The Planets Bend Between Us

Grace

I feel the need to write about grace. I had always wondered what it meant and knew that in the context of religious belief it was a state that was desired and sought after by many but attainable only by a few. I imagined it to be a state of purity and of peace at having found one's connection with God. Not being religious myself, I thought that perhaps it was something that I would never understand as only those who have been devoted to their God and have lived a pious life would have any chance of attaining it. But recently I have had a momentary flash of understanding, a small glimpse through a tear in the curtain, of what a state of grace might feel like.

For as long as I have been self-aware I have been searching for a state of serenity. I envied people who seemed to be comfortable in their own skin as I never did. I always felt awkward in my body, agitated, gauche in the company of others and unable to really relax. Inside there was an empty feeling that seemed impossible to fill, a feeling of incompleteness, which I tried to fill with food, cigarettes, alcohol ...  Those things only worked for a little while. But even so it took me a long time to finally accept what I knew deep down which was that, if I wanted to attain that state of serenity I was looking for, I had to stand alone without my crutches. It took me a few years but as I threw each one away I felt more empowered, more liberated and more myself. Although I had struggled with these dependencies for many years, deep down I always knew it was possible to be free of them because I realised that I hadn't needed those things when I was a child, so therefore I didn't need them as an adult either. The idea of a return to a semblance of that childhood state was a great motivator, as was the promise of being able to breathe deeply, to smell the plants after the rain and to sing again, things I had always loved to do.  But one thing I hadn't anticipated was this feeling of calm centredness, as though more of me were present, occupying my body more fully. Another noticeable thing was the gradual disappearance of the aching and stiffness in my chest which were replaced by lightness, ease, laughter and, more and more often, joy.  I began to understand why people said that life was a gift.

I believe that in some way, by giving up my crutches, I had allowed myself to reconnect to some essential aspect of my nature. I choose to believe that part of me is my soul or what some people refer to as the higher self. It is the eternal, wise, loving, unlimited part of me. It is my divine self that knows it is one expression of a greater whole that can be called God. It is the part of me that remains aware of its unlimited nature and its connection to the whole while another part of it experiences limitation in this physical body, in this three-dimensional world. I see the body as a container for this spiritual aspect and in turn the brain is a container for the mind rather than the source of it. In this limited state we are climbers at the bottom of the metaphorical mountain and however high we climb in this life we never reach the top where the ultimate truth of existence lies. But with each corner turned we orient ourselves a little bit more, understand better our place relative to everything else and every now and then the views are breathtaking.

Reconnecting to one's essence or divinity is the reason for meditation (conscious connection) and sleep (unconscious connection). In both cases we achieve a state that is beyond mind. In the case of meditation we quiet the mind in order to consciously access a state of deep awareness. The thought patterns are observed in a detached way allowing the meditator to become aware of programs they have running. The mind is an exceptionally creative tool but at times it can be a harsh critic or even a cruel torturer. Becoming aware of unconscious negative programs that we may have had since early childhood is incredibly enlightening and liberating when we are able to see them for what they are - memories of things said to us, perhaps by parents or teachers, that we repeat over and over again in our minds - and choose not to identify with them. These pieces of advice or criticisms given to us "for our own good" are taken literally when we are young children and we grow up defining ourselves by them. Being told as a child that you are clumsy or stupid or hopeless at maths or just bad in general stay with us into our adult years and, unless we have a strong determination to prove these people wrong, we may live our lives believing we are no good and therefore never reach our full potential. Realising that we have these programs allows us to decide if we want to continue to believe them or release them and choose to believe something else about ourselves. We can then set about developing a new talent or ability that we didn't know we had.

In this way we are using our mind as a tool to create the reality that we desire. With our minds we can visualise ourselves living the life we want: entertaining friends in the beautiful house, sailing the ocean in a sleek yacht, travelling the world with someone we love, getting that perfect job, being fit and healthy with a body we are proud of, being surrounded by a happy family...  Visualising what we want is the first step in making it happen. The next step is to let it go, know that it is done and follow the signs that lead you to its manifestation on the physical plane. Signs such as the person you meet who gives you some advice (positive only, ignore the naysayers), a book or article you find with some information, some action you are inspired to take. Believe it is yours and follow your instincts. Sooner or later you will find yourself in that place you desired to be.

But what if you don't? What if you wait patiently and follow the signs and act when inspired to do so, study, read, listen. You meditate and connect to your higher self for guidance. You eliminate the beliefs that don't serve you and you feel grateful for all the blessings of your life. But still what you desire eludes you. What then?

Although we are powerful creators, sometimes we are unable to create the circumstances we want. To understand the reason for this we need to go back to the metaphor of the mountain. From our position on the lower slopes we are unable to see very much. Only from the top can we have the benefit of a complete view of the world. With our human brains we have only a limited understanding of ourselves, our lives and how we fit into the big picture. Therefore, sometimes the things we desire, if we were to create them in our lives, might not be for our highest good at that moment in time. Or if the thing we desire impacts the life of another person or people, our desires must be in harmony with theirs for the situation to manifest. As an example, we might want to be with a particular person but, since we cannot override the free will of another (nor should we want to), we have to respect their wishes if they decide they do not want to be with us. Accepting that we do not always know what is best for ourselves requires a degree of  humility. We may not understand at the time but in hindsight, after some time has passed, we often see why we did not get the thing we thought we wanted at that particular time. Things have a way of working out for the best in the end. As we get older we can see how true this is. With experience we learn to trust, let go of the reins and allow events to unfold in their own time.  We relax, breathe easily, open our hearts and surrender to living harmoniously with the natural rhythm of our world. For me, this is living in a state of grace.

Creative Visualisation

When I was about thirteen, I was talking to a friend one day and she told me that she tried not to think about bad things in case they came true. I remember having two reactions to that. One was my rational mind saying that her belief was childish superstition. The other was a strong gut feeling that she was right. I remember thinking about it for a while but that train of thought brought me to the conclusion that, if it were true, it would mean a person having to monitor and control their thoughts all the time, which to me seemed impossible then. But I never forgot it and thought about it from time to time over the years until being given a book called Creative Visualisation by Shakti Gawain . In this book Shakti explains how we can use the natural creativity of our imaginations to visualise happier, more fulfilling lives for ourselves. At that time I had been suffering from severe headaches for several months for which I had got medication from my doctor but that did little to control the pain. I would just have to lie on my bed and try to sleep until the pain went away. One afternoon I was once again lying on my bed with a terrible headache. I was sick of feeling like a victim, disabled, unable to do anything to help myself when a headache came on. So I decided to try using my imagination to help myself. My headaches used to feel like there was a build up of pressure inside my head that had no escape so I imagined that the pressure was like steam that needed to be released. I imagined it travelling along my sinuses behind my eyes and escaping from my ears, nose and mouth. To my amazement, it worked. I could hardly believe it but the pressure inside my head had subsided so I continued to do it until it had decreased to a manageable level. It was such a simple thing but it gave me my life back because I don't really remember having those headaches after that.

La mente colectiva y el campo unificado

Bianca Atwell entrevista a John Hagelin, un físico cuántico, sobre el hecho de que somos todos una parte del campo unificado y cómo podemos acceder a este fuente de creatividad, inteligencia y paz por el medio de meditación transcendental. Me hizo sonreír cuando Bianca dijo que, de todas las partículas, su preferida fue el quark "encantado", lo que sólo descubrí hace pocas días y sobre lo cual escribí en el post abajo.

In this video which has been made in both Spanish and English, Bianca Atwell interviews John Hagelin, a quantum physicist, about the fact that we are all a part of the unified field and how we access this source of creativity, intelligence and peace through the medium of transcendental meditation. It also made me smile when Bianca mentioned that her favourite sub-atomic particle is the "charm" quark which I only discovered myself the other day while writing the post below. 

The nature of my reality

Completely ignoring the dismissive label of "pseudoscience" and treating it with the contempt it deserves, I am going to talk about the nature of reality. That is, the nature of reality as I have come to understand it. In the few years I have been here, I have been asking questions and in one way or another I would say that I've had most of them answered. A lot of them have been answered through reading: explorations through the realms of psychology, astrology, spirituality and philosophy. Many have been answered by friends, lovers and "enemies". Others through meditation and contemplation and some simply just from living life in this beautiful but sometimes frustrating and maddening world. In the case of science, despite being interested in biology at school, I became disillusioned when I realised how limited it was in explaining who we are and why we are alive. For example, medicine can tell us that one person is dead and another alive, but not why. What is the difference between the two? Instead science ignores the question and carries on its merry way down the eyepiece of an electron microscope into a reductionist denial of the bigger picture. Just divide reality up into little pieces and that way it seems a lot more manageable. But the problem is those little pieces just keep on getting smaller and smaller and in the end what we are left with is what appears to be just energy. Electrons, protons, neutrons and now quarks and leptons, are believed to be the smallest particles known to man. Quarks have names such as up, down, charm and strange. Discovering this information I wondered momentarily if I was reading an article about sub atomic particles or Pokemon. But whatever you call them, the fact remains that they are essentially just energy in constant motion. The solid appearance of our world is just an illusion. For example, if you were able to look through a powerful enough microscope nothing would appear as solid. Instead it would look like empty space with a few electrons whizzing around. As I explained in a previous post, the double-slit experiment showed that electrons are not particles unless you look at them. Until you look at them, they are moving and do not have form. They are waves of possibility. In my mind this means that, as I sit here at my desk, writing this post and looking out of the window, according to quantum theory the room behind me has dissolved into a wave of  possibilities: a possible bed, a possible wardrobe, a possible lamp, and so on. But when I turn around they are all there just as they were when I last looked.

Everything is vibrating at a certain frequency and it is this frequency that determines the characteristics of the thing in question. A rock has a different frequency to a crystal, for example. A human being, as a much more complex entity, has a range of frequencies emitted by the major organs and systems of the body. As well as emitting signals, the human being is also a receiver, decoding the frequencies around it.  The eyes decode the light that bounces off the objects around us and creates images that the brain interprets as the world we live in. The ears decode the sounds around us, the nose the scents and the skin the textures and temperatures we encounter from the things and people we touch.  The health of the body is dependent upon the body's frequencies being in balance. Illness is basically imbalance and the medicines and treatments that work best to heal it are those that work in harmony with the body and allow it to realign itself rather than trying to poison it or cut it. Kindness works better than cruelty and why should that be any different with our bodies? Alternative forms of healing are gaining popularity such as accupuncture, homeopathy, shiatsu, reiki, cranial osteopathy and aromatherapy. There are many more that I haven't mentioned and more are being developed all the time. The uniqueness of human beings means that people respond to different stimuli and what feels right to one person may not to another. The principle factor in whether or not a particular healing modality works is the patient's belief in the treatment. I think this explains why some people will only go to see an alternative practitioner once all conventional treatments have been tried and have failed. Healing will then take place according to how open the person is to the treatment and with nothing else left to try they may be more receptive.

Human beings, as already mentioned, emit frequencies from the different organs of the body such as the brain   and the heart. But the human being is more than just the physical body. We have thoughts and feelings too; we have consciousness-mind-self-awareness. Shouldn't this have a frequency too? According to those that teach the Law of Attraction, it does. One of my favourite teachers is Abraham, channelled by Esther Hicks. Abraham explains in simple terms that the thoughts we think produce a frequency and that frequency emits a signal which attracts back to us events and experiences of the same frequency. This is demonstrated by the analogy of going to work in a good mood and everything going your way, people being friendly and helpful etc. versus going to work in bad mood and things going wrong, boss is angry with you, people are unhelpful etc. Of course, life is more complicated than that and it's not so easy to be in a good mood all the time or even desirable. Most of us need challenge and some difficulty to make life more interesting and fulfilling. Abraham calls this "contrast". Without contrast we wouldn't grow and develop. We wouldn't try to improve ourselves or our lives, learn new skills or expand our awareness.

Sometimes people need things to become unbearable before they will do anything about their situation. Imagine you have a job that, although interesting at first, has now become boring and repetitive. You might have got to the point where you dread going to work every day. You start looking for a new job but don't have any success and so you become more and more frustrated, discouraged and maybe even depressed as you begin to lose hope of finding one. The solution to this according to Abe is to make peace with where you are. Instead of hating the position you are in and growing more and more resentful every day, the way out is to look for things to feel grateful for. Maybe you could tell yourself that these days just having a job is a reason to feel blessed. Finding reasons to feel happy where you are does not mean just accepting your situation and giving up trying to change it but instead feeling gratitude for what you already have while holding a vision in your mind of where you want to be. The difference is that you are using the Law of Attraction to create the new reality by raising your vibration to a higher frequency - gratitude is on the high end of the scale - and focusing on creating what you want instead of focusing on the lack of it. When you think that a certain change to your life circumstances or material possession will make you happy, in order to attract them into your life you need to be a vibrational match to them. The way I have come to understand it is that, although you might think you should get what you want because you need it, the vibration of need is not the same as the new circumstances you desire. The vibration of need is low and has a lot of resistance around it and possibly doubt around a person's belief in their deservedness to get what they want. Desiring or wanting something has a different vibration to needing something. Desiring something is a pure signal that is unadulterated by resistance in the form of negative beliefs like "things don't work out for me" or issues around one's worthiness to have what they want.  So in simple terms: feel grateful, lighten up and be kind to yourself.

Being authentic reprise

It's amazing but this just keeps happening. Lately in the course of my internal dialogue, I ask some questions and then I see something or hear something that explores or answers those same questions. Tonight I stumbled upon the video below that does just that. It appears as though the world is the mirror of my inner reality, reflecting my beliefs, thoughts, fears and the emotions I am feeling.   Many, many times, probably thousands of times, my questions have been answered in some similar way. The answers could come to me through a song on the radio, a programme on TV, a movie, a book, a person talking to me or someone else, or more often these days, from the internet. Sometimes, it just comes to me when I am sitting quietly, a flash of inspiration, something I didn't even know I knew. But is such an awareness itself proof of fundamental truth about the nature of reality or is it yet another belief reflected back to me? The outside world providing me with 'proof' that my beliefs are true. Like the fractal, the pattern within the pattern repeated, or the mirror reflecting the mirror and so on ad infinitum. Perhaps it has always been this way but these days I am sure it's happening much more frequently. Serendipity or happy accidents? But no, not that because personally I don't believe in accidents or coincidences.

About year ago, I decided to be authentic and to speak my truth as fearlessly as I could but it's hard. It's hard because being yourself takes courage to tell people what you really think and believe especially when your thoughts and beliefs are definitely not mainstream. Fortunately for me and people like me, more of us seem to be coming out the closet which is making it easier. But lately I have asked myself what is really me and what is ego, vanity or 'my story'?  By 'my story' I mean it's the story I tell myself. My victim story. My 'they-don't-understand-me' story because I'm different, weird or - flipping the coin and changing the tone from disparaging to conceited - "special".  I have just realised that all of them are stories. They're not really me. They are excuses that I tell myself to maintain the illusion of separation. I am unique, yes, but so is everyone else and should that be a reason to isolate myself from other people because I fear they will find me strange and so reject me?

During the first part of the video, Jiddu Krishnamurti, David Bohm and David Shainburg are talking about people's need to identify with a group in order not to feel alone or isolated. In order not to feel insecure. But that by doing so they compromise who they are by adapting to and adopting the consensus values and beliefs of the group, subverting their own in order to feel validated and accepted by society and therefore not alone. Essentially, as I see it, allowing the group to define them because they are either too afraid or unaware that they have it within them to define themselves. They argue that, in fact, being within the group in this way a person can still feel alone. They are talking about the idea that being alone is liberating but that the need to be with the group in order to survive is compelling and that banishment from the group would be the greatest punishment. In my case I am coming from the opposite side of this argument because I am feeling the need to reach out to people more and to release myself from self-imposed isolation. But this must happen without compromising who I am and any loss of my autonomy, and without asking anyone to compromise who they are either. An impossible feat? We'll see.