Holy Fools’ Day Coming Right Up!

My friend, Gail Larsen, sent this in her RealSpeaking newsletter. I pass it on in a spirit of fun and creative thinking. . .

I’ve taken it upon myself to rename April Fool’s Day. This festive holiday suggests we play tricks on others with a jovial spirit and once we’ve duped them to yell with delight, “April Fools!”

Comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell talked about the archetype of another kind of fool: the Holy Fool. The Fool is the most dangerous person on earth, Campbell explained, the most threatening to all hierarchical institutions. He has no concern for naysayers, and no one has power over him (or her). She is not limited, not stoppable, nor controllable. She knows what she has to do and is doing it, no matter what.

I think of the Holy Fool as similar to the Court Jester, the only person in the Royal Court who dares to make fun of the King without consequence. Or the Koshari of the Hopi and Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, who in the midst of sacred ceremonies makes us laugh at ourselves by mimicking our behavior so we can see ourselves in a new way. This “sacred clown” creates lessons at the expense of another’s seriousness, recognizing that laughter is a great shape shifter of old habits and patterns.  I often wonder if the striped ceremonial dress of the Koshari isn’t designed to remind us that getting out of our self-imposed jails isn’t a really good idea.

So here’s a suggestion. How about on April 1 we engage in a dialogue with our inner Holy Fool and ask what she most wants to express, convention be damned. Ask where you are being duped day in and day out and not shining the light of your truth. Let’s stop concealing our greatest passions and be willing to say what we love and what we know without editing and rehearsing ourselves into oblivion. Let’s declare April 1 Holy Fools’ Day and engage the passionate part of us that has something important to say—and just say it!

Rumi said (and I paraphrase):
I used to be like you.
Calm, rational, controlled.
Now I am seized by passion.
Watch out!No one’s safe!!!

Sacred Cows cartoon by Spirit Painter

Hurting Others with Energy: Part 5

As the frequency of energy in the earth, and in our bodies and personalities, increases, we are becoming ultrasensitive and consciously empathic. We are becoming aware that we can hurt each other in many ways that are much more subtle than the rape, pillage, and murder of yesteryear, and the mental, emotional, and sexual abuse of yesterday. For example, greed causes pain to others: because when we believe we have to hoard, we cannot give love, so intent are we on "getting," and this hurts others. And when we selfishly take opportunities away from others, we never get to experience how they might choose to help us of their own free will, and we deprive them of the opportunity to feel their own generosity. And when we believe we never have enough, that our self worth is based on riches, we often miss the experience of our spiritual roots, of our soul's inherent abundance, and ease of creating any reality it so desires—and this adds to the false idea that the physical world is a place of suffering, and prolongs our collective misery.

Envy causes pain to others: because when we think someone else is better than we are, or when we try to mimic them, we stall the expression of our own unique talents and destiny, which others may need. And simultaneously, when we project too much admiration or resentment onto another talented self-manifesting person, they may telepathically feel there is something wrong with their expressing their talent because of an undercurrent that feels unequal or imbalanced. How many people have kept themselves small because they might eclipse the reality of a parent or partner?

When we allow ourselves to vent in repeating waves of rage, for example, we hurt others: because we are choosing to indulge in our own feelings of frustration, in an arrogantly selfish and infantile way. Our frustrations come from our own beliefs that something outside us has more power than we do, and thus we must moan and groan, or resist and fight. But it is we who set up the definitions and circumstances to deprive ourselves of the right to free self-expression in the first place, we who granted the power to others to tell us who we can or cannot be. We are the ultimate authorities of our own existence! We are the only ones who can entitle ourselves once again to the full self-expression of our soul through our personality. No outside condition or person really has anything to do with it. But we allow ourselves to wound others: Why?

As we enter the Intuition Age, where we have a growing direct experience of the "rules" of how the unified field (or the unified Self) and Spirit operate, we will come to see that the current mental and emotional behaviors we accept as normal are actually prehistoric. We will feel ashamed. We will want to make amends rather than continue to avoid facing the music, because to avoid "atonement," or the recreation of the state of at-one-ment, will be too personally painful. I actually looked up words that try to describe this incredibly important part of the transformation process; maybe one will inspire you: 

remorse: deep regret or guilt for a wrong committed
reconciliation, reconcile: cause to coexist in harmony; make or show to be compatible;
acknowledgment
feel the implication of actions
day of reckoning; day of judgment
come to grips with
face the consequences
contrition, deep regret, repentance, penitence, guilt, compunction, remorsefulness, ruefulness, contriteness; pangs of conscience, self-condemnation, self-reproach

 I know people who refuse to apologize for bad behavior, in spite of the fact that they know they've wounded the people they love most—who refuse to admit they might want to change or might need help in doing so, because their ego feels it must maintain control and a superior position to avoid feeling deeply unworthy. Unfortunately, because of this ignorance, they remain isolated and encapsulated in a shell of invulnerability, unable to truly open to the gracious, lucky, and love-filled reality their heart would like to gift them with. And I must admit, I sometimes am angry with them, for depriving me of their true magnificence. But, really, what is so hard about turning a corner?

I believe there soon will come a time when each of us will voluntarily commit to becoming harmless. That means “I will not allow myself to act from a closed heart; I will not demean, abuse, or injure another person, animal, or plant.” No more excuses. No more postponement. The time is now to choose a spiritually-based, compassionate way of being in the world. We stop the cycle of pain by not participating in it. It’s time to really get it that when we hurt another, we hurt ourselves, in so many ways. We will soon feel the hurt, instantly, when we hurt another. This doesn’t mean we don’t stand up for ourselves or say what we need. It doesn’t mean we don’t protect our loved ones from danger, or speak truth to power. Doing no harm does not equate with being wimpy.

When we remain isolated and encapsulated in a world of our own creation, not trusting the Flow, not enjoying what others spontaneously bring out in us, not indulging in the joy of surprise, we freeze a spot in the unified field, we hurt the Flow, and we hurt others who need the Flow to both supply them with inspiration and support, and take their expressions and contributions to others who can use these effluvia.

So I invite you to examine the subtle ways you withhold love, or withhold yourself, or refuse to receive, or judge what comes to you, or demean the life of others or of yourself. These are all ways we hurt others with energy.

Vibrations 1959

My friend Rod, in Heidelberg, just sent me this quote he found in his reading of old journals and books:

Oct. 1959 Hibbert Journal, p124: "For Psychic Science—to give it a proper name—is securely based upon the indisputable fact that there are in nature vibratory frequencies unrecognized by orthodox physics, to which certain gifted people known as mediums are sensitive."

Life is Fine!

Is anyone in a "mood" they can't get out of? Feeling like a wet blanket has been thrown over your head? Read this Langston Hughes poem outloud, with feeling, several times, and you'll be healed!!

Life Is Fine

by Langston Hughes

I went down to the river,

I set down on the bank.

I tried to think but couldn't,

So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!

I came up twice and cried!

If that water hadn't a-been so cold

I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator

Sixteen floors above the ground.

I thought about my baby

And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!

I stood there and I cried!

If it hadn't a-been so high

I might've jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',

I guess I will live on.

I could've died for love—

But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,

And you may see me cry—

I'll be dogged, sweet baby,

If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!

Part 4: Hurting Others with Energy

There are a variety of subtle ways we hurt others and ourselves with energy. Just to recap a bit, some of the ways I've already discussed are: projecting blame, criticism, anger, and verbal, emotional, and physical violence onto others—when it's really our own fear that's surfacing in us to be understood and cleared. By deflecting away from our own wounds, and avoiding the experience of dissolving our fear, we not only prolong our dysfunctional habits of medicating and handling our wound, but hurt others willy-nilly as we fling negative energy at them. When we allow ourselves do this, we create deep levels of shame in ourselves, which only adds to our resistance to feeling the pain. When we live in pain, our loved ones feel the pain along with us, and are especially hurt by the fact that nothing they do seems to help.

It also causes pain to ourselves and others when we make plans and agreements—ie, create an inner blueprint or pattern of energy intention—then act in a way that's out of alignment or congruence with the inner blueprint. That might be by being late, by not following through and jumping ship midstream, or changing the parameters without renegotiating the agreement with the other partner or partners to see if the new way fits their needs. When we do this, energy jams up and doesn't flow to its manifested outcome. Jammed energy always feels painful. When we cause confusion for others, we hurt them in a subtle way. Whenever we make things more difficult for others, AT ANY LEVEL, we hurt them with energy.

It also hurts others when we think negative things about them or don't believe in them. Because we are so telepathic today, we DO pick up on the thoughts around us, even those at a distance, when they are aimed at us. If we're not centered and conscious it's very easy to fulfill other people's negative expectations of us. I once wrote a poem about this:

please don’t hold a friend
to the fumes of past fears
if they rise as a vapor
in your presence—
hold a moment longer, won’t you?
and wait for what’s real,
see beyond
what the Soul is evaporating
with Her heat;
see Her warm motive
steadily persist

 
Another extremely subtle way we hurt each other with energy has to do with projecting thoughts, feelings, needs, and whole realities onto other people. We used to almost glorify the kind of love where we "needed" each other, but now we see it as "codependence" that doesn't really allow either person the freedom to evolve without setting off the wound of the other. So there are strong expectations about the way one's partner MUST behave. If your friends or partners aren't happy for you when you grow to become more of yourself, this is a new sort of pain. When someone else has expectations of you, or pity for you, or even great admiration for you, this projected attention-with-an-agenda can handicap your consciousness like several wet blankets thrown over your head.

When 2 people enter into an intimate partnership, and one projects fantasies of a certain kind of life together onto the relationship, believing the partner will behave a particular way, this also causes subtle pain, because there is no faith in the spontaneous creativity of both parties in the moment, to bring forth their very best selves. There is even a way of praying for or trying to heal others that can be debilitating: when someone believes strongly in the badness of your situation and wants you to change so they themselves won't feel bad when they think about you. . .then the prayer or healing carries their own agenda, which may not be at all what's needed for evolution.

So whenever we limit the potential of another person's soul expression, we hurt them, and we hurt ourselves because what they might have offered might have been crucial for something we need for our full soul expression. Whenever we even second-guess what someone is going to say, or finish sentences for them, we deny them the freedom to be creative and spontaneous. Wherever we sacrifice our own self-expression, we hurt ourselves, and also others, because they may have needed what we were going to express via our joyful creativity.

There will be one more part to this series, coming soon!

Hurting Each Other with Energy: Part 3

I've been talking about subtle ways we hurt each other, and how, as we're becoming ultrasensitive in this emerging Intuition Age, we are building more skill with our ability to read energy patterns, decipher preverbal, telepathic communication, and actually FEEL more of what's going on under the surface.

When what's expressed externally by another person doesn't match what's being thought internally by them, we can sense it now, more easily than ever before. Even these sorts of very subtle lies or misalignments, which can cause confusion, blockages of clarity, and suppression of energy expression, can be thought of as hurting others—and ourselves. When we communicate clearly, though, and say what we're feeling and thinking at our various levels, in a tactful way, we relieve the hidden tension, and this might be seen as an act of compassion. It allows the other people who are involved with us in relational agreements to reassess their position, and participants can then agree equally on a new inner blueprint. So too, when we say we're going to do something, then don't follow through, there is a damming up of energy that started flowing toward the goal, only to be stopped halfway there. This is a kind of pain. So keeping agreements is an act of compassion.

Similarly, when agreements are made about what the basis of a relationship will be and when one partner starts acting differently, this causes a subtle form of pain. Two people get together as friends to do business, for example, then one person sexualizes the connection and puts a strain on the communication. Or, in a romantic partnership based on the desire both people have for transformation, when one partner decides he or she doesn't want to change so fast, and retreats to old, controlling behaviors, this causes pain. In effect it is a betrayal: when someone we trust acts in an opposite way that makes us feel disrespected, undervalued, and ripped off. Plus, the inner energy pattern is out of alignment with the external actions, and results will materialize in a chaotic way because the energy can't flow through cleanly. Whenever energy jams up artificially, there is pain.

Another example of this sort of thing concerns money and debt. When we borrow money from others with an agreement either pay it back or get paid to give services or products of equal value, then default on the loan, the business deal, or declare bankruptcy, we cause a misalignment and block in the flow of energy (and consciousness). We not only have created a financial debt, but an energy debt. We've hoarded energy and not validated the reality that there is equal flow from and to us, and everyone. We've validated the reality that there is lack. And validating realities that are not in alignment with universal principles causes subtle forms of pain.

Anything that is out of harmony with universal laws causes pain, and eventually intensifies and builds into problems, stuck places, systemic breakdowns, and failure. Part of this is pledging energy and attention to an outcome, then not following through and not communicating cleanly and honestly about why you chose to change the inner blueprint. When an inner blueprint is set, defined, and agreed upon, it tries to materialize. But when people shift midstream without CONSCIOUSLY shifting the inner blueprint, a lack of congruence arises, which feels painful in its confusion, confoundment, and contraction. It creates deeply uncomfortable tension. When you set a process in motion then jump ship midstream, expect others to read your mind and adapt to your wishes, and let them clean up after you as if they don't matter, this is a kind of cruelty.

When the defined inner blueprint (intent) doesn't match action (expression), energy jams up. When energy doesn't naturally flow in expansion-exploration-inspiration then contraction-focus-materialization cycles, we experience subtle pain.

In installment 4, I'll continue to list more ways we can work more positively with energy to not cause pain and suffering.

Red Ice Creations Radio

I did a wonderful, high-frequency interview that really flowed—2 hours worth—with a fabulous host, Henrik Palmgren, on Red Ice Radio broadcasting from Gothenberg, Sweden. It is somewhat parallel to Coast to Coast AM here. You can listen to it here:

http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2010/03mar/RIR-100314.php

The Future of Reading

The cover story in the Fortune Magazine March 2010 issue is called The Future of Reading, by Josh Quittner. As a writer and reader, and as an intuition trainer who values being inside one's body, understanding the physical realm by slowing down to FEEL and EXPERIENCE things in a tactile way, I have been watching the development of electronic media, not quite sure how I feel about all that heavily-weighted mental stuff. . . This article gives an interesting overview.

Hurting Each Other with Energy: Part 2

In Part 1 of this piece I described a dramatic, blatant pattern of how we justify hurting each other, or how we let ourselves hurt each other by pretending we don't see it happening. Looking at addiction, whether it's to an external substance or a habit of behaviors, is an easy way to see how careless we can be about flinging pain at others, and by staying in the pain reality—by constantly dreading it, expecting it, deflecting it, and causing it—we continually re-abuse ourselves.

In Part 2, I'd like to talk about the more subtle ways we hurt each other with energy. But how do you injure someone with energy? Outright verbal and physical attacks and violence are an obvious way, yet many people don’t consider harsh criticism, insults, and trash-talking to be a form of violence. It is. Remember the last time someone put you down? How easy was it to get out of that low-frequency state? To handle the meanness, you probably either had to close your heart, go away and cry, get involved in an intense activity, or throw more meanness back in the perpetrator's face.

There are so many reality television shows today that feature catty girls and women calling each other whores and bitches, or where there is ceaseless gossip and nastiness behind each other's backs. Or, the glamorous host or hostess proclaims, “You’re fired!” or “You’re OUT!” How awful can we make someone look and feel? Why is this such a huge behavior trend put squarely in our face today? Are we trying to see through it? Trying to understand how to heal childhood pain by diving directly into it again? Perhaps there is a vicarious thrill in watching someone else hurt others and be hurt by others—as long as it’s not me, right?

My experience is that by repeating these literally insane, pain-based cycles of feeling wounded then wounding others to avoid feeling our own wounds doesn’t get us anywhere, except locked into a never-ending, repeating, wound-generating, and wound-feeding reality that is a living hell-realm. There is no end to these cycles, no way out, as long as we perpetrate the punishment reaction, either by punishing and blaming ourselves or others.

Besides saying and doing mean things, it's also possible to hurt others by simply shutting down while they're sharing themselves. I have often experienced people clanging the energy door shut in my face when what I'm saying hits too close to home concerning one of their personal issues. In these situations, I had not been preaching or trying to change them, but they made me feel like I'd done something wrong by shutting down the energy exchange. So, too, when friends text or take calls on their cell phones during a lunch date, while we're having a conversation, the rudeness is a subtle meanness, a way of hurting by withholding attention and energy. And what about the plague of people who are habitually late for appointments and either laugh it off or have a plethora of excuses when they arrive? And the ones who reschedule appointments multiple times because something else more important than you came up at the last minute? Or people who don't return phone calls? Just a normal part of life? Or are these also ways we hurt each other with energy, and don't practice the Golden RULE? There are thousands of seemingly innocuous ways each day that people convey to others that, "I'm important, and you're not." This is hurting others with energy.

Since we are all becoming so sensitive, telepathy factors in to our exchanges more and more. We can literally read each other's minds these days. So if someone is judging me mentally, for example—no words spoken—I immediately feel unwanted or unloved without quite knowing why. It can take awhile to realize what has happened in these subtle energy situations, and return to my own home frequency.

In Part 3 of this series, I'll talk more about subtle forms of violence, and what practicing the Golden Rule is going to be like in the Intuition Age.

Earth Knocked for a Loop

An article in Science News, by Sid Perkins, (and slightly edited by me), describes how the Chilean quake sped up the Earth's rotation and slightly tipped the planet's axis.

The magnitude 8.8 quake that slammed central Chile February 27 knocked the entire planet for a loop — literally. The sudden, large-scale movement of tectonic plates that triggered the quake shifted immense masses of rock a few meters closer to Earth’s core, tilting the planet’s axis a few centimeters and imperceptibly shortening the day, analyses indicate. Disaster struck just after 3:34 a.m. local time, when seismic stresses that had been building for decades, if not centuries, let loose. Rocks along the interface between two tectonic plates slipped past each other a distance of seven to 11 meters, says Jian Lin, a geophysicist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Those pieces of Earth’s crust — the South American plate and the Nazca plate, a continent-sized slab of seafloor that lies just west of South America — are colliding at an average speed of about 8 centimeters per year. “This is one of the fastest plate convergence rates on Earth,” Lin notes. Rather than moving steadily, the plates can remain locked in place for long intervals and then slide past each other in quick bursts.

The early-morning temblor, which involved slippage along a 400-kilometer stretch of the tectonic interface, is among the strongest ever recorded: Only four quakes since 1900 — including the largest on record, a magnitude 9.5 shock that shook southern Chile in May 1960 — have been larger, Lin says. “The new quake picked up where the 1960 rupture ended,” he notes.

That 1960 quake shifted stress northward to a part of the tectonic interface that remained locked. The redistribution of stress probably caused this year’s quake to occur earlier than it otherwise would have, says Lin. Such effects aren’t unknown — just three months after a magnitude 9.1 quake rocked northern Sumatra in late December 2004 (SN: 1/8/05, p. 19), a magnitude 8.6 temblor on an adjacent segment of the same subduction zone shook southern portions of the island (SN: 4/2/05, p. 211). In a mere six days, the Chile quake has spawned more than 180 aftershocks, including seven above magnitude 6.0. One aftershock, a magnitude 6.9 quake centered about 125 kilometers off the Chilean coast, was almost as large as the Haiti quake of January 12.

The movement of tectonic plates in Chile February 27 has triggered glitches in Earth’s rotation, a new analysis suggests. Sudden subduction of the Nazca plate carried large amounts of mass closer to the center of the Earth — which, conceptually but on a vastly different scale, works like spinning skaters bringing their arms closer to their bodies, says Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. As a result, Earth’s day is now about 1.26 microseconds shorter than it was before the massive quake, Gross estimates.

And because the quake’s shift in mass occurred deep in the Southern Hemisphere, Earth was slightly tipped off balance — a result similar to a spinning skater bringing in one arm but not the other. The planet’s “figure axis,” the line about which the Earth is balanced, shifted about 8 centimeters, Gross notes. Earth’s axis is constantly wobbling at various frequencies, with some oscillations measuring several meters and taking months to unfold (SN: 8/12/00, p. 111). Forces driving those cycles, including those resulting from winds and ocean currents, act continually across Earth’s surface and often are about a thousand times larger than those generated during the Chilean quake.

Hurting Each Other with Energy: Part 1

As we become more and more ultrasensitive in this budding Intuition Age, as we learn to live by and use “frequency principles”—the way energy and awareness actually work—we must penetrate into the reality of the Golden Rule and realize exactly why it is the core truth in every religion.

I have recently encountered a handful of situations where people are trying to understand and recover from the hurt caused by seemingly intelligent, spiritually aware friends and partners. These partners were abused and abandoned in childhood, and periodically, like clockwork, they erupt in cycles of rage and passive-aggressive behavior. These abused and wounded people have a double standard they will not admit to: after having craved, solicited, and even demanded unconditional love and support, they seem not to mind abusing and wounding those who actually do love and support them—the moment they begin to feel scared. During the acting out episodes, they say cruel things, throw objects, destroy property, and impulsively try to ruin their relationship by blaming the other person for the very things they themselves are doing. They cannot see the parallels—how they are becoming the abusers they hate, and how they are actually re-abusing themselves—and don’t want to because that would mean taking responsibility for their actions and having to face a painful (though false) idea of who they think they are.

In this pattern, the wounded partner often walks or storms out of the room/house with no communication about where they’re going or when they might return, leaving the other person to worry about their safety and the future of the relationship. The heart and all empathy is shut down; there is no capacity to feel the other’s pain, or goodness. There is, however, a will to deflect one’s own pain, a will to blame others, a will to wound. I suppose, below the surface in some level of the crazy victim-mind, they are letting themselves off the hook because, "I was hurt, so I’m not responsible for what I do. I deserve to be mad. And I can make it all better later, or act like it never happened. Or, I can always leave and start another relationship."

I have lately been watching—I confess, it is a morbid fascination—the reality television program that deals with celebrity rehab from drug, alcohol, and sex addiction. It is interesting to watch the difference between the two states of awareness the addicts swing back and forth between. When they are high they isolate themselves, act impulsively and narcissistically, put down or destroy anything relating to "normal" life, and whatever substance they rely on to cover their pain becomes the Authority and begins demanding attention and obedience.

When they detox, the frightened mind acts out in ways I described above: behaviors are marked by lying, whining, making excuses, avoiding truth, going into apathy and dissociative states, and becoming cruel and violent to distance others who might want to "judge" or "change" them. When they come through the detox process and are clean, their sweetness shines through, they care about others, and express themselves clearly and intelligently. Their talent emerges. As I watched, I began to be able to discriminate times when the disease was talking vs. times when the soul was talking.

Many people are not addicts to the extent the television show people are, but many of us manage or medicate our early wounds similarly, in a variety of tricky ways. The behavior is the same: when faced with feeling the painful pattern might be repeating, or with the reality of having to give up the core addiction to being a victim, the mind pulls out every possible mode of distraction and avoidance. A gap opens up and it’s so easy then to say any hurtful thing, or to use energy to whack someone.

In the next installment, I'll talk more about how we can use energy more positively.

Merlin Project: The Coming Intensification

I was talking with Brad Walton, who has a radio show called Author Conversations, about The Merlin Project, a way of tracking time originated by futurist Paul Guercio and physicist Dr. George Hart. Though I don't fully understand the mechanism by which their process works, the information they came up with is interesting. In the above diagram, the zeros indicate periods of time in weeks, and the rows indicate intensity of change. Brad says there seems to be a major jump in intensity about 28 weeks into 2010. That puts it about the end of July. I have been sensing that there would be a large influx of energy coming in the not-too-distant future, and this may be one more indication that this year is to be an incredibly intense time. I think of these intensification waves as very positive. We just must learn to keep our mind and fixed beliefs out of the way, so our body can adjust itself naturally to the higher frequencies of life and the physical plane.

Sin, Rescue, Perfection?

This question came from someone who wrote to me from my website:
If the bible says not to judge, doesn't that mean that everything happens for a reason, so we're not supposed to get upset when we get less than pleasing results in life?? A book I read the other day—A New Earth—says there is no such thing is good and bad; it just "is" and we should not judge as good and bad because its all from God. What confuses me is that if we're all made from God wouldn't that mean we're already perfect so why do "sinners" get told we're not and that we have to ask to be saved. I'm a Christian, but I don't get it!!

I think the idea is that there are natural laws, as in nature, as in consciousness—universal principles. When we act in harmony with them, everything evolves and there is no suffering. Part of this Flow is a natural expansion and contraction, like breathing. Contraction is not evil, just part of life, but I think religions have often misinterpreted this. When actions are motivated by fear and control, they are out of harmony, meaning they don't allow us to experience the true qualities of spirit. That is why spiritual leaders point out certain behaviors as undesirable—like murder and the various "sins." Sin means missing the mark. It means these ways of acting are inefficient and block us from experiencing ourselves as having the divine inside us, and all around us. I think we are created perfectly, and are always actually complete, but because of the way our minds work, the way the mind perceives separation—we focus on fear and negativity and don't actually experience this oneness with the divine fully. Most spiritual paths teach ways to come back into harmony with the experience of oneness. And as for asking to be saved, perhaps this is just the act of opening our minds for the grace of natural perfection to reemerge once again, to make a hole through which truth can flow without being suppressed by fear's drama.

Ethics of Doing Intuitive Readings

I have often been asked about the ethics of doing intuitive readings for others. Here is an answer I sent to some students in a graduate intuition program at an online university.

"I think when we are engaging with another person in physical reality for the purpose of assisting them intuitively, for them to be able to hear us and receive openly, we must ask permission, basically to establish intent. It's really like any business deal. Things need to be stated out loud, and the client's possible fears assuaged. Also, we need to remember that any information we receive comes through our own filter, which is only as good as the level of emotional maturity we've reached. How they hear also depends on that. So anticipating potential blockages ahead of time and addressing them out loud is always a good idea.

"As to the ethics of it all, I think the most important factor is the motive of the intuitive. Are you projecting some need of your own onto them — like a codependent desire to rescue others and avoid having to feel pain? Or because you want to feel special and good? Or because by being in control of giving out "information from on high" you remain in an invulnerable, safe position? I think the best motive is: 'Let's see what I get about this. And you can see if it makes sense to you. If it doesn't make sense, ask me some more questions and let's try to clarify it more. And let's remember, what I'm seeing is just a snapshot of today's pattern of information coming through my own filter. Take whatever you can use.'

"When you're practicing the development of intuitive sensitivity, I think it's fine to focus on anything or anyone you want and see what comes to you from the pattern of what it is (an oak tree, a box filled with mysterious goodies, or an ailing plant) or who it is (a celebrity who's always on the cover of People magazine, your dead father, a friend, or a historical figure like Imhotep or Mark Twain). All information is available at all times to all people. After all, we regularly dream about others and know things about them and that's not an invasion. At the level of heart, where you merge into the Field to allow knowledge to literally pattern your awareness, everything exists equally without fear. There is natural respect and allowing. So getting a NEUTRAL subjective sense of anything doesn't infringe on the existence, free will, and potential of that person or thing. You are not invading their privacy unless you have a motive that's based on fear: like jealousy, vengeance, attack, etc.

"If you experience what you receive with love and amazement, that will naturally communicate through the Field to ALL people and things, and it will grease the wheels of life, so to speak. I believe this is what prayer and blessings do, when done right. If you experience criticalness or fear as you receive information, you will add more contraction to the Field, and make the flow just a little bit tighter. All in all, you're not affecting the other person or thing very much. Mainly, you're affecting your own reality.

"We are sensitive creatures. And quite telepathic. I have seen people who've had other people "praying for them," end up feeling energetically "clogged." What's behind that? Someone doesn't love and respect your capacity enough that they think you must have THEIR particular kind of divine help, whether you want it or not, and they lay it on you like an energetic wet blanket. I've seen people "crowded" energetically by people who admire them or envy them too much. It doesn't have to be overtly negative attention. Admiration and envy are really about not feeling the magnificence in your own self, and thinking you need to get it from elsewhere. And that is a misunderstanding of the way consciousness works. And to the extent that you misunderstand the natural laws, you contribute to ignorance. We must work on not projecting onto others in any way, and I think that's the key to ethics.

"Also, let me say that living in today's intense world, where the subconscious minds of individuals and governments are opening like Pandora's Box, we each have to learn a really workable method for clearing ourselves of clutter and distorted information, many times a day, and to return to our own preferred state of 'the soul in the body.'

"The more we learn about the unified field, and how consciousness functions, the easier this is all going to be. For instance, just taking a memory (negative or positive) from the past and projecting it into the future can limit oneself and others, if they're involved in your fantasy scenario. The power of right action, based on heart and soul, in the present moment, is being ignored and therefore the potential for destiny is being limited. There are many subtle distinctions to learn when you are a "consciousness worker."

Grappling with the Multiverse

I have edited and paraphrased this article, for brevity's sake, but you can read the full-length original, by Amanda Gefter, in New Science Magazine.

Cosmologist George Ellis, from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, is regarded as one of the world's leading experts on general relativity. Ellis is one of many theorists who has been contemplating what he considers a dangerous idea: the suggestion that our universe is but a tiny part of an unimaginably large and diverse multiverse. To the dismay of Ellis and many of his colleagues, the multiverse has developed rapidly from being a speculative idea to a theory verging on respectability. Several strands of theoretical physics—quantum mechanics, string theory, and cosmic inflation—seem to converge on the idea that our universe is only one among an infinite and ever-growing assemblage of disconnected bubble universes. The main cause for alarm is the fact that it postulates the existence of a multitude of unobservable universes, making the whole idea untestable. If something as fundamental as this is untestable, says Ellis, the foundations of science itself are undermined.

Raphael Bousso of the University of California, Berkeley, has also been grappling with the multiverse, and in the past few months has found a way round the troubling problem of unobservable universes. At a stroke, he has transformed the multiverse from a theory so problematical that it threatens to subvert science, into one that promises predictions we can test. His insights are steering physicists along the path to their ultimate goal of uniting quantum mechanics and gravity into one neat theory of everything. The trouble is that in an infinite multiverse, everything that can happen will happen—an infinite number of times. In such a set-up, probability loses all meaning. "How do you compare infinities?" asks Andrei Linde of Stanford University in California. Two events that are simultaneous for me are not simultaneous for you, so there are an infinite number of ways you can slice up the multiverse. None is more "true" than any other, so there's no reason to choose one time slicing over another—and different slices can yield dramatically different results.

Quantum mechanics tells us that the vacuum of space is not empty; instead, it crackles with energy. It also tells us that, sooner or later, any given universe will decay spontaneously into another one with lower energy. Indeed, most cosmologists envisage our big bang as precisely such an event, during which the vacuum we live in emerged from a higher-energy vacuum that constituted a universe before ours. What matters here, though, is that there are a plethora of possible universes that can be produced in this way, each with its own probability.

Bousso's work, combined with a totally different view researched by Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston, arrive at similar conclusions. Both suggest that the holographic principle is profoundly significant, and could lead us to a theory of quantum gravity—the long-sought theory of everything that mirrors the dynamics of the multiverse. As it turns out, everything we need to know about the multiverse might be right here in our own universe.

What I find interesting about all this—not being a physicist myself, but a metaphysicist—is that everything we know about the way consciousness itself works points to the reality of a multiverse, or a hugely extended "reality," or expanded consciousness, in which all realities coexist and are possible. Not everything has to be tested and defined by the mind, which craves measurement; there are experiences of truth that inhere in our nature and need not even be sought because they are so intimately known. I find it fascinating that science continually approaches what we, as meditators and metaphysicians, know about the principles of awareness.

I also find it interesting that scientists would panic because something might be untestable, and thus might put an end to science. I believe science is a subset of metaphysics, that eventually we will all need to put away our proof-addicted minds and dive directly into the experience of oneness and the multitudinuous potentials of our higher identity as mini-gods within the greater God-force. Perhaps science will one day end up stopping at the gate where Mind May Not Enter. For after all, is it possible, or even necessary, to describe everything??

New Intuitive Way eNews Is Out!

Falling slightly behind on all the social networking of late! Apologies! But this newsletter addresses a possible reason why: Mars retrograde. Are we being asked to pay attention to what's under our nose as our forward movement is restricted between Dec 20 and Mar 10???

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