10.18.44 - Whatever

And another sun passes through Libra - and another year is added to Allen's stay on earth.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALLEN!

I proclaim without reserve that today I celebrate the gift of LIFE!

Have a glass of wine with me!!

And here's a thought for today --

WHATEVER

Whatever I see --- I see God.
Whatever I hear --- I hear God.
Whatever I touch --- I touch God.

Whatever I smell --- I smell God.
Whatever I feel --- I feel God.
Whatever I think --- I think God.

Whatever I eat --- I eat God.
Whatever I drink --- I drink God.
Whatever I do --- God does in and through me.

              Therefore, I am.

                                                                        agd - summer - 2012

Living in God

Complaint is only possible

When living

in the suburbs of God.

                                           Hafiz

The more we deny the source of our being, the more we think of ourselves as "victims" of life. Through prayer and meditation, we sink ever more deeper into the Being we call God, the source of Life, and the power of Love. And Love, Spirit, teaches us all things - most importantly - to be thankful, and how to be channels of that Love in a world where so many live on the surface of Life - the "suburbs". Choose to live in Center City - that's where everything is provided for, everything is accessible, and that's where the real action is.  Dios es Amor.

Warriors of the Rainbow

Here is an article from a Cree (North American First Nation) seer:  http://www.birdclan.org/rainbow.htm

These are not new ideas - but they should help us to realize that living solely in the material world lacks depth and reality. We are spiritual beings living in material bodies. The material body's health depends on the venue in which it lives --- we need to care for it, allow it to grow by nature, not by our meddling in it's evolution. God, the Great Spirit, the Om in all, the Designer, knows well how to manage creation. Yes, we need to re-learn how to live WITH Nature, and not work at CONQUERING Nature. This plaintive cry for common sense is falling on the deaf ears of people and corporations only interested in making a buck. Love Nature, Respect the Earth and ALL its inhabitants, including other humans here to learn and grow in their own cultural provinces. Respect t the differences and learn from them. Selah.

Ask for the good of others

NT - Letter of James 4: 1-13

Pooh

I never read Winnie the Pooh, nor the many sequels and offshoots that it spawned. Recently I found "The Te of Piglet" (by the author of "The Tao of Pooh). It is a wonderful treatise on human behavior and our contemporary world. I am most impressed by the Eeyores, and how we are surrounded by their breed. The book is full of wonderful quotes, such as:
"Some people never learn anything because they understand everything too quickly." - a quote from Alexander Pope, of another era.
Or, "In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants and the other is getting it." - Oscar Wilde, of yet another era.
Wisdom drips from the clouds of any era, we just need to open our eyes and ears to it. Put down the umbrella and dance in the rain.

The Great Delusion

Life in this modern existence pays homage to a delusion we as human beings once knew in our hearts: We are NOT our bodies. The soul exists in another dimension, its true home, and is only attached to this body for a one-time journey. But the soul can be "attached", i.e., living, in a number of bodies over time. The soul does not change, but the individual identity does. Allen G. Dec will cease to exist when this body stops functioning. But the soul which animates it will return to its true home, and ready itself for another journey in the physical world, should it decide to do so. I say "it", because the soul is neither male or female, or better, is both male and female. The gender distinction happens when the body in which the soul lives is "built" in the womb and is born as male or female (or sometimes both). The advanced soul often has memories of both male and female existences in any one life, and can express itself in a gender-balanced way in either a male or female body. 

Sometimes the male memory or the female memory of a soul is stronger, and when a strong male memory is born into a female body, its urges and desires for intimacy can be for the female gender, because it remembers somewhere deep down that it identified with the male. The same goes for strong female memories in a male body. Human language calls these incarnations "homosexual", tending to be drawn to the same sex for intimacy. Thus, we have an amazingly diverse expression of human experience.

But again, we are not our bodies, and we pay much too much attention to this existent incarnation as if it were all that we are, trying to preserve it at all costs. Through prayer and meditation one can delve deeply into our soul memory to remember who we really are, and thus live a life that is full with understanding and wisdom. We are here to experience a limited life in the material world, but our life in the spirit is free and expansive. Remember who and what you are - focus on your real life as a child of the living God, and grow in wisdom and grace.

The Meaning of Life

Every person and every thing has a purpose is life which flows from their soul into the material dimension. Every person and every thing is busy with being and manifesting its purpose, whether we can understand it or not. Do not judge others....... love them, from the heart.

Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven....
no hell below us ......
Imagine there's no countries,
nothing to kill or die for,
and no religion, too.
Imagine all the people living for today...
living life in peace....
A brotherhood of man

John Lennon was a mystic who was not afraid to speak out. What he imagined was to make THIS world more like the dimension of life WE ALL COME FROM and to which we will all return. Jesus taught the same -- The Kingdom of God is within you (our true home), where there is only peace, harmony, respect, compassion and where Love is practiced in its purity - which is not a Polyanna attitude, but again, one of respect and compassion, where challenges are offered and discussed with the wisdom of experience. This perfect world of the spirit is in opposition to this world of matter, where it is not peace which rules, but war.
That's right. This material world is a world of warring. It's all around us - it's endemic to our human history. It comes from the fact that this is a world of duality (Greeks), and everything exists here somewhere on the scale from minimum to extreme, black to white, compassion and apathy, love and hate, cold and hot, male and female, peace and war. What for? It is what it is.
We choose to enter into this world, even if we cannot "remember" that we made the choice or why. This is a place of lessons, a place of challenges and risks, hopefully for our own good and for the benefit of others, but that often doesn't always pan out as we might plan. We are here to learn how to balance the two extremes, to work through the challenges, to take the risks which bring greater personal fulfillment, and which often can be beneficial to others. The soul who risks everything for others is the soul who has learned the greatest lesson of all - we exist not for ourselves, but for others.
And yes, this is a World of Wars, and when we acknowledge THAT, we can work at bringing about a BALANCE in which we can truly live in peace. Imagine that.

Hierarchy of Souls

I am more and more amazed that Christianity has, for so many centuries, twisted the understanding of the Afterlife and created a fear of death and a fear of the afterlife in its adherents. Why is that? It is truly an example of man creating God in a human image, and not understanding the heart of God. Jesus taught us to love God, and that God is Love. And we "say" (but do we believe) that Jesus conquered death - not just for himself, but for all, teaching us not to fear death, a necessary part of human, material life. So what's to fear? Fear is a part of material life, judgement is a part of material life, of human ways, not of God's ways. In this beautiful but limited world, humans have created an hierarchy of life which has been handed down for thousands of generations. There are leaders and there are followers - there are the responsible (righteous) and the irresponsible (criminals) - and we judge in each culture what the parameters of acceptable behavior are, and what the appropriate action should be taken to right the wrongs, or to praise the righteous.
Aggh - this is getting too wordy!! The skinny ---  The hierarchy of human life functions through authority and power created in each culture on earth. Acceptable behavior is lauded; unacceptable behavior is punished.  And we fear the judgement of our actions.
The Hierarchy of the Afterlife is  quite different -- It is not an hierarchy of power and authority, but an hierarchy of Wisdom, Understanding and Compassion. Sure, we have to acknowledge our errors and review our life and the choices we made, both good and bad, but there is NO ONE there to condemn us for our mistakes. We have guides and soulmates who help us to look honestly at our previous life and to glean what we can for our own growth and fulfillment. Fear and shame give way to understanding and responsibility for our actions, and the karma we have created can be molded into a new life and experience in the earth.

This is it!

What more do you need to know?? And this was known way before organized religion took control!

Come Home!

If you sometimes think about the real nature of life and ask, "What's it all about, Alfie?", you are not alone. Do you want the skinny on your place in the universe? Do you want to know if God really exists, or what happens when we cross over from this life to "heaven"? Are you curious about what "heaven" is like? Then you should read Michael Newton, Ph.D.'s book, "Journey of Souls." All through my life I have been led to several books which relate in content and each book affirms the truth in the other books. Lately, the books I am reading are deeply profound and nourishing. Dr. Newton has done extensive research through hypnotherapy to reveal truths about reality which many of us have only intuited, and of which religion has tried to teach. I LOVE this guy!! His work is monumental, and reveals so much about our relationship to God and to each other. 

Spiritual teachers like Jesus and Buddha tried to teach the truth about ourselves and God, but because their disciples were caught up in religious trappings, much of their insights were not honestly conveyed. Dr. Newton, and other contemporary souls, like Eckhart Tolle and Concetta Bertoldi, put into contemporary and understandable terms what reality is like. Our generation needs to read their words and take to heart their understanding of our "Life". It will challenge your religious understanding, but will deepen and strengthen your Faith.

By the way, if you look at the word "LIFE" as an anagram of Love, Intelligence, Faith and Energy, and remove the "F" for faith, you wind up with "LIE". Life without Faith is a lie. It is only with the eyes of Faith that we can see and understand ANYthing about Life.

Read "Journey of Souls"!

Dios esta en el aire que respiro

"On the Other Side, love is the constant state, the air we breathe."  Concetta Bertoldi.  "Inside The Other Side"
When I was ministering to the Spanish-speaking community in Hendersonville, NC, I came across a hymn, which I put in the title of this post. It translates to: God is in the very air that I breathe. I fell in love with the hymn because of its message - it is the insight of a mystic, of an old soul who has learned to see God in everyTHING and in everyONE. And here, Concetta uses the same concept - serendipity.

A clear understanding

"God has given each and every one of us gifts; He has given us all we need to love and be loved, to be happy and succeed both in spiritual terms and in earthly terms. We might resist believing this because on this side of the veil everything we do meets opposition. Expressing our love can be scary; using our gifts and getting to that happiness can require tough decisions and actions from us. In heaven [the Other Side-dimension] we have complete fulfillment, but here we need to work with[in] the constraints of the physical world. We have things to push against and overcome. Be we can do or be anything that is within our nature, and our guardian angels [and advanced souls], as emissaries of God, will be there to help us with our endeavors."

from "Inside The Other Side" by Concetta Bertoldi
Note: [ ] = my additions