These are very testing times. We are all feeling the challenge. It is also a time of opportunity, opportunity for perceiving our world with wide open eyes and making discerning decisions. Stretch your perspective. That is consciousness. And it requires courage and wisdom too. And that is growth. So, find the truth within yourself with courage and strength. Finding integrity, the ability to stand alone, is the road to discovering we are all One! One in God!

Everything is perception. I did not want to live in Texas;  I saw Texas as a red-neck state, a cowboy state, a great meat-eating state, a gun-loving state, unsophisticated.   But circumstances have brought me to live in Texas, and now I see Texas quite differently.  It is not at all as I had thought.  There are always invisible qualites that lie hidden from statistics and generalizations.  Next year I will have changed my perception again, and the year after that too, and so on, until at last I come closer to the truth.  The great ones, who have evolved, spiritualized themselves, see clearly, see the truth of things.  Until I have perfectly evolved myself my version of the truth will always be limited, be greatly prejudiced, and subject therefore to constant change.   However, what I can do is to accept this situation, to realize how the process of my evolution works – evolving my perception of things.   I too will then be on my way to spiritualizing myself.   Spiritualization exists only in the working on oneself – in going within, introspection.   Spiritualization is an interior process.  Evolvement, spiritualization is founded upon knowing the Truth – which is correct perception.

How can we practice desirelessness – one of the key injunctions on any serious spiritual path – when, for example, we are job-hunting?   We need that job and the payment it will give!   We desire with all our being to have that job!

Many new age advisers encourage one to use something known as the Law of Attraction, and advocate developing visualization skills.   So we are advised to visualize/imagine the circumstances, situation we wish to have in our lives.   This method almost never works, and if it does, it is most likely that the desired situation/circumstances were coming anyway.

We cannot attract to us what we do not have.   We must first of all have those corresponding qualities.   When we have those qualities, we activate the more valid law:  Like attracts like.   Thus, we must first change ourselves, so that what we need or want will come to us.

Patanjali (2nd century BC) taught what one could expect as the result of this practice:  wealth comes whenever one needs it;  all needs are met.

Happy changing!   It keeps one young!

There we find the lessons of love! There we find the book of life! Not on the television, but in all of nature. Look how the leaves of the trees lift in delight as the gentle breeze ripples through them, caresses them. Listen to their beautiful language as they whisper to one another. All is alive; nothing is what it seems. Then write a poem about what you experience. This begins to open doors that the subconscious has always held in readiness, but which the conscious mind was not aware of. Not aware of because our present culture strives to take us away from such awareness and potential autonomy. Our present culture militates against the deeper, the mystical to fix us firmly in the material world – for obvious reasons.

The ‘Golden Years’ is not just a euphemism, a cliche.   Everything is perception.   Perceived in the right way, we can realize that these last years before we leave the planet are a great opportunity.   Yes, there are irritations, like health, but these can be managed.   And the more we are conscious of the limited time left available to us, the better use we can make of it.   In so many ways this time of our lives is more precious than our youth.

 

I recently came across a young man, just about to graduate from high school.   He is very bright and has had a first class education.   Yet he is not going into banking, or  finance, or even into IT.   He has decided to apprentice himself to boat building.   He will never be rich, but he has a very good chance of happiness.

This is the gripping story of one girl’s journey from the darkness of gang life in London to the Light, passing through many trials and experiences on the way, including a sojourn in Glastonbury – the ancient location of the Court of King Arthur and his Knights, and home to Chalice Well Gardens – and an introduction to some of the Celtic lore of Ancient Britain, through a friendship with an old gypsy woman.

A fascinating tale of courage and mistakes unfolds as Kathy refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her, seeking to change her life and restore lost opportunities.
Her exploration of value systems concludes that the only salvation is good character and a love for nature and the Creator.