Do we need Gurus? That’a a good question.

Imagine we are in darkness and we see that bright light flashing at far, wouldn’t we be drawn to it like a bee to pollen. Well, not all flowers use bees for pollination, some use them as a source of food.

Or, let us say we are in the dark with only a lighter as source of light and we see someone with a big torch, we may most likely be tempted to walk alongside that person. Remember in school how the child with the coolest toy was rarely contravened and blindly followed.

What is a guru or spiritual leader or whatever sophisticated name is being used nowadays? It is someone who has gain a certain knowledge before another one in the same field of interest, hence the tendency to follow, no need to reinvent the wheel.

The word knowledge is important here. We gain knowledge so that we may use it to achieve something, knowledge by itself does not achieve anything, it must be put to use so as to manifest something. Let us take the example of mathematics, we go on to learn the maths, the knowledge of maths can then put to use in a variety of field base on a person’s subjective field of predilection. The role of any good teacher would be to enlighten the mind of the student about the different prospects of the knowledge instilled. The teacher’s predilection should not become the student’s predilection, it could, if the student is making an informed decision.

So where do we stand?

• The first paragraph about the bee is related to the false gurus and the like
• The second paragraph is about sophism
• The third paragraph tells us that knowledge in itself is neutral it is the specific nature of the individual which will trigger the path where the knowledge will be put to use

Hence, we need more teachers and less gurus. Don’t get me wrong, gurus do have their importance, but the way things have been going on for eons now is delaying the enlightenment of so many. Do the maths..which is better? to have 1 enlightened individual every 10 years or 10 enlightened individuals every year.

Gurus and the kind are for those who have not yet felt the urge for change. For those already embarked on the journey, you should avoid contact with spiritual leaders altogether. The knowledge has already been imparted to you, it is just that you are not aware of it.

On a spiritual journey, the first hurdles are to let go of the old and to learn about empathy/compassion. It is only after having grasped the essence of empathy and compassion that one is ready to continue the journey. If you are following a spiritual leader, that person will put you at use in his/her field of predilection, it may have to do with environment, helping third world countries or any other genuine objectives. The thing is, you will learn only a fragment of what is empathy/compassion in relation to the field of predilection of that spiritual leader. There is nothing wrong to it, only that you will never reach you full potential that way, a bit like using a sport car to plough a field or a tractor to run a race, both are out of context. The road to empathy and compassion is a solo journey, you may have a partner with you, but even that is rare.

The followers referred to above are being delayed in their progression along the path, for the true seeker, one not caught in the embroilment of gurus, there would be a tendency to look down on these followers. DON’T. They are the blocks at the bottom of the pyramid for now, the bricks of the pyramid, however, is in a perpetual movement as if the bricks from the bottom flows to the top and back to the bottom endlessly. The resultant effect is not a brick reaching the top, it is the continuous improvement of that pyramid. And, that improvement is not a linear one, meaning no one person is more advanced that the other.

This is but the beginning of trying to understand the route to empathy and compassion. We’ll develop on that later on.

Thank you for reading.

Ciao

Leap of faith

We all arrived at this point in diverse circumstances. One thing some of us may share though is the fact that at a certain point our safe world seemingly ceased to be safe, familiar structures became less supportive, we seemed to be running out of luck.

You will note that these seemingly disagreeable occurrences becames more and more frequent as you persist to resolve problems in your life using familiar structures, acquaintances. relatives, friends. Nothing seems to work for you. That’s not true. Everything is working fine for you, it is the way forward that is wrong.

Remember all the difficult time you’ve had in your life and how you dealt with them. You’ll agree that none amongst us would enjoy going through one of those time again, even though, when we think back, we could be saying to ourselves “some good came out of it” or “i’m more mature because of that experience”. But in reality, we would have prefered to learn the lesson in a more pleasant manner. The fear we experienced at the occurrence of a particular event does not shade off over time, it lodges itself in our subconscious mind and acts as a defence mechanism. But the defence style in this case is to cling on to familiar structures that supported us in the past or avoid similar situations altogether.

When we talk about leap of faith, we tend to understand that we place our trust in something higher than us and go on to proceed blindly into something new and unfamiliar. Well, yes, we do place our trust into something higher than us, but the meaning of leap of faith is not limited to that only, in fact that part is the easy one, what complements it and allows that faith to yield manifestation is something we are responsible for – we need to let go of our fears.

The difficulty is that we are not talking of the fears that lies in our conscious mind, but rather the fear that lies in the unconscious mind and which is tightly associated to the structures of our life.

How do we do this then?

Follow these recommendations:

• Take stock of your life – this will help you identify when the fear factor has been more acute in your life
• Recognise that all events in your life, prior to when the need for change was realised, was a necessity to enable you incorporate important lessons into your life. How it happened, why it happened, whether you were right or wrong, is of no consequence here. You have to let go and move forward anew, just like a snake dropping its skin and moving on.
• Learn how to be happy with yourself. It is important that your happiness does not rest into another’s actions or reactions. Do not allow others to make you angry nor happy
• During your daily affirmations make an intention to proceed into the unknown whilst being aware that better is coming to you, BUT affirm to yourself that you cannot foresee the form it will take at present and ask that all be revealed in the right time
• Make time for your daily meditation. 30 minutes, where you will sink into tranquility until the way forward is revealed to you (note that each attempt to force things will only set you back)
• Enjoy the simplicity of the now

Releasing dependency on others, especially emotional dependency begets freedom. It is that freedom which will take away all fears.

Doing the above on a daily basis gradually leads to a state where one is satisfied with its current condition, new hobbies and passion will reveal themselves, new groups may be joined. A word of warning here, if you do join new groups of people, do not be dependent on them to fill a void in your life, it should rather be a way for you to observe different individuals in an unprejudiced manner and without any expectation. Same as if you were observing birds, ants, or whatever.

The above recommendations is not aimed at precipitating matters, but rather preventing consequent delays.

The truth can only unfold once the mind is at rest. The primordial step is to get the mind at rest.

A leap of faith starts with us having faith in ourselves, our capacity to be on our own and feel the ecstasy of experiencing life.

These are preambles which sets the foundations for compassion and empathy. Spiritual Laws can only be approached in two ways, either you are touched by the Divine like Saints/ Prophets, OR, you are meant to seek it. And the muscle you will use the most here is your beloved heart, hence the importance of compassion and empathy.

Good day(night) to you all and …..have faith.

Religion

To understand the role religion should be playing in our life let us first state some facts that most of us would agree on:

• We are all equal before God
• We are not all equal in the manifest world

The reason why we are born here and not there is not the question to be asked, cause it will only bring a need to believe in something we cannot prove.  Let us drop it and move on.

We are not equal in the manifest world – FACT

This inequality and the demography of the world population gave rise to different beliefs (religions)   and it suited the indigenous people in each part of the world, which was kept quite segregated by lack of communication and transport.

In today’s globalised world and pluralism of society we are exposed to all existing beliefs system and can be easily seduced by that one or this one, or this can lead to sectarianism in other cases.

But we must not forget that the element of morality in each indigenous system of belief is resultant from its demographic manifest, the unmanifest being understood (supposingly) only by the priest, gurus, and the kind .  To engage on a spiritual journey we must first disengage from the manifest element of our belief system.  What is the “manifest element”, well it is the notion of good and evil.  It is pointless to disengage from one manifest to engage another one.

Remember, you are seeking the Spiritual Truth which is the unmanifest.

In our article “Navigating the spiritual path”, we said that engaging a spiritual journey is experiencing an increase awareness and a shift in consciousness.  This increased sensitivity should not be put to use in imposing our personal belief system to another, NO.  It should be used to further our understanding of our own religion so as to remove all element of “belief ” in it.  Attaining this is “bliss”, seeing the truth in everything.

Having said that, there would be occasions where you would be attracted like a magnet to another belief system, or you would feel the need to experience another religion.  The reason behind the urge is irrelevant.  Should you act on it? YES.  Act on it, but adopt the following guidelines:

• Understand its most basic form of worship, i.e. one which is done by almost all indigenous followers of that faith – really the basics.
• Do it everyday at dawn and at dusk
• Address the Deity or higher beings concerned and humbly express your intention of exploring that belief system
• Do not drop your own religion, rather append the new to it
• Do not, i repeat, do not BELIEVE anything you see on that particular religion except the Deity’s name and basic form of worship..
• Most important of all, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF
• Now, your resolve is important too, this simple prayer should be enough:
  • “Salutation to …………. , i do not know the cause of my urge to integrate this religion, i call upon thou to guide me through the process and bring to me what is best for my spiritual  advancement.  I ask for forgiveness for any mistakes i may be doing in the process of worship”
• Doing this, if you are destined to embrace something new, it will come to you.  You must believe that you are worthy of receiving.   

So, religion? Yes. But Keep it to yourself.

Navigating the spiritual path

A shift in consciousness coupled with an altered awareness is what is happening to you.  Why you? Do not seek a logical reason, there are none.  In fact a major lesson on that journey would be to free yourself from bondage of logical understanding, but not before having learned to navigate the waters where you presently are.

The cause may be great pain or simply boredom, but whatever the reason, once you experience a shift in consciousness and altered awareness, the things that will help you are:

• Be happy and content with your current environment and situation to the best you can (always try to find the good in a situation), whatever it may be, Concentrate with getting your basic needs satisfied, and do not feel regret over losses.
• Be resilient towards things that are out of your control, specially negative things. 
• Being satisfied and thus positive just recite this affirmation when you wake up and before you go to bed:

“Nothing stays the same forever – EVERYTHING CHANGES – my life is changing in positive ways because I am probing my true self – Dear [THE HIGHER BEINGS YOU BELIEVE IN] help me see it, feel it and help me manifest all my needs and wants on this plane”.

“My Ego is most powerful, I respect thy power, thy power lies in my hands, now I take it back and I thank you for everything”

• Start a healthy lifestyle to the best you can depending on the society you live in.
• Try to be independent for your income.
• Eliminate the need of third parties to be happy, I am not suggesting you to be a recluse, but rather to be happy and contended with your own self. If your happiness is not dependable on others, you will no longer experience sadness in any given situation, but rather you will start developing the muscles of empathy and compassion.
• Find time to meditate at least 30 minutes every day.

Getting through this phase, you would slowly feel lighter and lighter about life and it will now be easier for you to let go of your past and detach from it.  Detachment does not necessarily mean severing the old altogether, but rather changing the perspective of seeing things.  Although it is true that a complete change in scenery helps, it is really a subjective matter, best dealt individually.

Aiming to detach from your old self in that way will empower you with compassion and empathy.

And during this transformation, the question you will be asking yourself is: when to act and when not to act, remembering that an omission is a form of action.  Believe me, it’s not as clear cut as it seems.  Remember, if you truly are embarking on a spiritual path, you are aiming to understand the Spiritual Law.  You will not find it in books or with Gurus etc, in fact after 23 years probing i am quite certain that in our current form (i.e. human) we can only grasp a blurred image of it.   But that is what most of us can take and it will suffice to  bring us up to the next level of our natural evolution.

My salutation to you all.

 

Hello and welcome to you all –

Meditate on this beautiful message,

“I am not what most people think, but to defend myself would be to sink to a lower level than i feel comfortable with, i am with the Divine, just as you are, and it is here that i choose to reside.
― Marie magdalene

 

With these words full of wisdom from Marie Magdalene we will forge ourselves a place in this era – refusing the constant bullying of the self and allowing the Divine within all of us to shine its light blissfully.

Don’t be afraid to drop us a line to say “Hello YV Angel!”.

I’m glad you’re here to join us!