Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Tai Chi Master shares the seven secrets of cultivating qi energy in the body


There are seven core principles for cultivating the powerful, innate healing energy known as Qi in the body. These practices will unlock your ability to harness this sacred force and direct it around the body at will for various healing and rejuvenation purposes. It can also be transferred to others if they are open and receptive to this type of healing.

Ancient Taoist masters spent entire lifetimes developing the science of Qi cultivation and mastering its use in the human form and this knowledge has been carefully preserved through thousands of years of transmission from master to disciple. In this day and age, this knowledge is shared rather freely and openly although it can still be difficult to find accurate, complete sources of information. The basics presented here by Dr. Greg Yuen offer a complete, fundamental picture of the practices and methods for becoming aware of and cultivating Qi in the body. Often times this core understanding is enough to allow seekers to begin using and experiencing the force in their lives immediately. Please note that the terms Qi, Chi and Ki are used throughout this introduction and article interchangeably — they all refer to the same concept/force.

Dr. Greg Yuen, M.D. | Greg Yuen on November 8, 2000

1. Belief — Believe in the Chi

2. Paying attention — Focus Your Mind on Your Body

3. Feeling/Relaxation — Feel Your Body and Relax the Tension

4. Grounding/Skying — Settle into the Ground and Connect to the Sky

5. Breathing — Abdominal Breathing

6. Visualization/Re-creation — Visualize or Re-create the Experience of Chi

7. Efficient Movement — Move from Your Legs, then Waist, then Arms


The cultivation of ki requires mind power. The first element of ki cultivation is “belief”. You must believe that you have ki. The Chinese believe that ki is everywhere and that all you have to do is tune into it. Ki is running throughout your body and all you have to do is to direct its flow. It is important to experience ki by having ki therapy done to you, by giving ki treatments, and by talking to those who are more experienced in ki and learn what they have experienced. I have heard many fantastic stories about what ki can do. For example, ki has been used to light up lightbulbs held in one’s hands. Ki has been used to make people move from a distance. You must cultivate your belief of ki and then your power with ki will grow.

How many of you believe in the ki? What are some of your experiences with the power of ki? To experience the ki, rub your palms together and make sure you rub the centers of your palms against each other. You should feel a strong heat. Now hold your hands apart, as if cupping a small ball. You will continue to feel an after glow of heat. This is the ki.

The second element of ki cultivation is “attention”. You must be able to pay attention to your body to feel and produce ki. Paying attention is the essence of what meditation is about. It is learning to sharply focus your mind. You can produce very powerful ki if you can focus your entire mind on any given moment. The more you can totally focus your mind, the more you will produce ki. If you have distractions to your mind, then simply bring it back to focus on your ki.

The mind is like taking care of a baby. If you place the baby in the center of the room, he will crawl to the periphery. You simply bring him back to the center. So you do the same with your mind; you simply bring it back to your focus on the ki.

Let’s do an exercise to see how we do with focusing our mind. Sit comfortably and take some deep breaths. Close your eyes, not fully, but just so that you can see some light. Now I will ask you to put your attention on different parts of your body. (I will direct your attention to different body parts … right finger, left ear, right large toe, left thigh, etc.)

How difficult was this exercise? For most, this is not so difficult, but how often do we really focus good attention to our bodies? What you want to watch for is how you do not focus your full attention even though most of your mind does focus. If you can get your entire mind focused, you will develop more power with your ki.

The third element of ki cultivation is “feeling/relaxation.” I put “feeling” and “relaxation” together because to learn to relax, you must feel your body. This follows the second element of “attention” because in ki cultivation, you must pay attention to your body — body awareness. With that body awareness, you learn to relax. Progressive Muscle Relaxation is a technique that psychologists use to help patients relax. You could also use an audiocassette tape that guides you through parts of your body and telling the parts to relax.

A fabulous exercise I would like to share with you to learn to relax is “do-in” (). Both “Do” and “In” mean “to lead”or “to guide”. “Do-in” has to do with guiding the ki in your body. There are many books on do–in and many techniques of do-in. I would like to introduce you to two. First is to go over your whole body and feel it. May I have a volunteer? (To the volunteer: You have some experience developing body awareness? You have had massage in the past? Let me take your hand and let me just go over some pressure points. You know that you have 26 bones in your hand. Can you find and count all of these bones?)

This is what I mean by feeling your whole body completely. You know that you have two bones in your forearm. Can you feel the two bones and where they are? If you do this to your arms, then you can do it to your legs, your abdomen, your, chest, and your head. The back is the most difficult. For that I use a “ma roller”. (Demonstrate use of roller).

Doing twenty minutes of do-in is an incredible experience. Do-in is a precious secret that to me is worth millions of yen, but it’s so simple and it’s free, as long as you do it. Because of limited time today, we will not do the detailed do-in, but instead a more general form of do-in to get our energy moving.

First let’s stand with feet spread apart and arms held up to our sides and feel your body as it is. We will compare this feeling with the feeling after the completion of this exercise. Make your hand into a fist and use it to gently tap your muscles. Do arms, legs, abdomen, chest, head, backs, and bottoms. Now stand with feet apart and arms outstretched and feel our body again to compare. In my practice of taichi, I have dedicated my life to feel my whole body — from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, from the surface of my skin, to the depths of my bones. If you can feel your whole body in this way, you will experience your ki and your ki will flow harmoniously and lead you to great health. You will also become better skilled at healing others.

For developing this body awareness, I recommend stages of development. I had the fortunate opportunity of learning shiatsu and exchanging treatments with my shiatsu teacher for four years, once a week. These treatments were addictive and wonderful. Rather than simply putting yourself on the shiatsu mat and falling asleep, I recommend that any body therapy, like shiatsu or massage, can be a tool to learning the feeling in your body. Through the help of the masseur or shiatsu therapist, you can experience feelings in your body that you never knew before. After you have some experience with this through the body therapy, and then you can recreate these feelings when you work on yourself with the do-in. After you become skilled with the do-in, then you can use the same feelings when you do taichi or when you move around or exercise in your daily life. The final stage is being able to direct your energies when you meditate, just by your mind you can circulate ki throughout your body.

The fourth element of ki cultivation is “grounding/sky-ing”. This is remembering your relationship to heaven and earth. Grounding means letting yourself relax or settle into the ground when you are standing. Let’s try this.

Let yourself squat all the way down, keeping your feet flat on the floor. Be careful not to strain yourself and do not force yourself to go down; just go down as far as you are comfortable. It is important to keep your feet flat against the floor. If cannot go all the way down, you can practice at home by holding onto a chair or a door knob as you go down. Eventually you will be able to go all the way down. If you go all the way down and your heels come off the floor, you can hold onto the ground with your hands and rock back and forth; eventually your, feet will be able to be flat on the ground. Now shift your weight to one side and lift your other foot off the ground. Shift to the other side and lift the other foot. Now hold one leg out in front of you. Now hold out the other leg. Now keep very low, reach out with your leg to widen your stance, and shift your weight from one leg to the other outstretched leg. Do this on the other side. These grounding exercises may take a while to be able to do. Just do it at your pace and, believe me, you will be able to do it eventually.

Sky-ing is a word I made up to describe being aware of your relationship to heaven. While you are standing, imagine a string attached to your head and pulling from above. Let yourself bend your knees and feel the string pulling from above; feel your spine stretch. Then reset yourself by going up again and then bend your knees again. Feel the string pulling from above and feel your spine stretch.

Now stand with your pelvis settled into the ground, knees slightly bent, and feel the string pulling from above and feel your spine stretch. This grounding and sky-ing helps you to better tune into the ki, like a radio antenna. It makes sense because being grounded means being relaxed into the ground. If you are more relaxed in general, more ki will flow. When you also connect to heaven and stretch your spine, you relax the pressure between your vertebrae and your nervous system can flow better.

The fifth element of ki cultivation is “breathing”. In martial arts or other spiritual practices, there are many forms of breathing. For the beginner, I recommend abdominal breathing or diaphragmatic breathing. In this type of breathing, when you inhale, you expand your lower belly. Your diaphragm contracts to push your belly out. The diaphragm is the muscle between your chest and your abdominal cavities. In abdominal breathing, when you exhale, you contract your lower belly.

Let’s put your hands on your lower belly, below your navels. Breathe in and expand your belly against your hands. Breathe out and collapse your belly under your hands. When you breathe in this way, you fill your lungs with more oxygen so than when you breathe with your chest. In the West, we tend to breathe with the chest. In the East, you have such traditions of martial arts and you know more about the “hara” and breathing into your lower belly. When you have more oxygen in your blood, you are more likely to be relaxed because you are not tense to fight for air. Abdominal breathing also has benefits for gastric motility and digestion.

You can direct your breath to your palms, but this gets into the sixth element of ki cultivation –“visualization”. Visualization works best after your mind has connected to your body through the do-in, paying attention to the feeling and relaxation in your body. When your mind is integrally connected to your body and you visualize, then your visualization will more powerfully affect your body.

Let’s imagine a jar full of honey. Imagine putting your arm in and feeling the honey and feel it drip off when you pull your arm out. Do that with the other arm. Now step your legs into the honey jar and feel the honey drip off when you pull your leg out. Then jump in the honey jar and move around in the honey. Feel how sticky it is over your whole body.

The seventh element of ki cultivation is what I call “efficient movement”. In taichi we learn to use our body efficiently, to conserve as much energy as possible, to be lazy, if you will, but to still get the job done. The way we do this is to first use more of our leg power, whenever possible, whenever we use our bodies. Once we use our legs as much as possible, then we try to use our torso twisting as much as possible. Only in the end, after using our leg and torso power, do we use any arm power.

Get a partner and stand with your left leg forward. Place your palms against your partner’s. Now use your legs to go back and forth. First one person will push and the other will receive; then the other person will push and his partner will receive. Just hold your hands up in front of you, but let your legs do the work. You can use your legs whenever you go through a swinging door. Hold your arm up, but let your legs do the work to push open the door.

Another movement to illustrate efficient movement is a technique called “cloud hands” in taichi. Stand with your feet spread apart. Now shift your weight from one foot to the other. Go back and forth. Now when you shift your weight to the left, turn your torso to the left and let your arms swing out loosely without using any arm strength. Shift weight to the right and let the torso swing the arms out to the right. Now watch the flow of energy come from your legs, through, your torso, and then to your hands. Shift to the left, turn your torso to the left and point with your left index finger to the left. Now do it with the right side. Now do the “cloud hands” movement. Turn to the left and circle your left arm to the left. Turn to the right and circle your right arm to the right. Do this circling alternately and shift back and forth smoothly. Use the least amount of energy to do this as possible. This is the same principle used by those who play tennis or golf. When you follow the flow energy with your mind through your body, from the legs, through the torso, and to the fingers, you create ki. You become in touch with the ki and you use the ki efficiently.

I would like to end this lecture with an experience of ki. We are going to apply all the elements of ki cultivation in this exercise. Let’s rub our palms together. Feel the centers of your palms rub together and you will feel a lot of heat. Now separate your palms and continue to feel the energy or heat between your palms — this is the ki. “Believe” that you will feel great ki between your palms. “Pay attention” to your palms and focus your mind there to produce and feel the ki. “Feel” your arms and “Relax” them as much as possible as you let the ki go to your palms. Let yourself relax into the ground with “Grounding” and let your spine stretch with “Sky-ing”. “Breathe” deep into your lower belly and “Visualize” your breath going to your palms. Now let your energy ball between your palms grow larger and play with it in your hands. Keep doing all the things we talked about … believe, pay attention, feel and relax, ground, sky, breathe, visualize. Now find a partner and join your ki ball with their ki ball and both feel the ball between your hands. Next get another pair of individuals and make a bigger ki ball. (This exercise progresses where the whole group makes a giant ki ball. We all go inside the ki ball and then hold the giant ki ball in the middle of the group. We can also do put individuals, one by one, inside a ki ball held together by others.)

You can take a piece of the big ki ball home as your souvenir. Just remember that you can tune into the ki at any moment and remember the key elements of ki cultivation … belief, paying attention, feeling your body and relaxing, grounding, sky-ing, breathing, visualizing, using your legs and torso when you can.

Source: thehealersjournal


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Monday, February 20, 2017

What is Spirituality?


Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience—something that touches us all.

Spirituality is not one thing and can be expressed in multiple ways. Some will find enlightenment through their work, others through religion, others through spiritual practice like mediation and yoga, others through the use of psychedelics and others by just expressing themselves in a positive way through kindness, compassion and love. No matter how you find the spirit within you, there is no right way of doing it.

What is spirituality? Spirituality is a very misunderstood term, some equate it to religion and while it can be related it is not an exclusively religious thing. The spirit is the essence of a person, that elusive thing within us that makes us naturally behave in certain ways. When the mind is quite and all is peaceful all that’s left is the spirit.

You have your 4 levels of health- the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. All but the spirit are easily defined, measurable and explainable, the spiritual side of things is a little more mystical and hard to explain in a short sentence. But it is still a real thing.

One thing that will be present in all spiritual practice is consciousness. Consciousness is hard to define as is spirituality because again it is not one thing, but to make things simple consciousness on an individual level is your awareness of a thing, even if that thing is nothing.


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Friday, February 10, 2017

Did ancient people really have lifespans longer than 200 years?


It isn’t only biblical figures who lived to well-seasoned ages of 900 years or more. Ancient texts from many cultures have listed life spans most modern people find simply and literally unbelievable. Some say it’s due to misunderstandings in the translation process, or that the numbers have symbolic meaning—but against the many explanations are also counterarguments that leave the historian wondering whether the human lifespan has actually decreased so significantly over thousands of years.

For example, one explanation is that the ancient Near East understanding of a year could be different than our concept of a year today. Perhaps a year meant an orbit of the moon (a month) instead of an orbit of the sun (12 months).

But if we make the changes accordingly, while it brings the age of the biblical figure Adam down from 930 to a more reasonable 77 at the time of his death, it also means he would have fathered his son Enoch at the age of 11. And Enoch would have only been 5 years old when he fathered Methuselah.

Similar inconsistencies arise when we adjust the year figures to represent seasons instead of solar orbits, noted Carol A. Hill in her article “Making Sense of the Numbers of Genesis,” published in the journal “Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith” in December 2003.

Similar problems have arisen when adjusting ages in ancient texts with the assumption that authors used a certain pattern for skewing the actual ages (such as multiplying them by a given number).

“Numbers [in Genesis] could have both real (numerical) and sacred (numerological or symbolic) meaning,” Hill wrote.

Mathematical Patterns?

In both Genesis and in the 4,000-year-old Sumerian King List—which lists the reigns of single kings in Sumer (ancient southern Iraq) as exceeding 30,000 years in some cases—analysts have noted the use of square numbers.

Much like the Bible, the King List shows a steady decline in lifespans. The list differentiates between pre-flood and post-flood reigns. The pre-flood reigns are significantly longer than the post-flood, though even post-flood lifespans are shown to be several hundred years or more than 1,000 years. In the Bible, we see a progressive decline over the generations from Adam’s 930-year life, to Noah’s 500 years, to Abraham’s 175.

Dwight Young of Brandeis University wrote of the post-flood lifespans in the Sumerian King List: “It is not merely because of their largeness that some of these numbers appear artificial. Etana’s 1560 years, to cite the longest, is but the sum of the two preceding reigns. … Certain spans seem simply to have arisen as multiples of 60. Other large numbers may be recognized as squares: 900, the square of 30; 625, the square of 25; 400, the square of 20 … even among smaller figures, the square of six appears more frequently than one might expect.” Young’s article, titled “A Mathematical Approach to Certain Dynastic Spans in the Sumerian King List,” was published in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies in 1988. Paul Y. Hoskisson, director of the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies wrote along a similar vein of the patriarch ages in the Bible in a short article for the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

On the other hand, looking at patterns, co-founder of the Church of God in South Texas Arthur Mendez thinks the rate of decline in longevity from pre-flood times as recorded in ancient texts to today matches the rate of decay observed in organisms when they are exposed to radiation or toxins.

Accounts in Many Cultures, Including Chinese and Persian

In ancient China, super-centenarians were also commonplace, according to many texts. Joseph P. Hou, Ph.D., acupuncturist, wrote in his book “Healthy Longevity Techniques”: “According to Chinese medical records, a doctor named Cuie Wenze of the Qin dynasty lived to be 300 years old. Gee Yule of the later Han dynasty lived to be 280 years old. A high ranking Taoist master monk, Hui Zhao, lived to be 290 years old and Lo Zichange lived to be 180 years old. As recorded in the The Chinese Encyclopedia of Materia Medica, He Nengci of the Tang dynasty lived to be 168 years old. A Taoist master, Li Qingyuan, lived to be 250 years old. In modern times, a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, Lo Mingshan of Sichuan province, lived to be 124 years old.”

Dr. Hou said the Eastern key to longevity is “nourishing life,” including not only physical nourishment, but also mental and spiritual nourishment.

The Shahnameh or Shahnama (“The Book of Kings”) is a Persian epic poem written by Ferdowsi around the end of the 10th century A.D. It tells of kings reigning 1,000 years, several hundred years, down to 150 years, and so on.

Modern Claims of Longevity

Even today, people report lifespans of some 150 or more years. These reports often come from rural areas, however, where documentation is scant. Documentation was probably even less valued in rural communities more than a century ago, making it harder to prove such claims. 

One example is that of Bir Narayan Chaudhary in Nepal.

In 1996, Vijay Jung Thapa visited Chaudhary in Tharu village of Aamjhoki in the Tarai region. Chaudhary told him he was 141 years old,  Thapa wrote in an article for India Today. If this claim was true, Chaudhary trumped the Guinness World Record holder for the longest life ever recorded by almost 20 years.

But Chaudhary didn’t have the papers to prove it. He did, however, have collective village memory.

“Almost all the elders around remember their youth when Chaudhary (already an elder) would talk about working in the first Nepal survey of 1888,” Thapa wrote. “Village logic goes that he must have been more than 21 then, since the survey was a responsible job. Chaudhary claims to have been 33 and still a stubborn bachelor.”

Many people in the Caucasus region of Russia similarly claim ages reaching even over 170 years without the documentation to back their claims. 

Dr. Hou wrote: “These exceptionally long-lived people have invariably lived humble lives, doing hard physical work or exercise, often outdoors, from youth well into old age. Their diet is simple, as is their social life involving families. One example is Shisali Mislinlow who lived to be 170 years old and gardened in the Azerbaijan region in Russia. Mislinlow’s life was never hurried. He said, ‘I am never in a hurry, so don’t be in a hurry to live, this is the main idea. I have been doing physical labor for 150 years.'”

A Matter of Faith?

The issue of longevity in ancient times has long been connected to Taoist practices of internal alchemy, or mind-body cultivation, in China. Here, longevity was connected with virtue. Likewise it is intertwined with Western spiritual beliefs as part of the Bible. 



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Monday, February 6, 2017

We must free this dog


Please, we need to free this dog. This good boy needs our help to escape the wood prison. A heartless wizard heard him bark and trapped him in the wood. If you are a witch, warlock, or magic-adjacent, please tell us what spells, chants, hand movements, and/or ointments we can use to get this sweet, sweet pup out of there. I don’t know what this pup did to deserve such a fate, but I can tell you with certainty that the punishment is unwarranted — dogs should be in the real world and they should not be exiled forever to the Tree Dimension. Please help. Thank you.

Thursday, February 2, 2017

How Sacred Rituals can transform your daily life



Traditional Cultures have always known the benefit of Ritual

Today Indigenous people are still deeply connected to rituals as an inherent part of their daily lives. This connection brings a sacredness and power to even the most “mundane” aspects of existence and it imbues basic tasks with love and connection.

I’ve experienced this while sitting in circle with Aboriginal elders, singing as the women prepared food together. The coming together in song and community brought a reverence and intimacy that made the chopping of the vegetables a complete joy. The simple ritual of food preparation became a celebration, an opportunity to be with each other and enjoy the abundance of life. Another memory of the power of ritual I have is sitting on the land in circle, in the Andes preparing a Despacho (sacred offering) with shamans.

Being out on the land in this way, remembering Pachamama (mother earth) and all she gifts us with; water, air, food, life itself, felt so right and so good to have the opportunity to express my gratitude in a tangible way. Other potent memories of ritual include the sacred devotional offerings I’ve been taught to perform by my teachers in India and have shared in, during sacred rituals in the moist, balmy temples of this land still so connected to the sacred. I love the bhakti of Puja, where we offer symbolic items honouring the Divine, or the rituals of purification, dance and chant, that are outwardly different, but inwardly the same, across the planet.

These are really special rituals I’ve been blessed to take part in, but you don’t need to travel to the Andes, Ganges or Uluru and other sacred places, to perform rituals. Certainly Indigenous Elders bring an extra power to the rituals they perform, as they are part of an unbroken lineage of spiritual connection and ritual, and any opportunity to learn from Indigenous teachers is very precious. Their rituals are a vital part of their everyday lives and they have an expanded consciousness and connection to the land and Great Spirit. But you and I can imbue our own lives with greater potency, peace, and joy, through embracing some simple daily rituals.

In essence a ritual is about bringing sacredness into your life, and about honouring something greater than you and I. It is about honouring the mystery, and the bringer of life in all things, from the flowers, to the trees, to the birds, the tiny caterpillar glistening on a fresh leaf, or the waking sun, and the moonlight. There is a divine force that moves through all things, like a river, enlivening all of life. It is the same force that moves the plant to flower, the wolf to howl, or lights up a baby’s face. As we become more aware of this higher force moving in our lives and express our gratitude for it, it expands and colours daily life with a radiance and light that connects us to all living things.


The science behind rituals

Associate Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Scientist, Christine Legare has studied rituals for many years and has discovered there are a few key ways in which people trust rituals. What makes a ritual feel effective, is the same from ancient Egypt to modern-day Brazil. Christine says that rituals reflects how our minds work. “We don’t actually know how most things work,” she says, “so we do a lot of imitating.” According to Legare, in a chaotic world rituals offer us the illusion of control over what we want to happen.

A series of investigations by psychologists have revealed interesting new results that are not surprising. Their research demonstrates that rituals can have a causal impact on people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Other experiments by psychologists, into grief and ritual, showed that people who engaged in a ritual after the death of a loved one or loss of a close relationship, felt less grief about the loss.

Rituals, like birthday celebrations, weddings, funerals, coming of age parties, are an important way we gather together with our communities and loved ones. Today rituals have become more secular and materialistic, but essentially the desire behind them is the same, to connect, celebrate, and be grateful for life and its expression. Increasingly ancient rituals are returning and finding a place in modern society: rituals such as blessing way ceremonies for mothers before they birth their child, or rituals for girls as they enter womanhood and start menstruating.

Today there are camps or outdoor activities for men and boys, Women’s Healing Circles, Full Moon circles, Earth Healing Circles, and so many more beautiful ritual gatherings that are evolving as we acknowledge our primal need and desire to be together in sacred ways that are healing and transformational for us. Yoga, at its roots, a deeply sacred practice, and preparation for higher connection and communion with the Divine, may start off as exercise for many, but quite soon becomes something sacred that nourishes the spirit as well as the physical.


Simple rituals to practice

There are some very basic rituals you can add to your life that will greatly enhance and transform your outlook, and over time, your life. Yogic wisdom says that thoughts lead to actions, your actions become habits and your habits determine your character, and ultimately your character determines your destiny. As the late Wayne Dyer said:

"You do not attract what you want, you attract what you are."

Rituals put us in contact with the forces moving the universe, that energy that is within all life. We are said to have about 25,000 mornings as an adult. How will you start your day? Will you start with sacredness, with a ritual that sets your day as an amazing opportunity to be alive and connect with other people and animals, an opportunity to express your creativity and enjoy this beautiful planet, or will you drag yourself out of bed going: “Oh God, another day of work!” Starting your day with a simple five minute ritual can change the way you experience life over time.

Rituals like: Space clearing, Gratitude, Blessing your food, Prayer, or Chanting can greatly enhance your life. Being in nature is one of the most blessed resources we have. I love to sit in nature and reflect. To listen, to be with myself, on the ground, at one with all of life. Watching the wind move through the leaves, or the first rays of light shoot forth into the sky, sitting under the stars, walking in the local national parks, or being beside a river in the rain forest, is deeply restorative. Nature helps us reset. By bringing in regular mindful times in nature you can truly transform your life. Just sitting, being and listening in nature can bring forth insights, understanding and answers. Problems are solved and life resets itself, the pieces naturally falling into place.


Space Clearing

Creating a sacred space in your home is one of the most beautiful and health giving rituals you can do. Creating some sort of an altar where you can place images of loved ones, masters, elements of nature, crystals, or whatever you are inspired by or that connects you to Source, instantly elevates your space to something more sacred. Sitting at your altar and feeling gratitude, or meditating, is a great way to connect to your heart and to all of life. Temples and sacred places around the planet were made sacred by the devotional practices and rituals that took place within them. Your home and your body can become temples if you treat your space with reverence. You can sanctify the space in your home through conscious cleaning and space clearing. Regular smudging or use of sound, sacred music and chants, and burning incense can keep your home a sacred space that will nourish and support you.

Self healing rituals

Rituals are habits that support you during challenging times. A regular ritual, such as a meditation or yoga practice, brings the inner resilience and pathways of neural calm so that you are resourced when you are faced with potential derailment from life’s road trains.

Rituals bring relief when everything is falling to pieces. Having a daily sacred practice of some sort holds you together when things fall apart. Because relationships do break up, jobs end, friendships have bumpy bits, people die, illness hits, and the unexpected happens. And it’s at these times, that we need an inner resilience, something that can help us navigate the foggy territory of human suffering. While yes, sometimes we need to fall apart, it is helpful to have something to fall into, a cushion that will break your fall and support you to eventually get back up again.

Chanting

There are many sacred chants in ancient seed languages, or light languages of power, such as Sanskrit, which carry more potency as they are closer to the source. Words can divide and words can be a pathway to divinity. Sacred chants alter your physicality and your surroundings. You can do it while cooking, cleaning and driving. You can also chant a powerful mantra internally as a way of purifying an atmosphere when you are in a difficult or potentially explosive situation, such as conflict.

Keys to creating rituals

  • Start small
  • Make it a daily commitment.
  • Do something you enjoy.
  • Be kind to yourself if you forget or don’t do your ritual.

There are so many rituals to choose from. The best is to create your own ritual that suits you and your life and your spiritual beliefs. Basically a ritual must evoke something greater than yourself. It must bring you peace, and help you to experience your true nature


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Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Primary Clairaudient and Clairvoyant Experiences


If the yogi persists with internal Meditation constantly, tenaciously and with infinite patience, then within a period of time, clairvoyant perceptions will begin to develop. In the early stages of development, luminous spots will appear. Later, as the development continues, faces and objects and pictures of Nature will appear. Objects will seem dreamlike, as in the moments of transition that exist between vigil and dream.

The disciple’s enthusiasm increases when clairvoyant perceptions begin to take place.

These perceptions inform the disciple that his internal powers are being activated.

It is extremely important that the disciple does not become weary. A great deal of patience is required for the development of internal powers. It is very difficult to develop internal powers. Many disciples begin this difficult process, but there are very few disciples who have the patience of Saint Job. Impatience will only impede our steps along the path towards realization of the Self. Such esoteric practices are for those that are tenacious and patient.

In the sacred India of the Vedas, yogis practice internal Meditation four times a day.

However, in our occidental world, due to the preoccupation with our daily lives, and the difficult battle for existence, if we practice Meditation only once a day, then this is sufficient. Yet, what is important is to practice consistently, and without missing a day.

With intense repetition and tenacious practices, we will eventually put our chakras into rotation. Thus, after some time, primary clairvoyant and clairaudient perceptions will begin.

Luminous spots, pictures of light, living figures, sounds of bells and animals and the voices of people, etc. accurately indicate the disciple’s progress. These perceptions appear in the instant when the disciple is submerged in profound Meditation and during the sleepy state.

Many types of light begin to appear with the practice of internal Meditation. In early stages of development, the devotee perceives very brilliant white lights. These lights correspond to the eye of wisdom, which is located between the eyebrows. The white, yellow, red, blue, and green lights as well as lightning, the sun, moon, stars, sparks, flames, etc. are all particles which are forms of the supra-sensible elements (tanmatric particles).

When small luminous balls appear, shining with white and red colors, this is then an absolutely positive sign that we are progressing in our practices of concentration of thought.

There will come a time when the devotee will see Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Potentates, Virtues, etc. Within his/her dreams, while in Meditation, the student may also see grand temples, rivers, valleys, mountains, and beautiful enchanted gardens.

Commonly, during the practice of Meditation, certain strange sensations occur that may fill the devotee with fear. One of these sensations is an electric shock in the chakra of the coccyx. Also the lotus of a thousand petals, which is situated in the upper part of the brain, will feel electric sensations.

The devotee must defeat this fear if he wants to progress in the development of his internal powers.

The time in which these visions appear depends on the individual himself. Some students have these visions within a few days of practice; others begin to have these visions after six months of daily exercises.

Within the first period of daily training we are in contact with the beings of the Astral plane.

Within the second period of esoteric training we make contact with the beings of the Mental plane.

Within the third period of esoteric training we are in contact with the beings of the purely Spiritual plane.

We then begin to convert ourselves into competent investigators of the superior worlds.

The devotee, who has begun to experience his initial perceptions in the superior worlds, must in the beginning be like a garden that is sealed with seven seals.

Those students who tell others about what they have experienced crumble in their studies, because the doors to the superior worlds become closed to them.

One of the gravest dangers that attack the devotee is vanity and pride. The devotee fills himself with pride and vanity when he begins to perceive reality in the supra-sensible worlds. He thinks of himself as a master, yet he has not achieved the complete development of his internal powers.

He then begins to judge others incorrectly, according to his incomplete clairvoyant perceptions. The result of these incorrect judgments is a great deal of karma. The devotee attracts this karma to himself because he has become a slanderer of his own neighbors. He fills the world with pain and tears.

The student that has experienced primary clairvoyant perceptions must be like a garden that is sealed with seven seals. He must remain as such, until his Internal Master initiates him into the Great Mysteries and gives him the order to speak.

The devotee who is submitted to esoteric discipline also makes another grave error: he disregards imagination. We have learned that imagination is translucent. It is the mirror of the soul; it is divine clairvoyance. In order for the devotee to see, he must use his imagination. When the chakra of the forehead begins to rotate, then the images that are seen with translucent imagination become more brilliant, splendorous and luminous.

The devotee must distinguish between imagination and fantasy. Conscious imagination is positive, yet, fantasy is negative and harmful for the mind because it could lead us to have hallucinations or to reach madness.

Some wish to awaken their clairvoyance while disregarding imagination. If they disregard imagination, then they will fall under the same absurdity as those who wish to practice Meditation without the sleepy state. These people fail to develop their internal powers. These people break the laws of Nature and inevitably failure is the result.

Imagination, inspiration, and intuition are the three mandatory factors of initiation. In the beginning, images appear and in the end we penetrate into the purely Spiritual world.

Initiation is necessary for all clairvoyants. To have clairvoyance without esoteric initiation leads the student into the world of delinquency. Therefore, it is urgent to receive the cosmic initiation.

If a clairvoyant penetrates into the subconsciousness of Nature, he can then read all of the past history of the Earth and its races. He will also find his most beloved relatives. He may see, for example, his beloved wife married with other men. He may also see her committing Adultery. If the clairvoyant has not reached initiation, he may mistake the past for the present. He will then slander his wife saying, “She is betraying me, she is an adulterer. I am clairvoyant and I am seeing her in the internal worlds committing Adultery.”

All of the records of our past reincarnations exist within the subconsciousness of Nature.

If a clairvoyant penetrates into the infra-Consciousness of Nature, he will then discover all of the evil of humanity.

The Satan of every human being dwells within the infra-Consciousness of Nature.

If the clairvoyant has not received initiation, he will then see the Satan of the Saints continually reviving the crimes and evil actions that the Saints committed in their ancient reincarnations, before they became Saints.

The inexperienced clairvoyant who is lacking Initiation cannot distinguish between the past and the present, or between the Satan of a human and the real Being of a human, thus resulting in slanderous behavior.

The inexperienced clairvoyant may say, “That man believes he is a saint, yet he is an assassin, a thief and a terrible black magician. I know this, because I saw it with my clairvoyance.”

This is precisely what we call a slanderer. Many clairvoyants have become horribly degenerated slanderers. One of the grave dangers of this behavior is homicide.

Within the infra-Consciousness of Nature, a jealous, distrustful, and unworthy man will find that all of his doubts and suspicions are converted into reality. He then begins to slander his wife, friends, neighbors, and masters saying, “You see, I have reason for my doubts, my friend is a thief, a black magician, and an assassin; my wife is committing Adultery, just as I suspected. My clairvoyance never fails me, I am always right, etc., etc.”

Due to the lack of initiation, the poor man does not have the capability to sufficiently analyze in order to understand that he has penetrated into the subconsciousness of Nature. It is there where his own mental creations live.

Therefore, considering all of these dangers, it is necessary that the esoteric student does not pass judgment against anyone. Do not judge in order not to be judged. The devotee must be like a garden that is sealed with seven seals. Whosoever has primary clairvoyant and clairaudient perceptions is an inexperienced clairvoyant. Thus, if he does not know how to remain in silence, he will begin to slander others.

Only the great clairvoyant Initiates do not fall. Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus Christ, etc., were truly infallible and omniscient clairvoyants.

This chapter is from The Yellow Book (1959) by Samael Aun Weor. Find the book on the right side bar of our site.



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