|
Post by Lou on Oct 14, 2009 10:32:33 GMT -5
Hello Sleeper, It's funny that you mention seeing people in dreams who look exactly like us, on the night of my "trip " with Milton a movie was played in my head literally as soon as I closed my eyes to go to sleep (or that's how it seemed). The girl in the vision at first looked just like me but when I was younger, however, on closer inspection of her face she didn't look exactly like me...not quite as cute looking. ;D Still to this day I have no idea what it was all about, do you think it was me or not? Could it have been a screen memory perhaps, there was something about what I was shown that could not possibly have been real on earth as we know it today? Hello eevee, A psychologist might say that you were speaking from a younger you to an older you, being that we contain all of our stages in life inside of us. And that would have schizophrenic validity, on this side of the fence anyway. But the dream world is a much more complex world and certain entities have bit parts in our overall development.
|
|
|
Post by noface on Oct 14, 2009 20:12:12 GMT -5
And that would have schizophrenic validity, on this side of the fence anyway. But the dream world is a much more complex world and certain entities have bit parts in our overall development. Speaking of schizophrenia, when I was interested in Gurdjieff and Sufism he described the human condition as schizophrenic. That there were many different "I"s all vying for control. Each "I" was an autonomous being of a sort. Each wanted its way and had its own agenda. For example, one "I" wants to quit smoking. Another "I" wants to smoke. Whichever one gains power over the person, whichever the person allows themselves to be possessed by, is the one that gets their way and is what the person experiences. The secret to enlightenment, harmony, or sanity on that path was to struggle to develope a single ruling "I" that had power over all the others. One King, so to speak, which all the others had to listen to, obey, or were in service to. Then one could be considered whole, sane, in harmony, or in their right mind. ;D It is similar to God creating all the different beings in the universe out of him/her/itself and they are all different aspects of himself, yet he is the ruling sovereignty of them all. We are created in his image so we are a microcosm of the macrocosm involved in the same process. So says Gurdjieff and his Fourth Way.
|
|
bob
Full Member
Posts: 216
|
Post by bob on Oct 14, 2009 23:35:42 GMT -5
Hiya Noface!
This is similar to the practice of directing attention to the primal sense of “I-am-ness”, aka the Witness Position, although even mature stabilization here is not yet true liberation.
The “I-am-ness” is itself appearing in consciousness, while the Absolute is prior to consciousness. Consciousness itself has an origin, an appearance, and disappearance. There’s a big clue in that!
In any case, it seems this is optimum use of our free attention, aka free will, and from there Grace takes over and shows us the rest of the picture. The Witness itself is illusion -- a concept or mental fabrication -- and too must eventually be seen clear through. Then Welcome to the Unknown, where the ear and the optic nerve play, and never is heard a discouraging word, since words have long since dropped away. Hey!
Blessings!
|
|
|
Post by Eevee on Oct 15, 2009 4:59:35 GMT -5
Good point, Eevee, although it could be that now she is ready or prepared enough to have these matters reviewed in a therapeutic setting, and so we happen to find out just recently that the procedure is available right in our neighborhood, whereas before the mental block was necessary because she would not have been able to assimilate the gist of the experiences. Hello Bob, I just wanted to ask you that if Mazie does go through with this therapy do you think she would consider registering here and telling us about the experience? I would really love to hear from her. ....................................... Regarding Michael Newton's books, I've just started the second book: "Destiny Of Souls" I just wanted to point out something which made me sit up and take more notice as it relates to a particular experience of mine. The client in the book describes how after she died in a previos life she became a ghost for a while, eventually she is rescued by an entitiy she refers to as The Redeemer of Lost Souls. He takes her to the following place: "Well, this is a place for grieving souls like me and it looks like a beautiful meadow with flowers. Doni tells me to be joyful and he infuses my energy with love and happiness and purifies my mind. He lets me play like a child among the flowers and tells me to chase the butterflies while he rests in the Sun"It may all be bs, but the very vivid dream I had after an extremely stressful event (and during surgery) of my deceased Grandad taking me away to a beautiful place matches the description of the meadow exactly I particularly remember these huge brightly covered butterflies everywhere.....I was also in a state of grief at the time of the dream. Since there are no coincidences.....
|
|
bob
Full Member
Posts: 216
|
Post by bob on Oct 15, 2009 23:47:13 GMT -5
Hiya Eevee! Mazie came to the same conclusion as I did, after we examined the prospect for a moment. I’m still awaiting the books I ordered, but looking forward to a good read, especially now as we moved into woodstove season. Your Grandad is not unlike the deceased father who appeared to Jodi Foster in the movie “Contact”. Actually, this is a common theme among nde-type reports, with guardians appearing in the most comfortable form for the occasion, and in fact an interesting tale I meant to share here goes into this: www.mellen-thomas.com/stories.htm Just an abundance of gifts, eh. When we watch children, we can observe that they’re usually much more interested in the gifts they receive, than in the giver. At a certain point of maturation, attention can shift, and the giver may even turn out to be quite familiar, closer than a heartbeat. “If every medium were removed between myself and a wall, then I would be at the wall but not in it. But this is not the case with spiritual things, for with them one thing is always in another. That which receives is the same as that which is received, for it receives nothing other than itself. This is difficult. Whoever understands it has been preached to enough.” ~Meister Ekhart Blessings!
|
|
|
Post by Eevee on Oct 16, 2009 7:52:39 GMT -5
Hi Bob, I was not in a near death situation (as in the operation didn't save my life) nor did I "die" on the operating table as far as I know. I had just suffered a traumatic event though and was mentally on my knees. I would have given anything to stay in that place with him forever. My Grandad had been dead for about six years at this time, so seeing him twice in two days was an amazing gift, as he had previously appeared to my Sister and I at a transfiguration seance. I haven't had time to read all of his account, but I will, what I have read seems amazing. Some lucky people are shown what he was shown without having to "die" or without the use of hypnotic regression. I have been given more gifts than I feel I deserve, one in particular was/is the best gift ever imaginable. You have reminded me of an event which took place when my daughter was about two. I was sat on the sofa watching my daughter, she was laying near my feet totally enthralled by something on the wall behind me. Then she started really smiling then giggling. I was puzzled and asked her why she was laughing. She replied: "funny man" and pointed behind me still laughing. There was nothing there of course, but I have often wondered if it was my Grandad as he died before my daughter was born.
|
|
bob
Full Member
Posts: 216
|
Post by bob on Oct 16, 2009 15:49:58 GMT -5
Hiya Eevee! Extreme events, whether of ecstasy or trauma, can often have the effect of opening us up to dimensions beyond the narrow confines of the habitual ‘waking’ mindstream, and here we can get ‘glimpses’, so to speak. Many testimonies in the literature begin with such extreme events, and not necessarily of the nde variety. In my own case, my experience at 2 and then again at the age of 8 come to mind, and especially the car accident 25 yrs. ago that I wrote about earlier. That ‘place’ is within you now, just as it was then, but your attention is necessarily being drawn to a more pertinent aspect of your development at this time. There are restful oasis-type states, or ‘lokas’, but they are still merely provisional, and there is so much more beyond ‘Paradise’. Obviously some deep karmic connection there. One of our dearest friends, Linda S., had a rather remarkable nde experience years ago, which I’ll also share here in a bit, but since then she’s had a foot in both worlds, so to speak, and can freely communicate back and forth. She’s given deep comfort to many many people over the years. Funny story – she was at a big public barbque a year or so after her nde, and suddenly dozens of spirits showed up clamoring to have her relay messages to their loved ones – folks she herself didn’t even know that were also attending the picnic. She tentatively began, and one person after another was stunned and amazed by the info and messages she related, especially as she described each particular deceased relative with unerring accuracy! Although Linda’s nothing like Whoopi Goldberg, I’m thinking of that scene in “Ghost” when the souls were all lining up around Whoopi to get their messages through. Here’s her nde story: www.near-death.com/stewart.htmlRight, but it’s not really about ‘luck’, although from the limitations of our partial perspective, it may appear that way. It seems to be more about preparedness. For example, few students get A’s without doing the work, and nobody graduates by mere chance. The feelings we may harbor of personal worthiness or lack thereof are both neurotic mental fabrications that we typically add to experience, based on certain acquired filters or conditioning factors that pertain to our particular assumed self-image. The so-called ‘imaginary friends’ of childhood are often literal beings, though as we age, the consuming content of our everyday experience eventually overshadows such contacts in most cases, to the point that we come to categorize them in retrospect as ‘imaginary’. My younger brother Tim used to spin like a Sufi in circles for hours, back when he was a kid, and when I asked him about it, he told me that spinning was the way he communed with “‘the other Timmy, on the moon”. Blessings!
|
|
|
Post by robertgoodfella on Oct 16, 2009 17:51:03 GMT -5
Hi Bob,
I shared this story of mellen with sleeper a year ago on ATS, he said he experienced the same thing only without dying. what a coincidence you brought this up, I ordered his audio CD's 6 month's ago and just got them 3 days ago due to a re-audit on their part, i gave up after 2 attempts of e-mails.
|
|
bob
Full Member
Posts: 216
|
Post by bob on Oct 16, 2009 19:57:04 GMT -5
Hi Bob, I shared this story of mellen with sleeper a year ago on ATS, he said he experienced the same thing only without dying. what a coincidence you brought this up, I ordered his audio CD's 6 month's ago and just got them 3 days ago due to a re-audit on their part, i gave up after 2 attempts of e-mails. Hiya Robert! Yep, funny how these things work out, the synchronicities! Somewhat related to that visionary experience described in the tale, here's something from a fellow named Brad Warner, a popular young Zen instructor in the USA: "People long for big thrills. Peak experiences. Some people come to Zen expecting that Enlightenment will be the Ultimate Peak Experience. The Mother of All Peak Experiences. But real enlightenment is the most ordinary of the ordinary. Once I had an amazing vision. I saw myself transported through time and space. Millions, no, billions, trillions, Godzillions of years passed. Not figuratively, but literally. Whizzed by. I found myself at the very rim of time and space, a vast giant being composed of the living minds and bodies of every thing that ever was. It was an incredibly moving experience. Exhilarating. I was high for weeks. Finally I told Nishijima Sensei about it . He said it was nonsense. Just my imagination. I can't tell you how that made me feel. Imagination? This was as real an experience as any I've ever had. I just about cried. Later on that day I was eating a tangerine. I noticed how incredibly lovely a thing it was. So delicate. So amazingly orange. So very tasty. So I told Nishijima about that. That experience, he said, was enlightenment.
You need a teacher like that. The world needs lots more teachers like that. Countless teachers would have interpreted my experience as a merging of my Atman with God, as a portent of great and wonderful things, would have praised my spiritual growth and given me pointers on how to go even further. And I would have been suckered right in to that, let me tell you! Woulda fallen for it hook line and sinker, boy howdy. If a teacher doesn't shatter your illusions he's doing you no favors at all.
Boredom is what you need. Merging with the Mind of God at the Edge of the Universe, that's excitement. That's what we're all into this Zen thing for, right? Eating tangerines? Come on, dude! What could be more boring than eating a tangerine?
Some years ago some psychologists did a study in which they sat some Buddhists monks and some regular folks in a room and wired them up to EEG machines to record their brain activity. They told everyone to relax, then introduced a repetitive stimulus, a loudly ticking clock, into the room. The normal folks' EEG showed that their brains stopped reacting the stimulus after a few seconds. But the Buddhists just kept on mentally registering the tick every time it happened. Psychologists and journalists never quite know how to interpret that finding, though it's often cited. It's a simple matter. Buddhists pay attention to their lives. Ordinary folks figure they have better things to think about.
If you really take a look at your ordinary boring life, you'll discover something truly wonderful. Our regular old pointless lives are incredibly joyful -- amazingly, astoundingly, relentlessly, mercilessly joyful. You don't need to do a damned thing to experience such joy either. People think they need big experiences, interesting experiences. And it's true that gigantic, traumatic experiences sometimes bring people, for a fleeting moment, into a kind of enlightened state. That's why such experiences are so desired. But it wears off fast and you're right back out there looking for the next thrill. You don't need to take drugs, blow up buildings, win the Indy 500 or walk on the moon. You don't need to go hang-gliding over the Himalayas, you don't need to screw your luscious and oh-so-willing secretary or party all night with the beautiful people. You don't need visions of merging with the totality of the Universe. Just be what you are, where you are. Clean the toilet. Walk the dog. Do your work. That's the most magical thing there is. If you really want to merge with God, that's the way to do it. This moment. You sitting there with your hand in your underwear and potato chip crumbs on your chin, scrolling down your computer screen thinking "This guy's out of his mind." This very moment is Enlightenment. This moment has never come before and once it's gone, it's gone forever. You are this moment. This moment is you. This very moment is you merging with the total Universe, with God Himself."Blessings!
|
|
bob
Full Member
Posts: 216
|
Post by bob on Oct 17, 2009 17:44:16 GMT -5
Hiya Friends! I've received the two books by Newton, and am about a quarter way through the first one (Jouney of Souls). It's great to see this kind of quality info becoming widely available! Elsewhere, I found this book by Robert Schwartz suggested for a follow-up or complement to Newton's work www.YourSoulsPlan.comBlessings!
|
|
|
Post by robertgoodfella on Oct 20, 2009 22:26:26 GMT -5
Hi Bob,
I guess this is what it's all about in this stressful world of responsibilities, to sit back and reflect on things and the moment. To disconnect and connect with your higher self and god. Thanks for the feed back.
|
|
bob
Full Member
Posts: 216
|
Post by bob on Oct 20, 2009 23:50:09 GMT -5
Hiya Robert!
Shifting the angle of vision to steady calm and awake awareness does have the effect of reducing the sense of stressfulness about existence, if properly applied with consistent sincerity, especially when you’re drawn back into the game after the pause that refreshes. For some, things may seem to get even more stressful as they start to open their eyes to their own activity, as you begin to catch on that stress is not something happening to you, but something you are actually doing to yourself, believe it or not, moment after moment! Recognition of these mechanics in our own experience is a solid step towards freedom. See how a sense of contraction is the actual physical sensation we are habitually superimposing on experience, and just stop pinching yourself, let it go and become obsolete, what do you care, you’ve got better things to do with your time here these days than making yourself miserable.
We’ve never been disconnected, but trying telling that to anybody these days – they think you’re nuts! “How can he say that – just look at this place!” This ‘place’ is not unlike a kind of humorous joke -- all this staged play-acting -- but they say it serves some purpose of edification long term, so who am I to disagree? Laughter in the midst of it all relieves stress – that’s a genuine fact you can see for yourself when you’re laughing through the tears at the whole damn thing!
Happy to oblige!
Blessings!
|
|
|
Post by Eevee on Nov 15, 2009 5:51:46 GMT -5
Hey Bob,
I finally got around to reading the thread at Open Minds about these books and discovered that one of the members there has had one of these LBL sessions earlier this year.
She sent me the link to a recording of her session, it was almost four hours long but it was very interesting, and funny lol.
I can't say that I agree with all of the information obtained from the session though, especially the part about her only bringing 30% of her souls energy with her to earth, and living a parallel life, but a lot of things tally with what Sleeper has been telling us and I enjoyed listening to it very much.
I kept getting distracted by the fact that the hypnotherapist sounded like Mr Mackay from South Park which was just too funny. ;D
|
|
|
Post by vortices on Nov 15, 2009 13:59:09 GMT -5
"Drugs are bad, ummm Kay"
i love those guys
*v hugs everybody*
|
|
|
Post by Izarith on Nov 15, 2009 21:22:55 GMT -5
I kept getting distracted by the fact that the hypnotherapist sounded like Mr Mackay from South Park which was just too funny. ;D Thats too funny LOL! "I'm...I'm in a a bright place. Can't tell where the light is coming from...It's so beautiful here. I, I feel love all around me rapping me like a warm blanket. Other souls are here. I know them. They are my friends and family. It's so wonderful here." Hypnotherapist: "Lets move a little forward shall we, mmmmm kay." "We are all playing a game. It's so much fun. I have never had so much...." Hypnotherapist: "Move Forward, mmmm kay." "Wow, oh my, it's so beautiful!" Hypnotherapist: "Wha, whats beautiful, mmk?" "Th.....the being of light I'm with." Hypnotherapist: "mmm kay, you obviously are not the one who took a shit in the urinal, mk. So at the count of thee you going to wake up, mk. 1,2,3 Next, mmmmmmm kay." Vodka!
|
|