Fundamentals of Spiritual Study

The fundamental aim of spiritual study is to get facts and principles into the Heart’s fertile ground. Ideas must get through habitual and familiar filters; otherwise, the information is diverted from having its full power. It’s not how much you read or hear that counts, but how much you take in and make your own.



How can you receive knowledge deep in your core so the principles work for you in far higher ways? Here are eight proven methods that work wonders:
1. Write your own book of development. Gather pearls of wisdom as you read, listen to audio programs or attend talks. More importantly, when YOU have an insight, get it down! You’ll find as years go by that the notebook you’ve created is filled with wisdom that has special resonance for YOU.


2. Contemplate. Picture yourself flying a glider. The tow plane lifts you. Now it’s your time to soar. You pull the connection and you’re on your own. The winds lift you higher and higher.

The glider is a perfect parallel to the art of contemplation. Focus on a single word, sentence, illustration or experience that matters to you. Put the spotlight of your attention on it. What’s in this idea that isn’t presently seen? What does the experience REALLY mean? Then, let go of the thought. Soar in the silence. It is the silence following the focus that reveals the core. The silence takes you beyond what you already understand. Transcend the word, concept or experience and move from theory to revelation. Soar to a higher level of deep and rich understanding.

3. Read aloud. Read enthusiastically and with conviction. You may even wish to stand and gesture freely. You can imagine that you are addressing a large and attentive audience, like your own thoughts that now wish to change. Reading silently exercises your intellect, while reading aloud combines both your intellect and your power of speech.


4. Read with repetition. Take four or five pages from a good book, and read these same pages every day for a week before going on to the next four or five pages. Read them more than once, if you have the time, but at least once a day. Just before going to sleep at night is an ideal time. Something marvelous happens when you do this. Information seeps through old patterns.
I first learned of this method from Og Mandino in his classic book, “The Greatest Salesman in the World. ”The benefits are enormous.


5. Be a metaphor hunter. This is wonderful fun. Simply be alert to daily life experiences, historical examples or encounters with nature that have a resemblance or connection to a spiritual principle. For example, let’s say you’re on a hike. You observe an old tree that has fallen into a stream. The tree is lodged but the flowing water gradually breaks it away and takes it downstream. You think with delight how the flow of Truth clears away old thinking that no longer serves your Heart.


Again, it all comes down to what you plant in your Heart. The same experience happens to two people. One seizes the experience and plants the lesson deep within, the other let’s it just bounce off the old and familiar mental patterns.


6. Express the knowledge you gather. See yourself as a conduit of information, like a lake that stays pure by taking in fresh water on one side and releasing it on the other. Refuse to be a stagnant pond! Find ways in harmony with your talents and interests to live and express what you learn, even though you may sometimes be criticized. Write, speak, paint, dance, start businesses, raise healthy children. These are all ways to express spiritual knowledge in action.


7. Transform your automobile into a rolling cosmic university. So much good information is now available on audio CD. Drive time on the less crowded open roads is a great place to absorb these treasures. It doesn’t all have to be spiritually focused material. Helpful ideas can be found in programs on efficiency and vocabulary, for example. In all your listening, however, don’t forget the enlightening value of a quiet drive as well.


8. Make the most of group meeting opportunities. A group where sincere men and women meet to delve deeply into life’s great questions can be a powerful venue for collecting more knowledge. Just be aware that not all spiritual and wisdom groups are true and healthy, and some take dreadful wrong turns. More than a few foster dependency to support the endless insecurities of the “leaders.” For example, unhealthy groups pry into people’s affairs. Never forget that your privacy is your sacred right and must never be sacrificed. Just because you participate in a group activity does not mean that you owe them any explanations concerning your private affairs. This prying is a sure sign of a false group.


With self-reliance, what is best and true for you has an amazing way of finding you. Groups are temporary vehicles that can be valuable, but only if there is genuine value in the group.

Use these eight methods and watch your secret garden bloom in your Heart. You’ll feel joy and cheerfulness reach you at unexpected moments, and more frequently.

A Role of Emotions

It's not surprising that many of us believe emotion is somehow antagonistic to thinking. The notion that the best thinking occurs in the cool clear light of reason, high above the distraction and messiness of emotion. It has influenced our culture in this way, particularly in the area of education.

People make distinctions between thought and emotion in the same way they make distinctions between the mind and body. However, despite our deeply ingrained assumptions, these distinctions don't actually exist. Body, thought and emotion are intimately bound together, and function as a whole unit to enrich our knowing. And research is helping to explain how and why rich emotional development is essential for understanding relationships, rational thought, imagination, creativity and even the health of the body.

All of our emotional/cognitive processing appears to be biochemical. How we feel about a situation triggers specific neurotransmitters. Objectively speaking, to the mind/body, every experience is simply an event. The way we choose to perceive that event, colored by our emotions, determines our response to it and our potential for learning from it.

The natural processes of life is now understood to be essential to learning, creative thought, emotions and it's time to consciously bring them back into every aspect of our lives. And realize, as I have, that something this simple and natural can be the source of miracles.

Poetry Emotion: Wendy's Window Opens Again

Relentlessly she tossed

Waiting for the boy in green

Still not accepting

He was nothing but a dream



Like a rose the moon bloomed

As the frozen landscape slurred

Streetlamps gathering sounds

... But the mists kept them blurred


A silence same to the houses

Where the English soundly slept

But Wendy heard the noise

As the snow melt sadly wept


Like a raven in a poem

Came on her glass a tapping

She tossed away her covers

Knowing it was happening


At the window a shadow hunkered

Shivering in the chill

But the frost had not taken

The strength of her will


"Wendy," the shadow whispered,

"Are you ready to fly?"

"There is no need whatsoever"

"To bid your parents a last goodbye."


"Who are you?" she asked

"And then I'll ask no more."

"I am the key," Peter answered.

"And I am your Door."


"Let us go to a place,"

He said with a smile.

"I never believed in Destiny,"

"But for you I will awhile."
 
 
 

Copyright 2012  Edward Randall Arriaga

Poetry Emotion: The Lost Boy's Secret Council

Peter slept deeply that morning

Neverland's sun rising high

The Lost Boy's called a council

Asking desperate questions why

Tinker sat as the chairman

... Their hope she had took

Though no boundary surrounded them

They were pages in her book

Tink took the stage with laughter

Glowing like a flower in bloom

She said, "Boys we have gathered,

To watch Peter seal our doom."

The boy Justice spoke swiftly

"Of what end do you speak?"

he was answered by Prudence

"It's the girl Peter seeks."

"He has lost his sense of a place,"

"That Indians and mermaids do share."

"This girl comes to our Neverland,

"From a place that is Neverthere."




Copyright 2012  Edward Randall Arriaga
Image: Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery

Poetry Emotion: Where The Lost Boys Dwell

Peter landed deftly

Upon hills rolling swirls

Around him gathered Lost Boys

Who threw their arms around the world

The Pan they had proclaimed him

In the trees they gladly dwelt

High above the earth they slept soundly

But on that earth they now knelt

Clothed in skins of nature

They never stood alone

They found it's not brick that builds a house

But blood that builds a home

A cheer rose noisily

As he and the golden fairy descended

Then they cried tears of joy

Fearing their leader's time had been ended

It was Orion who first questioned

While Tinker smirked with glee

"Peter, why have you been leaving?"

"Who is it that you see?"

Peter hung his head

Like a flower that has withered

Tinker then did answer

As a snake that did slither

She said, "Peter has a dilemma,

"And in this your part does not play,

"You live here in Neverland,

"While Peter flirts away."

The Lost Boys looked about in confusion

While the trees grew more shade

Tinker held a laugh inside

Until Pan showed of what he was made

"I will tell you, O' brothers mine,"

"I have gone to see a girl."

"She breathes the air in a land of fools,"

"I intend to bring her here."

Copyright 2012  Edward Randall Arriaga

   Image content provided by: Neverpedia 

Poetry Emotion: The Resurrection of Peter Pan

He sat cross legged and shivering

A London winter blowing cruel

As Tinker spiraled round... and round

Telling him he was a fool

She spouted words brashly

Unleashing her deceit

He knew a fairy's fury

And knew the sleeping girl's Belief

His young heart had no idea

Of what kept him always true

But Tinker loved him dearly

And never told him that she knew

As Peter watched her sleeping

The wind grew less cold

He knew that this girl Wendy

Would help his youthfulness unfold

Despite Tink’s best efforts

He tapped upon the glass

His knuckles leaving marks

That for a reason seemed to last

The girl Wendy stirred softly

Then awakened like one ordained

But there was no surprise in her eyes

Seeing Peter on her pane

He said, "I can take your hand with certainty

And fly you to a star

I’ll take a right and follow it

To land that isn’t far"

"I know it’s hard to trust," he said

One who can truly fly

But those who are frightened by our wings

Will never reach the sky"

Wendy heard the truth

And did not care if it was a dream

She thought, If all dreams are like this one

Then nothing is as it seems

As Wendy came to the window

Tinker swam about Peter's head

Bickering and wrangling

Of a decision he would dread

The fairy's voice meant nothing

As he watched Wendy's hand

Flip the latch that would lead his heart

Into the Promised Land...

"Who are you, little boy?"

"With clothes so bizarre?"

And though it's dark outside,

"You glow like a star."

Peter could not help but smile

The fairy's shine still aglow

"I am the Pan," he grinned

"And there's a place you need to know."

Tinker wheeled in fury

Scolding him with pride

Peter whispered, "Tink your breath is wasted,"

"On what I feel inside."

Wendy took Peter's hand

Despite her gown and the cold

"Are you ready?" Peter asked

"To never grow old?"

© Copyright 2012 Edward Randall Arriaga

*Image by the artwork of Brom all Rights reserved

Poetry Emotion

*meditation*


Sit still and disengage normal activities.
Draw energy from the earth.,
Admit power from the heavens.
Fertilize the seed within.,
Let it sprout into a flower of pure light.
And let brightness open the top of your head:
Divine light will come pouring in.
Your mind is empty,
Light seeps into your whole body.
Sitting cross-legged, with hands clasped,
As if trying to embrace the brilliant flood,
Your skin turns transparent.
How can a bag of skin hold divine magnitude?
Your last vestiges burn away in a torrent of infinity.
Only after indeterminate time do you return.
Flesh, blood, bones.
Were you gone? Or were you never here in the first place?
Where is the torrent? It is gone.,
You've only closed to it once more.
Meditate upon it later.


~ Robin Ann

Something Sacred

Self Awareness

Awareness of our mental selves, our thoughts and feelings, awareness of awareness: We all know exactly what this means, even if none of us can describe it very well.

Neuroscience is still far from being able to explain how human self-awareness works, but some general ideas are gradually emerging. A key concept is that we are spectators to our own awareness. The fact that we take in, reflect, and encounter an I-ness is apparently at the core of religious experiences that we call mystical. Western traditions describe a sense of Immanence or Presence., Asian traditions variously describe states of Nirvana, of liberation, of living with the Tao. Albert Einstein underscores its centrality: "The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the source of all true art. He whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as not fully living."

Throughout history, this experience has often been interpreted as the apprehension of the Divine within or the luminous Other, and they are actively sought in prayer and thought., Western traditions say that we are aware of a Spirit, that we are comprehended by something much larger, deeper, more valuable, and more enduring than ourselves and the infinite universe.

The encounter is truthfully inwardly, intensely personal, and described, if at all, with a halting tongue. In Asian traditions, the religious person seeks in meditation an emptying out, a receptivity, in order to experience an at-one-ness, a spiritual communion with the universe, Enlightenment.


So we raise our eyes to the heavens and we ask, Is this Other? Is this God? Is this the Perfection of Understanding? Or are these overwhelmingly powerful mental experiences, with Immanence a particularly intense form of Self-awareness, so that all else can penetrate? How can we tell? And then, does it matter?.. In the end it doesn't matter. All of us are transformed by our own Light. My response is to open myself to its blessing.

* *

Poetic Emotion

With your beautiful eyes, I see a gentle Light..

my blind ones could never see.,

One your feet, I bear a burden..

my lame ones could never bear.

With your wings, I fly though featherless.,

By your mind I'm lifted ever upward.,

At your whim, I pale or blush,

cold in the sun, warm in the cold of winter.

In your desire alone is my desire.,

my thoughts are forged in your heart,

my works are breathed in your breath.

Alone, I am like the moon, itself alone.,

our eyes see it in the heavens..

only as the sun enlightens it.

~ Michelangelo 1534

Reflection: ~

A metaphor my father seemed to like with thoughts on life itself: "Life is a coral reef. We each leave behind the best, the strongest deposit we can, so that the reef can grow. But what's important is the reef."

Original of Origin ~

Soem extract from reality, all the meaning and guidance and emotional substance that we can, and we bring these responses with us as we set out to chart global paths. And then we come back to our original of origin. Its better to see it all exactly like a tapestry.

The tapestry maker first strings the warp, - long, strong fibers anchored firmly to the loom, and then interweaves the weft, the patterns, the color, the art. The Epic of Evolution is the warp, destined to endure, commanding our universal gratitude. And then, after that, we are all free to be artists, to render in language and painting and song and dance our ultimate hopes and concerns and understandings of human nature.

Throughout the ages, the weaving of our weft had been the province of our prophets and gurus and poets and teachers. The texts and art that come to us from these revered ancestors includes about Nature, something that can be absorbed over 'time', appreciated, and founding deep wisdom embedded with abundant opportunities that is offered to experience transcendence and clarity.

Accept Yourself

As this begins today truly is perfect in all its unfolding. Observe with an open heart and mind. Listen, watch and stay receptive. Yes with what comes around us, to us but just as importantly what is within us. Observe ourselves, look deeper and all that we observe about ourselves accept and embrace. When we are open and willing to see a situation as it is and not try to place it in a particular interpretation or form we are allowing ourselves to shift not only our perception of what this is but how we respond and act upon it.

Take the time to digest and make our choices from a place of mindfulness and receptive to change. I am not speaking on being hesitant or uncertain in any way. It is on relearning how to trust ourselves and our choices by cultivating patience and coming from a place seeing a person, a place, a circumstance as they are. Watch the energies that come and our own as they are and when we do choose we act from a place of fuller understanding, wisdom and insight. This way we can move and act in a way that comes from our integrity and will full confidence.


This is especially true with change that we wish to see happen. Think of those areas that you wish to change. Are truly accepting ourselves in every way or do keep ourselves at a distance from what we wish to see change? Observe our actions, our reactions, our thoughts, our perceptions about ourselves.

Apart of the essence of this is being able to accept every part of who you are I do mean every part., even the parts that we may not find that acceptable. Approve and embrace who you are right now, in this moment., every aspect and be at peace with yourself even those parts of you that you want to change. The more open you are to accept the more you begin to integrate, adapt, evolve and yes the more you change.

You are no longer contending with yourself, arguing, fighting, at odds. You come to place of harmony in that choice you can observe and participate at the same time. Watch what unfolds, continue to give yourself unconditional acceptance and love and that, that Acceptance and Love, will transform every part of you and what magnificent and divine changes will occur.

You will be making choices and taking actions that flow from the root and seed of Unconditional Love and that is where everything germinates from. Be patient with yourself, be accepting of yourself and love yourself completely then watch and listen and See just how marvelous you truly are and the way you Shine deeply and brightly. :)

Believing Is Seeing

Intellectual awareness is a function of the solar plexus chakra, where mental ability is developed in a linear direction. Examples of linear thought include the performing of arithmetic and the operating of machinery. In this mode of consciousness, people have learned to develop a rigid discipline of “seeing is believing” in order to find what works and what doesn’t. With holistic awareness, the heart chakra is developed, allowing issues of separation to be resolved and integrated. Holistic awareness means that mind, body & spirit are seen as closely related facets of the human being. This heart-centered awareness is a viewpoint of integration or wholeness which heals the fears and discords that come with solar plexus consciousness.

There is a paradox with moving from linear intellect to heart-centered consciousness. While the intellectual phase of consciousness may say that “Seeing is believing,” the holistic phase requires quite the reverse. In holistic consciousness, opposites are often both true as they are seen as opposite sides of the same coin or as polar opposites of the same issue. Awareness that is limited to the intellect is subject to issues of separation; of us versus them, of struggling for resources that are perceived as scarce instead of solving the problem of their scarcity. Holistic awareness includes the idea that consciousness creates realities, that something must be created in consciousness – “believed” – before they can become a reality.

So, in holistic consciousness, “Believing is seeing” becomes a statement of truth, even though it is the opposite of “Seeing is believing.” Instead, it adds the understanding that reality is created by consciousness. We are not merely observers of what is. We create what is. Traditionally, people have entered a realm of holistic, heart-centered awareness when they pass on from this life. In the afterlife, their task is to heal the fears and hates of their physical lives and transform them into love and forgiveness, thus integrating themselves with others, rather than feeling separate from them.

Today, due to The Shift, more and more people are embracing holistic, heart-centered consciousness while still alive in physical bodies. As the heart is also the gateway to spiritual consciousness, this global movement is producing a revolution in spiritual unfoldment. Spiritual consciousness is flowering in the global consciousness of humanity as The Shift progresses. Today’s pioneers in consciousness are people just like yourself. They are exploring the new territory of unconditional love and experiencing a reunion with their own inner, spiritual connections.

The higher aspect of heart-centered consciousness is fully connected to your inner being, or soul. Your inner being is fully connected to the consciousness of the universe and to that which created the universe. Infinite Being is within each of us. We are Infinite Being. The daily focus that we apply to our five senses and their connection to the outside world is just like performing a part in a play. We act out the part of being us, along the general theme of the type of events that we planned for this life.

We ride along through the journey of this life, gaining the type of experiences that we planned to gain. When you open up to your heart, and through that, reconnect to your own spiritual source, then you have become a part of the very future of humanity. The Shift is heading towards a world where unconditional love and acceptance is normal, where strife is relegated to the distant past, where the true potential of human beings can express itself in the daily joy of being all that you are.




Owen Waters is the author of The Shift:
The Revolution in Human Consciousness, which is available as a downloadable e-book, at:

http://www.infinitebeing.com/ebooks/theshift.htm