Psychic Protection

This is a post inspired by a comment from a reader  – cheers, AgentSully.

[Insert usual explanation of my channeling here – or go look at the post entitled Suicide to read the explanation … ]

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Me: Talk a bit about psychic protection, please.

Them: Psychic protection can be necessary we would say, or at least desirable for some. It may be understood as protection from the poorly formed ideas within your own mind, the misconceptions and misunderstandings within the mind, or as protection from particular beings who are separate from you or the thought forms that originate from beings less scrupulous than they might be with their creations. Either would be true.

We will first speak from within the viewpoint of the physical realms, from within the illusions or energy systems set up for this realm. They are real, remember, from within the realm.

Being within the physical planes of existence, know that there are certainly those who do not necessarily act with the awareness of their participation within the All. This is not to say that what they experience is outside of the All, only that they are unaware on some key level, and within their own free-will-creations they may be wagging the dog, you will say. Meaning that their free will actions are allowed free rein by the whole self, the whole self (the dog) then following along after the wagging tail, perhaps only stepping in if things get too far out of hand, for instance.

The individual is given free rein to some extent, and so may be shaping themselves or others into beings that one would not necessarily care to interact with.  You will recognize this. We speak from one particular viewpoint, within or not far from the physical, you understand. Please acknowledge.

Yes, I understand.

This assumes willful or inadvertent blindness to one’s true nature. It does not presuppose that some of these beings are inept with energy, consciously or unconsciously. On a very basic level, you have encountered people who seem quite kind and friendly, yet when you leave their presence you feel completely drained and must go lie down and somehow recover and recharge your energy. They are in fact feeding off of your energy, consciously or unconsciously, believing that they are not adequate unto themselves, having lost the memory or skill to connect with the All, the Sea of Awareness, to refresh and charge their own energy. They are yet skillful enough to gather the energy of others, believing that is the only place they can get it.

Another example would be those who do this without being within one’s physical presence. We speak of the friend on the other side of the state, the mother on the other side of the continent. Unconsciously or consciously, they may draw upon your energy and insinuate their own presence into your energy space. They may be physical personalities who do this unconsciously or consciously, or they may be beings that exist within the physical but are not always manifest as visible, shall we say. These are not fictions, they are real within the viewpoint of the physical realms. We would like to stress this without entering into that discussion.

In the case of leaving one’s body to explore the universe or other realities, other vibrational planes or places, dimensions, we will also say that it is possible here to encounter those beings that do not have respect for another. They will, if possible, cling to you or appear to interfere with your energy and comfort. It is valid to put up some protection from these beings if one chooses not to explore one’s own power over self in the presence of them, or to explore the nature of these beings.

We will leave that as is, for more will be said in a moment about this.

From the view of the All of All, from within your awareness expanded to its fullest, we would remind you that nothing comes into your experience that you do not invite or allow as a whole self. In this viewpoint, if you have encountered those who you feel you need protection from, what is it in yourself that has attracted or allowed this reality to enter your own? It may not be that you yourself harbor some mirror of this being, we would point out. It may be that what attracts them is a kindness or a curiosity. What attracts them may be a whiff of fear. This is not meant to alarm, frighten, or appear as an accusation, that something in the self allows the experience – it is presented here as a hint on the road toward understanding.

As an example, at one point Robert Monroe recounts that upon leaving his body he found two small beings clinging to him. (I don’t recall which of his books this story is in.)Monroe was disgusted and frightened by these beings piggy-backing on him. He fought to get them off of himself and could not. He begged for assistance. A man came, plucked the beings from him, smiled and left. Monroe was not amused.

Many years later he was given to revisit this incident from another viewpoint. Monroe found that he himself was, in fact, the man who came to help his struggling younger self. To avoid confusion, let us refer to him now as Young Bob (struggling with clinging things) and Old Bob (returned to help himself struggling with clinging things). The two small beings that frightened Young Bob so much, those that he tried desperately to remove, were seen from the viewpoint of Old Bob to be his own two small children’s spirits. As Old Bob, the beings did not appear malevolent or frightening at all, because he could see them clearly, without his own fear and surprise standing in the way.

It is unlikely that were one to encounter frightening beings, or beings who drew from one’s energy, that one would be able to effortlessly move oneself into a new mindset or viewpoint from which to assure oneself of what was really happening. We want to apply ourselves to explaining this in order to avoid misunderstanding, for we see that it would be quite easy for the human to imagine that because this viewpoint is smaller (Young Bob), it is wrong, or foolish, or something to be corrected. This is not necessarily so.

At any point in time you will know what you know, no more, because that is the beauty and comedy of the human realm. Remove all judgment and competition from the two viewpoints, and you will find the beauty in each. One is not wiser, only broader. One is not more valuable than the other, for they are both necessary to each other. The situation is not a test, it is only an experience. It has no potential for wrong action from either viewpoint, only the possibility of an expansion of understanding.

We would say this: do not attempt through force to convince yourself of the benevolence of something that is frightening, disturbing or otherwise unpleasant just because it might be something good if only you could see its goodness. Certainly reflect, consider, open yourself to the possibility of goodness, but we would also say that being within that which you feel honestly, that viewpoint where you are right now, is important and valuable. Monroe’s Young Bob experience had value.

You are within the human experience for valuable reasons – reasons valuable to you. So be within the moment – trust that moment. If you deny the moment you are in, will you not miss an opportunity? If you feel fear, feel it. If you feel disgust or revulsion, feel it. That is what you are here for, to go through the moment.

This is not to encourage you to lose track of the awareness that you are experiencing from this limited perspective. You are not a being wholly of emotion, for emotion is the result of perspective. Certainly train your perspective, open it back up out of the culture’s misconceptions when possible. We simply encourage you here not to deny emotion as it moves through you. Allow it to move while you also maintain what we will call intelligent emotion – the awareness of the whole self, the value of spirit-informed reason. The energies of an emotion can flow through the body and mind without them being acted out without control, upon oneself or another, is this not so? The expression of emotion is a choice. Your reason has its place in this equation.

We do not wish to get sidetracked (too late!) … what we wish to say is only that denying yourself the truth of yourself is a denial of yourself. In order to move forward, one must first be wholly aware exactly where one is.

Protection is not denial. It is only protection. In fact, when you feel and know that you are safe and protected, is there not freedom within that to resolve the form that you are faced with? This brings us back to the first paragraph, does it not?

If you feel that you need protection, set protection, for the intention of it will in fact protect you as you learn, as you explore, until you realize or understand or feel that you no longer need such protection.

That is all we have to say on this subject at present.

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Suicide

A reader has asked me to write about suicide; this is for CW. 

When I approach a subject like this, I like to go into a quiet space inside myself and ask the question of my group of advisers or what people refer to as guides. I want to say that I don’t know whether these personalities are separate from myself or parts of myself  – I suspect they’re both, but doubt that it matters. Either way, I then write what I get using the conversation format. Sometimes I later re-write what I receive so that it’s in the form of an essay (my ideas, my form), and other times leave it as it comes and refer to it as channeling. 

In this case, I’ve left what I received in the form that it came to me because I’m too lazy to re-write it. 🙂 A

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Me: Tell me about suicide.

Them: There are more than one aspects to this subject. Let us take one at a time.

There are those who choose to come into this incarnation with the plan, shall we say, of killing themselves, choosing the time and place once within the body, or before taking on the body. This is a creative exploration of their own, or in some cases an agreement made between many for the benefit of all. We will leave that as it is, for it should be self explanatory.

There are also those who come into this life with a plan, yet once they are in the physical they discover that it is much more difficult than they had realized from the point of view of the non-physical. Looking at physical life from the other side makes physical life look much simpler. Things look possible and often quite easy that, once in the body, prove to be so difficult as to cause some people to  kill their bodies.

In some cases this decision is not welcome, shall we say, by the Group Self, yet that is not to say that the person is judged as lacking or judged as evil or weak for having made the decision. It may be a disappointment only in having missed some exploration’s possibility should that personality found the endurance to continue. There is no judgment placed on the person, and many times it is recognized that the life was much more traumatic than imagined or planned, so that this spirit is in need of healing.

There are others who are, let us say, like lost spirits. If you go to a strange city and lose your way, wandering lost for many hours, is it a fault? Do you judge yourself evil? No. And neither are you judged so if one were to kill oneself under these circumstances. Losing one’s way, forgetting where one came from or how to return to where one came from is not a matter for condemnation, it is a matter for assistance and healing. It is true that in some instances the loss of remembrance causes … shall we say … disruption in the ranks. And the dis-remembrance is so acute that finding a way to reestablish communication with this spirit while it is still in a body is problematic or even impossible. Sometimes it takes quite an effort even to reach them once they are out of the body. It is never, however, a matter for condemnation nor judgment.

Let us describe this in another way in hopes of clarification.

The group self – however that is understood – is not a punishing body, nor is the vast All That Is. As we have stated and will emphasize, all is good. All experience is ultimately creative exploration and expansion. The group self is a supportive body, never anything but that. Whether the incarnated being/awareness forgets its origin or not, whether it takes its own life or not, that is still a creative act of free will, a valid choice of the being. The choice is respected at the level of the group or whole self (we use these interchangeably for this discussion), though the group may feel intervention or healing is necessary at the individual incarnate level once that portion of itself has left the body.

This presupposes a difference between the whole self and the individual self, and this we would agree is correct in a sense. The individual spirit may become enmeshed in the physical reality to the point of being without conscious awareness of who s/he really is, where s/he comes from. When this occurs, all sorts of complications might arise, one of which is suicide. This is another way of summarizing the same thing described above.

What is respected and accepted as a choice of free will from the viewpoint of the whole self does not presuppose an incarnated spirit or personality going “off track” so to speak, or setting out on a mission, only to abandon that mission by way of suicide. Keep this in mind and we will return to it.

There are those who are aware that were they to end their own life – we speak of incarnated personalities now – that they would simply be “sent back” to try it again. They sense that they might end up doing the difficult things all over again within different circumstances, and it would still be difficult in their eyes.

This is an awareness that the whole self or the group self feels committed to what it has set out to do, regardless of the reactions of this particular personality. The personality might be viewed for the sake of this discussion as a splinter of the self, not having full awareness of the whole, yet fully conscious in its own environment. Let us say in this case the whole self would accept the ending of the life, examine it, then perhaps take on a different body which would necessarily provide a different personality through which to experience the desired experience.

Either splinter, either of the two personalities, are still that same whole being. It is simply not the whole being’s consciousness within that one incarnated body’s awareness. One piece of lasagna from the pan is still a part of the whole, removed or not, carrying the personality and flavor and knowledge of the whole with it into the new existence as this one piece of lasagna, separate on a plate.

Me: roll my eyes – lasagna?!

The subject of suicide can be fraught with emotion and we would like to defuse some of that. Said another way, your hand is not all of you yet it is still your hand – it is you, it is simply not capable on its own of all that the whole body is capable of, is this not true? In this sense we will say that the personality of the incarnated being is simply not capable on its own of all that he whole being is capable of, yet it is wholly and completely of the particular whole self or group self.

We offer this example: Perhaps your hand shakes, and you cannot control this shaking with the conscious mind. Just as the hand shakes without direction from the mind, so the physical body and its limited awareness is capable of taking actions that are not fully informed by the whole self. Thereby, if the hand shakes without your conscious control, do you condemn your hand and cut it off? You do not. You live with it and perhaps attempt to heal it, to bring it back into the fold. The whole self also does not cut off the incarnated personality who is “lost” in some sense. The whole self does not abandon any part of itself.

As a whole, the concept that suicide is evil or wrong is a misconception, based upon the mountain of misconceptions that shape cultures as they are. That suicide if often considered to be a selfish act is nonsensical, for the one accusing the suicide of selfishness is buried in their own selfishness by that very judgment, are they not?

Any death can be viewed from many viewpoints, suicide included. It could as well be approached with celebration, or with healing ceremonies and attention, and perhaps these viewpoints would be more useful to those still incarnated, for as one judges another’s decisions as wrong or misguided, the fears of the judger are most often revealed, are they not?

That is all we have to say at this time.

Me: Thank you.

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Imagination

During a Monroe Institute workshop that I attended earlier this year, the facilitator suggested that if we felt as if we weren’t getting anything during the meditations (visual images, messages, communication, whatever), that we prime the pump by imagining something, then following it.

She paused for a moment, looking around the room with a small smile. “I love doing this workshop in Australia,” she told us. “In Australia I can say use your imagination, and no one stares at me like I’ve just suggested you all cheat on a test. Americans assume that imagination is not real. The Australians don’t have that hang up.” I looked around the room. People’s faces were polite blanks, like they were waiting for a punch line, explanation or assurance. The perplexed energy was palpable. You could feel their question: “But is it real? How do you tell?”

I’ve had similar questions from friends and clients, people curious about how I do my psychic readings, or how I trust information that I receive through non-physical means: How do you tell what’s imagination and what’s real?

It’s a valid question, but only because we’ve been taught and believe that there’s a difference between imagination (not real) and reality, whether that reality is the physical world or visions, messages, or other “spiritual” or non-physical communication.

About ten years ago my father had a severe heart attack. In Florida at the time, I immediately jumped on a plane to get to South Dakota where my father was supposedly dying. During a layover in Houston, I sat down and calmed myself. Closing my eyes, I imagined being with my father. I immediately found him wafting around over the Southwest, looking a little confused or lacking purpose. Getting his attention, I told him that he needed to get back to his body and make a decision; he needed to decide whether to stay with the body and heal it, or move on. I told him that either one was fine, but the decision was his so it would be good to get back to South Dakota. He nodded and moved back to his body, and I had the sense that he wanted to stay and heal this body.

When I opened my eyes, I knew that I had really found my father. My conversation with him had been vivid and real. Over the next couple of days, however, immersed in the family worry and the reserved pessimism of the medical doctors, part of me began to wonder if my conversation with him had just been my imagination.

As my father stabilized and before his six-bypass surgery, I found myself alone in the hospital room with him when he was fairly lucid. I decided to ask whether he remembered anything about where he’d gone after the heart attack. He thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah, I was flying around the Southwest.”

*

When we set our imaginations free, we can imagine anything. Think of the infinity of possibilities available for our imaginations to choose from. Why do we choose this thing to imagine?

*

I’ve learned that what pops into my imagination pops into my imagination for a reason. Even what I choose to imagine, what I deliberately pick out of the infinity of options then deliberately direct and rearrange and edit and re-imagine, comes for a reason.

Communication may not always be so direct and clear as the communication with my father happened to be, but what we imagine is not random. You don’t have to believe that. I wouldn’t recommend trying to convince yourself to believe it, arguing with yourself or brainwashing yourself into believing it because I say so it must be true (I am not your authority – you are!). It’s not a matter of faith. Try it. Test it. Play with it. When you begin to do that, you’ll eventually discover that it’s true, and know it through experience. Try priming the pump with your imagination.

About thirty years ago while I was in Spain, I sat at a café with a young man who was very outgoing and therefore intimidating to me because I was shy. I was half paralyzed with nerves when he said to me, “Don’t think, just tell me a word.” I did. He said it again, and I gave him another word. I think we ended up with ten words or so. The words all rather inexplicably had to do with the Pope, blood, guns, and Rome.

About one week later, Pope John Paul II was shot.

Twenty years ago I wrote a novel about a woman recovering from loss and injuries. Friends and family reading it now are blown away (haha) by the many parallels and details that match up with my having been blown up in Iraq. Was the story “just” my imagination?

It may be that “imagined” scenes highlight one issue, idea or theme; they may be revealing of a belief; it may be one symbol that has to be unpacked. Some details may be accurate and others may not be. The imagination may be a dense and rich scene that has to be pondered a bit to find the core. Or the imagined may have pieces of “true” or “real” tarted up within scenes to make them acceptable to our conscious minds.

I’ve played with the reality of imagination for many years, so usually I can tell that this is important and that is junk. I can deliberately create, or I can deliberately read someone else’s creations. I can get one flash and unpack it. I can deliberately set my intention that this is imagination and that is fantasy (i.e. I don’t want this to actually happen to me – I’m just exploring it in a fantasy). Not always, but often enough.

I’ve developed my own language of imagination. I’ve developed little tests of perception that work for me (turning the white robed beings into monsters, for instance, as described in Application of Impossible Things). I’m not unique – you can do this yourself.

As you continue to pay attention to your own imagination, I suspect that you’ll begin to understand the language that you use to communicate with yourself. You’ll learn where to look: through “seeing” or hearing, feeling or sensing. You’ll probably begin to understand symbols, not unlike analyzing dreams. You’ll probably begin to discern what is “true” within imagined scenes and what is overlaid on them by your conscious mind, or what is window dressing to make the information entertaining to your mind. You’ll likely begin to notice little flashes of “imagination” that come to you out of the blue and learn to unpack them.

You don’t have to believe that imagination is real. Test it for yourself if you’re interested. Prove it. Try priming the pump with imagination. Explore.

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Golfing in Iraq

While in Iraq I took up golf.

I love saying that. I enjoy strange juxtapositions: golf in a war zone. Take cover! Take cover!

Now I have to tell you that we didn’t have a course; we had a driving range. We didn’t have grass; we had packed silty dirt. We didn’t have any groomed greens; we had some areas of packed silty dirt that were a little higher than the surrounding packed silty dirt and they didn’t have any tire ruts, mud holes or craters in them. Temps were around 110 -120F, and the trucks and tanks driving by on the road often threw up terrible dust storms, but a line of trees along the road shaded the tees in the morning, so all in all it wasn’t too bad a deal.

Honestly to say that I took up golf is a silly exaggeration. All I really did was take up a club. I didn’t set out to learn to hit a ball well. All I wanted to do was hit the ball. I wanted to relax my mind, to use my body in a new way. I wanted to concentrate on something that I didn’t give a shit about – that had no dire consequences at all. No drive was worth ten or forty or sixty million dollars, for instance, like the projects that I was responsible for administering. My simple goal for golf: relax and hit the ball every time.

I love setting reachable goals. It’s so satisfying to succeed. I reached my goal on day two.

After another three or four morning sessions at the range (lol – “the range” … there’s a war zone pun in there alongside the stupidity of calling it a range rather than a big empty lot of dust! But I digress … ) … another three or four sessions at the range, and I began to hit the ball to nearly the same spot every time.

Since I wasn’t expecting this to happen, I was surprised and extraordinarily pleased. Consistency! The hobgoblin of little minds? Not in sports! I felt like I’d made grand progress without even trying. I felt like a solid success. Even if every drive was an atrocious slice! It didn’t matter. I was relaxing, and I was hitting every ball.

A friend recently stated that he has been successful all his life because he didn’t do things if he didn’t think he’d succeed at them. If he thought he was going to fail at something, what would be the point of trying it?

I applaud the simple logic and lack of apology with which my friend said this. In some way I suspect that most people do this without ever having articulated it. We weigh our chances of success, and if it looks unlikely we take a pass. I can think of any number of times I’ve bowed out of trying something because I doubted that I would succeed.

Yet within some categories I move without fear. Golf in Iraq, for instance, was so beyond reason to me, and anyway Iraq itself was so far past the safety barrier, I ignored anyone who might have scoffed or teased me about my atrocious golf skills. I didn’t give a flying fuck, when normally I would have been shy or embarrassed. I’d have felt obligated to “improve.”

And almost every time I confront a blank sheet of paper or canvas, there’s a little thrill: will I create something beautiful, or will I fail? People seem to think that artists don’t fail, that everything that we set out to create is a success. I assure you that even the most accomplished artists sometimes make horribly ugly things. Within art and writing, though, I’m like a soldier. If I fail, without thinking about it I’ll pick myself up and ask myself or a friend some questions: what worked and what didn’t? What might I do differently? Then I try it again.

With art, writing, and golfing in Iraq I’m fearless.

Why confine it to these situations?

The goals that we set for ourselves are the only true measure of a success or a failure. If I set aside fear in order to try something that I’d like to do, even if I don’t think I’ll succeed I’ve always found satisfaction in the attempt. If the goal that I set for myself is to try instead of to succeed, what kind of freedom does that give me?

If we set ourselves goals that we know will bring satisfaction of some kind, how can we fail? Even if we don’t reach the goal, we might find a surprise along the way. We might discover or experience something of value, something funny, or something purely and pointlessly delightful. That seems worth it to me.

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How to Improve the World

If the world needs improving, does that mean it’s not perfect?

Is there a difference between judging someone’s soul and judging their behavior within the context of culture/world?What is the difference between physical reality and spiritual evolution? Are physical reality and spiritual evolution separate things, or a valid distinction to make?Do you think that you inspire people to change, invite people to change, or meet them when they’re already changing or about to change themselves?
If you have a message that you think will change the world for the better, is that message dogma? If you believe that the world should be improved and think that you know how that could look, are you willing to honor other people’s ideas about how that could look – even if they appear to contradict your own and without trying to convert them to

your idea?

Are you willing to put your opinions, ideas, thoughts, visions and wishes out there and let go of the outcome? Are you aiming for a specific outcome – and if so, what happens if it goes awry? (look at Jesus’ difficulties 😉 )

Is it possible to sit within an apparent paradox, moving around between viewpoints at will, accepting action from any of them as valid?

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New Art

 

Instead of writing, I’ve been painting … check out the new work on …

http://www.nataliesudman.com

 

Available through Davis & Cline Galleries, Ashland Oregon

http://www.davisandcline.com

 

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The Wind

Yesterday the wind was howling here in southern Arizona. Normally when winds are blustery and wild I feel restless, out of sorts, or downright cranky. The wind whips my hair into my eyes or tosses dust into my eyes, making it especially difficult to see when already I only have one good eye to work with. It makes things clank and slam and whistle, distracting me from whatever it is I’m trying to concentrate on. I wonder if that particular noise indicates a problem that I’ll have to fix or just a natural movement of a roof vent. Is that sound a branch blown against the door, or a piece of the neighbor’s trash dump of a yard catching and whipping fiercely in a tree, or has the tarp covering one of my construction projects finally shredded.

Yesterday I found myself indifferent to the anxiety that wind can produce. When it blew hair in my eyes, I pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt to corral that hair. When I heard strange noises, I sat still and listened to the quality of the sound instead of wondering what that sound might indicate.

On my fourth night in Iraq, our base got mortared. The first one landed close enough to shake the ground and rattle my trailer. Although I instinctively rolled off the bed into a crouch, my first reaction wasn’t panic or fear. While my body reacted instinctively by ducking, as it would to any loud noise, my mind froze instead on the incredible quality of sound the mortar had made when it detonated. I can’t describe the beauty contained in that sound. It had a crack and a crump and a thunder and a rumble and a whistle and more. For three or four seconds I was frozen, immobilized by the beauty of that symphony of sound.

I realize that this isn’t necessarily a normal reaction to incoming. A friend who has spent years in war zones suggested that a description of this moment is incomplete without describing the pure fear experienced when a rocket or mortar explodes. But I didn’t experience that. My perceptions weren’t anchored in fear.

Perceiving the explosion in the way that I did sealed the moment in my mind in a different way than worry or fear or panic would have. I sometimes wonder whether it made an unusual track in my brain’s chemistry that future reactions to incoming would travel. Because from that moment on I was not afraid of rockets or mortars. Intellectually I knew what they could do, and later I came to vividly know the horrible damage they could inflict on a human body, yet the sound of incoming always dominated my attention before any other thoughts intruded. I still miss that beautiful sound, like a lost song almost remembered.

Yesterday I found a way to apply attention to wind in a way that approached the interest I had found instinctively in the sound of incoming mortars and rockets. Instead of attaching all sorts of worries and fears to the wind, I just noticed the quality of its effects. Once I let go of fear, I could enjoy the graceful dancing movement of the branches on a young desert ash tree. I could hear the musical notes in a rattling roof vent as if it were intentional timpani.

We rarely think about air beyond our own uses for it (breath), and how it affects our environment (the weather). What if air has its own consciousness? I suspect that it has, and that we can touch it or hear it if we pay attention. What if wind enjoys dancing across the face of the earth, brushing through vegetation, swinging over hills and racing down valleys? I imagine the wind communicating with each tree, singing songs with each object it touches. I imagine it loving to set the trees dancing, the dirt whirling into the air. What if by expressing its own joy of movement, wind is playing with everything it touches, passing around the pure fun of existence, movement and creation? Setting everything in motion, it gets everyone dancing together.

So many of the things that I fear or worry over are transformed simply by paying attention to them in a new way. It only takes a moment to shift perception. It only takes a few seconds of listening to what’s underneath the noise of the mind, if we can remember to pause once in awhile to do that.

As I sat on a chair on the front patio, a small piece trash from the litterbox that is my neighbor’s yard blew past. Hopping and rolling, it hurried up the hill like a small animal traveling.

Galaxies

Why do galaxies spin at a uniform rate from the centers to the outside edges?

I received this question from a reader of Application of Impossible Things. It’s not the sort of question I usually get from readers – what the hell, I like to try new things.  I asked “my people” about it (whether those people are guides, or aspects of me – does it matter?). I’m not sure that they answered the question, but I’m not really qualified to judge since I don’t know much about the subject. I thought it might be fun to see what sort of feedback people have about what information I did receive. Feel free to comment below … 

Answer:

First we would say that what you perceive when perceiving a galaxy is a particular viewpoint. That viewpoint from within time/space gives a distorted view of the reality of what a galaxy is, for you have trained yourselves to see one aspect (or many aspects, but not enough) of it, while missing other aspects altogether. We remind you that it is said that when Spanish ships approached the shores of the new world, many of the natives did not see the ships. The ships were invisible not because they didn’t exist, but because in being outside the reasoned perceptions of the viewers, the accustomed trails of perception, the ships were edited out by the manager, the brain, the mind. The mind made them invisible by editing focus.

So too we would like to suggest that aspects of the galaxies, or of space, are edited out for the purposes of maintaining a coherent flow within the mind. Now we will invite you to step outside that sphere of the familiar into what is for you unknown territory.

The string of time that is inhabited currently by the human population could be said to include a certain plane of space. Were you to expand your concepts of time, concepts of space would also necessarily be understood to expand because they are actually not two concepts, they are one. This is not to say that time/space expand in ways that have been postulated, but that there must be a new paradigm to understand that which is questioned.

There is an additional energy to be identified, in one sense (while in another it is all one energy – we will remind you, then set that aside for the sake of this discussion so that we do not confuse the issue for now). The qualities of this unidentified energy have already been confined, in concept, by current science, within a band that does not allow for depth.

We see you hesitate, for depth is one of the three dimensions. You must now enter physics, which we understand you have little knowledge of.

Let us say that a plane has three dimensions, for nothing can ever be of no thickness. As soon as something has two dimensions in space, it has three. That is how we describe how you currently view time/space.

Imagine now a plane with a MEASURABLE depth. Now you may liken that to the depth of physics.

Now imagine a plane with depth, width and breadth, and also inside out, and between inside out, and mirroring itself, and mirroring betweens, and on and on – infinite insides and outsides and betweens. From this viewpoint you will begin to see that you perceive what you think time/space is, but you see only the elephant’s tail. We will say that this might be the equivalent of quantum physics for the sake of this discussion (although it actually is not – they are not as deep as they appear to be. They probe, though, and draw closer to a new paradigm.)

So let us leap now. When you perceive only a fraction of that which truly exists, your viewpoint and conclusions will be incomplete. Does a galaxy spin at the same rate on the interior as it does at the edges? Yes, from your point of view it appears to do so. Does the pinwheel appear to be a solid object when it spins in the wind? Yes, although your memory tells you that this is not so. You have lost your memories of Full Time/Space, so you have lost the ability to see that from another viewpoint the galaxy does not appear to spin evenly in speed, inside to edge. It is a more complex movement containing not only the galaxy but much beyond and between.

Another way to think of it would be to say that everything else is spinning, and the galaxy is stationary.

Or imagine the whole of creation were spinning slowly, and one galaxy were the center of the spin. From the view of the whole of creation, that point, far smaller than the smallest particle, would not appear to be spinning at different rates, inside to out. It would be such an infinitely small difference from the inside to the edge, it would not be discernible at all.  (Physicists will not accept this, literal as they are. We invite them to think in terms of the questions being presented, or the idea of the model being presented, not the particular example.)

What if you perceive from between the two viewpoints, but you think that you perceive from one: the physical world? What if, as you currently read space, you are not looking at time as is currently understood, but time as it could be, as it was, as it might be?

What if your observation has changed it? We assure you that your observations, your expectations and thoughts surrounding the stars and planets and solar systems and galaxies are affecting the bodies in space. Please think this over and we’ll keep moving….

Say that you are looking at a galaxy from your viewpoint, seeing what you think is true: the insides and edges of the galaxy are moving at the same rate of speed through space. Your assumption is that space and time are fixed and universally measurable. What if, in fact, time/space contain bends and movements of their own? What if those bends and movements are both independent, and responding to the observer (be that observer a single consciousness or a collective consciousness)? What if time speeds up here, and slows there? What if space also bends, speeds and slows, having its own movements? Galaxies might then appear to be moving oddly within comparison to the rules you have found on earth, for the universe is not constant as assumed.

We offer this idea.

There are many energies that have not been identified. Or none. As we specified, all energy is, at source, one energy. Within the model of making distinctions between the properties of aspects of the single energy, say making a distinction between gravity and electricity and magnetics, then we can address your question. There are in fact aspects of the energy that have not been described and categorized. Depending upon how the distinctions are made, there may be a few or quite a few that could be said to have been, as yet, “undiscovered.” They have in fact been discovered and to some extent explored, although they are not recognized by scientific investigators.

Let us address Dark Matter, which the reader has proposed or introduced. Dark Matter is a nebulous concept that science has postulated. It is not yet described in a way that will clearly separate it from other energies (aspects) that are also available. Let us say that Dark Matter is the soup that could be more useful to science were it further split into carrots, beans, and potatoes. Or when the soup is made into a consommé, so that all ingredients are understood to be throughout the “energy” called Dark Matter.  One of these paths will be chosen within ten years or so, and followed to greater knowledge. It matters not which is chosen, for either will lead to the same understanding and conceptualization necessary to understand the perceived actions or movements of galaxies.

My conscious mind: Will dark matter explain the apparent aberrant behavior of the spinning of galaxies?

Let us say that in the course of investigating Dark Matter, the information needed to gain an understanding of the apparent movement of galaxies will be found.

My conscious mind: I don’t think you’ve answered the original question.

Are you sure?

My conscious mind: No.  😛

(No more communication found.)

On Guides

A friend recently asked if I think that the Gathering (from Application of Impossible Things) is a sort of executive committee comprised of other incarnations of myself, and whether it has an active part in guiding mine. His question came from reading Robert Monroe’s book Ultimate Journey, in whichMonroe has eventually reached this understanding about the many guides that he encountered on his out of body experiences, as well as some culminating experiences that he had out of body late in his explorations.

I don’t exactly consider them separate from myself, while at the same time I know them as separate from myself. They are both separate from me, and aspects of myself. I am them, they are me, and we are separate consciousnesses having largely separate experiences. When I “channel” them, I currently think of that channel as a particular aspect of myself that both resonates with them, and is them. Of course from the deepest perspective, we are all one anyway, so the question becomes moot.

In a way, whether they are aspects of myself or separate beings is not that important to me. What interests me is how the information that we receive from them or our Whole Selves gets applied in our physical lives.

I have available a more intimate group of essences (smaller than the Gathering) who generally offer daily help and backup. Since these beings coincide more closely to what people think of as “guides” I’m going to set aside the Gathering for now and write about this level of interaction. The Gathering is more complex and more difficult to explain; an essay for another day, perhaps. And for the purposes of this essay, I’ll speak of them as being separate from myself.

My “guides” are guides in the sense that from where they sit they have a broader view of my experience, and they have my best interests and safety in mind. But I think of them more as advisors than guides. I argue with them, disregard or edit of their input, and sometimes ignore them altogether. I don’t consider my advisors any more all-knowing than I am, only more-knowing within certain moments or experiences. I don’t consider them to be invariably correct, only more often more accurate than I am. I don’t consider them to be wiser than myself; they are only more pertinently wise within certain moments and experiences. While I might be distracted by physical world beliefs, fears, excitements, events, and concerns, they are not.

I’m not always comfortable with the way many people convey what they receive from their guides. Some people seem to use the guides as a stick in competition, as a crutch, or as a badge. “My guides are telling me to tell you that you need to do xyz.” “My guides are telling me that you need to realize that xyz.” While passing that particular information along might normally be considered rude, presumptuous, patronizing or uncomfortable were it one’s own insight or opinion being expressed, suddenly it seems to be okay to pass that along if it’s from The Guides.

I’ve come to understand that it is often not okay to do that. The way information is conveyed is very important, and is the individual’s responsibility – mine – not the guides’.

Too often when something is blatantly attributed to the guides, it smells a little bit of self-interest. I recognize this – I’ve embarrassed myself in the past by doing it. Years ago, when I received information from the guides I would sometimes convey it in a way that implied that I was somehow wiser, more skilled, more in touch, more together than whomever it was I was passing this information along to. I was privy to some information and they were not. I’m only saying this for someone’s own good, or to help someone. They need help, they’re blind to themselves, they’re screwed up, they don’t have as clear a connection as I have, they don’t get it.

Very fine motivations on some level, maybe, but polluted by my own desires, fears, and the blanks inside myself that I hoped to fill. I was saying it to gain some power or validity, to show off, to give myself a pat on the back, to get attention, to inflate my sense of self in some way, often invalidating the other person in the process. I recognize the strange mixture of shame, pride, aggressiveness, self-satisfaction, self-doubt, fear, craving, and delusion that marks this kind of action. I felt a little precarious and ugly when it became valid to act presumptuous, rude or patronizing, to offer “help” when no one had asked for it. Hey, it’s The Guides – I’m just  following orders.

I quickly realized that if I felt compelled to pass along some information without being invited to do that by the other person, it was useful to ask myself, “But what do I think, and why do I think that I feel so compelled to share that?” It occurred to me to ask questions. What if the guides are giving me some insight not so that I’ll pass it along raw to another, but so that I’ll notice what the other person is doing then notice when I’m doing the same thing? What if it’s not about correcting or helping that other person at all, rather it’s about correcting or helping myself? What if it’s only given to draw attention to different ways of being, to become aware, not to correct or help either them or myself? Or what if the guides were transmitting some information in a raw state, expecting that it would be translated into something useful and appropriate to the situation, never expecting that it would just be blurted it out raw?

The truth is that guides don’t need to be quoted or followed without question or thought, without weighing that guidance. They don’t care if we attribute knowledge to them or claim it for ourselves. They know that as soon as we speak or act, that knowledge is ours. They aren’t responsible for our words, actions, or lives – we are.

I’ve come to understand that one way of accepting responsibility is to apply my own conscious physical world wisdom, my own situational awareness to expressing that which I receive. In this way, I acknowledge my individual decision and choice in the process of communication. Sometimes it’s more useful to say, “Now I know this,” or “I think xyz,” regardless of where that knowledge came from, leaving the guides out of it. Sometimes it’s more useful to ask questions than to assert knowledge. Sometimes it’s more useful to translate information into something gentle and amusing rather than blurting it out raw. These are important choices.

That said, I do find situations when does seem appropriate to acknowledge where information is coming from. I sometimes find myself saying, “The information that I’m getting is …” or “My people seem to be saying …” When doing readings for some people, “channeling” for groups of people curious about the mechanics of direct communication (or writing some posts on this site), for instance, that can be appropriate. It may be appropriate to source an idea that I’m receiving if I’m not sure that I understand what I’m receiving, or am not sure that I agree with it, accept it, or even want it. If the information clearly doesn’t feel like my information, I might feel that I’d be lying if I said the information was my own. In many cases I find myself saying – at least to myself, then, “The information that I’m getting is xyz … ” or even “I’m not sure about it, but I feel strongly urged to pass it along. What do you think?” That seems more respectful and ultimately more useful.

I’m following orders only works in the military (and obviously not very well even there). If my guides demanded total unmindful following of orders, I would re-evaluate that relationship. I’d seek out different guides. A parent who constantly dogs their small child with “do this,” “don’t do that,” “now do this,” is going to raise a child that has not developed their own decision-making abilities, their own skills and situational awareness and wisdom. That child is not going to be moving through the world on their own with any confidence. In the same way, I’m pretty sure our guides are not there to make every decision for us. They are not with us in order to direct our every move.

Here is what I suspect to be true: the guides that people refer to – whether they’re flaunted or kept secret, whether they’re used to dominate others, compete with others, inform others or the self, help others or the self, or explore with others or alone – they are parts of ourselves whether that’s understood as “because we’re all One” or “because they are all aspects of Me.” The mechanics don’t necessarily matter; the understanding of its application does. The understanding or a true digestion of that fact of individual responsibility changes how we think about our own words and actions. It requires us to accept full responsibility for how we apply that which we know – and that which we don’t know.

It encourages us to live consciously and humbly, fully owning our own infinite power and creativity, and respecting the same in others.

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The Object of Our Attention: Perspective

This morning I opened the garage/studio door early in the morning to give baby seedlings light. (My garage serves many purposes – perhaps another story for another time.) I left the garage door open while I went back indoors for a couple of hours. When I had reason to go back out to the garage, I found a hummingbird flying around near the ceiling. The hummingbirds have been flying into my garage lately, looking around. They usually fly right back out.

When hummingbirds are frightened or confused, their escape route is up. If trapped in a garage, up doesn’t get them out. Sure enough, as I stood and watched, the hummingbird made its way all around the ceiling of the garage, stopped to rest on a shelf, then took off to try the same loop again.

So I went and got the red glass feeder that hangs near the front door. Standing under the hummingbird’s resting spot on a shelf, I held the feeder about six feet off the ground.

It only took a few seconds for the little bird to see the feeder. She flew right down and began to drink. As she hovered with her beak in the feeder, I slowly lowered both the bird and feeder until they were about three feet off the floor so that when the bird was through drinking (and panicking), she would see that big garage door escape route easily.

And she did. She flew right out the door and across the desert.

At one point while I was lowering the feeder, the hummingbird stopped drinking, perched on the feeder and looked around. She looked a little bit ruffled, and was breathing hard and shaking just a little bit.

 

Fear is such a strong blinder. One whole wall of the garage is open to the wilds, yet this bird couldn’t see it. I’ve watched a hummingbird fly frantically around under the peaked roof of a picnic pavilion for more than forty-five minutes, only eventually escaping by perching on a long stick someone held up high. When the bird rested on the branch, the branch was lowered to the ground. That bird had four open directions to choose from, but it couldn’t see any of them.

Hummingbirds are wired to go up to escape, and apparently they’ll go up until they collapse or die.

I think that we do similar things. When we look for an escape from a situation or event or issue in our lives, we look where we’re wired to look. Whether we’re wired through socialization, through conscious learned behavior, or just through the quirks of our personalities, I think that we sometimes miss an obvious route because we can’t even see it. I know I’ve stood in one place beating my head against a wall more than once.

Robert Monroe, an engineer and businessman who traveled extensively out of body (Journeys Out of the Body, Far Journeys, Ultimate Journey) tells a story of leaving his body, having some adventures traveling fast and far, eventually coming up against a wall. (I probably don’t have the details right, but the idea is accurate.) While investigating the wall, he began to feel his body calling him back.

Monroefelt absolutely certain that the way back to his body was in the direction of the wall. Home, his body, lay beyond the wall. So he tried to get over the wall, under the wall, around it this way or that way. He tried to go through it. He wasn’t able to do any of those things. He was stuck. He called for help, increasingly desperate. He screamed for help, sobbing. No one came to help him.

Eventually, exhausted, he collapsed against the wall. He was still feeling desperate and frightened, but he decided to apply some logic in spite of his fear. He thought, “If I can’t get around it or through it, I’ll have to turn back. I’ll have to go away from the wall.”

As soon as he thought that, he was whisked back to his body. 

The way home for Monroe was available all along – he was just focused on a different direction.

When I hit a wall in trying to solve something that I consider a problem, or when I’m trying to understand the best course of action, or what something in my life means, I’ve found that it’s  sometimes useful to notice how I’m thinking about it, then ask myself questions.

I’ll give an example of what I mean, though this example will be based on someone else’s story (details changed enough that it’s just a story).

A woman wakes in the night to find her grandmother and grandfather standing near her. They tell her it is “time for her to go.” She thinks they mean she is going to die and must go with them. She’s frightened – panicked. She refuses to go with them, and argues with them about it for a long time. Finally the grandfather agrees, telling her they’ll return later.

The person who told me the (a vaguely similar) story wanted to know what this experience meant. She was (we’ll pretend) fixated on the fear that they would come back to take her away.

I couldn’t tell her what the experience meant (or didn’t look – I wouldn’t have told her even if I’d been able to see it). Instead I asked her questions. I asked first whether she felt the story turned out well – she had talked them out of taking her, right? What are the implications in that – free will respected, or she has more power than they do, or orders are negotiable, or something else?

Then I asked her whether she really knew that they meant that she would die, or was that an assumption on her part? I suggested that the point of their coming might not have been to actually take her away, but to incite her to argue for staying – to get her to notice that she wanted to be in the physical world. Perhaps within that was a chance to notice what about death frightened her, or what about life was of such beautiful value that she would fight to stay, or some other message that I wasn’t seeing but that she might.

I said that maybe in thinking about these questions, she would find some other questions or notice other things that I hadn’t thought of, and through that process she might find the meaning of the experience on her own.

If she asked someone else what the meaning was, if I told her the meaning of the experience for instance, then she would have two questions: What is the meaning of my experience? And: Can I trust this person’s interpretation?

I didn’t want to pick her up and shove her out the garage door. I thought it would be more valuable to her if I only tried to nudge her in another direction, letting her notice a new view on her own. Maybe she would notice a crack in the wall and prefer to go out that way instead of out the garage door. Maybe it was of value for her to go out the lower right corner of the garage door instead of the center I would have shoved her through.

She was, like the hummingbird, perfectly capable of flying out the door on her own. She just needed a little help getting herself off the ceiling. Sometimes we all need that.

I can’t always find the right questions to ask myself, the questions that will open up a new way to think about an experience, event or issue. Most of the time, though, if I stop panicking and just sit down, take a breath and empty my mind in spite of the fear,  sooner or later I’ll either notice that gaping garage door or something or someone will nudge me toward it.

Sometimes all it takes is a little different perspective.