Guided Meditation

One of the most powerful and useful tools in meditation is the “guided meditation”
If you believe that we exist on parallel universes or if you just believe that the human mind can conceive infinite outcomes of a certain scenario, is up to you.
The cert fact is that if we pose a certain question or quest to our subconscious mind, we will receive the optimum answer each time – some how :)

This is also the most difficult of the meditations techniques to perform.
It requires that you have already mastered the “relaxation” and the “contemplation” meditation.
(So you may have to wait a year or so before you try this :)
But I want to finish this series of posts on meditation, so here it is my final advice to you.
(Anything beyond this point would be for you and I, yet to be explored.)

Let’s say that you are a physicist working on the grand theory of unified physics, or whatever you are working on.
You go into your regular meditation and when you reach the state of contemplation with a good, clear visual, you gently start “guiding” the scene to the following scenario:

You are in Sweden at the Nobel Prize Ceremony and you are announced to be the winner of the Physics award for the work you have done.
You get to the podium and start explaining to the audience how you have solved and discovered whatever you want to discover.
You repeat this scenario until you are able to clearly see and understand everything.
(Incidentally many of great scientific discoveries have been made during a dream state.)

But you don’t have to be a scientist to use this method.
You can be a musician imagining the debut of your first symphony.
Or you can be a painter at the opening of your first gallery.
Or even you can imagine yourself on your first date with your future spouse.
The uses to this technique are limited only by your imagination.

Like I said before; these are my own “experiences” and this is how far I have come in my practice and understanding of the spiritual world.
There are many practices and techniques out there and you can experiment and find your own path.
I put a great deal of emphasis on practicality and not that much on religious side of spirituality.
Like my relationship with my physical father, my relationship with my spiritual father is intimate and personal.

So let me know how your practice and journey goes.
By this time I should be back from my vacation.
So I am curious of how is everybody doing?

Intern Net

I was studying to get my hypnotherapist license.
(This was about 16 years ago.) And part of the program was hands on practice.
We – the students – were encouraged to practice on anybody that would volunteer for “experimentation” – which is a really bad idea; do not volunteer!

So I was working with a friend of mine that had a strange affliction:
She was afraid of cats.
Nothing major – I thought.
Some early childhood drama involving cats that had left some buried trauma in the subconscious.

I did an induction and then started a time regression.
I asked her to regress – to go back in time – to the first time she had experienced that feeling of anxiety towards cats.
And she did.
The only problem was that she did not go to her childhood, she went to antique Egypt.

She told me this strange, and very elaborate story, of being a girl in a temple.
She was in charge of cleaning after some holy cats and she was being punished for not doing a very good job.
She could name the priestesses and describe in great detail everything in the temple.
I was completely perplexed – they did not teach us that in school.

The way I understood – up to that point – the inner workings of the human mind was like this:
The human mind is like a computer.
We have the I/O cards – eyes, ears, nose, mouth and touch.
We have a RAM – the short term memory – and we have a Hard Drive – the long term memory.
And of course we have the CPU – the part of the brain in charge of reasoning.

According to this model we are born with a BIOS – the human instincts and whatever abilities and qualities we inherited from our parents through our DNA – and everything else is programmed – learned – as we grew up.
Inside of our memories should be nothing except that, but as I was exploring this strange new world I discovered more and more things that were not supposed to be there.

So the only conclusion I could deduct is that there was something else about the brain we didn’t know about.
We are connected to an “intern net”
We are getting outside “information” in ways we are not aware of.
Here is a very interesting VIDEO for you to watch

Contemplative Meditation

Have you ever witnessed a sunset so beautiful, so majestic that it took your breath away?
Have you ever had that spiritual experience of wonder, that “wow” moment, when your mind and soul opened up to a higher understanding?
Of course that would be just for a brief moment because the instant we will feel that way we would try to analyze, to grab and hold the experience and of course that would be the end of it.

If you want to know what “contemplation meditation” feels like that would be the closest thing to it.
Contemplation meditation is an altered state of mind in which you experience a sense of wonder.

As you continue to practice the relaxation meditation you will observe on the back of your mind some strange, minute, random, things happening.
You will perceive glimpses of images and strange sparks of light.
You will perceive sounds and sensations, fragments of memories and emotions.

These “anomalies” popping up randomly, without any rhyme or reason, are the workings of your subconscious mind starting to surface into your conscious mind.
Actually the process would be exactly the opposite; your conscious mind is starting to peer, dive into your subconscious :)

We are using less than 10% of our brain power to reason and think.
The other 90% of our brain is running everything else from the complex system we call the human body to mental tasks like memory and emotion management.
We take all that work for granted.
We never think much about our immune system or digestive system, unless something wrong happens to us.
We also get only some glimpses of the workings of the subconscious mind when accidentally we become aware of our dreams.

So as we are practicing in our meditation this process of “contemplation” will be a natural progression.
You do not have to do anything special just to be aware of the “grabbing” and “analyzing” tendencies of your mind and gently let go.
In time, the little spark and glimpses will become clear images and you will enter what many call a “lucid dreaming” state.
This will be your first real exploration of your subconscious mind.

Here is a good video: HOW TO MEDITATE
The video would be fantastic if it did not make any references to religion but that is my personal preference :)
Have fun and keep up the practice!

Magic

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke
“Any sufficiently badly-written science is indistinguishable from magic.”
Aaron Allston

I do not like to look at things in a scientific manner and don’t like to look at them in a superstitious manner either.
I always like to look at things in a rational manner.

By that I mean that I do not believe in magic and supernatural as explanation for the spiritual occurrences.
Magic and supernatural are just labels we attach to things we do not understand.
There is nothing super or sub natural.
God itself is as natural as nature can be.

Of course I do not take the scientific point view on spirituality either.
Just because you say something doesn’t exists you can’t make it disappear.
I’m sorry but the world we live in is not only a material world; it is as much or even more a spiritual world and the scientific community will have to come to grips with that reality sooner or latter.

If we look of some of the things that we thought were “magic” a long time ago, like talking bushes and magic mirrors that showed images from far away, we realize that they are not “magic” anymore.
We send pictures through radio waves, talk on telephones, make birthday cards that sing and fly to the moon.

“That is no magic” you will say “That is just technology” but try to explain that to a tribesman living in the Amazon jungle and he will tell you that it is magic.
Walking on water is magic to us not because it is supernatural but because we don’t understand how it is done.
Once you understand how something is done, it is not magic any longer.

We know so little about the human mind and about the spiritual world.
Actually know more about our oceans and about the universe than about our mind.
We have not even scratched the surface of the spiritual world.
We are about were alchemist were before modern chemistry arise:
90% superstition and about 10 % knowledge.

So you might look at this and see a dismal situation.
Or you can look at it and see a great opportunity.
Ether or we have a lot of work ahead of us.
I hope you are practicing your meditation technique ;)

Relaxation Meditation

“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”
Swami Sivananda

Like I mentioned in my last post “meditation” is just a label describing a certain state of mind.
We all have experienced this altered state of mind in a natural occurring form.
If you have ever exhausted yourself on a mental task – like doing your taxes or working long hours on computer – you might have experienced a momentary lapse of reason.
You might have found yourself staring at the computer screen with nothing in your mind at all.

If the brain was a muscle, meditation would be the complete relaxation and let go, completely limp of the brain.
It is the cessation of all conscious thought.
Or to put it in the simplest form – relaxation meditation is “spacing out” at will.

The first thing to do is to find a comfortable position.
There are many schools of meditation that insist in specific positions of meditation – the most mentioned being the “lotus” position.
But since I suffer from a lower back pain and being allergic to religious dogma I prefer lying on my back in my bed – which also gives me a really good excuse to fall asleep – another good side benefit of meditation.

The second step is tricking your mind into not thinking – which, if you think of it, is an oxymoron since you can’t control your mind not to be in control.
So the trick is to focus your mind on something else than your own thought process.
Once again there are different techniques.
The classical method is the breathing method.

In this method you follow, watch or concentrate on the air coming through your nose into your body and going out. Some people count, time, the length of inhale and exhale but I found that distracting to the process of quieting down of the mind.

Personally I prefer the “OM” meditation.
I have a CD with an "OM" chant for 15 -20 min.
I play the CD while I’m comfortably lying in my bed with my eyes closed and in my mind I join the chorus of monks in their chant.
The hamming will produce an instant cessations of the thought process.
The mind will quiet down and enter a state of total relaxation.

Here is a place you can download a clean OM CHANT
This kind of meditation is not much of a spiritual journey but it is an essential step in preparing your mind to become that vehicle of exploration.
You may choose to stay at this level and enjoy all the health benefits of meditation.
Or you may choose to go further in your practice and step into the ocean of spirituality.

Spiritual practice

“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal.
It can't be organized or regulated.
It isn't true that everybody should follow one path.
Listen to your own truth.”
Ram Dass

There are many spiritual practices going around.
Everything from scientology to transcendental meditation.
From anti depressant drugs to catholic sacraments.
From hypnosis to psychosis.
One for every budget and taste :)

My personal practice is meditation.
(For those of you that have never done it, it might sound like a good waste of time, like a lot of doing nothing when you could do something more constructive.)
But so far – after trying almost everything available out there – I found meditation to be the best suited practice for spiritual exploration.

Meditation is actually just a label describing a particular practice.
There are a lot of other practices like, prayer, chanting, yoga, hypnosis or self hypnosis, that are just different packages of the same thing.
In essence all spiritual practices use an altered state of mind to open a door into the subconscious and if you believe in it, into super-conscious.

I like meditation because it can be practiced without any religious strings attached.
You do not have to join a church or a cult and you don’t even have to believe in God.
It is also relatively easy to do. It doesn’t require any equipment and it can be practiced almost anywhere at any time.
Also there are many health benefits coming out of meditation – and this is not BS – Meditation is one of the few techniques that have been scientifically tested and proven to benefit your physical health.

(There are religious practices that will deliver a greater punch – at the expenses of giving up the control of your experience – but I am not very kin on organized religions – I am more of a free spirit – but for those of you that are adventurous enough I have to mention that other paths are available.)

But if you decide to practice meditation you will soon find out that meditation can also be a tool for exploration beyond the confines of our consciousness.
I know, some of you might not believe that such a wonderland exists but frankly we do not have a choice on the matter.
What lies behind the realm of human consciousness is up to the spiritual explorer to find out.
You have to see it and experience it yourself and don’t take anybody’s word for it.

Talking to God

“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)


If you pay attention to the holy scriptures you might be able to see how our forefathers, our spiritual leaders and prophets have come to the understanding of the word of God.
If you look carefully you will realize that all the moments of revelation, the moments when we got access to a higher awareness, a higher knowledge, were moments of solitude.

Where did Moses get his commandments?
According to the Bible Moses went on Mount Sinai, alone, praying for 40 days before God gave him the 10 commandments.
Where did Buddha get his sutra?
Well, according to the legend he sat, alone, under the Bodhi tree meditating for 49 days before he got his enlightenment.
Do you see a little similarity here?

It is not that God doesn’t want to talk to us.
It is that we are too busy to listen to him.
We are too easily distracted by the sensationalism of the media, by the glitter and magic of Hollywood or simply by the noise around us, to hear what God has to say.

We are continuously in a state of hyper excitation.
It is this continuous bombardment with fear, impending doom, global pandemics, war, crime or simply junk gossip.
We are suckered like little children with the rattle of mass media while the thieves are emptying our pockets.

On top of that we have our “personal” problems.
Our little drama is going in our head 24/7 and even at night when we go to bed our minds are still preoccupied with the problems of the day.
So you see the “system” is rigged so you will never find the truth.

It might sound simplistic to you but before you can hear anything you have to learn how to listen.

The sacred Book

I know that one time or another we all had this crazy thought that life would be so much easier if it came with a user’s manual that would tell us exactly how it works and what to do.
Well, believe it or not we do have such manual.

You are the question, the puzzle, the quest, the discovery to be made.
You are the path, the road and the journey.
You are the obstacle on the road but also the power to overcome it.
You are the solutions to all the problems.
You are the destination, the end result and the final destination of life.

You are the beginning and the end of everything and you are perfect in any way right here and right now.
There is nothing missing, nothing lacking in you to be perfect.
You have all the love, the joy, the intelligence and talent.
You have the knowledge and the power to do and to be anything your heart desire.
All you have to do is to experience it.

How would you know that red is red and green is green if you were never taught that?
How would you know the beauty of a sunset or the harmony of a song if that knowledge wasn’t part of you?
How would you know a truth you have never heard before, if that truth was not already known to you?

You are the truth.
You are the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud and the Sutras.
You are the holy parchment that fire doesn’t burn and water doesn’t wash away.
You are the word of God that time will not forget and lies will not corrupt.

The truth is written into your very being, into your DNA so nobody will be a stranger to the word of God.
Not the sailor lost at sea nor the shepherd on the top of the mountains.
The knowledge you seek you have always carried with you so you would have it in your darkest, loneliest hour.
No matter how far from the world you get you’ll never be far from God.

So the problem is not that we don’t have the knowledge.
The problem is that we were taught to look for answers outside.
The problem is that we are waiting for the answers to be given to us by the media, scientists, scholars or our religious leaders.

Nobody has the answer of who you are and what your destiny is; except you.
You are the answer you seek.
You are the sacred book.
Why would God give that answer to anybody else?

Changing the world

My six year old daughter came to me the other day with a big apple and asked me to take a bite.
Those of you that have children know exactly what I’m talking about.
Small kids can’t eat an apple unless it is cut into smaller pieces or bitten first.

When people ask me how do I attain enlightenment or how do we solve the world’s problems, I have a similar feeling.
I feel like I have to bite into a watermelon.
It can’t be done unless you cut it into small pieces.

I understand the frustration of some of you that are looking for answers but you have to understand my frustration too.
It is hard to write a post on spirituality with a beginning and an end and try to make some sense at the same time.

Spirituality is like a thread that goes from deep inside our individual being into our relationships, our families, our communities, our countries, our planet, the universe and back into our subconscious mind.
It all connects together in a never ending looping and evolving web of causes and effects.
It affects everything and it determines everything; the quality and outcome of our whole life.
I know it is a corny image but it is “the circle of life”.

There is nothing more important in our lives than the beliefs we hold.
What we believe determines how we act.
Our beliefs determine who we are and in turn “we” the individuals are the foundation of the society.
If we want to change the world we have to challenge and change the current set of beliefs; to change how we think and act.

The problem I have with that is that I do not believe you can, or should, try to change another human being.
It is like the damn thing we are doing in Iraq.
You can’t impose democratic change at gun point.
It is like forcing a woman to have sex in the name of love.
If you have to use a gun it’s called rape – at least in the communist country I grew up in.

So by sharing my thoughts and beliefs with you I am going against my own philosophy, some how.
I do not like to preach and teach.
I’d rather have a dialog or a debate where I can learn and grow as well.
But I don’t know any other way to connect with you and that bothers me – in a way.

Divided we fall

If you have 6 minutes to spend I would like you to watch this:
VIDEO

You turn on the TV and you see the Amazon forest being burned to the ground.
You see tanks rolling, bullets flying, airplanes dropping bombs on villages and cities.
You see corporations making billion of dollars in profit while children in the world are dying of starvation and disease.
And you ask yourself what a person like me can do against all this?
And the answer is simply: “Nothing”

I am sorry if I sound insulting to those of you that call themselves pacifists, environmentalists or any kind of activist for noble causes, but you are just kidding yourselves if you think you have a chance of wining your battle.
You can’t stop the rolling of tanks and bombers.
You can’t save the rain forests and the whales.
Because you can’t stop billion dollar corporation from making billion dollar profits.

As long that you only continue your fight to save the trees and the children, the whales, the air and the water, you are always going to lose.
I wish some how I had the power to change your mind, to make you see that this battle is not about whales and trees but about human minds and souls.
The ones that control the minds of the people are the ones that control the world.
To save anything you have to first liberate the people, to break the chains off their mind and souls.

We all call ourselves democrats, republicans or liberals.
We are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, pacifists, environmentalists, pro life, pro choice, gay, straight, middle class or working class, white, black, Hispanic or oriental.

How many of you think of themselves as the consciousness of the universe?
How many of you feel and think: I am two eyes of a 14 billion eyes seeing.
I am one mouth of 7 billion moths taking.
I am the thought and consciousness of this planet.

This is how far we have to go.
But it would be nice even if we just realize that we have been divided and pitted against each other.
If for a moment we would look at each other and not see enemies but human beings.
If we would stop for a moment from accusing and fighting each other, join our forces and turn that energy in solving our problems.
We could solve any problem, no matter how daunting.

Toghether we stand

“Coming together is a beginning;
keeping together is progress;
working together is success.”
Henry Ford

You and I are just like the little ant in my last post.
We go around in life, facing challenges and obstacles, and after trials and tribulations and some time heart breaking experiences, we learn the right way of doing things, we discover the right path.
Unlike the ants thou, we do not teach that experience to others, we do not share our path with our neighbors, with our fellow men.
We keep the morsel of truth or wisdom for our selves and let the others go through life facing the same obstacles and perils.

This however is not how things used to be.
This is rather a phenomenon of the modern times we live in.
For thousand of years we have passed our wisdom from generation to generation.
We had our traditions, our customs and rituals we had our coming of age rites and passages.
We had holydays and celebrations we had a spirit of belonging and continuity.

That all stopped when we entered the “ME” era.
All that was seen as an obstacle in the glorification and adulation of “ME” was removed from social life.
“US” had become a dirty word and “ME” was the new rage.
What nobody saw is that “ME” is also “LONELY” “ALONE” and “DESPERATE”

In this new era we have lost the ability to love.
Love has become a hurtful experience and we have learned to avoid it.
We have lost the ability to communicate and debate.
We don’t trust anymore because we’ve been used and abused.
We have grown more and more polarized and divided.
We have become lonely, alone and desperate.

There is no redemption out of the “Me” trap.
Love is a verb. You need somebody to love; you need somebody to be loved.
Trust is a two way street; to have a friend you need to be one.
You can’t be successful, happy or complete, alone.

The only way we will be able to evolve is as a community.
The only way to survive as specie, is to learn how to work together.
The day we will realize that; what happens to our community to our fellow man is happening to us.
The day that we realize that; we are all hurt and scared and lonely and we all need each other to survive.
The day we gather the strength to reach out, to make “US” more important than “ME”
That is the day of our awakening, the day of our redemption.

Spirituality

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
Albert Einstein

What I like about science is the belief in searching for truth no matter what.
Although some scientist are looking into the canonization of science and have declared some truths absolute, therefore unquestionable, taking science a first step towards scientific dogma.

Religion used to be propelled by the same search for the truth.
Jesus and Buddha were truth seekers and their revelations were revolutionary at that time.
Although over time all religions have become dogmas.
Now days all religions are declared absolute. There is no more searching for the truth and any questioning of the dogma is deemed heresy.

But what we have in term of spiritual knowledge today is 2000 years old.
What once was revolutionary today is obsolete.
Who is the moron that still believes God is a white bearded man sitting on a golden throne in the clouds, surrounded by angels?
If that was the case, we would have angels sucked in jet turbines daily and by now some 747 would have knocked God down of his throne for sure.

The spiritual experience we had 2000 years ago was written in the language and the knowledge constrains of that time.
The spiritual experience we are having today is not suitably explained any longer by that language and that knowledge.
Religion has become a prison for the truth an obstacle against spiritual development.

I don’t blame any of the atheists that are making fun of us for believing in the “boogie man” I actually agree with half of what they have to say.
Now, the problem with so called scientists is that they continue to see reality one sided.
Only the material world is real. The spiritual world is not real therefore not worth even talking about it.

In this scientific materialistic world everything from homosexuality to obesity is explained through DNA mutations.
Un happiness and low self esteem are just chemical unbalances and can be cured by magic pills.
You don’t need love, gratitude, tolerance, generosity or any of the BS meditation crap anymore because according to them happiness comes in a pill.

But as the scientific zombification of the general population continues many of the formerly believers in the “happiness pill” have come to the realization that the real spiritual, human experience can not be replaced by a pill.
As, I may add, many religious followers of the church doctrine have come to the realization that fear of eternal damnation and the milk and honey of the promised heaven are not enough to replace a fulfilling human experience either.

We are in the middle of a spiritual crisis.
On one hand religion will not accept the fact it is obsolete.
On the other hand science will not accept spirituality as a fact.
So the only thing that is left is to look through the rubble of scientific data and the dirt of religious scriptures for the few diamonds of truth.
We have to paste together all the knowledge of the past with the emerging knowledge of today and come up with a better understanding of our reality and our human experience.

Until that coherent new understanding will arise people like me will be considered nut jobs, heretics, quacks, charlatans, ego maniacs, schizophrenic, freaks.
But that is OK, it is the company I choose to keep and I understand why many will look at me that way.