FINDING YOUR TRUTH

The Certainty of Ignorance

Had I not just read a copy of (and stifled a critical comment on) the shared-sermon spoken Sunday at my friend’s church service, I might have brushed over this little interchange below, but the “absolute certainty” expressed in the comment on the picture presented above accentuated my earlier feeling on the sermon’s ‘factual accuracy.’

“Another example of ‘the certainty of ignorance’,” echoed between my ears.

It isn’t necessarily what we ‘know’, that makes the interactions with others so difficult. The problem lies in our loudly professing what we “believe,” rather than what is factually accurate—that dooms the communication attempt from the start because everyone has their own “beliefs” and often times, those beliefs simply don’t match our own.

So this morning, I’m cruisin’ through my social media and a guy is sharing his South Africa vacation images, including this leopard pic taken at a sanctuary he was visiting; and in the comments below, one guy says, “Jaguar, not Leopard having a good rest!”, to which the original poster says, “Andy, actually Jaguars are native to Central and South America. This is a leopard.”

Obliviously, Andy then replies, “One and only one there?”

Now I wondered what made “Andy” so certain that this particular image was misidentified by the guy who actually took it? Has “Andy” personally SEEN jaguars in South Africa? I guess we’ll never know, but what I got from the interaction between them was that there will be NO convincing Andy that whatever actual species of big cat that is above, it doesn’t match his BELIEF of what it might be—doesn’t match his CERTAINTY that he is ‘right’ in identifying the image as he does. He believes it to be a jaguar—so therefore it MUST be.

Which brings me back to the earlier read church sermon where the preacher is expounding on the depths of Saint Paul’s faith and devotion to Christianity; and “how if we could ALL be more like Saint Paul, we’d all be BETTER Christians.”

Okay, I won’t rehash much of my earlier comments on Saint Paul (actually called Saul of Tarsus, the tax collector who watched a mob that he was a part of, stone to death Saint Stephen—yeah, the same guy who never met Jesus in person—was NEVER a follower of Jesus prior to his death—but claimed to have had a ‘blinding light’ experience with his Spirit three years AFTER his death—witnessed only by himself).

Yes, the same guy that the true disciples themselves shunned as a faker—a pretender—a mocker of their actual first-hand experiences with Jesus, the actual man who was crucified before their eyes on a cross at Calvary.

I personally think the biggest thing Saul learned to do, was to latch onto a growing religious movement and spread his own version of Jesus’ teachings: “…The Church has always accepted the apostle Paul, not at all as a religious philosopher, but simply and solely as a witness to Jesus. [But] If he was not a true disciple of Jesus, then the authority which he has always possessed and the influence which he has wielded have been based upon a misconception…” (www.biblestudytools.com/ )

Read some of the documented differences between Peter’s version (an actual disciple) of Gospel and Paul’s version. They are quite different. The early organized church preferred Paul’s version, and that became the standardized ‘word of God’ issued through questionable sources because the Church of that time had an agenda.

My complaint with it all is this: I want people to idealize TRUTH itself, not some fabrication created for dubious reasons!

No more fictions. No more myths and fables concocted to manipulate others or push someone else’s agenda. I don’t care if they are established institutions or global organizations, or some politician proclaiming their own ‘second comings’ whenever election season rolls around.

Either speak truth or don’t speak at all.

And Jaguar or leopard, it’s still a very big spotted cat taking a siesta on a limb who could care less WHAT you think.

Preparing for the Next Phase of Life

Earthschool Harmony

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before.
Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant.
But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”
~ Alice Walker

Lee Harris on “Who Are We Becoming?”

As a pretty empathic and experienced energy-worker myself, I can acknowledge how difficult the world’s current ‘collective energies’ are at present. So to avoid ‘empathic sensory overload,’ sometimes I simply shut off the non-stop news channels to better control my own thoughts—steering my mental gyrations where I want them to go—focusing instead on higher-frequency states of mind and more peaceful aspirations than the media’s ‘perpetual fear and mass destruction’ blitz.

In other words, where I put my mental focus is a choice that I consciously make.

I’m not denying that the world’s affairs seem to be one gigantic dumpster fire right now with natural and man-created disasters, but I also know how important it is to hold your own energy field strongly and purposely higher than the continually-disruptive, fear-based collective energy field, just to maintain your own health and sanity.

So today I ran across a Lee Harris short video on how to ‘reframe’ the nastier aspects of your life as the initiatory ‘gauntlet you have to run’ to gain greater awareness and expanded consciousness—or in essence how surviving through some of the worst experiences of your entire life actually helps you EVOLVE to a more advanced state of awakening and being—it’s like an ‘initiatory’ aspect of enlightenment.

Anyway, if you are interested, here is the location for the video which might help you personally reframe your current mind-state on world affairs at present: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgLAvN6zOpo

I transcribed a few notes from it below.

“(Many in today’s world are now realizing that) their sensitivity, their empathy, their level of feeling is on the increase, and it can be very uncomfortable for people…”
Everything that’s been going on in the recent weeks and months is conspiring to HEAL you. Doesn’t mean it’s pretty right now or that you are in a pleasant part of the process, ….but when you come through one of those ‘dark night of the soul’ experiences, there is an incredible transformation occurring (within you), and we ARE DIFFERENT afterwards. So, for me, I now wouldn’t trade any of the more hellish moments of my life that at the time I would have done anything to have someone take it away, so that I didn’t have to feel it. …
So ‘Who are we becoming?’ is a consideration focus I would just like to invite you to hold in this next month or so. And more specifically: ‘Who am I becoming?’ …We are changing internally,…and we’re changing our consciousness as individuals and as a collective—where we are in the world right now is very different than anything we have been through before. … (I’m guessing Lee means this CURRENT generation has experienced because from a historical perspective, I would argue that ‘collectively’ the 1930’s-1950, were far worse and more individually- and group-transformative than our current inane madness could ever be.)
So if you find yourself in human reaction, can you just let yourself have the reaction: the sadness, the anger, the grief, whatever you need to feel? (Don’t wallow in it but DO acknowledge it—let yourself FEEL IT.) Now for sure if you feel ‘stuck’ in those emotions, then find ways to help you move them or shift them or change them; and that might be (through helpful) people, or that might be finding other tools and resources to move (those stuck emotions/energies) out, but try something if you feel chronically stuck with some (powerful) emotion,…but never lose sight that we are on an evolution journey, and one of the ‘risks’ of this time is that we ‘shut down’ and we pull back and we ‘close off’ from it (to avoid feeling the intensity of the emotion). …
It’s okay if you need to shut it all out for a short while just to preserve your sanity, but don’t let yourself close down for weeks and weeks, and months and months. (Don’t isolate yourself or hide away or pretend that you aren’t experiencing/feeling the awfulness of the world’s chaos around you, because we ALL are.)”…

***

In my humble opinion, YES the world is changing and WE are changing right along with it; and we shouldn’t assume that anything we ever experience will stay the same in this world for any length of time because it seldom does, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant experiences. But please also recognize that as your own ‘empathic sensitivities’ increase, which they will, that sometimes what you are feeling may not be YOUR OWN energies. You could be picking up ‘the collective’s’ anxiety and fear, or ‘the collective’s’ anger vibes.

So you need to find effective ways to stop yourself from absorbing/feeling all the energy lunacy around you; which means you must learn to refocus yourself back to where you want YOUR energy frequency to be, and where you want to focus your own thoughts and emotions—because you have the ability to choose your thought focus.

Meditation, yoga, listening to soothing music, making time for yourself, taking walks in nature, etc., are all good recentering/refocusing practices to better enhance, consolidate and protect your own energy field boundaries.

Please keep this in mind: The world is going to do whatever it is going to do, because it is undergoing a huge global energy-shift right now; and that shift will shake up political structures and entrenched institutions forcing all inhabitants of earth to reexamine, reevaluate, and rebuild their social and governing institutions to match the newer higher-frequency energy environment. It may not be an instantaneous change but it will be pivotal to how LIFE exists over the next few decades on the planet.

But what you can personally do to survive this nasty ‘reconstruction havoc’ is to let go of what you cannot control and focus instead on where you want to be during this process, and what you personally can do to help make the world around you a better place in which to live.

Lee asks “Who Are We Becoming?” then asks you to consider “Who am I becoming?” And answering THAT question is where you need to put your energies, because you are evolving into a ‘new upgraded version’ of yourself.

My advice to anyone interested in better handling this chaotic ‘collective’ uncertainty:

Let that ‘NEW YOU’ slowly emerge over time to become even stronger; filled with greater compassion and empathy toward others.

Be also aware that this NEW YOU will be far more naturally/intuitively aware of your interconnectedness to everything and everyone.

And during that mental/psychological evolution you will likely reach a stage of realization and energetic realignment where you will suddenly understand that the ‘NEW YOU’ has become even more amazing and powerful in ways you could never have previously imagined—ways where you are far more sensory perceptive and comprehensively astounding than those earlier versions of YOU could have ever dreamed for you to be.

That’s the effect that some of these higher-frequency energetic-shift changes are meant to do to us and FOR us. We are becoming higher-consciousness beings capable of true ‘self-realization’ with far less effort than was required before the new energies arrived.

So don’t FEAR the massive changes already underway. Just learn to step back, observe without judgment (and emotion), and allow the change to occur all around you.

Then you must learn to simply adapt yourself to better utilizing the new expanded awareness that you are being gifted/given. You will have new abilities—new ways to sense things—a new intuitive understanding of how LIFE unfolds for you, when you allow it to do so.

“Who are you becoming?”

That’s an easy one to answer:

You are becoming a better/higher version of yourself.

“How Einstein Saw the Universe”

Again, just sharing the thoughts of others, particularly from one of my three biggest heroes of humankind (Jung, Fuller, Einstein). The ‘bold’ statements below could have easily arisen from my own experiences/beliefs.

Ecological Consciousness

“~How Einstein Saw the Universe~
‘From the age of twelve I began to suspect authority and distrust teachers. I learned mostly at home, first from my uncle and then from a student who came to eat with us once a week. He would give me books on physics and astronomy.
The more I read, the more puzzled I was by the order of the universe and the disorder of the human mind, by the scientists who didn’t agree on the how, the when, or the why of creation.
Then one day this student brought me Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’. Reading Kant, I began to suspect everything I was taught. I no longer believed in the known God of the Bible, but rather in the mysterious God expressed in nature.
The basic laws of the Universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can’t grasp them. There is a pattern in creation. If we look at this tree outside whose roots search beneath the pavement for water, or a flower which sends its sweet smell to the pollinating bees, or even our own selves and the inner forces that drive us to act, we can see that we all dance to a mysterious tune, and the piper who plays this melody from an inscrutable distance—whatever name we give him—Creative Force, or God—escapes all book knowledge.
I like to experience the Universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified… The whole of Nature is life, and life, as I observe it, rejects a God resembling man.
Man has infinite dimensions and finds God in his conscience. [A cosmic religion] has no dogma other than teaching man that the Universe is rational and that his highest destiny is to ponder it and co-create with its laws.
The genuine scientist is not moved by praise or blame, nor does he preach. He unveils the universe and people come eagerly, without being pushed, to behold a new revelation: the order, the harmony, the magnificence of creation!
If we want to improve the world we cannot do it with scientific knowledge but with ideals. Confucius, Buddha, Jesus and Gandhi have done more for humanity than science has done. We must begin with the heart of man—with his conscience—and the values of conscience can only be manifested by selfless service to mankind.
Religion and science go together. As I’ve said before, science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind. They are interdependent and have a common goal—the search for truth.’
~Albert Einstein

Text Source: Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983). From a series of meetings William Hermanns had with Einstein in 1930, 1943, 1948, and 1954

How Einstein Saw the World http://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/…/how…/”

Now Consider ‘Somebody Versus Nobody’

Dr. Joe continued to elaborate on that ‘something versus nothing’ quantum field concept the next day, so before I move on to another subject here, I think it’s worth viewing his explanation conclusion of how we are personally affected by it.

Dr Joe Dispenza – OFFICIAL NEWS & FAN PAGE
“Most of us embrace the notion of ourselves as a ‘somebody’ – after all, we learn to separate ourselves as ‘I’ as opposed to ‘you’ or ‘us’ at a very young age. We identify with our material, physical self so intensely that we feel disconnected and separate from others around us and from the universe and all the energy it contains.
We forget what we really are: unlimited consciousness connected to a quantum field of vast intelligence and infinite possibilities.
We experience ourselves as physical beings because we identify with things that are local to us in our environment, and because we live in a materialistic world in which obsessing over the physical self has become the norm.
Emotions are energy in motion, and survival-centered emotions vibrate at a lower frequency, causing us to become heavier and denser. That low-frequency energy vibration grounds us in the physical. The slower the wavelength, the more matter and less energy we become.
Elevated emotions such as love, joy, and gratitude — which vibrate at a higher frequency — are much closer to our natural state of being. Our negative emotions just keep us stuck in the illusion of materialism.
Go beyond your sense perceptions and your 3D world and dive into the quantum model of reality.”

The Quantum Nothing

I knew there was a ‘reason’ for writing “Something vs. Nothing”, I just didn’t know the reason until today. Here Dr. Joe elaborates on the concept.

“Dr Joe Dispenza – OFFICIAL NEWS & FAN PAGE
The quantum is a multidimensional reality that exists beyond your senses, in a realm where there is no body, no one, no thing, no where and no time. Thus, to move into that domain and create from that paradigm, you’ll need to forget about your body. You’ll have to shift your awareness away from your external environment—all those things that you identify with in your life. And you will have to lose track of linear time. That is, in the moment when you are intentionally observing a potential future experience, you will have to be so present that your mind no longer vacillates between memories of the past and expectations of a ‘same as usual’ future.
Isn’t it ironic that to influence your reality (environment), heal your body, or change some event in your future (time), you have to completely let go of your external world (no thing), you have to release your awareness of your body (no body), you have to lose track of time (no time)—in effect, you have to become pure consciousness.
Do that, and you have dominion over the environment, your body, and time — I affectionately call these the Big Three. And since the subatomic world of the field is made purely of consciousness, you cannot enter any other way than via pure consciousness yourself. You cannot walk through the door into the quantum field as a ‘somebody’; you must enter as a ‘no body.’
Your brain has the innate ability to harness this skill. When you understand that you are fully equipped to do all this, leave this world behind, and enter a new reality beyond space and time, you will be naturally inspired to apply it in your life. Are you ready to walk through the door?“

“Passage from Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. Learn more by clicking the link: https://bit.ly/3ihYlVW “

Something Versus Nothing

The image above captured my attention showing binary coding looking more “worm-holish” than a standard 2-dimensional computer-screen version—more like a ‘coding tunnel’ intentionally designed to lead somewhere-other-than-here; and I felt a sudden perspective shift.

This binary data tunnel above, funneling away through the background ‘information matrix’ and extending off into some unknown ‘data-collection universe,’ seems to lead our imaginations away from the relative flatness (2-dimensional aspects) of our ‘documented’ existence in this world, to somewhere other-than-here—somewhere beyond our predictable expectations of how data (or the experiential fruit of our existence in general) is gathered and stored, but where is that imaginary ‘other’ place that it goes?

“A binary code represents text, computer processor instructions, or any other data using a two-symbol system…” (Wiki)…. “In the earliest computer coding language, it referred to signaling electrical impulses of “OFF” (0) and “ON” (1).”

‘OFF’ and ‘ON’—you don’t exist and then you do; and then you don’t, and then you do.

Flip a switch and overwhelming darkness disappears with the vibrancy of light. Flip it again and the brilliance of light dissipates back into an enveloping darkness.

In one sense, those basic coding “1’s” and “0’s” are the perpetual dichotomy of pitting ‘something’ against ‘nothing,’ and THAT is the basis for LIFE as we know it—unending possibilities that come and go, and come and go depending on how you are programmed. Flipping OFF, then ON, then OFF, then ON.

Matter versus non-mater. Existence versus non-existence. LIFE vs. DEATH, then LIFE again, then DEATH again, etc., and so on; the binary choices of physical expression vs. non-physical existence.

We and our world(s) are a mystery too complex for our limited minds to fathom from this dimension of existence.

How we view the mysterious dichotomy of our existence itself is confusing, which reminds me of that old Emmanuel (Pat Rodegast) book quote that goes something like this:

“The entrance and exit doors of LIFE are reversed: LIFE is the adventurous journey away from HOME, and DEATH is the triumphant return back HOME.”

So how you view that LIFE switch flipping ON then OFF, then ON, then OFF, is a more so a matter of perspective depending on the dimension from which you are viewing it.

Maybe we’d have a better understanding of it if we could simply step into the binary worm-hole above and follow it back to its true Source. That is probably the only accurate perspective from which to view it all.

James Van Praagh Book Quotes

Here is a book well worth perusing: James Van Praagh’s Adventures of the Soul: Journeys Through the Physical and Spiritual Dimensions

Long ago I accepted an opportunity to receive the online PDF version of Van Praagh’s Adventures of the Soul book that was made available (likely through Hay House). I’ve read parts of it but I’m more of a hardcover-between-my-hands sort of book reader, so the PDF has been on my computer for probably years.

JVP is also on my Facebook follow list so when he put something out today that resonated in me, I thought about his PDF book that I still have.

That inner nudge that I always follow said to revisit that long-stored PDF file because there was something that I needed to share today from that book. So here we go from JVP’s Adventures of the Soul. Whatever resonates today with me is what will appear here:

“— Your personality, memory, and mind are all contained in your astral body. When your physical body dies, the “real you” is still in your astral body, and it becomes aware of life outside the human body in the Astral Plane to which your earthly acts have drawn you.

The lowest Astral Plane draws the least evolved souls—those who have not learned the lessons of love and respect.
The intermediate Astral Plane draws in those who need rest and rehabilitation after a long physical disease, traumatic experiences, or inflexible beliefs.
The highest Astral Plane is what we humans would call heaven—a place of opportunity for souls to grow in spiritual consciousness.

— The soul will eventually decide whether to return to the Earth plane for more experience or to venture on to the Mental Plane. This level offers unlimited development of the individual soul. There is access to the accumulated wisdom of the ages.

— The highest realm is the Celestial Plane. Here is where the individual soul becomes one with all universal life. Christ, Buddha, and other great spiritual leaders are here. (p7-8)

***

You can be a well-read spiritual scholar, but unless you apply the concepts of love, compassion, and empathy to your daily life, all that book learning is for naught. (14)

***

Religion vs. Spirituality

Many people ask me about the difference between being religious and being spiritual. I think that difference is significant. Religion is a man-made, organized belief system consisting of various creeds, teachings, rituals, and documents and usually (but not always) revolves around a deity of some kind. If people follow a specific belief system, it is their conviction that this is how they will receive a greater position on the other side.

In contrast, spirituality is the very personal search to find the greater meaning in life and one’s existence in this world. It doesn’t have to involve rituals or written words and may encompass having a love for a Divine Source, or God, and learning to use this all- encompassing energy in every situation. In being spiritual, you have a respect and love for self and an understanding of your connection to others. (p15-16)

***

Everyone has spirit guides, and they can change with our earthly circumstances. We have:

Personal guides, who are people we’ve known in the physical dimension
Mastery guides, who are drawn to us based on certain activities we’re currently engaged in
Master teachers, who are very evolved and may never have incarnated on this physical plane (p29)

***

Since my NDE (near death experience), I have done some research, and I discovered that besides the feelings of peace and love that survivors experience, many people have observed a “weblike” matrix of interconnecting lights existing above and around humans. I think this matrix might be what is commonly referred to as the Akashic records, an energetic imprint of every thought, action, emotion, and experience that has ever occurred. Sometimes called the “Collective Consciousness” or “The Book of Life,” it’s the vibrational record of every soul and its journey. Everyone has the power and right to access the Akashic records because, as souls, we are the records. (38)

***

Death Is Merely Change

There is a monologue from Shakespeare’s play ‘As You Like It’ that begins:

‘All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts . . .’

I am very fond of that quote, and I’d like to take the liberty of expanding on it. Before the “actors” make their entrances, they choose the parts that they will play and whom they will play them with. And after they make their exits, they still watch us from backstage and cheer us on and root for a fine performance. When it comes time for our exit, they will be there in the wings to greet us, and we in turn will continue to watch the play and applaud for our fellow actors, before it’s time for them to join us backstage. Then we can all decide on the best time to make a new entrance, and in what roles. (50-51)

***

The love energy of each particular soul as it leaves the body vibrates at different rates, and the energy you happen to be vibrating at when the silver cord is broken will determine your place in the dimension of Spirit. The levels aren’t deemed good or bad (that’s not a concept in Spirit), just different. Some humans who made a conscious effort to use their free will to raise the energy of love on Earth (or who made the “tapestry” brighter) will gravitate to the corresponding level in Spirit, and those who lowered the energy will gravitate to a different level.

Just as the earth is composed of many countries, the Spirit World is composed of many levels. These “worlds within worlds” are energetic levels and not in a specific location. The Spirit World, or heaven, is not “up”; it’s interdimensional. Everything occupies the same space, but the energy vibrates at different rates, and each level is a solid, real world to those beings in it. (p70-71)

***

Like attracts like, so the beliefs you held on Earth about the hereafter are mimicked in the Astral World, for the sake of a smoother transition. For instance, if you have a very strong belief system as a born-again Christian, you will gravitate to an astral level that is the home of others of your belief system. The same could be said for nonbelievers or skeptics of life after death. They will of course live on, but they will be at a level in the Astral World made up of other nonbelievers who may not, at first, accept life past the physical world. (p73)

***

I was blown away, but then I realized that we are exactly what we think, and the environment we create matches the level of awareness we’re at. It is a misconception to believe that all souls have an immediate expansion of consciousness once they leave the body. You are what you believe, and you will expand and grow and evolve in your own time. (p74)

***

Random acts of kindness such as a smile to a stranger carry more weight than attending church every Sunday out of obligation. You can literally change the energy field around you by keeping your thoughts high-minded, and only attract those who gravitate toward the higher vibration. Remember that like attracts like, so when you bring that energy into your life, only good things can happen—and what you reap may arise from something you had no conscious awareness of sowing. (p78)

***

Souls in the Astral World may reincarnate directly from there, or they may move up to the subtler dimensions known as the Ethereal World….The Ethereal World—also known as the Thought Plane—vibrates at a higher rate than the Astral World. It seems to be made up of soul beings who have reached a point of purity of mind and thought, and really are connected to us through what is known as inspiration. … It is a formless realm that is made up of pure consciousness. Thought and energy move about faster here than data in any supercomputer you can conceive of. …It is the place where the “higher self” resides. This plane is filled with light and love and truth. (p79-80)

***

The Celestial Plane is often referred to as the “Angelic Realm.” The souls who dwell on this level have achieved a particular degree of spiritual evolution and would be considered elevated beings. It is where angels and archangels; mystics and masters; and prophets whom we know as Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha reside. … The entities on this level have no humanoid characteristics and are connected to all life and able to bring the best attributes of higher conditions of being to others. This is also known as the bliss level, where there is a feeling impossible to conceive of on the lower spheres. It is tangible yet beyond the imagination and has been described as “divine joy.” (p81-82)

***

Your soul has delved into the dimensions of many worlds, planets, star systems, lifetimes, positions, situations, and experiences in order to bring knowledge, insight, and understanding to the world of Spirit. Just as a bee goes from flower to flower to bring pollen back to the hive, so does your soul go from life to life to bring your unique experience back to the Source. The soul’s adventures are always about learning, experiencing, expanding, and evolving.

People are constantly asking me, ‘What is my soul’s purpose?’ The easy answer is to love unconditionally. The energy that we call ‘love’ is what the world of Spirit is made of; it’s the natural rhythm of the Universe. (85)“

Honoring the “VERB”

“I live on Earth at present,
and I don’t know what I am.
I know that I am not a category.
I am not a thing—a noun.
I seem to be a verb,
an evolutionary process—
an integral function of the universe.”
~ R. Buckminster Fuller
( I Seem To Be a Verb 1970 )

As previously mentioned, no post on Buckminster Fuller ever goes unappreciated by me.

Perhaps reading his book I Seem to Be a Verb at that particularly impressionable time in my young adult life when I was searching for something to believe in—something meaningful to guide me—something to inspire me to look beyond the end of my nose and to see the world that we ALL share in a different, more expansive manner; perhaps that simple literary catalyst was a defining moment of TRUTH to settle the inner restlessness that I had felt for so long.

I mean seriously THINK about what he is saying here: “I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am NOT a thing—a noun. I seem to be a VERB, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe.”

Distilled version: “I don’t know what I am…I am NOT a thing…I seem to be…an evolutionary process…an integral FUNCTION of the Universe.”

The NOUN of ‘ME’ represents the ego; while the VERB of ‘ME’ is the ‘action taken’ through my BEING—it’s the Universe witnessing aspects of itself through this particular lens (aperture) of perception during this time period.

The VERB known as “Buckminster Fuller” keeps affecting others long after his death; inspiring them through his engineering genius, his humanist philosophy on our ecological-interconnectedness, set against his stark humbleness pertaining to his actual earth presence here.

If you study his life’s work at all, you will quickly see that Buckminster Fuller made things happen in a very BIG way. You can trace his life’s effect though our species subsequent social and cultural planetary evolution that aligned most closely to his words and deeds.

The real importance of Fuller’s existence was NOT in his fame or his personhood per se, but in his evolutional legacy for humanity.

And when it comes down to it, at the end of our time here on Earth, we should ALL strive to be so impactful.

Eckhart Tolle on DOING and BEING

Sometimes ‘seeing with new eyes’ requires us to make a serious perspective shift; and I really like what Eckhart Tolle did here with his explanation on “DOING” and “BEING”. (Click his name to reach his Facebook page.)

“Eckhart Tolle

Dear friends,

Over the years, many people have asked me about finding their purpose in this world and how this connects to spiritual awakening. It’s a very important question.

Recently we have had events in the collective that have pushed many into states of fear and anxiety. There has been a kind of enforced stillness for the population. Whenever there is an extreme form of adversity, an opportunity also arises.

Our alertness has gone up to the present moment and to what is happening around us. Many are going deeper to become aware of something that cannot be seen but is rather felt. This is an undeniable field of energy, consciousness that makes all sense perceptions possible. That Presence is inseparable from who you are in your essence.

On the one hand, your life purpose unfolds through the activities that you engage in on what I call ‘the horizontal dimension’—or the dimension of DOING. But everybody eventually finds if they only operate on the horizontal dimension, it doesn’t ultimately satisfy them.

There is another dimension that I call ‘the vertical dimension,’ or the dimension of BEING. The mastery of life is to have a balance of both. I sometimes call it the dance between BEING and DOING—not as separate things, but acting together—BEING and DOING as one.

‘Eckhart Tolle Now’(his membership community) is a place for you to learn, practice, and awaken in community. We will look deeply into the skills, the practices, and, perhaps most importantly, the BEING dimension. Remember: the ultimate source of satisfaction in life is to recognize yourself as consciousness.

If you miss that, then no matter what you achieve in life, it is not going to make you happy for very long. We can start now, right where we are. By going within we can discover the place where life is born continuously—the source of creation—consciousness itself.

As humanity awakens, so too will our powers to create true change on our planet.

With you on the path,

Eckhart Tolle ”

This Aperture’s View Today

While this is not what I had intended to write about today, it must be what is internally pushing hardest to appear here now, so there you go. Similar to Popeye’s favorite slogan, “I writes what I writes.”

It’s like that Alan Watts quote, whatever has the strongest desire to transmit at the time through this Universe’s Filter called ‘ME’ will appear on the page:

“In other words I seem, like everything else, to be a center, a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself, comes alive. A sort of aperture, through which the whole universe is conscious of itself…” Alan Watts

Well this morning’s ‘catalyst for contemplation’ was my listening to a speaker talking about ‘Ascension Symptoms’ and realizing that she was actually describing much of what I had been personally experiencing lately—the sudden unleashing of old memories, the fresh feeling of impactful energies long ago released, the unexpected recurrence of old trauma thought-triggers, etc.. You know, the FUN STUFF that we often try to avoid at all costs—causing the meteoric rise in addictions over the past year with the increased desire to numb-ourselves-out from this chaotic world around us.

So since I don’t ‘do’ addictions or numb-outs, I’d been wondering what was happening energetically in the collective that I couldn’t seem to pinpoint—I mean beyond the usual: the awful group negativities and spewing volcanic angers over nearly EVERYTHING; and even the annoying adolescent social-tantrums of adults who really should be beyond that now.

I mean seriously—aren’t we better than this?

But then I heard a different perspective on this ‘acting-out phase’ that we ALL seem to be collectively embroiled in, and I thought, “Okay, …maybe I can see that. This does makes a type of sense to all the senselessness.”

What she was talking about was the reemergence of ‘cellular memories’, which sounds like a physical thing, but it’s more so an energetic thing, and as such it extends beyond this lifetime, because in truth we are primarily energy-beings stepping into a physical body exterior for this particular level of learning.

In a sense we are our own Avatars.

And this particular ‘Avatar’ had been experiencing first-hand knowledge of what the speaker was describing, so I decided to hear her out.

She said we’re in a reckoning right now—a ‘reckoning time’—where we must admit, acknowledge, and own our worst aspects—our ‘shadow stuff’—both personally and collectively.

Most importantly, you don’t ‘own it’ to wallow in it—you own it to recognize the unhealthiness of it and to then compassionately ‘let it go’—to release the negative energies and influences of it—to disconnect that unhealthiness from your being.

You look closely at your shadow with greater understanding that in one sense it might have been an earlier ‘educational experience’ in self-awareness, but it was and is an experience whose usefulness has long since past. So now we can admit our previous mistakes and perhaps even apologize to those we may have hurt during the process of making those mistakes that hurt others (or ourselves); and then we can release those still-festering-inside-us shadow patterns to a higher Source light for energy transmutation (a process of distilling out impurities and recycling the energies).

She said it is a time to ‘let go’ of the old and move into new patterns of BEING.

Okay, I can get behind that, but what ARE those “new patterns of BEING”?

In order to restructure your ‘living experience’ for this lifetime in this plane of BEING, HOW do you hit the “reset button”?

Now this is where I might lose you because she talked about shifting your frequency high enough and holding it there long enough ‘to choose a NEW higher-frequency timeline’ for the remainder of your life. And why would you want to do that?

Well if you are pretty tired of shloshing through mud puddle after mud puddle every day of your life, and you can suddenly see a higher road around and away from all that mud, would you take it? THE NEW timeline is the path more ‘mud-free’ than your current one; meaning it has fewer ‘challenges’ (called “learning experiences”) with less negativity on the path that you follow.

And I’m certainly no authority here on this, but I am familiar with the concept through previous training and as I currently understand it, what we choose to experience in LIFE adheres to certain ‘frequency zones’, meaning that there are ‘levels of learning’ that provide more direct physical experiencing (more hand-to-hand-combat type to explore baser emotions) and levels that provide a milder, more intuitive and cerebral experience to explore the higher emotional states like love, compassion, and empathy.

Whatever ‘level of learning’ that you experience depends on the frequency that you can hold as an energy being. It alludes to that “Law of Attraction” theory—the frequency that you personally hold is the frequency that you attract to you—the frequency that resonates best with your energy body.

So when you can raise and hold your frequency higher to choose a Higher Frequency Timeline, you experience less turmoil and fewer lower-frequency challenges; and you will instead experience more higher-frequency explorations into the more subtle qualities of LIFE.

So we’ll see I guess—I’ll test it out and if the process works for me, I’ll pass it on to you.

Sometimes it’s hard to get your head around this particular “option” when you’re so busy just trying to side-step the mud.

Defining Your Identity

“Who ARE you?”

Can you truthfully answer that above question?

I’ve identified myself so many different ways during all the phases of my life that I’m not sure how I would have answered that question during each of those growth phases, because to me IDENTITY has more to do with how we think of ourselves and less to do with what others might think of us. It is less about the roles that we play (or have played) in life and more about the content of our inner being—our core values, our life perspective, and how we view our relationships/interactions with all others.

Identity-wise in general, other people can call me by my standard recognized moniker—meaning my name—and that is one way of identifying me in a crowd of others; or the Social Security division of the federal government can identify me as a specific string of numbers; or my cat can identify me as the two-legged moving-mass that fills his food dish or shares HIS recliner; or my friends can identify me as …well, I’m not sure how they would identify me depending on their mood or mine at the time.

So IDENTITY is a tough concept to pin down, let alone fully understand.

But for this post I want to focus on ‘self-identity’. So when I ask: “Who ARE you?” I actually mean ‘How do you consider yourself?’

Are you a good person or a bad person?
Are you a loving/giving person or a hate-filled/selfish person?
Are you proud of yourself or are you ashamed of yourself?
Do you always build yourself up or do you tend to tear yourself down?
Are you generally optimistic in your view of LIFE or are you overall pessimistic on LIFE in general?
Are you active and eager for new ideas, new opportunities for growth, and new learning situations, or are you more sedentary and resistant to NEW ‘anything’?
Are you basically happy with your LIFE and with yourself, or are you ….not so much?

You can see where I’m going here. What spurred those comparisons above was this:

While browsing this morning’s media outlets, I was half-listening to a ‘self-help speaker’ talking about trying to help her clients conceptualize the difference between DOING and BEING—especially where feeling ‘shame’ is concerned. She asked the client if she was “ashamed for something she had done” or was she “ashamed for WHO she was”? (She coined the difference as: “I FEEL ashamed for doing that…” or I AM ashamed of myself…”)

Can you see the perspective shift there?

What we occasionally DO in LIFE is not necessarily WHO WE ARE as a person. When the emotional residues of SHAME/GUILT for ‘something harmful that we might have done to others’ infiltrate our psyche and persona, then we turn a ‘behavioral mistake’ into fodder for ‘self-loathing’, and THAT can be a hard thing to reverse-engineer out of our mental programming.

What did I say a couple posts ago? “…I still like to believe that people are basically ‘good’ before something/someone turns them more toxic and self-focused…” Well, that applies here as well because:

WHO WE ARE is not WHAT WE DO.
And WHAT WE DO in this LIFE’s gladiatorial arena, is not necessarily WHO WE ARE as people just trying to survive in this challenging dimension of existence.

Of course we do unkind things to others, some unintentionally and some not. And most of us may have regrets for some of the things that we’ve previously done, but that doesn’t make us bad people.

So don’t turn that previous behavioral mistake into your ‘self-loathing mantra’ for how you view yourself.

Define your identity more so by charting your increased self-awareness and your expanding perceptual growth, and less by mentally rehashing your past mistakes, because sometimes we simply have to forgive ourselves for being so momentarily stupid when we do slip up.

And as painful as it might be, that is often how we learn LIFE’s most important lessons.