. For a brief time, this will often be a torturous experience, or certainly very painful, even if only for a brief period.

Here at PA everyone gets at least an indirect taste of the suffering of all humanity, just by reading about it and considering it. This can only make people a little stronger, a little more mature.

My experience has been that often a spiritual seeker begins by learning to master silence at least moderately well, and maybe after a few months of daily practice there has undeniably been a positive breakthrough. Then suddenly, the individual becomes his or her own worst enemy by doubting what was achieved. He or she suspects having misled her/himself with an enthusiasm that now looks like it was unfounded, just a kind of dream.

That individual really has become more aware. But greater awareness also means being able to see more of everything. That includes more of the psychological burdens that have been weighing one down. These don't go out of existence and -- pop! -- get replaced by peace and light. Rather, the more aware one gets, the greater one's ability gets not to be bothered by them. But one has to break one's attachment to one's ego. The ego complains bitterly about being disturbed by this disruption of its comfort zone.

[powessy]

When I was 18 years old I joined the military for the sole purpose to go to college, ~~by means of the Montgomery GI Bill. During my time in the military I started receiving many forms of OBES, But there was a time when they stuck out the most. I have always believed that the human mind is strong and if you get enough people thinking about the same thing then it might be possible to use this energy to your advantage. I started to meditate and conjure power from the world’s deities believing they were in control of the greatest amount of power granted to them through thought and prayer. During these months of meditation my OBES changed dramatically diving me into a realm of apparitions I thought did not exist. At first there were only four dark entities all of which would grab onto my extremities and forcefully pull me out of body, these entities were a dark mosaic of dots taking the shape of smaller sized human’s. One night I laid in meditation chanting my mantra over and over again knowing I was able to overpower the dark ones I was going to see what laid beyond them. As they pulled me from my body I jerked free and eyes wide open to find myself standing in my room but what I saw still stands as clear today as it did then. I saw many people standing in my room it seemed they were from all parts of the world then the crowd broke and something moved pushing its way through them as I looked up I saw what I believed to be the devil he was reddish in color and had the horns protruding from his head. Any way I turned tail and ran running into the door and waking to a painful shoulder and head.

Did I see the devil that night perhaps, but it was I who conjured him and the others that stood in that room. Did I stop trying to get out of body, no way! I just learned to go or do things that were not so intense, I also learned to stop calling others into my OBES this allowed me to learn more about me and my abilities before taking on things I was not prepared for. The thing that I learned the most is that taking small steps to reach your goal is more practical than trying to play on the last level, so slow down and do it in increments as you are ready for them.

I am going to pass on one thing that may help you but it could also hinder you if you are unprepared for it. If you believe you have a close connection to the veil you will be able to feel it and your guides. How do other’s communicate with their higher self or guides is it through meditation? I communicate through several different forms of physical contact and meditation. The EYE is my main method of contact, this requires relaxation and clearing of the mind. I relax my eye and then ask a question, the answer comes in the form of yes, no, I’m thinking and a series of dots. My guides tell me that any others having a closeness to the veil will also have this ability so you can try this but don’t be afraid if something does come answering. You must request a clear sign for yes and a clear sign for no for these directions change depending on the speaker. My guides are around me all the time and then the others come to check on me quite often they all seem to know me well, I only wish I could remember them. And just because you have found a new way to communicate with them you still have to filter out the lies from the truth for it is this process that teaches us to dig deeper into ourselves to find the answers we seek.

Even with all my many strange experiences within the astral and the veil that had occurred in my life up till six months ago, they all fail to compare with what I am experiencing now, but I intend to play this out in its entirety till the end with their assistance.

Just a few more words to maybe help soften the journey you are on.

[TraineeHuman]

I believe the true underlying motivation behind a person's desire to experience, or master, astral travel is ultimately a desire or urge towards something considerably greater than that. I believe this urge is ultimately irresistible to us all, however buried and veiled it may be inside our hearts. I'm talking of the urge for the consciousness within us to become free and in harmony with all there is and with all other beings. Another way I would describe this is the urge to finally bring Heaven down to earth, completely. This, of course, is what I've been saying about going through all hells and out the other end of them, so that for you in the end they become transformed into paradises.

Bringing Heaven down, and fully into, Earth. It's not a matter of somehow performing a metaphorically surgical "operation" on all that is evil or negative or unawake within us. It's a matter of transforming our lives so that "small is beautiful" applies ultimately to everything we do -- because it's we who transform the everyday and the dull into something positive and proactive, where all problems are only challenges to our resourcefulness and creativity. Paradoxically, to get to that point we do need to go into the depths of consciousness, into uncharted territories we don't even recognise as familiar to us. Go deeply beyond the superficial, and keep going there, throughout your day. That's the true journey. Can we begin to see the beauty and unity and harmony which are actually there all the time, but only through our narrowness we fail to see them, and instead see chaos and conflict?

In my experience, there are two stages one needs to go through in the elimination of (emotional) suffering. Firstly, we need to replace the shrinking and contraction we do so habitually we don't even notice it, with its opposite. That opposite is to face and bear and ride through all the barbs and shocks of our life. To face everything and avoid nothing, but to do so with a calm smile inside our heart. It involves learning not to let anything throw us off. Kind of like wild bronco riding, in a way.

The second stage is where we become able, in the words of Rudyard Kipling: "to meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same". In other words, to treat all experiences as essentially the same, in that nothing can throw us off center any more. I don't care if you learn to do this by learning to love everything and find joy in everything and everyone, or if you learn to find a detachment and inner peace so strong that to you it's really all the same. And I don't expect or believe that anyone (or almost anyone) manages to do this fully or perfectly. But basically, the transformation is to taking this attitude most of the time, instead of the egoistic attitude, of dramatizing, of jumping to one extreme or another.

[TraineeHuman]

It may be worth quoting Kipling's poem "If" in full:

If—
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Source: A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1943)

[powessy]

An example of a astral message that I received this morning.

I hope my last post did not offend or scare anyone these things have been part of me my whole life but they were always in the back ground it is I who has decided to recognize them and bring them to the front of my human experience. I had only wished to share a time of youth and innocence in a quest to seek answers at that time in my life in attempts to explain the pain and suffering my life had held as a child and onward until that moment.

Today I awoke to an astral projected dream and new lesson that seems appropriate to the problems I am having I wish to share.

I found myself at this house where a man was testing me on my knowledge of things around me and my sense of the astral and the veil. There were younger children around they were all playing some games, watching tv and others just doing regular things children do screaming, playing and laughing. The man said I passed this written and verbal portion of the test but had one more thing he wanted me to do, a board puzzle. I sat down in front of this multi- tiered puzzle which had many boards all representing different tests he used. A woman entered the room she seems to be in her mid-forties and had a long connection to this man, she wanted advice from him but he was compelled to get me to finish his test so she went and sat in a sofa chair. I looked up at her and she just stared back agitated, this attitude seemed to be off putting to me but I felt compelled to begin, by this time I was unsure of the puzzle he had pointed to but grabbed the closest one to the vicinity that he had pointed.

As I grabbed the puzzle the lights started to dim and all I could soon see is a young boy sitting in front of the tv with the light it was emitting, The puzzle changed and they all started to fall towards the table top from where they were originally positioned, now all I could remember was some small aspects of the puzzles texture which I was feeling for in the dark trying to still put it together. Soon the lights started to come back on and as I looked down at the puzzle in my hand I soon realized the pieces had all changed and I wasn’t even holding any of the pieces I thought I had gained during the darkness.

The message I received from this is I have the power inside of me to figure out the puzzle but I still stand in the dark, if I wish to see the actual pieces I need to bring them into the light to see them for what they truly are, In Hinduism They call this MAYA. The other thing I see here that may be causing interference is all the distractions around me but this is a life one must endure when one has four children and a spouse , so the answers will come they just might not come as fast I hoped for.

[TraineeHuman]

For the benefit of any new or newish readers of this thread, within the next two weeks I'm going to provide a kind of summary or guide about some of the topics that have been covered in this thread, and where maybe some of the important posts on those are to be found.

It feels necessary, though, to clarify a few background things first. Traditionally, astral travel (which I would consider only one of many OB phenomena, and probably not the most important) was taught as one of various psychic skills in spiritual traditions or systems, usually somewhat as sidelines. These traditions or systems primarily taught -- or, at least, gave equal weight to -- meditation or self-observation or psychotherapy.

The longer I've deeply considered the topic, the more clear it seems to have become to me that the essence of all this is to do with releasing and becoming more aware of one's Higher Mind -- or Higher Self, Witness, Consciousness, Soul, or perhaps whatever other similar term you prefer. To even attempt to learn astral travel in any way other than in an integrated program where astral travel is only one of various byproducts of getting in touch with one's inner consciousness, does now seem to me to be absurd, I'm afraid. It's like the Kentucky Fried or Macdonalds approach -- and I think we all have some knowledge about how toxic the so-called food is that such merchants flog to the public.

In post #9, I mentioned how at any time at least 90% of the population aren't quite in their bodies anyway, but are actually floating in their energy body about six inches above where each corresponding part of their physical body is. I'm not sure everyone took the hint here. Until you can be aware with reasonable certainty of when and that you're fully grounded in your physical body, wouldn't it perhaps be foolish to even attempt to be aware of going out of your physical body, especially at will? Isn't that somehow rather obvious? Well, apparently not, to many writers of books and teachers of what look like they may be Kentucky Fried courses on the subject.

I guess it must be an unwritten rule that a discussion Forum is firstly about just discussing. Then secondarily about doing things in whatever way you decide seems best for you. I was a rather rare bird in that I discovered my HM and even Source virtually without any tutoring or reading. But afterwards I did unbelievably many exercises and therapies and classes and hands-on courses. That's why my summary guide will be centered around what exercises to do.

In addition, I've had direct, wordless interactions with many spiritual teachers. One of the most memorable was U.G. Krishnamurti (no relation to J. Krishnamurti), though I met him only once. That is, U.G. met with a group of eleven, that included myself, here in Sydney when he quietly visited for several weeks. At the beginning of the meeting with the group he immediately established himself as the ultimate nihilist. Virtually every question anyone asked him, he would respond by saying they were just revealing themselves to be a puppet of their social conditioning, or some such thing, and they therefore weren't asking a question with any depth to it. I eyeballed him without any evasion and telepathically asked him why he was so nasty, so negative. To my surprise, he responded. He went into a description of how when he was growing up, some adult in his town had pointed out to him that he "had the heart of a butcher" -- and he wasn't able to deny it, at all. Obviously, he considered he was still very much that way. Nonverbally, though, he conveyed more to me. By chance I had caught him out, just for a moment. I had glimpsed that his true underlying modus operandi was to play the devil's advocate to the nth degree, outrageously, all the time, yet insist that what he was saying, as devil's advocate, was what he sincerely believed. Not by a long chalk, in fact. I've seen a video clip on this Forum of U.G. on his deathbed. He passionately and very irritably proclaims that there's absolutely no survival of physical death. His secret,though, which I somehow accidentally penetrated, was that all the while he had his tongue harder in his cheek than anyone else ever has. What a radical teaching method! I have not the slightest doubt that he absolutely knew he (his higher consciousness) would survive his physical death magnificently. The question was, with how much awareness would his onlookers pass through their own transitions, when their time came? That was what he was actually concerned with, even to his last breath.

What a teacher. What a process that was for me. U.G. was in fact one of the most enlightened and liberated beings I've ever met. For reasons which would take too long to explain, almost any time you drop some major identities, one of two things happens. Either you get extremely energised for several days after. I've sometimes found I didn't need any sleep for several days at such times. The other thing that often happens is that you get hugely drained of energy, at an outward level. This is because your body needs to create new identities to match the new you. Several hours after I returned home after the group meeting with U.G., my body felt so lacking in physical energy I went to sleep in the early afternoon and slept for eighteen hours.

[chocolate]

Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
A member has written to me asking what is the best thing to do when all hell breaks loose whenever one decides to "go for it". He says he has decided to do that many times, and always with the same result. I'd really like to invite anyone reading this to offer any possibly useful insight or anecdote from their own experience. And I'm impressed to hear that this member has "gone for it" many times.
[...]
This is such a huge topic, and there are so many different things to say in response. That's one reason I would love to hear others' accounts or ideas about what going through hell has meant for them -- from the positive view, of doing it successfully. And please don't feel you need to agree with me, at all.

Greetings!

I have been reading the last few posts TH has made recently, and I don't really want to disrupt the stream of thought there. But since I am cartching up on some of the earlier posts on the thread ( quite a few gems there! I have to say ), I decided to share a post that can be related to any situation that seems as if 'all hell has broken loose' on oneself:

Posted by TraineeHuman (here)

Posted by Finefeather (here)
[...]
I guess the point I am trying to make is that we often are locked into the thinking of our parents and friends and cultures and this can be a great deterrent in the discovery of the beauty which is present in us all. It often takes great commitment and will to lay down our past and seek a new beginning in our attitudes to those around us. It becomes a kind of death of the ego, and can be preceded by pain and turmoil in our minds when we need to come to terms with possibly losing friends or members of the family, or our whole old identity, for the sake of truth and love in our lives.

This is what happened to me and I found myself in great inner conflict and my 'dark night of the soul' lasted for quite a few months, until one day I just woke up, and it was not long after that that I experienced my crown chakra opening...this experience was so overwhelming that it took me weeks to settle down. Since that day, 40 years ago, my life has been dedicated to serving others and my Soul/HS has been in my life daily and constantly...it is a feeling of great humility and joy...everything around you and everyone you meet and are with becomes a picture of the love that we are surrounded in...truly breathtaking at times...just what are we waiting for?...when all it takes is to remove the mask which has been hiding our true natures all this time...the dear old ego.

I went through a similar thing at a similar age, Ray. Not because of racism, which wasn't such a big public issue at that time where I was living. But I felt similarly compelled to totally reject the kind of society I was living in. Little did I realize that most of what I considered "me" came totally from that society, so I was cancelling the old "me".

And yes, experiencing union with Source certainly left a feeling of great empowerment. When you're so hugely empowered inside, it's unthinkable not to want to make helping and contributing to humanity be the center of your life, one way or another.

As time went by, I would find myself repeating something that resembled that journey, but in miniature. Mostly it came down to finding more and more different ways to put myself (the ego, that is) out of my (its) comfort zone. For more than five years, for instance, I survived through cold selling, mostly in my own business. That did wonders for getting rid of a considerable amount of shyness.

When you first take the plunge into the discomfort zone, it feels like all hell has broken loose and is targeting you, and that everything you do is wrong and stupid and mostly fails. But most of that is the ego working on your subconscious, "arguing" that you need to give up this foolishness. So you don't give up (unless it's genuinely sensible to do so), and all that part of the ego that was interested in those obstacles has to drop off, never to bother you again if you persist in going on.

It also helps to go into the discomfort zone to do things that are directly of service to others, because that seems to make it easier for the HS to get involved.

No matter if it's many years later, this process still goes on. "Life" continually throws one into new discomfort zones if one isn't going into them voluntarily anyway. I guess we could and do sometimes run away or pretend it isn't happening, but what's the point of that?

The quote was from post #559 on page 28 if anyone is interested to read on.

As a person who has been extremely shy to start with, working on a supervising arena for a while, and having to feel responsible for project's outcomes, people and situations, I've managed to accomplish something similar to what TH was describing as overcoming 'shyness'.
As it has been stated before me, being in service to others ( even if one doesn't necessarily see it in this way while at it ), and when done full-heartedly, does create a safe space for dealing with negativity, doubts, insecurity, etc. I have even thought back on some moments feeling incredulous as to what kind of person has been acting in my role. This has come as a natural state for me, feeling responsible, of feeling 'the love' for some cause and people involved, but I can attest it does create some amazing -- at a more close examination -- results. But it has it drawbacks too -- it can become addictive, as a state of 'mind', or 'being', as any other 'state' that creates with itself the sense of feeling some sort of a 'pleasure'.

[TraineeHuman]

In post #10 I described an exercise for easy astral/mental traveling to view one of one's past lifetimes -- or I thought it was an easy exercise. I was certainly surprised by readers' lack of much success with it. After all, almost each time I had done the exercise (starting from 36 years ago), I had seen a type of short movie showing several very brief detailed scenes out of what seemed to be a past lifetime, a number of them having occurred definitely not on this planet. Unusually, in my case I happen to believe this is my first incarnation on this planet. So I believe that a number of the lifetimes I saw, at least on this planet, were "imprints" I had adopted. That is, they were actually past lifetime memories belonging to others, but I'd evidently "borrowed" them as if they were my own, to help me understand life on this strange mixed-up planet better. One such borrowed lifetime memory was, believe it or not, that of the Roman general Pompey, and I'll describe a few details of that further below.

As I say, I was surprised when I kept hearing that Forum members who tried this exercise didn't experience "movies" of some of their own past lifetimes at all. Scarcely even glimpses. It then eventually dawned on me that when I first did this exercise I was already an experienced meditator and that therefore my HM, being always prominently with me, could easily do such "tricks", it seemed.

There are a number of reasons why I believe things work that way. One of these is as follows. The exercise actually requires one to do a certain form of remote viewing. But it's a personal form of remote viewing. And successful remote viewing -- even when confined to viewing one's own past (lives') memories -- requires an extraordinary degree of control over precisely what one allows oneself to view. It's not a matter of experiencing a vague blur, but of capturing sophisticated details. And meditation strongly develops one's control or mastery of oneself -- and hence of all one's memories, even including those from past lifetimes or imprints. Meditation doesn't on its own further your mastery of the world so much, though it provides some of the tools for that. But your own memories rather than the entire physical world -- it does, or can, on its own help you master that much.

To me it's sad that this particular exercise has proved so difficult to various members. All my experience has been that very deep and full self-knowledge is one of the biggest keys to anything wothwhile ("spiritually"). It's something I believe everyone should make a major lifelong project of theirs. And the exercise from post #10 is a great way to know your self better in a very efficient way. Seeing what you were like, what kinds of major decisions you made, under quite different circumstances -- those of one after another past lifetime of yours -- is such a great way to get accurate insights into who you really are, what you are really like. Two of the most talented clairvoyants I have known both independently accused me of trying to somehow live many different lifetimes all crammed into one lifetime, my present one. They seemed to think this was a mistake, a weakness. But I couldn't help thinking: "But isn't that partly what getting free of having to reincarnate physically is all about?" Such freedom is closely tied up with everything the HM is about. And to move into the presence and freedom of the HM you need to be become good at being Still, and therefore at being "nothing", in a sense. Why? Because the better you are at being "nothing", the more easily you can be everything, or anything. And to the best of my knowledge and memory, that's very closely related to the "well-roundedness" that seems to be the most essential quality in being free from having to physically reincarnate. For instance, the more easily you can "be" anyone, the more fully you know what it would be like to be in anyone else's shoes, and so you find it easy to be empathic or understanding.

Just for the sake of interest, here are some of the things I learnt, through this exercise, about Pompey as seen through his own eyes. He came from a family much richer and more aristocratic than Julius Caesar or virtually anyone else in Rome did. He was immensely independent by nature, and hence even though he had very much of the refinement and education of an aristocrat, he was also strongly a nonconformist at heart. He considered he would have won the Roman Civil War (because, it would seem, he was a superior tactician to Julius Caesar). The only thing that enabled Caesar's faction to win was Pompey's being betrayed by someone very close to him. That person, however, had felt uneasy about the implications of Pompey's nonconformist nature. In particular, Pompey was no diplomat, and he had openly told the entire Roman Senate that their opinion didn't count on a certain important issue, simply because Pompey didn't agree with them. No doubt, this would realistically have led to his prompt assassination anyway had he won, much as what happened with Julius. Pompey had a great vision to make Rome as glorious as Greece had been in the realm of the arts and philosophy and physics. He did manage to found the city of Pompeii as a bohemian paradise for artists and sculptors and writers. As we know, though, by the time the city was destroyed by larva flowing from Mt Vesuvius, the city intended to nurture great art had degenerated into a place of pornography. Actually, the first thing I noticed when I looked through Pompey's eyes was that he was quite colorblind by today's standards. A color such as orange was virtually indistinguishable from violet or purple, for instance, and almost indistinguishable from bright red. I later learnt that color awareness is indeed considered to be something that has only evolved strongly over the last thousand years or so.

[chocolate]

Hello TraineeHuman,

I reread post #10 to refresh my memory.
I had done one such exercise as part of a program done by Gerald O'Donnell -- The Complete Remote Viewing Training System -- long ago, before joining this forum. ( I have covered few versions of RV, but I prefer the one that doesn't involve OBEs ).

I did manage to feel as if I am flying at the time, but I will have to adjust the exercise so that it includes the parts that you have added.

I've never felt compelled to try and remember details from past lives, for no particular reason, or may be because of some specific reason. In much of the same way I wanted to be able to go Out of Body just so that I visit places and events that I find interesting -- present, past or future, but not as part of the goal to become 'enlightened' or to meet my 'Higher Self'. I guess I am at the level of a 7-years old ( I wrote first 5 but than I realized that those kids may be still remembering past lives, so I changed the number slightly ).


Recently I was almost forced to 'remember' some details of one of my past lives ( I have to 'believe' that is a 'true' past life ), and I still fail to see the point of the task. Even if it seems I have gone through some identical or similar situations, and even if it seems to explain health problems and emotional problems I have in this life time. Probably that is just me, failing to see the point.

But I will do the exercises you have included in post 10 and 461, and will report back.

[chocolate]

Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
I believe the true underlying motivation behind a person's desire to experience, or master, astral travel is ultimately a desire or urge towards something considerably greater than that. I believe this urge is ultimately irresistible to us all, however buried and veiled it may be inside our hearts. I'm talking of the urge for the consciousness within us to become free and in harmony with all there is and with all other beings. Another way I would describe this is the urge to finally bring Heaven down to earth, completely. This, of course, is what I've been saying about going through all hells and out the other end of them, so that for you in the end they become transformed into paradises.

Bringing Heaven down, and fully into, Earth. It's not a matter of somehow performing a metaphorically surgical "operation" on all that is evil or negative or unawake within us. It's a matter of transforming our lives so that "small is beautiful" applies ultimately to everything we do -- because it's we who transform the everyday and the dull into something positive and proactive, where all problems are only challenges to our resourcefulness and creativity. Paradoxically, to get to that point we do need to go into the depths of consciousness, into uncharted territories we don't even recognise as familiar to us. Go deeply beyond the superficial, and keep going there, throughout your day. That's the true journey. Can we begin to see the beauty and unity and harmony which are actually there all the time, but only through our narrowness we fail to see them, and instead see chaos and conflict?

In my experience, there are two stages one needs to go through in the elimination of (emotional) suffering. Firstly, we need to replace the shrinking and contraction we do so habitually we don't even notice it, with its opposite. That opposite is to face and bear and ride through all the barbs and shocks of our life. To face everything and avoid nothing, but to do so with a calm smile inside our heart. It involves learning not to let anything throw us off. Kind of like wild bronco riding, in a way.

The second stage is where we become able, in the words of Rudyard Kipling: "to meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same". In other words, to treat all experiences as essentially the same, in that nothing can throw us off center any more. I don't care if you learn to do this by learning to love everything and find joy in everything and everyone, or if you learn to find a detachment and inner peace so strong that to you it's really all the same. And I don't expect or believe that anyone (or almost anyone) manages to do this fully or perfectly. But basically, the transformation is to taking this attitude most of the time, instead of the egoistic attitude, of dramatizing, of jumping to one extreme or another.

TH,
Although I find your posts truly poetic and amazing, I wanted to share a different point of view on the issue of 'emotional suffering'. If you were to allow me, I wanted to post a video, which seems to describe my point better than any words could do:

http://vimeo.com/zandrak/stilllife

I do realize the need to find the middle path of an 'emotional balance' in most situations, but somehow I feel this life wouldn't have much adhesion to me if I were not able to feel my emotions, regardless if they were positive or negative ones. The buddhist way of detachment is probably very liberating, but I am not sure it would work for my personal journey.

I hope you will find this post not as a disagreement, but just as presenting a slightly different variation on the topic.

(PS. I am not sure how to properly link the video to appear as a window here, for some strange reason )

[TraineeHuman]

Posted by chocolate (here)
I've never felt compelled to try and remember details from past lives, for no particular reason, or may be because of some specific reason. In much of the same way I wanted to be able to go Out of Body just so that I visit places and events that I find interesting -- present, past or future, but not as part of the goal to become 'enlightened' or to meet my 'Higher Self'....


Recently I was almost forced to 'remember' some details of one of my past lives ( I have to 'believe' that is a 'true' past life ), and I still fail to see the point of the task. Even if it seems I have gone through some identical or similar situations, and even if it seems to explain health problems and emotional problems I have in this life time. Probably that is just me, failing to see the point.

But I will do the exercises you have included in post 10 and 461, and will report back.

Everything we ever know is filtered through ourselves. It's very important to Know Thyself very well. Otherwise we won't appreciate what sort of filter we have and are.

It goes deeper than that, too. All our experience of "the universe/multiverse" is forever within our individual consciousness. So, to thoroughly know what's in our own consciousness turns out to be the same as knowing the entire universe/multiverse.

As far as I know and have experienced, being able to see what you were like and what your style of doing things was like in previous lifetimes does significantly help a person to know themselves better. I claim it also happens to be a fact that many of a person's deeper psychological issues have their origins and developments in past lifetimes. And again, it can be very helpful to know something about such details in healing such issues.

[TraineeHuman]

Concentration, or "focus", is a skill basic to achieving almost anything. In post #1294 (and various posts in February and March 2013) I mentioned it as one of the necessary skills one needs (unlocked in and developed by one's HM) to astral project successfully. It's also very closely connected to intention. Posts #241 to #251, for example, discuss some issues to do with intention.

Through concentration, we can come to achieve anything the mind can imagine. That includes "mind" in any higher sense of "Mind" also.

As mentioned in a post in February 2013, there is such a thing as too much concentration on one thing. Awareness requires a certain level of concentration, but it also requires opennes to the totally new and unexpected.

Exactly how much concentration to cultivate and how much open willingness you need in order to go wherever your positive consciousness takes you -- that has been a hot topic between various of my past spiritual teachers and myself. Some have chided me for being too willing to "veer off" into exploring some new approach or insight rather than sticking steadfastly with what I already know clearly works very well. Others have favored being so immersed in the flow of a deeper awareness that one may completely fail to remember the details of what one has seen while in such a state.

I suggest the answer -- if there is one -- may lie somewhere in between those two positions.

[TraineeHuman]

Posted by chocolate (here)
I do realize the need to find the middle path of an 'emotional balance' in most situations, but somehow I feel this life wouldn't have much adhesion to me if I were not able to feel my emotions, regardless if they were positive or negative ones.

Freedom from suffering doesn't mean that you in any way stop having feelings or become unable to have feelings. Though I guess it does mean you'll often -- more and more often -- freely opt for feeling bliss or joy rather than some form of misery. It sounds paradoxical, but bliss somehow contains everything that's in both pleasure and pain, plus more. Pleasure and pain are partial or limited or "baby" forms of bliss, once you understand their nature more fully. They're simply ways of feeling much less fully, of having much less passion. Enlightenment means enormous passion, for the rest of one's life.

Freedom from suffering also means not continually getting trapped in some negative emotion or other. For instance, if you get jealous then for that moment you become totally identified with jealousy. Then you are that jealousy and nothing more. That's being trapped, and temporarily blind and very narrow. The energy of potential jealousy can still be there but you can learn to watch it and work with it from a distance, and hopefully transform it into something constructive. I would claim that when you do, your awareness of it is much greater than if you let it come in and narrow you down while it takes you over. From a position of not identifying with it you can still go into its implications and even briefly feel them for a moment without getting sucked in. Kind of like watching a movie. I claim you're not missing out on anything, at all, except the suffering and imprisonment.

It also seems to be a fact that your body has a much less aware consciousness of its own. Your body will still largely feel the jealousy or fear or whatever it is anyway, but because you have "dual vision" you can watch that whole show. That whole show will still go on, but only in your body's consciousness now.

[TraineeHuman]

Posted by chocolate (here)
I do realize the need to find the middle path of an 'emotional balance' in most situations, but somehow I feel this life wouldn't have much adhesion to me if I were not able to feel my emotions, regardless if they were positive or negative ones. The buddhist way of detachment is probably very liberating, but I am not sure it would work for my personal journey.

"Buddhist"? Well, detachment and detached understanding are very central to every major spiritual tradition, as far as I know. In Christianity I would say it gets made a little confusing because it takes the form of the notion of "the holy". But still not so confused and unfortunately dumbed-down that the point gets entirely lost that it's our job to somehow "be holy". Actually, Advaita Vedanta is really all about the HM (called Atman, among other names) and the Divine Mind and/or Source (called Brahman, among other things). So I would have thought the "slant" I take on things might more accurately be described as "Vedantist" (or maybe "Zen") rather than "Buddhist". And by the way, it happens there are about ten quite different religions that come under the heading of "Buddhism," most of them emphasizing quite different things.

And anyway, unfortunately I'm not so familiar with "Buddhism" per se (except for Zen, which is really a form of Taoism) -- with several qualifications. As you may have noticed, I do strongly favor paying great attention to achieving freedom from unhappiness, or to coming closer and closer to that. What's the point of talking much about anything that lies beyond that, unless it's linked back in some way -- as I'd like to think I've tried to do throughout this thread -- to the basic aim of coming closer to freedom from unhappiness. After all, if you can learn to get freedom from your physical body in a controlled way, the act of doing so will have automatically required some inner progress towards the earlier-mentioned freedom. And I believe one of the "basics" of the Buddha's teachings was that one should look at and then overcome the five or so sources of (psychological) unhappiness or suffering at an individual level.

The other big qualification regarding my ignorance is that I'm quite familiar with a number of the videos and books of J. Krishnamurti. I consider there's good prima facie evidence that J.K. was a reincarnation of the Buddha. Part of this evidence comes from the last lecture/discussion series J.K. gave before his death. This included a dialogue with a Burmese monk from the University of Paris. That monk was widely regarded in the academic world as the foremost expert on what the Buddha actually taught. That monk also had the most wonderful and attractive smile. You can tell a lot about how far a person has "progressed" spiritually if you can see them smile uninhibitedly. Does the smile light up the whole room? Does it reveal great generosity? That monk asked J.K. a number of pointed questions, using different words than what Buddhists are presumably familiar with. To every answer J.K. gave, the monk had the same response:"That is precisely the same position as the Buddha would have taken." Perhaps I should mention that J.K. claimed he never read or studied Buddhist material his entire life.

In his lectures, J.K. was forever talking about what freedom from "thought" means. If that's Buddhism, then I'm familiar with that. See my description of how to practice one of the most common types of "watching the breath" meditation in post #283, and also the practice, fundamental to many if not most forms of meditation, of letting everything be exactly as it is (while you meditate), as discussed e.g. in post #1396 and in the link there. J.K. of course certainly didn't imply that we should discard discard critical analysis from our lives. Rather, he was saying that we need to also develop and continually exercise a higher type of "Mind", for lack of a better term, that goes far beyond what the ordinary mind can do. Such as learning to get reasonably accurate knowledge through our intuition. J.K. considered that being kept limited to and within "thought" was the chief means by which human beings of today are kept dumbed down and limited and unaware of their true capabilities. It wasn't just a matter of particular kinds of conditioning or manipulation -- including microwave signals, no doubt, and whatever else.

J.K. pointed out that the tricky Western mind would always make a mess of solving humanity's problems. That mind generally fails to possess or understand true integrity, which is mainly found in the HM (or whatever we call the latter).

[TraineeHuman]

It's not the impossible dream. In post #114 the exercise of feeling the aliveness was introduced. There was some discussion of it, with frequent posts about between May 2013 and August 2013. Never mind the second stage of the exercise, as described in that post. for now, let's confine ourselves to stage one.

This simple and very easy exercise is basically freedom-from-unhappiness on training wheels. If you do it, you'll have direct experience of what freedom from unhappiness feels like.

The aim is to learn to do this exercise well -- so that you feel not only the OK-ness but the delight simply of being alive.

Then it's a matter of learning to feel the aliveness at times while you're immersed in everyday activities, of all kinds eventually. Once you learn how to fully feel the aliveness, you'll know just what freedom from unhappiness is. The challenge then becomes to learn to do it all the time.

How is this relevant to OB reality? Well, the Aliveness is part of the HM.

And please, folks, any time I again mention freedom from unhappiness, please don't assume it's something you can't have a direct if partial taste of quite easily -- if you just take the time to sit down quietly and experience it. That's not the impossible dream.

[TraineeHuman]

In Zen, blindfolds are used to teach archery. Why? Obviously, because the aim must be to develop excellence in archery through developing a person totally. Also, I understand, to develop the ability to consciously surrender to the HM. The HM knows how to find the skill to hit that target, even when one is blindfolded. I consider that development of the skill to astral travel fluently ideally, and most safely, works in a similar way.

The surrender to the HM is an extremely lengthy process, with ups and downs. I guess, with extraordinary good luck, one can just one day come to the insight that learning to surrender to the HM is what everyone's life is really all about -- except that nearly everyone is taking the most major detours imaginable to resist this. Short of having that insight, though, the only smart way is as follows. The heart and the will have to turn. They have to commit to --well -- Stillness. So also does the mind, and for this a discussion Forum or other access to knowledge is helpful, and needed. There also needs to be change in one's actions. They should automatically become more proactive, more constructive -- though at the start one can also deliberately aim to work to make them more that way. One's actions need to provide proof of one's greater understanding; otherwise the understanding needs more perfecting, whatever that may involve practically. One's self-reflection needs to turn also. May I emphasize here the importance of self-honesty. Please see post #1234 for more details about that. Another turning needs to be into surrendering more to your intuition. Post #959 expands on that.

The total person needs to surrender, eventually. It's quite OK to begin with just one area, but as you progress it becomes necessary to combine all of them in surrender to the Stillness. That surrender is the main power that unlocks the HM.

But anyone new to spirituality probably should proceed slowly, gradually, because otherwise they can get "burnt". This is the great game of life, folks, and you need to build up your fitness gradually at first before you play in the pro league.

Surrender means you keep giving your free assent for the Force that is the HM to take over more and more of your life -- and yet, what that releases is more and more of the true you. It's a gradual rebirth. And the HM doesn't shirk from continually throwing up tough lessons in your face, if you can see what's truly happening in your life. The challenge is to stay in the inner yet live fully in the outer world. A matter of not letting yourself come from any place except within -- in any action, thought or feeling. Now that's the real meaning of being centered. Easy? Hell, no. But it's what we need to learn to do, more and more fully. And you only learn through making quite a few mistakes.

And yet, surrender is incredibly light, and subtle. There was a famous novel made into a movie about 30 years ago called The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It was about certain individuals getting free of living under the Soviet system. But for some of them, where they were at, that freedom seemed unbearable. Freedom is a gradual process. but it does absolutely require more and more surrender.

[TraineeHuman]

The easiest OB exercise to do that I know of is described in post #24. This is an exercise in mental travel and beyond, rather than in astral travel. In all my experience, mental travel is much more fun. This is also an exercise in "listening" directly to your HM -- often for about two seconds initially, but preferably for ten seconds initially, or as long as you can keep your ordinary thinking mind's interference basically switched off.
I don't understand why more readers of this thread didn't learn to thoroughly practice and somewhat master this exercise, rather than complaining quite so much about how they supposedly couldn't experience anything OB. For some reason, some seemed to assume that superficial techniques such as those of The Phase or Buhlmann or whatever were the real deal, when this wasn't, in their eyes. All I can say is, that's not reality at all, not the truth. It's the reverse of the real truth, for most -- as many have attested with their words of disappointment.

Consider, if you will, what happens when you do this exercise. You are actually in a world made of pure symbols or movies or pictures, usually for two seconds initially, but then at least ten seconds once you genuinely get the hang of it. Never mind whether you have some kind of mental "body" at the time. What's important is that you're actually there in that nonphysical world, seeing the symbols or pictures directly. Not only that, but you're actually receiving what your HM wants to "tell you" in answer to the question you're asking.

I've sometimes spent considerable time mental traveling through various worlds made of nothing but symbols, or nothing but pictures, or both, among other things. This exercise teaches you how, if you keep doing it.

This exercise has also been discussed in another thread such as at this post. I'll continue with more about the implications and applications in my next post.