Should you join a monastery?

*The post that follows came from the Steve Pavlina forum before it closed down. I am not the original author.

Okay, this is reminding me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine whose traveled Asia and visited monasteries. He talked about how the monks there chose that kind of life, so they could get closer to God. But that didn't mean that they were any more conscious than he was. In fact, most of them were less conscious. They chose that life because they needed the peace and quiet, the peace and quiet became a crutch.

Take a monk out of the monastery, and you have fish out of water. A truly conscious person will adapt and flow to any situation.

There's also the Zen principle that states that wherever you are is the best possible place you could be. Your soul chose the kind of life you're in because it felt that it offered the best conditions for you. Your subconscious put you in the very spot you're in because it felt that was the best spot for you. Once I figured this out, I was able to really relax to a great extent and start looking for growth opportunities everywhere.

For example, if my father and I are quarreling, the growth opportunity isn't to wish that I wasn't in the kind of situation that leads to quarreling, but to wonder what it is about my authentic response that's leading to fighting rather than affection. Once I fix how I respond to him, I can also look at the rest of my life and figure out how I could change that response too.

Reincarnation

*The post that follows came from the Steve Pavlina forum before it closed down. I am not the original author.

                          When taken from the perspective of the Spirit world, incarnation is really really effing fun. It might not seem that way from your own point of view, but having and chasing and failing and succeeding at linear goals doesn't happen "out there." Sort of like the converse of playing a video game here. We like video games because it allows us to lower the stakes for awhile. In the spirit world, there aren't any stakes unless you want there to be. This whole way of looking at things where we have linear goals, such as becoming financially independent, or climbing to the top of our social ladder; having them fail or succeed based on non-linear principles that we must then learn, then falling down off our carefully constructed perch because of yet another non-linear principle that we first see as linear, like market forces that we mistake for the government or whatever, there's nothing like it.To become enlightened, you not only have to master that game, but you then have to give it up to God. To say, "yes, I could rule the world, but the world doesn't concern me anymore."That's why enlightenment's so rare, it requires lifetimes to do everything the soul wants to do here. If you haven't done everything, you'll work and you'll meditate and you won't get enlightened.Because enlightenment isn't your true wish. But because it's a big and shiny goal, we'll want it.So what will happen is you'll keep getting signals and signs. "Here's your clue, dickwad, now quit bothering me," Self says. And full enlightenment will be denied to you.But chasing our true heart's desires is the real purpose of incarnation, not enlightenment. That's just the "last boss."

Muscle Testing

*The post that follows came from the Steve Pavlina forum before it closed down. I am not the original author.

When I first read Power vs. Force I had a negative reaction to the idea of muscle testing. I played with it, briefly, but without a fuller understanding of why it's supposed to work, I simply ignored it.

With this book, getting to it a year after I read the former, I've finally got an idea of why it works, and how. First off, the technique cannot be understood from the point of view of ( the level of consciousness) Reason. If you're at Reason or lower, then you'll need a degree of faith to use the technique. But once you transcend Reason, dropping completely the ego's claim to ultimate truth, then with a spiritual eye you can begin to grasp what's going on. 

First off, one has to understand and live the fact that standards of ethics are universal, and that they flow from God, Truth, the Source, not from our own pithy minds. 

Second, one has to understand and live the fact that mind cannot distinguish truth from falsity. Think about that. Human beings cannot distinguish the two. The ego rebels, it wants to believe that it can. But the ego is imperfect, wild, and temperamental. Anyone seriously interested in understanding the true from the false needs some other way of figuring things out. The mind has devised it's own solution, that of science.

Experimentation, carried out and repeated by others interested in knowing the truth. But how far can science take us? The limitations of science are breathtaking in scope if one takes the time to honestly ponder. Whereas faith-based institutions are often very excellent at filling in the gaps. Religious people are simply happier than non-religious people. Alcoholics Anonymous still succeeds where no scientific therapy can hope for.

So, in order to tell the true from the false in the questions that really matter in life, human beings have to have a way of doing so. It turns out that all of consciousness is linked, and that a sufficiently advanced consciousness has access to the universal records. But not consciously!! If we hadn't, we'd be extinct already, our animal natures consuming us.

We test things in a similar way to muscle testing all the time. We've all gotten "feelings from our gut," that urge us to act in ways that are for our best interest, even if the ego doesn't see it. Those gut feelings stem directly from this linked field of consciousness, subconsciously urging all of us to grow and transcend, onward and upward.

What muscle testing allows us is the opportunity to "ask God," and receive an answer from this linked field, granting us conscious access to what has historically been only the province of highly intuitive beings. It uses the same mechanism we do when we access our intuition. There's more than one way to muscle test, including a method to self-test. 

Thing about muscle testing by yourself is, you have to have faith in your abilities. And you have to exercise them often. You're building up a skill. Faith comes into play because unless you're trusting the linked field of consciousness to give you the answer, your ego will substitute one instead. You have to have faith in the technique, or in the above exposition, or you have to witness for yourself muscle testing in action.

The method to muscle test by yourself is to press your left thumb and middle finger together tightly resembling an 'O'. Then hold the statement to be tested in your mind, and then try to pull them apart with the thumb and index finger of your right hand. If they break apart, then you've gotten a negative answer. If they hold, then you've gotten a positive answer. You'll have to do it a lot before you'll start to get firm answers, as the ego doesn't want to believe it doesn't hold all the answers in itself.

Another tip: release any attachment you have to the outcome before you do the test. That's the only way to be sure that your ego isn't misleading you, if you're truly non-attached to the outcome, merely witnessing.

Poem: I am Me

I am Me:

I am young, full of life
yet here comes the dark of night
here to take my joy away
oh dear joy, why won't you stay?

The struggles I go through you’re never understand 
the life you live 
Is so very easy 
compared to all I have to give

I'm not the traditional guy
You're probably wondering why

I guess on the outside, I may look like a guy
But I am different, you won't guess why
I like things that are soft and cute
and have a heart to boot

My feminine nature is free to blow in the wind
carefree, like an angelic spirit within

Like a bird wanting to fly
I wanted to be free
and yet I still
am afraid to be me

Afraid people will laugh
Afraid some will say
what the heck is wrong
with your personality?

I try to be strong
try to take a stand
try to brush it off
Won't let fate force my hand

Do you have a problem like I do?
Do you have a problem of fitting in, too?

I'm not into sports like most guys
I've actually been known to cry
but it's okay
because no one is perfect anyways

Yet some days people do
bully people like me and you
only because of our different ways
of expressing our gender personalities


People may laugh and tease
I've never been known to please
I simply go my own way
and carry on to the next day

Please have a heart, please try to understand
I am no different from your fellow man
whatever gender you are is fine
perhaps this is a sign

that true beauty is on the inside

and superficial are all your cliques

underneath appearance 

there is something more to this

You won't know what it's like
feeling different from your own gender in spite
of the fact that you know you're right
to be the person you want to be
I am similar to you, can't you see?

You won't know what it's like
sitting alone, wishing you liked sports
so that you had something in common
and that you'd have to resort
to being by yourself simply because
you don't care for sports and everyone else does

I'm not a girl, so I don't fit with them
I'm not traditionally masculine
because of that I don't fit with men

where do I fit in, then?

Back then, to be honest with you
I hated myself, in grade two
seeing how I was different, didn't quite fit in
would I ever be free from the burden within?

Not trying to brag, not trying to boast
but there was something I needed most
I definitely needed help
the confidence to be myself

I was a bit sensitive
and I guess it's just that
I just wanted someone to confide to
simply someone to talk to


You can pick the pieces of yourself off the ground
and carry on
despite not feeling like you really belong

Despite feeling flawed

I carried on

I was not weak

I was strong

People laugh

they don't understand

but I know deep down

God has a plan

for everyone, God's abundance is just

we are not just pieces of dust

to be used and abused and thrown away

everyone is different, in their own quirky way

I know now that God made me who I am

In His eyes, everyone is beautiful merely a grain of sand

within the bigger beach that makes up life

every person has the right

to feel like they are worthy of love

and respect from others, kindness above

is a gift from the heavens to us below

on us, does His blessing bestow

Now I can finally see

I may not be perfect but I am Me

Now I can finally see

I may not be perfect but I am Me       =)