How to check for a Scammer

      This article came to my mind after a heated debate from another blog article. So I feel this is a subject that needs to be brought up. Many investigators of phenomena such as ghosts, UFOs, haunting s, paranormal creatures and many unusual events often find themselves in a situation where they need to know how to check out a hoax. This article will provide a set of guidelines you can use to determine whether or not a claim or a story you are examining is a hoax.

     As a paranormal investigator or researcher, it is your responsibility to discern between deception and truth. The word "hoax" refers to those stories, videos or pictures where there is intentional deception or fraud. For example, it's up to you, as the unbiased observer, to separate the story that a homeowner may tell you about a haunting from your own efforts to determine what's really causing the phenomenon. However, there are times when the storyteller is a con artist, an attention-seeker or a sociopath. As a paranormal investigator, you need to remain vigilant against these types of people.

Identifying a Hoax Before It Grows Legs

     The field of the paranormal is filled with tricksters. On YouTube, over half of the "ghost videos" are fabricated or spoofed videos meant to poke fun at people who believe in ghosts. Unfortunately these "hoaxes" are mixed in with a gold mine of video that homeowners have shot featuring authentic paranormal phenomena. There is no faster method to become disenchanted with a field of research than coming across one or two of these ridiculous hoaxes.

     Elements of a story, video or phenomenon that will help you to immediately flag it as a potential hoax include:

•Is the "evidence" in a format to be distributed to a large group of people, such as an email distribution or a website?

•Does it fail to provide legitimate and verifiable confirmation sources?

•Is the language used either very emotional or highly technical?

•Is the source anonymous, or is it impossible to verify the source's expertise?

Identifying a Hoaxer

     While identifying a fabricated story may be easy, identifying a hoaxer isn't. Hoaxers are essentially con artists who are attempting to sell a particular audience on a paranormal story. The following are common characteristics of such con artists.

•Chameleon: The con artist adapts quickly, using the same lingo and basic core beliefs as the crowd and incorporates those into the hoax.

•Charismatic: A clever con artist can come across as extremely professional, successful and charismatic.

•Techno-babble: They often use poorly understood science to peddle certain "technology" or research. They use meaningless phrases like "ectoplasm anomaly", or "micro-cosmic harmonic stabilization", which sound no different than highly technical phrases from a scientific journal to a layman.

•Nasty Skeptic: If you ask a hoaxer for evidence, the con artist will act slighted and attempt to make people feel that questioning the source of information will cause the information to stop.

•Too Good To Be True: If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Aliens do not offer secret free-energy technology. Ghosts do not shoot dishes across the room while flickering the lights and shooting ectoplasm from the walls. And, when Bigfoot is captured, he likely will not be stored in an ice cooler available to the highest bidder. Using common sense can go a long way when you research paranormal claims.

     The following are examples of paranormal hoaxes that took place over the past few years.

The Elevator Ghost Hoax

     In early 2008, a creepy video surfaced on YouTube and throughout the Internet, showing security camera footage of a ghostly, stooped figure of an old woman haunting an office building in Singapore. It quickly became well known as the "Raffles Place Ghost." Later in the year, the GMP Group admitted they fabricated the video, at a cost of $100,000, in order to "highlight the dangers of working late". Many thousands of people had fallen for the hoaxed video.

The Aleshenka Creature

     In August of 1996, a mentally ill elderly woman named Tamara Vasilievna Prosvirina claimed that she'd discovered a small creature in Kaolinovy, a small village in Chelyabinsk, Russia. Locals claimed that the creature was extraterrestrial in origin. For years, Ufologists and crypto zoologists believed that the creature was not of this world. However, in 2004, scientists from the Moscow Institute of General Genetics, used genetic testing to prove that the creature was nothing more than a prematurely born female baby with severe deformities.

Planet Serpo and the Human-Alien Exchange Program

     In 2005, a story about a human-alien exchange program surfaced on the Internet. An anonymous person, claiming to be a government insider, used free Internet email accounts to send poorly written military journal entries written by military officers who allegedly visited the alien planet. In 2006, investigators at Reality Uncovered, using email-tracing evidence, revealed that the anonymous hoaxer was former U.S. Air Force Sergeant Richard Doty, famous for his part in a number of past UFO hoaxes that he distributed to UFO researchers Bill Moore and Linda Moulton Howe during the 1980s.

Bigfoot Found

     During the summer of 2008, Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer claimed that they'd discovered the body of Bigfoot in the backwoods of northern Georgia. The hoax built up steam throughout the national and international media as the two men claimed they had the corpse frozen in a chest freezer. Self-proclaimed crypto zoologist Tom Biscardi picked up the story and pushed it into the national news by promoting several large media events. The two men sold the body to a research group called Searching for Bigfoot, Inc. for $50,000.00. After thawing the creature, the hoax was revealed when they discovered that it was nothing more than a rubber gorilla costume.

6 Ways Drumming Heals Body, Mind and Soul

From slowing the decline in fatal brain disease, to generating a sense of oneness with one another and the universe, drumming’s physical and spiritual health benefits may be as old as time itself.

Drumming is as fundamental a form of human expression as speaking, and likely emerged long before humans even developed the capability of using the lips, tongue and vocal organs as instruments of communication.

To understand the transformative power of drumming you really must experience it, which is something I have had the great pleasure of doing now for twenty years. Below is one of the circles I helped organize in Naples Florida back in 2008, which may give you a taste of how spontaneous and immensely creative a thing it is (I’m the long haired ‘hippie’ with the gray tank top drumming like a primate in the background).

Anyone who has participated in a drum circle, or who has borne witness to one with an open and curious mind, knows that the rhythmic entrainment of the senses and the anonymous though highly intimate sense of community generated that follows immersion in one, harkens back to a time long gone, where tribal consciousness preempted that of self-contained, ego-centric individuals, and where a direct and simultaneous experience of deep transcendence and immanence was not an extraordinarily rare occurrence as it is today.

This experience is so hard-wired into our biological, social and spiritual DNA that even preschool children as young as 2.5 years appear to be born with the ability to synchronize body movements to external acoustic beats when presented in a social context, revealing that drumming is an inborn capability and archetypal social activity.

Even Bugs Know How to Drum

But drumming is not a distinctively human technology. The use of percussion as a form of musicality, communication, and social organization, is believed to stretch as far back as 8 million years ago to the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans living somewhere in the forests of Africa.

For instance, recent research on the drumming behavior of macaque monkeys indicates that the brain regions preferentially activated by drumming sounds or by vocalizations overlap in caudal auditory cortex and amygdala, which suggests “a common origin of primate vocal and non-vocal communication systems and support the notion of a gestural origin of speech and music.”

Interestingly, percussive sound-making (drumming) can be observed in certain species of birds, rodents and insects.  Of course you know about the woodpecker’s characteristic pecking, but did you know that mice often drum with their feet in particular locations within their burrow, both for territorial displays and to sound alarms against predators? Did you know that termites use vibrational drumming signals to communicate within the hive? For instance, soldiers threatened with attack drum their heads against tunnels to transmit signals along subterranean galleries, warning workers and other soldiers to respond accordingly. 

6 Evidence-Based Health Benefits of Drumming

Drumming has been proven in human clinical research to do the following six things:

1. Reduce Blood Pressure, Anxiety/Stress: A 2014 study published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine enrolled both middle-aged experienced drummers and a younger novice group in a 40-minute djembe drumming sessions. Their blood pressure, blood lactate and stress and anxiety levels were taken before and after the sessions. Also, their heart rate was monitored at 5 second intervals throughout the sessions. As a result of the trial, all participants saw a drop in stress and anxiety. Systolic blood pressure dropped in the older population post drumming.
2. Increase Brain White Matter & Executive Cognitive Function: A 2014 study published in the Journal of Huntington’s Disease found that two months of drumming intervention in Huntington’s patients (considered an irreversible, lethal neurodegenerative disease) resulted in “improvements in executive function and changes in white matter microstructure, notably in the genu of the corpus callosum that connects prefrontal cortices of both hemispheres.” The study authors concluded that the pilot study provided novel preliminary evidence that drumming (or related targeted behavioral stimulation) may result in “cognitive enhancement and improvements in colossal white matter microstructure.”
3. Reduced Pain: A 2012 study published in Evolutionary Psychology found that active performance of music (singing, dancing and drumming) triggered endorphin release (measured by post-activity increases in pain tolerance) whereas merely listening to music did not. The researchers hypothesized that this may contribute to community bonding in activities involving dance and music-making.
4. Reduce Stress (Cortisol/DHEA ratio), Increase Immunity: A 2001 study published in Alternative Therapies and Health Medicine enrolled 111 age- and sex- matched subjects (55 men and 56 women; mean age 30.4 years) and found that drumming “increased dehydroepiandrosterone-to-cortisol ratios, increased natural killer cell activity, and increased lymphokine-activated killer cell activity without alteration in plasma interleukin 2 or interferon-gamma, or in the Beck Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory II.”
5. Transcendent (Re-Creational) Experiences: A 2004 study published in the journal Multiple Sclerosis revealed that drumming enables participants to go into deeper hypnotic states, and another 2014 study published in PLoS found that when combined with shamanistic instruction, drumming enables participants to experience decreased heartrate and dreamlike experiences consistent with transcendental experiences.
6. Socio-Emotional Disorders: A powerful 2001 study published in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine found that low-income children who enrolled in a 12-week group drumming intervention saw multiple domains of social-emotional behavior improve significantly, from anxiety to attention, from oppositional to post-traumatic disorders.

Taking into account the beneficial evolutionary role that drumming likely performed in human history and prehistory, as well as the new scientific research confirming its psychosocial and physiological health benefits, we hope that it will be increasingly looked at as a positive medical, social and psychospiritual intervention. Considering the term recreation in its root etymological sense: re-creation, drumming may enable us to both tap into the root sense of our identity in the drumming-mediated experience of being joyous, connected and connecting, creative beings, as well as find a way to engage the process of becoming, transformation and re-creation that is also a hallmark feature of being alive and well in this amazing, ever-changing universe of ours.

New to drumming and want to try it?

Fortunately, drum circles have sprouted up in thousands of locations around the country spontaneously, and almost all of them are free. You will find them attended by all ages, all walks of life and all experience levels. The best way to find one is google the name of your area and “drum circle” and see what comes up. Also, there is an online directory that lists drum circles around the country: http://www.drumcircles.net/circlelist.html  

Your Mind & Body Are Not Separate

How often do we go about our days feeling things within our body and trying to figure them out yet never really find the answers? We might go to a doctor and explain what’s going on. We might say we have tightness in our shoulders, pain in our knees, constant stomach or abdomen issues or maybe pains in our feet. There’s no doubt that sometimes these things can truly be the result of something we did physically or something we might have eaten etc., but there is also a lot to say about our state of mind and our emotions and how this translates in our physicality.

We are energy beings, this isn’t some new-age spiritual concept. Our body has electricity that runs through it and it flows based on the cleanliness of the paths in which it travels. This is the premise behind meridian points or acupuncture points made popular in Chinese medicine. So if we are energy and we need our energy to be flowing well throughout our body to stay healthy, is it possible for us to have blockages? Can experiences we have create dormant or ‘stuck’ energy within the body?

The illustration below is a general depiction of how energy, experiences, emotions or beliefs we have can get energetically stored within the body. As “out there” as this may seem to some of us, it’s really a simple concept when you begin to understand the fact that our thoughts, body, emotions and feelings are all energy related. And yes, allow me to be the first to say that not every single disease or ailment is going to be directly related to some emotional distress, however it’s always a chance or experience for us to take a look at what might be playing out. After all, what’s the harm in exploring your emotions and getting to the bottom of how you might feel about something?

Next time you have a pain somewhere, notice tight shoulders etc. Take a moment and see if any of these can trigger some internal reflection. Of course, you can always go to a practitioner to find out what might be going on physically as well, but I believe the emotional and spiritual side of our health is just as important as the physical, it’s just been greatly avoided as we tend to set aside personal development for the quick fix.

Keep reflection simple, you can ask your self-questions about what you might be feeling in that area. The first step is to rid the doubt you might have about getting to the bottom of the feeling and the next important step is being open and honest with yourself. You can also have someone be a sounding board for you if it’s easier that way. Again, it is important to be open and honest with this. When you start to figure out what you might be feeling in those areas, question how it got there, why you might feel that way and ultimately accept it for what it is. After you accept the feeling, know that it’s all been an experience and now there’s a chance for you to move beyond it.

Once you are aware of how you are feeling, you’ve already taken a big step. The issue will not have the same power and you can now choose how you feel about whatever was creating the blockage. At the end of the day, the body can be a great tool in showing you what you might be holding onto emotionally, energetically and spiritually. With an open mind, personal honesty and reflection, you have the tools to get to the bottom of your issue and leave it behind for good.

How Did Humans Get So Out of Balance?

Lots of people say it, and it can’t be denied… this would be a wonderful, balanced natural world if humans weren’t a part of it. Knowing how accepted this sentiment is, I feel for us. We’re not meant to be a curse. We see what’s been done to the earth and to us, and we’re working so diligently to comprehend what has allowed it, and what we can do to change it. 

How did humans get so out of balance? By ignoring, fearing, demeaning, even hating and destroying a most vital part of ourselves. We were born into it, so let’s not go to guilt. 

I started thinking about balance after watching a video documentary on the potter Lee Kang-hyo. This Korean artist makes the big pots called Onggi. The story followed him as he created his art, questioned his choice of Onggi, did some soul searching about his life, and came to realize that what he wanted was not far away… it was right there with him.

As I watched the story, I realized that the big pots looked like sculptures of the feminine… open, strong, inviting: containers that hold food for long periods of time while the food transforms itself through brewing and fermenting. Toward the end of the video we watch the artist put his spirit and energy into the pot, caressing and applying the color. The pot turns out to be quite a beautiful masterpiece, just standing there in readiness.

That’s a gorgeous image, isn’t it: picture the waiting, receptive, open invitation to transform? We all have her within, ready to contain our experiences and turn them into something life-giving… like the wisdom so desperately needed at this time.

We don’t get this wisdom by pursuing it or working our way to it logically; we get it in the ‘water into wine’ way – the right ingredients, the right pressure, the right temperature, the time fulfilled, in the perfect pot.

The inner worlds and the relationship with inner divinity are so vital to my life that it’s hard for me to imagine not being there. But it’s not so for everyone. The other day I talked with a young man who was having marriage issues. I asked him if he ever goes within, in order to relate to his inner life. “I don’t have time for that,” he said. “I have to work to take care of my family.” I understand, and I love him… but he’s not whole. He’s out of balance.

There is some resistance to wholeness, and it could come from conditioning or fear, or failure to understand the importance. We need to be honest, so I ask: since when is a man who looks inward to explore his wisdom and experience his divinity less of a man? Or, when is a woman who looks outward to see how she can relate to the world, and change things, less of a woman? There is no downside to balance, no loss of manhood or womanhood. There is wholeness. And we’d be wise to find time for that.

We find the masculine and feminine polarities within, and we find that the marriage of these aspects makes of every one of us able to create and relate to the world. The inner child, when acknowledged and loved, becomes the vital, enjoyable expression. This is inner balance.

What would happen if the inner perception and wisdom were diminished almost to extinction and the capacity for outer action were set free to ‘do as you will’? Well, that questions is answered. ‘Do as you will’ is the only law for the humans who rule – the top of the hierarchy.

For millions of others, the masses, ‘do as God wills’ is the law. They take, as the highest authority, an invisible male force outside of themselves; a moral force with rules and lessons, interpreted in every which way. Morals don’t apply to the rulers, but they are a gift to the masses, to keep them happy, because they naturally want to be good.

So, we’ve been living within the conditioning and under the authority of 1) do as you will, which places unbalanced humans in charge, and 2) do as God wills, which places moral rules, interpreted by unbalanced humans, in charge. Maybe this ‘no inner light’ experience was necessary to our evolution… that I don’t know. But if we needed to be in a spiritual dark age, brought near death, in order to align to what is within, it has been done and we’re ready for the changeover. Turn on the light.
There is something we all know: the ‘do as you will’ top humans destroy the feminine Mother Earth, distort the feminine human being, and denigrate the feminine wisdom within all. And the interpreters of the religion say it’s God’s will.

We have been on this destructive track for 6000 years. When thinking about this, I remembered the ‘thousand years being like one day to God’ message that we get from the Bible, and I also remembered that it says God created the world in six days and then he rested. Well, it’s the end of the six days, and as they must know, since they can read, their time is up. It’s time for them to rest and admire their creation.

And it is quite a creation… to be unbalanced enough to enslave and control and exploit humanity and attempt to kill the earth and all that’s in it including themselves. They did a bang-up job, and now we know what will happen if we ignore, fear, demean, even hate half of ourselves… our sacred heart, our inner trinity, our trans-formative inner sanctum.

When you want to ‘do as you will’, you have to sack the feminine. We see huge numbers of persons in power into pedophilia. Could a man horribly and viciously destroy human innocence if he was balanced… if the mother love was within him? Grotesque and hideous to think of, eh? This could be the ultimate example because it horrifies us so, but there are many other destruction's… so many.
There is an entire spectrum of humanity that would be frozen in their tracks if their own inner light were switched on. Envision the moment: there we find the end to violence, lust for power, slavery, rape and exploitation, theft and deceit, trashing of the earth and the peoples of the earth, and the grab for total control.

Unbalanced people in power do tend to keep the world out of balance, and an awful lot of people out of balance too. What do we want? Balanced people who can relate without harming anything: harmonic… that word must mean relationship without harm. We want harmony.

It’s not easy to find people in balance, but we can find many who are working on it and doing well. Bless us… we help each other. And if a harmonic world is possible, let the intention to create it originate in those who have ‘turned the water into wine’, integrated the most experience and gained the most wisdom. After all, we’re all in this for life’s sake: the love of life and of love, which is the only thing worth living for.

Love: that means the Sacred Heart must be the highest authority… Our sacred heart, within Us. The greatest love relationship that we can ever experience is with our own radiance, our own eternal spark of the God force. It is the divinity within, and within is ‘feminine’. Don’t be afraid of it.

Let’s go back to the master potter. He is making the container that holds the perfect ingredients from which something new is made. Remember when I said that’s a gorgeous image… the waiting, receptive, open invitation to transformation. I know you know: we’re the potter, and the pot, and the ingredients and the something new.

We are evolving, and we’re often at a new stage, drinking the new brew. There is so much to celebrate. Raise the glass… here’s to being human!

Transcending the Illusion of Disconnection

A Guide to Unity

If reality is unified, then we must also accept that everything is essentially equal.

Spirituality is a very personal affair regardless of the various pathways that one may take or disciplines that one may adhere to. Yet even though there is an abundance of different belief systems and avenues for spiritual endeavor, there is one universal agreement between them – the principle of unity.

Transcending the illusion of disconnection is a personal path.

There are many ways that one may be introduced to this philosophy. We may have been brought up around it via our family. We might have had a profound revelation in a one-off experience. Some are initiated through paranormal activity. Others just intuitively feel it. Altered mind states could have been the catalyst. A revolution could have occurred, through synchronicity deposing coincidence, or the lessons of assorted texts and teachings which all infer this similar conclusion. Or through a combination of channels.

The personal awakening is synonymous to the collective awakening.

Regardless of the series of events, teachings and resources that led to our personal awakening, together we have a responsibility to heal and grow our internal and external worlds. This is because the collective mental and physical landscapes that we inhabit are transcending their states of suffering, like we are. In unity, irrespective of how peaceful we have made our internal environment, our external environment is still a reflection of our collective fundamental nature – including what is in harmony and what isn’t.

A Global Metaphysical View

The nature of reality is unity.

Unity can be used as a universal term to describe the outcomes of various fields of thought. Examples include: Energy; Mind; Consciousness; Hologram; Light; Love; Spirit; the Source; the Field; the Akashic Field; the Zero-point Energy Field; Quantum Field of Possibilities; the Collective Unconscious; Undivided Wholeness; Nirvana; One; God etc. If these are all equal to each other in terms of their agreement that a unifying principle exists, then we have arrived at an agreed global metaphysical position which incorporates both our rational and intuitive hemispheres.

Earth’s global culture needs to heal.

Regardless of what reality is literally made of, whether its essence is of a material or immaterial nature, it’s irrelevant to our goals. As long as we agree that a property of reality is unity, and that unity inherently implies that everything is fundamentally equal, one, then together we can get on with making this earthly experience fair and peaceful for all.

In unity, the suffering of others is a reflection of our own suffering.

That is why an agreed metaphysical view for our global society has significant implications for our future. From both a personal and societal standpoint, as well as a rational and intuitive standpoint, we know to treat everyone and everything equally. The way we care for ourselves should be equivalent to the way that we care for others. Our philosophical and practical systems should also ensure that each person has access to the resources they need to adequately survive and thrive.

Suffering is pandemic across both (so-called) developing and developed nations.

No matter how far we may be personally removed from it, the reality is the majority of our fellow man is distressed from a lack of external and/or internal resources. The former is strongly influenced from an unequal distribution of food, water, shelter, infrastructure, education, medicine and political representation, whilst the latter from a lack of knowledge and skills in emotional regulation and psychological balancing, as well as a limited capacity to face and overcome the external challenges that can inhibit one’s inner peace.

Translating It into Practice

There are infinite expressions of unity.

When we individually undertake a process of spiritual introspection, we all arrive at the exact same place; unity. Yet when we translate that wisdom into practice, the result is a plethora of personal, philosophical and cultural differences. The spectrum of spiritual interpretation is why so many distinct religions exist; the expression of how the original perspective of unity manifested into religious practice was subject to social and human influences at inception and over time.

Regardless of the personal path we choose to take, spirituality is a journey of enlightenment for both the inner and outer realms.

Today, many people undertake this process of conscious introspection away from the pre-established context of religious models, so it is no wonder that there are so many individualized methodologies and interpretations of ‘spirituality’. And there’s nothing wrong with that either; there is no one strict way to live, and anyone who thinks they have all the answers probably doesn’t. As long as your path reflects the primary agreed principle of unity, and its inherent implications, then it should be embraced.

The Health and Growth of the Self

Therapeutic and developmental practices which harmonize all of our life vitalities ensures that we raise our vibration and align ourselves closer to our spiritual path.

We are all subject to suffering of the self and it is our personal role to transcend it. But our health is much more than is usually defined; it’s not just our physical and mental well-being. The reality is we have many layers of our life to take care of including our physical, psychological, emotional, philosophical, sexual, behavioral, creative, social and spiritual vitalities. With this in mind, we should be continually asking ourselves what areas need more attention and what strategies can we implement to heal and grow. We also need to find a true love for ourselves.

To be truly free, we must empower ourselves to lead our thoughts and emotions.

Even though we literally make the free choice on how we think, feel, act and live, we are still strongly influenced by our environment, such as parents, peers, culture, society, government and the age we live in. Therefore, as an adult we are both independent and conditioned agents. But we can transcend our conditioning. The time we become truly free is the time that we take full responsibility of ourselves and ensure that we, not anyone or anything else, are the most influential factor for how we evolve for the rest of our lives. That of course means taking full responsibility for how we think and feel.

If people act unjust, then justice will inevitably be served.

It’s the basics. Excuses which blame something or someone for our thoughts and feelings just don’t cut it on the spiritual path. Spiritually, we have experiences for growth; we are co-creators of our experience. Now this doesn’t mean that there aren’t consequences for the actions of others which hurt us, the response we provide is incorporated into the overall context of the negative and positive vibrations that they’ve attracted into their life.

Not only should we accept our experiences, but also respond to them accordingly.

The new age mantra that “everything happens for a reason” may be true in the sense that experiences have innate information that we can capitalize on to progress us on our path of enlightenment, but it is equally true that proportional actions need to transpire in response. Just like we should respond to the injustice we serve ourselves, we should also respond to that which surrounds us. The tricky part is determining what that response should be which is why we draw on both our rational and intuitive capacities to guide us.

If we process each experience as an opportunity to learn, regardless of how undesirable that experience is, we always get exactly what we need: growth.

It is true that we make so-called ‘mistakes’ which deliver us to our destiny; however that doesn’t mean we should make that same choice again. We should learn from it. There are innumerable times that we have had an undesirable experience which resulted in our growth, regardless if it was influenced from the actions of ourselves or others. And that’s what we need; to learn, to heal, and to grow. We need to harmonious our energies and become our new, more developed selves in every moment. When we conceive of our experience this way – where our wants are the healthy and unhealthy desires of our ego and our needs are the experiences we require for sustained growth – then we always have something to offer ourselves.

When we embrace our experience, we must develop a healthy balance between awareness, acceptance and action.

Every moment is therefore an opportunity to progress our health and well-being. When we treat ourselves and others disappointingly, we should process it in the context of our learning and then make amends. The same applies when somebody treats us poorly; when we are exposed to underdeveloped actions by others, we should embrace it as a part of us, as well as give a calculated response in return. After all, we have accepted that we are fundamentally united. For example, what information and energy can we embrace from it? Is there some action we can do to encourage the health and growth of both the internal and external worlds?

The Health and Growth of Society

Maximizing the impact we have as co-creators amplifies the awakening of our collective consciousness.

Mindful living is an integral aspect of spirituality. Allowing ourselves and others to make poor choices without negative judgment is vital, as is reasonable and realistic judgment in general. Radiating positive and loving vibrations is too. We should understand ourselves as a pulsing and energetic vibration – an instrument of sound adding to the orchestra of reality which encompasses us. We should lead from our heart and consciously influence the collective vibration of our shared reality.

It is as much our responsibility to undertake appropriate responses to our outside world as it is to our inside world.

This means being loving, patient, compassionate, empathetic and understanding. But as described above, it also means taking action to influence the health and growth of our society. It’s a misconception to think that just because everything is meant to be, that it will naturally balance itself out without our intervention.

The earth and our species needs help to come back into balance.

Just like there are some justified ramifications within our social models of law and ethics, there are also measures that we must apply in response to our external environment. This does not necessarily mean that the law should be taken into one’s own hands, but more so that as an individual within a global culture, actions need to be taken to rectify the injustices of our world which violate the philosophical principle of unity.

Caring for the external world really is as important as doing it for our own internal health and growth.

For example, our leading philosophical and pragmatic compasses are contributing to some major ecological, social and individual injustices – systems that need to be addressed through calculated measures. If we just sit back and allow it to continue, it will. That’s why collective action needs to balance these injustices out, so we need to decide how we will personally contribute to our shared goals.

It is a shared responsibility that we transform our world.

There are many injustices and social dysfunctions that currently plague our cultures. To heal that situation, we need to ensure that the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual vitality of every living being is cared for as our future develops.

Together we must act, united.

It is by having a true sense of the healing and growth that is required for both the inside and outside of us which reflect a holistic approach to spirituality. Once we have that awareness, we should aim for acceptance of why and how it needs to change, as well as the application of strategies to facilitate the therapeutic and developmental process that we and our society so desperately need to work through.

Together we are one.

Is Enlightenment Possible?

     There are plenty of ways we can find enlightenment, and they all require dedication to the spiritual path. Even though it’ll be worth our effort, enlightenment is probably the hardest thing we’ll ever experience because it requires us to seriously discern what about our life is keeping us from achieving our goal.

     Some seekers think enlightenment will just happen without any real effort or focus, and unfortunately, this isn’t true. We have to strive for it in a sense, but the only real ‘striving’ we need to do is in detaching our focus from the external and looking to our internal reality for the love and wholeness we seek.

     This world can be heavenly if we let it, and I don’t think we need to all-out renounce it like some spiritual teachers have told us. People feed heavenly and hellish qualities here, and we have a choice as to which qualities we want to feed each day.

     Those of us who are spiritually aware obviously want to feed the heavenly qualities, but as we’ve learned, it isn’t as easy as we initially expect. We’ll want to turn ourselves over to these qualities in a sense, but we don’t want to lose our uniqueness or individuality in the process.

     We’ve been told we’ll eventually transcend our sense of individuality as we merge with our creator and experience life as one consciousness, but that won’t happen for a long time and we still have our individuality while we’re on earth. We might as well embrace it (even though it’s technically an illusion), because we all have something unique to offer the planet’s restoration.

     Here, we’ll explore some of the things we can do to find enlightenment. The things we’ll explore here are only suggestions, and we should each find what works for us along the spiritual path; what helps us enlighten ourselves or at least reach a temporarily blissful state of consciousness.

     Beyond anything we read on the internet or in spiritual books, we have to find the way ourselves. We have to show ourselves the way back into a blissful state of consciousness, and the advice we’re given here is meant to help us along the path.

     We can all use assistance sometimes, and that’s exactly what our spiritual teachers intend to offer.

     The Upanishads tell us that simply learning about spirit isn’t enough – we have to find some kind of spiritual practice to assist us.

     Meditation is obviously important, but I don’t think it has to be a requirement. It’s an extremely helpful practice that we might want to embrace, but everyone reaches enlightenment in their own ways and as crazy as it sounds, some people don’t require meditation to enlighten themselves.

     I enjoy meditation and I’ll continue to practice it as often as I can, but we want to be careful with any external guidance we’re given because it’s based off of the knowledge and experience of the person who gives it. We’re each traversing our own paths, and some of us could very well find enlightenment without meditating even once.

     I’m sure it’d be hard, but it’s doable nonetheless.

     The Upanishads mention the importance of meditation again in another passage.

     “This Effulgent Self is to be realized within the lotus of the heart by continence, by steadfastness in truth, by meditation, and by superconscious vision.”

     We’re also told about the difficulty of knowing Source, which, admittedly, is eased when we practice meditation.

“The ancient, effulgent being, in-dwelling Spirit, subtle, deep-hidden in the lotus of the heart, is hard to know. But the wise man, following the path of meditation, knows himself and is freed alike from pleasure and from pain. … When a man is free from desire, his mind and senses purified, he beholds the glory of the Self and is without sorrow.”

     Letting the intellect rest is one of the best ways to connect with Source.

“When [your intellect] can rest, steady and undistracted, in contemplation of the Atman, then you will reach union with the Atman.”

     Speaking as Source, Sri Krishna tells us that love is the best and most effective way to connect with our creator.

“To love is to know me, my innermost nature, the truth that I am: Through this knowledge he enters At once to my Being.”

     We’re learning that love is the way back into a higher state of consciousness, but most of us have yet to really put this knowledge into play. It’s liberating to realize that love really is all we need, and it puts us on the path to embodying as much love, bliss and wholeness as we can.

     This is what’s great about enlightenment: It requires some difficult disciplines, but they’re all centered on becoming the loving beings we’ve always been. It’s a very simple goal, and the only hard part about it is actually achieving it.

     Constantly embodying love sounds easy at the surface, but as we quickly realize, it requires the renunciation of things that keep us from shining our light. This is the hardest part of the enlightenment path for most seekers, because giving up habits or attitudes that used to work for us can be an uncomfortable and painful process.

     It’s required to consistently embody love without any mind-driven hindrances, however, and even though it can be hard, it’ll be very worth it when we can flowingly express our love to everyone we meet.

     Dattatreya outlines some more qualities of the common enlightened person.

“He whose intellect is not agitated by desires, and whose sense organs are controlled; he who is gentle, pure, without possessions, not covetous, not greedy for food, serene, and steadfast; he who has taken refuge in the Self — he alone is a sage. …

“The sage is vigilant, profound, and steady, and has conquered the mind and the senses. He is humble and gives honor to all. He is well mannered, friendly, compassionate, and farsighted.”

     We’ll all embody these qualities eventually, but some of us still have some inner work to do before we can really embody them. We might embody them for a short time before something happens that makes us want to scrap them for anger or other negative, self-serving emotions, but we’ll eventually be able to express them consistently.

     We’ll eventually get to a point where we can constantly radiate our love without worrying about ourselves or how the things other people do affect us, but some of us still have some diligent inner work to do before we’re there. As long as we stay dedicated to the whole process, radiating our inner love will become a breeze.

     We’ll be glad we made the effort that’s necessary to heal ourselves and the world, and our positive influence will spread to everyone who’s had trouble enlightening themselves or embodying love for an extended period of time. We all want love, but most of the world has a long way to go before they can constantly enjoy or express it.

     We’ll get there in due time, and for now, those of us who are becoming aware might want to take the advice so many spiritual teachers have given while remembering to be our own teachers.        We’re here to help each other learn and grow, and this is why so many spiritual teachers have strived to help awaken others.

     We’re meant to find the way and help others find it too, and empowering ourselves (and each other) is one of the best ways to do it. With self-empowerment comes the realization that we really are infinite, and with this realization usually comes the desire to serve humanity’s evolution in any way we can.

     Once we realize we’re infinite and make a lasting effort to embody our inner love, everything starts flowing smoothly. It’s hard at first, but things get easier with every genuine effort we make; everything we do to spread the light we’ve just started to discover.

 

 

The Fear of Fear: How to Beat It

Fear is real enough isn't it?

I mean, there are times when each one of us feels ‘afraid’. If we didn't we most probably wouldn't be around to tell the story.

Biological fear is instinctual – but non biological fear is not instinctual. So firstly we have to sort these two out. Fear as an instinct is that inner warning bell – or shiver – which tells us that we are probably or actually – in danger. It needs heeding.

But fear also comes as something superimposed. A form of indoctrination which, renders us fearful; about things that we have no business being fearful about. And it is this type of fear that we need to get a grip on – and ultimately reject completely.

You see, fear in its non biological form, and is the single greatest weapon of mass destruction to our subtle, responsive state of being. The state that opens us to flows of creative energies, inspirations and actions. States of being which, in turn, have the greatest capacity to turn around the totalitarian regimes of oppression that hold up the pyramids of power.


No wonder the fear card is played to the hilt! The ruling cabal knows from experience that so long as it can keep people in an almost perpetual state of anxiety/fear, there’s not a chance that the creative energies will rise up in rebellion and depose them.

So there you have it. Fear is the key controlling agent of this era, and the media are being whipped into a miasma of false fear-mongering even as I write. So much so that you are supposed to be scared to even open your window – let alone your front door!

So one might conclude – that that is indeed a fear to fear. And one would not be wrong – except for the fact that this indoctrinated fear is 100% sham!

It is the instinctual fear which is the only valid version.

Thus, rather than quaking at the notion that a media created psychopathic terrorist is crouching just outside the garage door, we should say to ourselves “Hey, wait a minute, let’s get this in proportion.” Step back from such mind controlling games and see them for exactly what they are: top-down psy-ops for blocking us all from stepping out of our serfdom and acting from the predilection for joy and passion which is our birth right.

Be wary of those who claim that fear is ‘an illusion’. It is not. We cannot ‘escape’ fear by pretending it doesn't exist. That is the coward’s route to nowhere. We can, however, go face to face with our fears and explore their origins. Tease-out the entrenched or semi-entrenched symptoms – and have a good look at them.

Here, we are unearthing and bringing to light that which prefers the shadows and darkness: just like the fake psy-ops terrorists hiding behind the garage door.
By engaging these shadow elements and drawing them into the light of day, we are performing a critical part of the actions necessary to oust our personal oppressors. Particularly that oppressor Carlos Castaneda refers to as ‘the foreign installation’.

This ‘foreign installation’ – or archon/vampire as we tend to call it – is a good friend of the Illuminati bankster cabal. Both feed off the negative energies that fear produces. The corporate bankster cabal’s ‘control’ activities sport tentacles that reach out around the globe and pray on us, ‘monitoring’ our every movement. While the ‘foreign installation’ works from the inside – via insidious psychotic scaremongering and the introduction of simple ‘wrong thinking’. Between them, the cabal and ‘the installation’ cook up a nasty stew which reeks of deception, terror stoking and outright mind control.

So you see, fear is the chief tool of our oppression. The chief weapon of our self-paralysis. However, it can be rendered utterly inert and without power, once we recognize its origins and bring to light its phony role.

The process of conquering fear involves pin pointing the tell-tale signs, like: monetary obsessions, preoccupation with health, worry about one’s children’s futures, the insecurity of maybe not attaining the material – and even spiritual – ideal one has set one’s self, a general fear of the outside world and even the fear of fear itself; all these and more are manifestations of an ingrained indoctrination about the way we are ‘supposed’ to live and understand our lives. The act of breaking-free from our mostly self imposed prisons, leads to a period of great rejoicing. Rejoicing in the creative flowering of our newly unfettered spirits.

The great majority of fear blockages can be traced to the entrenched societal goals we have allowed ourselves (with the help of the foreign installation) to accept as valid. Whereas in fact, these goals are nothing to do with our true purpose here on Earth, they are simply the cunningly manipulated chess pieces of the military industrial complex’s endless war games. Our fear blockages simply trick us into unwittingly supporting the cabal’s oligarchical ambitions.

Give in to them – and very soon you are check mate. Stand up to them – and they dissolve in their own creation: fear.

To hell with that deeply manipulative war game!

Now we’re on the road to exposing it for what it is. And that means rooting out its slimy tentacles from our overburdened psyches – and consigning them to the proverbial garbage bin.
No longer can we afford to be held up in our onward passage by the deliberately placed banana skins of an aggressive, moribund status quo. The use of fear as a weapon of control has never been as overplayed as it is at this moment. It is being used as the last line of defense of a totalitarian psychotic dream. The whole political agenda reeks of it.

A new type of courage is called for in humanity now. The courage to; face our inner ghosts, and to name, shame and eject them. You will find that they don’t give in so easily. Don’t give up. Your life – and all life – depends upon your victory.

Remember, they are simply sycophantic agents of ‘the foreign installation’ which somehow or other, got installed in us human beings at some dark point of early history.

But now that we can identify the symptoms – we are half way to victory. Now that we can separate our biologically necessary fear from our non biological unnecessary fear, we have a greatly enhanced vision of the way forward. And that means freeing both ourselves, and our planet, from the tyrannical forces of oppression that otherwise render us perpetual slaves to their non biological fear-fueled power games.