mystikegg.com - A Mystical Guide to Enlightenment

Axis: Bold as Love

Jimi Hendrix was arguably one of the best guitar players of all time, his classics Purple Haze, All Along the Watchtower, and his rendition of the Star Bangled Banner defined a generation. The sixties generation was a time of unprecedented freedom, experimentation, defiance of the status quo and the expression of love in all it’s forms. It was indeed a bold generation, but what happened. How did all this free love and peace and experimentation turn into the ‘me generation’? How did this generation which marched against the Vietnam war send troops to Afghanistan and Iraq? How did they leave an environmental legacy that may be beyond repair and the impact of which will not be fully felt until 2050? How did “Love the one your with” turn into the love of greed, power and money? How do this generation lose their love? How do we the next generation get it back? As the Black Eyed Peas asked “Where is the Love”

Some say that the boomers in their retirement will come out in droves and use their vast stores of entrepreneurship, leadership and experience toward philanthropic ends, that voluntarism which has been on the decline will start to surge forward. There is some evidence that the 60’s generation may still find the their way to give back and ensure that their children inherit a planet that is better off then the one they received. Some examples include the foundations that Bill and Melinda Gates and Oprah Winfrey have founded. These provide real examples of where the love is at. Those that have been blessed with unlimited abundance have an obligation to give back to their societies and indeed the human race. For all of the evil of Islam that some in the west proclaim one of the Five Pillars of Islam is to give back to the community up to 10% of one’s earnings. Just as Friday prayer, observance of Ramadan and a visit to Mecca are pillars of Islam, so is giving back to society.

The boomer generation needs to take some responsibility for the legacy they have created and define a new paradigm that encompasses more than amassing wealth and caring for one’s family. We need to take care of the whole family, the family we call the human race, and to share abundance with those less fortunate. turn the other cheek when threatened and attacked and create a world in which love and peace are the most important and sacred principles as opposed to profit and national security. This may be an overly idealized perspective, however I do believe that love begets love, hate and war and suffering beget the same. The Law of Attraction and The Secret have some value here in creating a world that radiates with light and hope and abundance for all. It is indeed Bold as Love to be a pacifist or environmentalist in this day of polarized partisan politics. To be for peace is to be called unpatriotic and uncaring of the struggles of others. To be an environmentalist and to put the health of our planet before profit is considered to be against the American Dream. We need a new way forward that bridges party politics, transcends partisanship, power brokering, and profiteering.

Jimi Hendrix is also quoted as saying When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. This is such a powerful statement. The key word in this statement is ‘When’. When will we come together as one and realize that there are no boundaries or borders on this planet we are all the same despite all our apparent differences. Listening to the title track on this album I can’t but help think of Lenny Kravitz, the sound and tone of Jimi’s voice are echoed in the recordings and style of Lenny. They had more than their style of music in common they shared an equally passionate view that the world could be a better place if we Let Love Rule.

On the path toward greater awareness and compassion yoga has been very beneficial for me. It has allowed me to root myself in my physical being and to transcend my physical limitations. I do not have a body type that typically lends itself to yoga but in my own practice I have been able to achieve poses or asansas that I would not have believed possible. I have much further to go in terms of mastering many of the asanas but it is the focus, awareness, and compassion that one must bring to the practice that provide the benefit for me.

Even in a very difficult posture to retain a sense of sweetness on the face is critically important in order to transcend the state of duality. To feel and understand the postures are challenging and stretching the limits of my physical self but at the same time to cultivate a sense of peace enables one to feel the presence of the inner witness. I feel the pain and the challenge of holding this pose, but I am not the pain nor I am the challenge. I am removed from the person practicing and can witness the practice unfolding unto my physical self. The goal for me in my practice is to become more aligned with my physical well-being and also to reach a place of complete and utter surrender. Shivasana or corpse pose at the end of session is the ultimate primer for a deep meditative state. This place where the physical self has fallen away and has left only awareness is very powerful.

The asanas or postures or poses are what most people refer to when they think of yoga but the true nature of yoga as codified in the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali represents a much more holistic perspective. The asanas are one of eight limbs of yoga that impact every aspect of life. Yoga is in essence the practice and the asanas are but one of these types of practices that lead to a “state of unutterable joy” .

The eight limbs of yoga are as follows:

1. Restraint (Yamas)
2. Observances (Niyama)
3. Postures (Asana)
4. Breathing (Pranayama)
5. Deprivation of Sense (Pratyahara)
6. Concentration (Dharana)
7. Meditation (Dhyana)
8. Enlightenment (Samadhi)

This post has touched upon Asana and Dhyana (postures and meditation). In fact in the practice of the asanas all of the limbs are touched upon to some degree and that is why the practice of yoga has been seen in the west to mean the rhythmic change of postures or the asanas themselves. In future posts I would like to touch upon the other aspects or limbs in the practice of yoga.

I hope this has been helpful to you.

Namaste

Show your love

It seems obvious, but it’s true: Children need love to live. Your emotional caring and support give your child a secure base from which to explore the world. This isn’t just touchy-feely advice: Hard scientific evidence shows that love, attention, and affection in the first years of life have a direct and measurable impact on a child’s physical, mental, and emotional growth. Love and touch actually cause your child’s brain to grow, according to Marian Diamond, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Magic Trees of the Mind: How to Nurture Your Child’s Intelligence, Creativity, and Healthy Emotions From Birth Through Adolescence.

How do you show your love? Hug, touch, smile, encourage, listen to, and play with your child whenever you can. It’s also important to respond to your child’s needs for comfort and attention, experts say it’s impossible to spoil a child with love. Being there for your child when he’s upset helps you build trust and a strong emotional bond, according to Zero to Three, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of infants, toddlers, and families. And responding to your child’s bids for attention during happy times is just as important.

Originally published by Babycenter.com

Transcendental Techno

Check out this video produced by the brand manager for Integral Naked the official website of the integral community spawned by Ken Wilber. A mix of trance, house and transcendental mysticism rolled into a remix of Stuart Davis’s Belle.

Where does Money Come From?

We all earn money through one means or another, full time employment with a business, corporation, government agency, non-profit, NGO or other source of work. We use this money for shelter, food, medicine, transportation, entertainment etc. For most of us our biggest purchase is that of a home or a car, and generally we don’t earn enough money to be able to buy these things outright, we go to a bank and apply for a loan. So where does the bank get the money to loan us? It is usually a very significant proportion of the value of the home in the neighborhood of more than 75%. The average cost of house being close to $300,000 that means the bank has to come up with at least $225,000. Where does the bank get this money? Well I thought like most people that the money comes from the sum of all the deposits that we make at the bank but I thought wrong.
If for example you have a bank account with $100,000 in it, the bank may or may not have the money on hand at the branch. If we all went to the bank and withdrew our money at once the bank would collapse as it does not have the funds available because they are tied up in your next door neighbors’ mortgage (remember It’s a Wonderful Life when George Bailey has a run on the Bailey Savings and Loan), right? Well not exactly.  This is where things get interesting, a little complicated and down right diabolocal.

In fact the banks all over the world operate on a system called Fractional Reserve Banking. What this mean is that for every $100 deposited into an account the bank can lend out $900. Well this $900 dollars doesn’t truly exist and is not owned by the bank or anyone. It was magically created by the bank. We were always told that money doesn’t grow on trees, which is true unless you own a bank. So the bank lends you this $900 it never had and they charge you interest on it, and not just interest but compound interest amortized over 25 years. At the end of the 25 years the money you have paid to the bank is

Total Repaid: $1740.00 Total Interest Paid: $840.00 Interest as percentage of Principal: 93.333%

Therefore you have almost paid twice the original amount you have borrowed back to the bank. This is how the bank makes money. They create money out of thin air then charge you as much as you are borrowing for the privilege of doing so.

Does this seem wrong to you? Well it also seemed wrong to Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, the Bible (Deuteronomy 23:19), the Koran (2:275-278), the Catholic Church, many codes of law and most writers on morals have condemned it for more than two thousand years. The historical name for this evil is usury. Well who lets the banks get away with this? The short answer is you do through your government. The government has actually in the last twenty years very quietly made it even easier for banks to create money by further reducing the reserve that must be maintained (remember the original $100 and the $900 created for a of 10% fractional reserve) and reduced the reserve to zero in some cases.

Fractional Reserve banking in essence makes us slaves to those who own and operate the banks, keeping us in almost permanent debt for the sole purpose of making a very small few extraordinarily wealthy. It not only very effectively keeps the masses down, it creates poverty and suffering while the super elite amass fortunes of unimaginable size. But you still need a mortgage to buy your house and your car so what other option do we have? The only other institution that is capable of creating money is the government. They can create and print more money. For those who have gone to business school you are shouting out loud about inflation. Inflation is the number one enemy of the banks and the super elite. The government can print more money and put it into circulation and it could even do acts of good such as pay for housing and eliminate poverty.  The government (in essence you, as the government is the representative of the people in a democracy) can lend money for your home interest free. This money has also been created out of nothing but has no interest attached to it. The banks do not want this to happen as they will lose the ability to create 95% of their wealth.

There is no scarcity of resource and capital as the banks and the government would have us believe. One way to end world poverty would be not only to end third world debt but also end the practice of Fractional Reserve Banking.

We need more hugs in this world. Don’t you think it would be a better place if we loved more and hated less.

There is new trend emerging toward a more holistic approach to business that has been spearheaded by the likes of John Mackey at Whole Foods. The Whole Foods business model has been held up as on example of very profitable business being in line with a greater awareness of it’s responsibility to it’s stakeholders beyond those of it’s investors namely society at large. The idea of conscious capitalism has been promoted as the way forward in bringing the world to a better place. There is a debate raging within enlightened circles regrading the place of profit and capitalism vs. spirituality and an expanding awareness, if they can be combined and if so is this the answer to the plague of our current situation. One side of the debate is the notion that money is the root of all evil.

In my view it is way too simplistic to stay that money is evil. Greed however is a very destructive force in the world. Money is an abstract system that all cultures have used to deliver value and service and allow a society to function. The problem isn’t capitalism per say it is that people and corporations value profit (again an abstract system) over other values like compassion, empathy and respect for the natural environment. One of the problems of the current system is that it has been set up as a large pyramid scheme (which is illegal in most places). This allows for huge concentrations of wealth at the top, and guess what folks most of us are at the bottom of the pyramid. The goal of any conscious capitalist should be to determine the correct amount of profit and growth that is sustainable and to ensure that those profits are not concentrated at the top.

As alluded to above the other issue of our current economic environment is based on unlimited growth. It is not acceptable to Wall Street for a corporation to make a profit, said corporation has to grow their profit year over year. Double digit growth is the benchmark for corporations worthy of investment which is based on the growth of profit not of the business itself. The market places value only on exponential growth not natural or organic growth. The only systems in the natural world that grow exponentially are bacteria which grow until they use up the medium in which they depend upon for survival and cancer cells which grow at an uncontrolled rate until the host (human) dies. Our current economic system is programmed to self -destruct. That is unless you believe the earth is expanding. and the rate of growth of the planet is greater than or equal to the rate at which we are consuming it.

We obviously need a better model. Getting rid of money or currency is not going to help the situation unless you believe chaos and anarchy and more suffering are the only other alternatives. Energy can not be created or destroyed and neither can money. Socialist systems still have a place for currency and there are still elite members of those societies that have more than others. We need to define a system that blends the humanistic and natural laws of the universe together in a manner which is “sustainable” The reality is that most North Americans live a lifestyle that is unsustainable. Is money the problem or is that we have been blessed with abundance and have taken it for granted.

Debate is necessary in a free society to ensure that all view points are given fair representation and to generate new ideas and new ways forward. For real evolution and progress to be made toward making the planet more humane we need to work within the system to change it or develop ideas for a new system. To bring down the current system without any real alternative in it’s place is about as good an idea as going to war. Be Profitable not Greedy……Make Love not War……Heal the planet…… Peace.

As far as ultimate questions go this has got to be the at the very top of the list. What is the nature of reality? This thing that surrounds us, pervades every aspect of our lives and dreams. What is this magic that is taking place around us, to us, through us, and can we describe it and explain it? This question has been asked by mystics, prophets, poets and philosophers throughout the ages and can not be answered with logic alone. This kind of question is translogical it is transrational. The only way we can hope to come close to this answer is through empirical observation, contemplation, meditation and altered states of consciousness. These altered states may be dream states including lucid dreaming or recalled dreams, visions, or even sudden flashes of insight and intuition. I have experienced altered states of consciousness through meditation and will describe some of the intuitive discoveries I have made from non-local sources of information.

During one particular meditative session I was contemplating the idea of the subjective nature of reality in that my reality may not be the same as your reality or anyone else’s reality. Our own personal reality is made up in large part on how we perceive the universe. Based on our upbringing, mental conditioning, cultural and societal values one event can be interpreted or perceived to be different from the point of observation. A classic example of this is the Akira Kurosawa movie “Rashomon“. I won’t go into detail regarding the plot but suffice to say the same crime is recounted before a judge three different ways by eye-witnesses. Each observer/participant had their own relative version of what happened and believed it to be true. What actually happened or the objective version of the story can never be known as the observer will always see through their personal filter and color the perception of the event. This frame of thought really started to resonate with me in that each person’s reality was quite real, hence three different realities in this example. So how could these different realities coexist? Well there were some commonalities to the stories. Each included the same time, place, characters, and surroundings and this is where reality was grounded for the judge. These were the only objective facts, what made these facts objective was that each of the realities intersected and overlapped at these points. Where there was no intersection this formed the reality only for that particular observer/participant. This difference of perspective was quite strong and resilient to force and coercion by the judge. This can be seen and personally experienced in social interactions on many occasions.

I then started to imagine what this personal reality “looked” like. I started to envision an individual’s ego at the center, and as their particular perspective started to move beyond themselves to their environment, physical location, time and place, and particulars of cultural and social functioning, identification with nation, humanity, and all living beings. Each of these levels of consciousness formed concentric rings that encompassed those before it. These rings become three dimensional and formed waves of energy similar to sound waves extending outward in all three dimensions beyond the physical self extending as far out as the mind could project itself. The farther these projections the greater the number of perspectives an individual could recognize and integrate into their own reality. This vision became really fascinating and filled me with an intense energy of realization when I started to contemplate how all these individual projections would interact. Similar to sound waves a pattern of interference was created where these projections of consciousness intersected and in a similar manner either amplified or subdued or each other where there was concordance and disharmony respectively.

This was quite a beautiful and profound realization for me in that it made concrete for me a number of fundamental truths regarding the nature of reality. One being that we each create our own reality through our conscious and subconscious thoughts, beliefs, assumptions and actions. Two, that the interconnectedness of all humanity is created and reinforced where these intersections of consciousness exist and form the basis for a broader and common “objective reality”. The most profound idea this suggests is that we have the power to recreate our world if we all agree on the same fundamental beliefs. If we all believe or if enough of us believe that peace on earth is possible then the myriad of interconnecting projections of consciousness will amplify each other to the degree that this forms the basis of “objective reality”.

To date I have not come across a similar description of the nature of reality. Aspects of this have been described by Ken Wilber in his work on waves and levels consciousness, in Spiral Dynamics and in the underlying fabric of reality popularized by “The Matrix”, but not in the same manner as I experienced. When I say experienced I mean it in the literal sense of the feeling of knowing deeply and to one’s core, not of simply recalling knowledge or of using logic to solve a problem. I personally experienced this fundamental realization on the nature of reality.

If this theory is correct it throws into question some of the most basic assumptions about the Universe and totally dismantles the Big Bang Theory. What dos this have to do with spirituality? The quest to understand the nature of the Universe is the very foundation of the contemplative traditions in the east and the west. The underpinning of why we are here and witness to the wonder and amazement around us. In striving to grasp the absolute and ultimate truths of the Universe we need to consider the subjective truths or assumptions on which our beliefs rest. This theory brings into question all theories of space, time and matter. Enjoy!

Please take a few minutes and view this meditative visual experience. Let your thoughts come and go as they will and don’t try to block any thoughts from your mind. If you start to focus on a train of thought, it is OK, just let it go without attachment. Namaste