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ClothedWithTheSunKingsford

Title Page
Table Of Contents
Preface To The Second Edition
Preface To The First Edition

Pak Subuh – God’s Chosen People

SuperMinds

Chapter Ten

It is interesting to look at the influence of Muhammed Subuh. He was born and lived in Indonesia, working as an accountant for many years. His main interest in life was to seek out some of the many holy men in his country, and attempt a deeper awareness of life’s mysteries and the nature of God.

In his late twenties, in the year 1925, he experienced a vision while out walking. It seemed to him that a ball of light or fire rushed across the sky and descended on his head. He began to shake and tremble, and felt a powerful and divine energy had begun to work in his being. On reaching home he opened himself to the influence of this power and found spontaneous movements and experiences occurred. From that time onwards he frequently ‘opened’ himself to what he felt to come from God, and found that each time movements, sounds, and a wide variety of inner experience arose.

He observed that the movements and experiences were ways in which his being was gradually cleansed and made whole. It was as if some influence were gradually guiding him through experiences in a direction he could not preconceive, but IT could. Also, his physical health improved, his experiences educated him regarding his and other peoples life on Earth, and he found his intuitive faculties enormously enlarged. Often he could also be instrumental in helping other people to experience healing. The film star Eva Bartok told her story in the newspapers at the time of her own healing in connection with Pak Subuh and her baby.

By 1932 Pak Subuh had discovered that other people who relaxed in his presence could also receive the same experience and be led through cleansing and integration. Groups of people in Indonesia began to practice this ‘opening’ to what they felt to be the grace of God working in their lives. The manner of these group experiences is like that described under Shaktipat in Christianity. People found their bodies making spontaneous movements; they experienced themselves in a wide variety of ways, were led through catharsis and great inspirational insights. Like the Pentecostal approach, there was a tendency toward remaining on the symbolic level, and editing all but the transcendental.

The experience of being moved from within was called ‘Latihan’, which in Indonesian means to be moved, cleansed and disciplined by the power of God. But until 1957 comparatively few people were in these groups doing latihan. Those who were had mostly been using latihan several times a week for many years. Sometimes the length of practice was ten or fifteen years. These practitioners had found that their nature and body had been gradually changed by the practice. Their awareness and sympathies had widened. Problems had shifted, and in general they felt more in touch with the force or meaning behind their existence. At this point a European working in Indonesia – Rofe – asked to be introduced to the latihan. Rofe taught it to people in England who started an international centre at Coombe Springs. From there the practice went world-wide, and at one time the followers numbers were claimed to be 200,000. People of all nationalities, religious belief, political views and social status found they could experience the latihan. The lives of many were deeply changed by it.

If we are to understand how modern men and women relate to yhis practice there are things we must be aware of in regard to the latihan, and the organisation named Subud. J.P. Barter, for instance, writing about his involvement in the latihan says, “We do not know for any certainty why the force which is received in Subud has been made uniquely available to mankind today rather than at some earlier period in history.”

The statement is typical of the sort of historical blindness and spiritual pomposity that is common in the practice. Pak Subuh states that the experience is unique to him and new in the world , but in later years said latihan was not unique experience.

When I myself started a similar group many years ago, based on Reichian work and Mesmer’s groups, a spy was sent from a Subud group in a nearby town to find out where or how I had stolen their latihan! That people like J.G. Bennet, a well educated man, and Barter, bright enough to write an orderly account of Subud, can accept such statements is a warning that the Western mind, in attempting to re-establish connection with the deeper layers of the psyche, can often revert to primitive attitudes, ignoring or discarding information and lessons learned through hard experience.

I see the Latihan, Pentecostal experience, Mesmers groups and the enormous critcism aimed at them, enough in the case of Wilhelm Reich to land him in prison, as explainable by modern scientific research. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration obtained an injunction against the interstate shipment of orgone accumulators and associated literature, believing they were dealing with a “fraud of the first magnitude”. Charged with contempt in 1956 for having violated the injunction, Reich was sentenced to two years imprisonment, and that summer over six tons of his publications were burned by order of the court. He died in prison of heart failure just over a year later, days before he was due to apply for parole. This resulted in a real witch hunt – all arising from the enormous misunderstanding of human nature. I tend to wonder whether his death was the way governments get rid of ‘troublemakers’.

The scientific research is as follows: In 1937, through the use of the electroencephalograph EEG measuring tiny electrical brain impulses, Loomis and his associates discovered that the form of brain-waves change with the onset of sleep. The next leap forward in understanding came when Aserinsky and Kleitman found rapid eye movements REM in 1953. In 1957 the REM were linked with dreaming. This defined sleep into two different observable states, REM sleep, and NREM non rapid eye movement, pronounced non-REM sleep.

Later sleep paralysis was discovered – the fact that voluntary movements are inhibited during periods of the dream process explains sleep paralysis. All brain signals to the voluntary muscles are stopped. Therefore if we become slightly awake and attempt to move at that time we feel paralysed. This is not sensed as a problem if we are unconsciously involved in a dream. While dreaming another level of will takes control of the body, so any sounds or movements made are not from ones conscious will.

So, in life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us. The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities and a particular gender. Our second is the power that gave us life and continues to express as dreams, in our breathing and heartbeat – our life. This I have given the description as the Life Will.

While we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we dream our voluntary muscles are paralysed – therefore another will or motivating force moves our body. So we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will. The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak in everyday activities; but the second will takes over when we sleep. See Sleep Paralysis

This Life will can move us to speak, to move our body, and in fact do things that we cannot do with our Conscious Will and in fact runs all our important life processes like heart beat, digestion and also dreams.

For simplicity I have called this experience, of what is actually ‘waking lucid dreaming’, ‘LifeStream’ and Opening to Life. Also see Waking Lucid Dreaming that explains in more detail how the Pentecostal experience and also Subud are explainable as fundamental life processes.

See For Yourself

A method that is a mild introduction to movements not arising from ones conscious will is Arm Circling. This is a useful technique to learn the first stages of allowing your inner being to express spontaneously. It is a way of gradually loosening tensions and blockages, but must be practiced several times to really feel your way into it.

It is good to try a preparatory exercise first, one to give you a direct experience of spontaneous movement.

But it is good to get the feel of something that is easy to do first. A simple way you might be able to learn the beginnings of this it may help to first learn how to yawn spontaneously. You can do this by acting out a few yawns till they come spontaneously. Let them come and let the rest of your body join in if an urge to stretch comes. This is to learn how to recognise and allow your body and feelings to express spontaneously. When you can allow spontaneous yawns and stretches, then try the arm circling.

Spontaneous Arm Movement

This is a simple and enjoyable technique which gives a direct experience of spontaneous movement. You need to stand about a foot away from a wall, side on. Start with your right side. You are going to lift your right arm sideways, but because you are near the wall you will only manage to lift it part of the way. So when the back of your hand touches the wall, press it hard against the wall as if trying to complete the movement of lifting the arm. Using a reasonable amount of effort stay with the hand pressing against the wall for about twenty seconds. Then move so you face away from the wall, and with eyes closed relax your arm and be aware of what happens. Try it before reading on, and use the left arm afterwards.

For some people nothing happens. In which case I suggest you loosen your arms by consciously moving them to get your blood circulating, then try again.

What we have done is to attempt to make a movement. Because the wall prevented this, the body was not able to complete the movement you asked it to make. Therefore a muscular charge built up in the deltoid muscle. When you stepped away from the wall the arm, if relaxed, was then free to complete the movement. So possibly your arm rose from your side as if weightless, thus discharging its energy. Some people need several tries before they can find the right body feeling to allow the arm its movement. It is easy to prevent it moving because the impulse is quite a subtle one. The point of the exercise however, is to learn a relationship with oneself in which a subtle impulse can express. The movement the arm makes, and how it feels to experience an un-willed movement, is so similar to LifeStream we are thus provided with an experimental experience of the real thing. Therefore it is helpful either to practice the technique until you can do it, or use it a number of times to establish your relationship with the feeling of it. This sense of allowing movement can then be used in LifeStream itself.

Arm Circling Movement

For the next exercise you need sufficient floor space to move easily, or even lie full length if necessary. It also helps to have loose clothing.. You start by standing in the middle of your floor space, giving yourself time to explore what you feel and experience. Start by circling your arms. Take the arms above the head, down to the lower front of the body fairly slowly, with the arms fully extended, then upward crossing the front of the trunk. In the full movement the hands are then forming wide circles that cross the front of your body. This arm circling is simply to help you learn how to allow spontaneous movement. It is a way of working with the natural forces within you.

So, as you are circling your arms with eyes closed, bring your awareness to the shapes your hands are making in space. As you become aware of the shapes the hands are carving in space, watch what feelings you have as to how you would like to move. Give yourself permission to doodle, to make any sort of shapes your feelings or body incline you to. Allow any sort of posture or movement, as active or quiet as you like.

If they arise, allow sounds to accompany the movements, and allow whatever feelings accompany them. Hold the attitude that what you are doing doesn’t have to make sense. Nor does it have to comply with what other people might expect of you. Realise that you are allowing another part of yourself, perhaps a non verbal part, or a facet unknown to the rational mind, to express.

With a non critical watching attitude, relax and let your body and feeling sense direct what happens. There is no need to fiercely concentrate in order to wipe the mind clear of other influences. But you may need to relax the part of the mind that always needs to know beforehand what you are going to do.

This is not like creative dance, in which there may exist a need to produce something pleasing for others to watch. With this exercise you need an open area in which your inner being can make its own adjustments, and movement and feeling has a chance to express outside of rational criticism, self decision and demands of everyday life.

Give yourself at least fifteen minutes in which to explore what spontaneous movements and feelings emerge

Writing it all down – Don’t be fooled, it can work

The work of Dr. Caron Kent, is summarised in his book The Puzzled Body. He began to explore himself because of his own need to deal with his depression by giving himself regular time at a typewriter and writing spontaneously whatever came to mind. In this way he found he began to contact areas of experience and feeling previously unavailable. He developed this in his practice as a psychotherapist into working with the body and feelings directly.

The idea in this approach is to sit down with a pencil and plenty of paper or at your computer. Have a clock or watch before you so it is easily seen. You must now, non stop, write whatever comes into your head, for ten minutes. You do not try to think, you simply write whatever word comes into your head and there is no need for it to make sense, whatever word appears with the thought what does my dream mean. This cuts out the rational thinking mind and leads to you tapping the unconscious.

So, you must actually not stop writing for ten whole minutes. If, for a moment, your thoughts block, write continuously the last word until further ideas arrive. There may be rather strange results at first. However, practice will bring the flow and harmony that you are seeking. The benefits of this will only be seen through practice. Try to do this exercise as many times as possible during the next week. Write anything that comes. You simply hold in mind about the dream without thinking about it. Actually, once you have asked about the dream you can drop it.

A quick way to gain insight

A dream image is a mask or cover of what we are feeling, and that is the core of the dream. So, if you imagine removing the image of the dream you are left with the feeling that gave rise to the drama and images.

A way of doing this is to realise that the images in our dreams are just emotions, thoughts and feeling taking on, or presenting themselves, as images and drama, and if you take away the images of a baby, a tree, or an animal and see what you feel you have the real meaning. This is so simple that many people fail to try it, instead they ‘think out or about their dream’. This may be because many people do not like to meet or deal with their real feelings and emotions. So, please take time with it.

So, after you take the image away and feel the feeling underneath it, ask yourself, “When have I felt this before – even years ago? What is the feeling about and what can I understand from it?

Talking as a Dream Character

This is a technique I have used myself and with groups of people. People arrive at understanding very quickly. But for some people this takes a little practice because instead of – if we dream of a dog – saying, “The dog is only a puppy and is adorable” you need to talk as if you are the dog, person or place. So, say “I am a little puppy and the person thinks I am adorable”. So, do not say “This little dog” for that does not connect with your feelings, but distances you from the dream image.

The idea is to really describe in detail what it is you are dealing with, and also what you are feeling as the dream object. The more you use this the richer the experience gets and you allow yourself to really be the dream object or person – and do not make the mistake if it is a person you know by describing them as an outside person. Stick with them exactly as they are in the dream.

Here is an example: I dreamt I arrived at a railway station, but instead of a platform it was at the top of an old castle keep. I had to walk down through the castle and then out to a street.

So, I said: “I am a Castle. In the past I defended myself so strongly against all manner of attacks and people. This caused all manner of conflicts in my life. But now I am a station. People come and go in my life. I do not stop the train of events. I have been redecorated, altered inside, not beautiful, but hard wearing and enduring. I am stairs, giving passage for people going down or up.” As soon as I said that I could see what it meant. I had suffered a lot of shyness and was defended not allowing people near me. I had built impregnable emotional walls to keep people away. Now I was finding it easier to let people come and go.

Here is another example: I dreamt I entered my living room and things had been thrown everywhere. It was a mess. I realised that it was my wife who had done it. Also it was not our living space but a dream one.

This is a tricky one because the wife was not in the dream, so if one sticks with the dream and not his actual wife here is what was said. “I am an invisible presence in my husband life, a presence he feels tears his living space to bits. Yet I am invisible and so could not have done this. But I am a feeling in his life that assures him that I am an awful intrusion. You see, I am just a feeling he has, and that makes him irritated with me.” The dreamer admitted that it wasn’t his wife that was messing up his ‘living space’ but his own feelings about her.

So, try it and see what you find. But take time with yourself and ask the person, castle wall, dog, or object questions to clear things up. If you say whatever comes to mind you will be amazed how well it works. And remember – in choosing an image to work with, such as a person, a tree, cat, place, or an environment like the street in the example dream above, it must again be treated as it appears in the dream, not as it may appear in real life. One can take any image from the dream to work with. So, describe yourself as the image in the dream. Remember what was said – So, say “I am a little puppy and the person thinks I am adorable”. So, do not say “This little dog” for that does not connect with your feelings, but distances you from the dream image.

Child’s Play

There is time here in Mexico. Time to get up and slowly stretch in the morning, or time to lie quietly in bed gazing at the window, watching the dawn turn off the street light and blue the sky. So there was time, before any chores, to stroll away from the house together, out into the open ground between cacti. I thought H. and I could see where the rail track ran across the bottom of the road, and we hadn’t been out into the scrub before. Almost immediately H. found a small gathering of trees whose arching branches created a domed clearing. She stood in front of me in the middle of the small temple of branches and leaves, and took my hands. “Close your eyes,” she said. When I did so bird song filled my awareness, creating a world of distances, of space, and qualities of life. I could hear birdsong from high places and low. It came from far away and close by. The enormity of space I exist in was given qualities and dimensions.

We stood for a while holding hands, listening. Then walked on through the thorny trees and cacti, trying to find the railway track. We emerged onto a dirt road and could see the rail track across open ground. Although it was early, the sun was hot, and it was good strolling and taking in what was around us.

H. caught my arm and turned me to look at the track. “Do you see that woman?” she asked.

I didn’t at first. Then I saw her, standing quite still, with her back to us, maybe a hundred meters away. She seemed to have a flowing red shawl over her shoulders, and a dark dress reaching to her ankles. Her stillness communicated a feeling of calm quietness. I wondered if she were absorbing the beauty of the morning. Or perhaps she was experiencing the gentle rising of an inner joy or long slow thought.

Eventually she moved, and turning towards us began to walk across the open ground in the direction of a tumbledown collection of sheds. Perhaps it was her home. And as we watched, she seemed not to be a part of the present, of the world of cars and televisions. This impression was heightened by her clothes. Apart from the red shawl and long heavy dress she also wore what appeared to be an apron in a folk design.

Walking on, perhaps to see where she went, or even to meet, we lost sight of her, and instead came upon a wooden house that from its shape and feeling, could have been lifted from an Austrian or Swiss mountain slope. As we got nearer to this house, we could hear quiet singing. The house had a wide covered balcony along its ground floor front, and a wooden balustrade separated this from the garden. Through the balustrade we could see a young girl of about five or six, with long brown hair, and a face oddly older than her size indicated. She was completely oblivious to us as we stood and watched her, and listened to her singing. At first I thought she was dressing a doll, and her song was for that. But as we watched we saw she was holding and dressing a small dog about the size of a miniature poodle. It was standing quite still, without any struggle, and I had the impression it was wet from having been washed. At times the child laughed with happiness and pleasure, totally in her world of play. And again we had the sense of being in a past age, a secret world of imagination and quieter times. So intimate was the scene, so private and precious, that I felt restless to move away, lest the girl see us, and the wonderful laughter and singing, along with the exquisite moments of her play, be shattered. But she remained completely unaware of us, and we walked on, enriched with the vision of the child at play.

The Christmas Story

This story, like many others, has a long history, and I wish to show how much longer it existed before it was enshrines in Christian belief. It is a story that preserves the holy nature of something that was realised very early in human histiry. The belief was probably started in pre-history, and below are just a few historical mentions.

Hebraic – Melchizedek: The Second Book of Enoch contains a section, called Exaltation of Melchizedek, which says that Melchizedek was born of a virgin, Sofonim (or Sopanima), the wife of Nir, a brother of Noah. The child came out from his mother after she had died and sat on the bed beside her corpse, already physically developed, clothed, speaking and blessing the Lord, and marked with the badge of priesthood.

Greco-Roman religions – According to tradition, Zoroaster’s mother, Dughdova, was a virgin when she conceived Zoroaster by a shaft of light. Attis was born to the virgin Nana on December 25 – : Heracles was born on December 25 to a virgin. Romulus was born to Rea Sivia, a mortal Vestal virgin, probably about 2000 years BC.

Mithras Mithra was born in a cave, and on the 25th December. He was born of a Virgin. He travelled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. His great festivals were the winter solstice and the Spring equinox (Christmas and Easter). He had twelve companions or disciples (the twelve zodiacal signs). He was buried in a tomb, from which however he rose again; and his resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings. He was called Savior and Mediator, and sometimes figured as a Lamb; and sacramental feasts in remembrance of him were held by his followers. He was dated about 1400 BC.

Buddhism – Siddartha who became the Buddha. The story of Gautama Buddha’s life (567- 487 BC) starts at preconception when his mother, Queen Maya, is said to have dreamt that a six-tusked elephant pierced her side with one of its tusks. This produced an immaculate conception. She understood the dream to mean the resulting child would become a monarch whose domain was the world.

Because of his life story, a story that is confirmed, we learn of how a real historical character, Siddartha, sets out on a search for a way beyond pain and death. The search is long but he finds what is sought in enlightenment and becomes the Buddha. In a similar way Jesus becomes the Christ at baptism.

Egypt – The virgin Queen of Egypt, supposedly gave birth to Pharaoh Amenkept III through a god holding a cross to her mouth. – The Egyptian sun god, was said to be born of a virgin. – Horus was born to a virgin Isis–Meri on December 25 in a cave. Isis bore Horus having impregnated herself with the semen of Osiris after his death [1]

Hinduism – Krishna In the story of Krishna the deity is the agent of conception and also the offspring. Because of his sympathy for the earth, the divine Vishnu himself descended into the womb of Devaki and was born as her son, Krishna.

“This is occasionally brought up as evidence for the hypothesis that “virgin birth” tales are a fairly common phenomenon in non-Christian religions around the world. However, there is nothing in Hindu scriptures to suggest that it was a “virgin” birth. By the time of conception and birth of Krishna, Devaki was married to Vasudeva and had already borne seven children.” That is quoted from Wikipedia, and the author supposes that virgin birth is a miraculous event rather than an event occuring in a person whose mind is free from preconceptions.

Assyrian and Babylonian religions – Tammuz: was born to a virgin, named Mylitta, on December 25.

Mary is an image of your own human situation representing the possibility of a virginal mind and feelings. Put simply this means that when we drop preconceptions, and melt away fixed opinions, rigid attitudes, perhaps through prayer, meditation or perseverance, and in that state one can then receive a conception from Life itself – in other words a divine interception.

“The story of Mary beautifully illustrates this. She is a young girl who has just started menstruation. She is therefore fertile, open and loving. How much more we can receive from that mysterious spirit of life that is around us and within us if we have an open and loving heart, a love that has unfolded like a beautiful flower toward the unknown mystery that we have given the name of Life or God?”

Evelyn Underhill, writing under the name John Cordelier in her book The Spiral Way, has this to say about Mary:

“So many had gone up the mountain to that one desired encounter; only to be thwarted by the cloud that broods upon the summit, and hides from human eyes the Shining Light within. The great prophets, poets, and philosophers of the antique world – all these had gone up, all had marked classic moments in the ascent of the race. Then came a little girl, pure, meek, and receptive: and ran easily to her destiny and the destiny of the universe because she was ‘full of grace.’ She held out her heart to the Invisible and in this act flung a bridge across the chasm that separates Illusion from Reality. Mary becomes by this circumstance the type and pattern of each human soul. Consciously or unconsciously, all are candidates for her high office. All, truly can become the mothers of God. Published by Watkins.

Here is an example from a man giving birth, remember that in Islam it was said a man could give birth to the Prophet.

“I dreamt I was lying in a cellar. I was myself, yet at the same time, I was my wife and another woman I loved. I was in labour, and after a time the baby was born. It was a boy, a wonderful child. The membrane covered part of its face and I pulled it away. The baby then began to breathe, and looked about, fully conscious and very alert. Then, to my wonder, it spoke the name of Jesus, and said, ‘It is gone’.

When asked what was gone, the beautiful baby replied, “The other ego, where has it gone?” I seemed to know exactly what it meant. The baby had been part of the cosmic awareness, of universal consciousness, and was now but a babe; and I said, ‘The cosmic still exists within you, to become known as you grow, but being in a body has closed that door, but being in a body has closed that door for a while.’ I then carried the baby from the cellar upstairs, and knew it to be a holy and wonderful child. It started a new life for me.”

As Evelyn says, “Consciously or unconsciously, all are candidates for her high office. All, truly can become the mothers of God.” All means everybody, men as well as women. It suggests that if we take on and learn to become the prayer of the virgin soul, we too can allow the birth of the holy.

The life of prayer is often spoken of as part of the Christian path. But prayer can so easily be the mechanical mouthing of certain words, repeated over and over. We may make the movements of our mouth, we may repeat the words, but do we really experience them – do we make them an outflow of a real inner feeling? The great women and men of East and West have gone beyond words and ego-directed movements, to the real changing of self. Some of the changes they made within themselves are almost universal. This is true of the Prayer of the Virgin Soul.

The prayer of the virgin soul

The symbolism of the Virgin Mary, and the many other virgin mothers in the world’s sacred literature, show how universal a realisation this is. But if you wish to practise it, you have to make it an inner reality. In doing so you have to realise that by “inner change” is meant an inner condition, an inner state of being. It is also helpful to understand why you attempt this. It is because, until you clear at least part of your consciousness of preconceived ideas, biases, convictions, rigid emotions, unconscious habits, and so on, you cannot conceive new realisations from your own inner possibilities, you cannot give birth to the awareness of that Mystery that you are, to God. Basically this is very practical. In trying to remember someone’s name you may fail utterly because you are certain it begins with ‘S’ – when in fact it begins with ‘B’. You will never remember the name until you drop your preconception.

So the virgin posture of the soul is an attempt to bring about an inner state, an inner feeling of fertility and love towards your invisible and unknown potential – purity from preconceived ideas – the offering of your whole being as material for your potential to use in creating a new self – the act of supplication in which you let go of your thoughts, emotions and body, so they can be played upon as a piano or organ by Life. There should arise a feeling of warmth toward and desire for the unseen Life, openness to any possibility Life may have in store for you, good or bad, allied with trust. If you have a temperament capable of this, then make it an act of love, a real devotion, approaching ones darling. See https://dreamhawk.com/news/how-i-became-a-virgin/

When you manage to let go of what you think God or Life is, what you believe yourself to be, or what you are convinced is so about yourself and the world, then you are ready to receive something new. Then, that divine conception can take place in you that enables the spiritual (that which exists beyond the barriers and boundaries of your own ego) to gain a foothold in you. Then you become pregnant with new life and eventually give birth to the More of yourself in the way you live and act. This conception and the following birth will become known to you in some way. It will be felt, or maybe shown to you in a dream. The dream above of a man who for some time had been practising the way of Mary shows this.

My understanding of how to do this, at the time, came from Eliot’s words:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

It is an old, old story, for having a virgin soul has always been seen as holy. This means that when we become empty of preconceived ideas we can receive and conceive, and even give birth to, an extraordinary impulse or power that can open us to a new life and purpose.

Deep within us, when we have opened to Life itself as a virgin, in the cellar or cave of our unconscious, among the beasts of our instincts, and physical energies, the New Life tentatively begins its growth to consciousness, to birth. The star and the stable are the highest and the lowest in us uniting in this wonderful task. Joseph, our intellect and outer creativeness, difficult though he finds it to believe in this miracle, listens to his intuitions and dreams, and protects and cares for the childlike mother within us.

See Holy Baby Birth

Archetype of the Virgin Birth

This archetype, like many others, has a long history, and I wish to show how much longer it existed before it was enshrines in Christian belief. The belief was probably started in pre-history, and below are just a few historical mentions.

Hebraic – Melchizedek: The Second Book of Enoch contains a section, called Exaltation of Melchizedek, which says that Melchizedek was born of a virgin, Sofonim (or Sopanima), the wife of Nir, a brother of Noah. The child came out from his mother after she had died and sat on the bed beside her corpse, already physically developed, clothed, speaking and blessing the Lord, and marked with the badge of priesthood.

Greco-Roman religions – According to tradition, Zoroaster’s mother, Dughdova, was a virgin when she conceived Zoroaster by a shaft of light. Attis was born to the virgin Nana on December 25 – : Heracles was born on December 25 to a virgin. Romulus was born to Rea Sivia, a mortal Vestal virgin.

Mithras Mithra was born in a cave, and on the 25th December. He was born of a Virgin. He travelled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. His great festivals were the winter solstice and the Spring equinox (Christmas and Easter). He had twelve companions or disciples (the twelve zodiacal signs). He was buried in a tomb, from which however he rose again; and his resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings. He was called Savior and Mediator, and sometimes figured as a Lamb; and sacramental feasts in remembrance of him were held by his followers. He was dated about 1400 BC.

Buddhism – Siddartha who became the Buddha. The story of Gautama Buddha’s life (567- 487 BC) starts at preconception when his mother, Queen Maya, is said to have dreamt that a six-tusked elephant pierced her side with one of its tusks. This produced an immaculate conception. She understood the dream to mean the resulting child would become a monarch whose domain was the world.

Egypt – The virgin Queen of Egypt, supposedly gave birth to Pharaoh Amenkept III through a god holding a cross to her mouth. – The Egyptian sun god, was said to be born of a virgin. – Horus was born to a virgin Isis–Meri on December 25 in a cave. Isis bore Horus having impregnated herself with the semen of Osiris after his death [1]

Hinduism – Krishna In the story of Krishna the deity is the agent of conception and also the offspring. Because of his sympathy for the earth, the divine Vishnu himself descended into the womb of Devaki and was born as her son, Krishna.

Assyrian and Babylonian religions – Tammuz: was born to a virgin, named Mylitta, on December 25.

Mary as an image of your own human situation represents the possibility of a virginal mind and feelings. Put simply this means that we drop preconceptions, we melt away fixed opinions, rigid attitudes, perhaps through prayer, meditation or perseverance, and in that state one can receive a conception from Life itself – in other words a divi ne interception.

Evelyn Underhill, writing under the name John Cordelier in her book The Spiral Way, has this to say about Mary:

The prayer of the virgin soul

When you manage to let go of what you think God or Life is, what you believe yourself to be, or what you are convinced is so about yourself and the world, then you are ready to receive something new. Then, that divine conception can take place in you that enables the spiritual (that which exists beyond the barriers and boundaries of your own ego) to gain a foothold in you. Then you become pregnant with new life and eventually give birth to the More of yourself in the way you live and act. This conception and the following birth will become known to you in some way. It will be felt, or maybe shown to you in a dream. The following is the dream of a man who for some time had been practising the way of Mary.

My understanding of this at the time came from Eliot’s words:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Here is an example from a man who had tried for ages to be open to the influence of that Mystery giving birth, remember that in Islam it was said a man could give birth to the Prophet.

“I dreamt I was lying in a cellar. I was myself, yet at the same time, I was my wife and another woman I loved. I was in labour, and after a time the baby was born. It was a boy, a wonderful child. The membrane covered part of its face and I pulled it away. The baby then began to breathe, and looked about, fully conscious and very alert. Then, to my wonder, it spoke the name of Jesus, and said, ‘It is gone’.

When asked what was gone, the beautiful baby replied, “The other ego, where has it gone?” I seemed to know exactly what it meant. The baby had been part of the cosmic awareness, of universal consciousness, and was now but a babe; and I said, ‘The cosmic still exists within you, to become known as you grow, but being in a body has closed that door.’ I then carried the baby from the cellar upstairs, and knew it to be a holy and wonderful child.”

Books Have Souls Too

HARMON Bro, a well known author and sociologist once handed Edgar Cayce a new book, still in its postal wrapping, and Cayce held it with closed eyes. After a few moments he was able to tell Bro what the book was about and its overall ‘tone’. Bro, unwrapped the book, read it, and was able to confirm Cayce’s amazing accuracy.

Edgar Cayce was one of the great seers of our times, but many people can feel the inner quality or theme of a book by simply holding it for a few moments. Many people are quite unaware of this ability until they test it, Likewise, when they hold a photograph with eyes closed, and run their fingers over the surface, they receive mental impressions of the images on the picture.

A friend who once visited Raymund Andrea (one time head of the Rosicrucian Order in England) told me that Andrea held the book my friend had given him; without opening it he gave a full commentary on its contents, pointing out mistaken attitudes and certain poor qualities in the ideas expressed.

Cayce could go a step further than this. When he was learning to read as a child, he had great difficulty in remembering his lessons. One night, after his father had tried literally to beat some sense into him, and he was still unable to read the words, he had a vision! An angel seemed to tell him to put the book under his head and sleep on it for a little when he went to bed. This he did, and he awoke amazed to find he could remember every page without having read it.

His father was even more surprised, and cuffed him again because he thought his previous ignorance had been put on.

Many years later Cayce worked in a big department store, and, through sleeping on the catalogue, was able to remember every single item sold on the premises. The management used him as a walking catalogue, as he could repeat goods, colours, catalogue numbers, price, and all printed details.

But books go a lot more deeply into us than simply producing images of their printed words. They have a soul, and in some strange way, carry with them a quality or power imparted by their author. And, just as we are usually careful about the friends we make, we must be equally careful what books we read or take to heart.

When I was in the book business I bought a pile of old American magazines. My wife, was recovering from the birth of our first son and she began to read the magazines. She sank very quickly into a deep depression which lasted much longer than it should have.

Only much later, could she see that she had already been near the edge of post-natal depression, and that the magazines had pushed her over the edge. The ideas they carried were negative and cloudy, and their darkness had been like an infection around a person whose resistance was low.

Open to the flow of ideas

When we begin to be aware of what goes on within us, it becomes plain that books are very much like people, but perhaps more subtle. They carry a mood, an attitude, a gaiety or blackness, a hope or despair with them. So relaxed and open to the flow of images and ideas do we become as we read, that these moods and attitudes deeply penetrate us unless we read and know what we are doing. Only when we are firmly anchored to our own inner values, commitments, direction, and integrity, can we safely take in a mass of influence from somebody else, and digest it without being moved away from our own inner insight.

For instance, in our own moments of quiet we may find, deep within us, a desire to remain true in marriage; or a belief in God; or a certainty of life’s wonder and purpose. This is our own inner integrity, our own inner values.

On reading a cynical book, however, the force of its influence may be such that our own values are swept away by those held by the author. Even books supposedly sympathetic with one’s own integrity may yet carry unforeseen aspects of the author’s inner qualities.

I noticed this when I read two books about the same subject by different authors. Both books praised and dealt positively with the subject, yet after reading the first book I noticed I felt churned up inside. I had a headache, my mind would not slow down, and there was a general burdensome feeling. The second book, however, although it seemed to say very little, and what it did say was apparently simple, left me feeling inwardly at peace, calm, uplifted and sure of myself.

The soul of the author

I concluded from this that each woman or man had put his very essence into the book he had written. The first man’s soul was still in a turmoil, threshing about intellectually, not at peace with itself, whereas the second man was simpler in expression, yet had found the thing of which he wrote.

Of course, the same thing applies to films, plays, television, and the arts. Whatever we create, carries the stamp of our own inner condition. If we open ourselves to the writings or art of one who inwardly is a violent, materialistic and perhaps ‘animalistic’ person, those qualities enter into us. This is all very well if we are ‘centred’ or anchored on our own inner integrity. But if we have not found this unique integrity of our own, and are already in a condition of being possessed by our own hates, cynicism, habit patterns and fears, these other forceful influences will strengthen our own, and plunge us deeper into possession by them.

Emotions act as a creative force

Most people when they work creatively, whether on a book, or painting, or play, allow their emotions or fears, or intellect to act as the creative forces. Such fears, emotions or ideas then embody themselves, incarnate, so to speak, in the work being produced.

There are a few great men and women, however, whose creativeness has come from a different source. Through long discipline, they have centred their activities as in Zen art or archery. Perhaps this can be explained by using the body as an example.

The body is made up of billions of separate cells. These form organs, which together work as systems. Thus we have a heart, liver, kidneys, tongue, brain: and in the systems, digestive, circulatory, lymphatic system etc. All these billions of parts are united in function and expression – except in a sick body. In a sick body, harmony and unity is disturbed. One system or organ or group of cells, may function to its own advantage only, instead of to its own advantage within the common economy.

The thing uniting all aspects of our being, and directing them, is sometimes called the Self or Atman, and we may be in or out of harmony with the Self. If our sexual desires have become out of context with the whole, or our ambition or intellect does not work in harmony with our other aspects, such as sexual feeling and emotions, we have an unbalanced system or personality.

Yoga, which means union with the Self; or Zen, or most philosophical or religious disciplines, aim at opening up each of our functions to direction by the Self. Thus when this is achieved, sexual desire, intellect, all the emotions of the body are not denied or ignored, but are directed in their activity in a harmonious united manner.

Dictated by an inner voice?

To some extent many great writers and artists have achieved this harmonious creativity with the Self. Beethoven spoke of his composition as if it were dictated by a higher source – the Self perhaps – or as Emerson called it, the Overself. The author of the recent best seller, ‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull,’ also says the book was dictated by an inner voice. St. Catherine wrote in a similar way, and most of the greatest religious works arose while the author’s conscious ego was united with the Self, acting as a channel.

When we read such books as ‘The Prophet’, by Kahlil Gibran, or The Bhagavad Gita, The Bible, we open our inner being, whether we are sensitive to it or not, to a soul condition which strengthens our own integrity. Written from an inner harmony on the part of the author, we feel something of his achievement, his contact with the Overself his wonderful maturity.

Finding My Little Girl

“I feel as if I am falling down a hole into depression.” Tony is my ‘go to’ person so I told him my feelings.

“What’s happening?” he asked. I reminded him of what had been going on for me recently, which was dealing with a fraudster, heavy going.

“What are you feeling,” Tony asked.

“Sick in my stomach.”

“So stay with that feeling; don’t keep running away from what you feel”, he replied.

“I now feel as if my legs have became really heavy; also in my sexual area heaviness is growing.”

“So again, stay with it; and breath. Holding your breath is how we hold back our feelings. That way our natural healing cannot take place,” he said.

So I exaggerated my feelings. Then memories of childhood emerged, for at that age I felt there was no safe place for me as a child, always having to keep on guard and aware of my family’s needs. If I stayed aware of their needs I might not get attacked, emotionally or physically, because I came from a family with many complexes.

Then I suddenly felt aware of what a poor little girl I was, with no one to tell what I faced or to be able to ask questions. My family never shared what they felt, and so much was left unspoken. As a child I couldn’t make sense of what was happening.

But I am moving away from what I had experienced, that my inner child needed me care for her right now and to love her, because my family wasn’t capable of giving love and understanding I needed. So I am now trying to give love and care to that little girl me, love it never had. See https://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/parenting-yourself/

I cannot explain in words all the emotions that welled up in me at the same time
With this shift in awareness I thanked Tony, “It’s what I do” he said.

You do not belong to You – You belong to Universe

That was the statement Buckminster Fuller says was the height of his enlightenment – “In 1927 Buckminster Fuller stood on the shore of Lake Michigan contemplating suicide. He said to himself: ‘I’ve done the best I know how and it hasn’t worked.’ He was still grieving the loss of a daughter who had died five years earlier; his business had just failed. He was penniless and 32 years old. He wondered how he could support his wife and newly born baby, but, after struggling with his despair for hours in the dark and the freezing wind, he decided to live the rest of life like an experiment. He wanted to discover whether the golden rule of life was dog eat dog. He would find out by seeing what could be physically demonstrated. To free his mind of conditioned thinking and reflexes he stopped talking for a year. He is now known for many, many achievements.

Fuller said that he had experienced a profound incident which provided direction and purpose for his life. He felt as though he was suspended several feet above the ground enclosed in a white sphere of light. A voice spoke directly to Fuller, and declared:

“From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”

The suggestion is that even our body is not wholly our own.

The Industrial Revolution, starting 250 years ago, accelerated cultural changes and left our bodies more out of sync with our environment. Consequently, our health suffered. Lieberman lists obesity, Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, osteoporosis, hypertension and certain reproductive cancers as hypothesized noninfectious mismatch disorders, and likewise asthma, allergies, chronic insomnia, cavities, anxiety and depression, fallen arches, myopia and back pain. He later warns me “a majority of readers of the book are likely to suffer from and die from a mismatch disease.” He also counts broad-scale infectious diseases as mismatches, though they’ve been mostly tamed in developed nations. Health deteriorates when cultural evolution becomes the driver and certain adaptations, like an ingrained taste for sweets, become mismatches.

These first members of our H. sapiens clan evolved in Africa some 200,000 to 300,000 years ago from more primitive Paleolithic foragers. Their anatomies were like ours. Researchers know a fair amount about them from archaeological and skeletal remains and also from examining bands of more recent hunter-gatherers. These people were in great shape; they ran like marathoners and napped like lords. They had a nutritious, if chewy, diet. And if they were not in perfect harmony with their environment, they were well adapted to it.

Aborigines in Australia frequently become overweight and diabetic after they settle in urban areas. In the late ’70s, researcher Kerin O’Dea moved a study sample of Aborigines back to the bush for several weeks. Subsisting on lean kangaroo meat, fish and wild yams like their forbears, the Aborigines not only lost weight by foraging but also dramatically reduced their glucose levels and other metabolic signs of diabetes. Some were cured of the disease, at least temporarily. Many modern aborigines suffer enormous overweight because their diet has switch to that if white processed flour rice and sugar. The picture shows the physical condition of the race before white intervention and how many look today – similar to some Americans.

Nearsightedness is estimated to occur in just 3 percent of hunter-gatherers. “We know that in farming populations, it’s almost nonexistent, too,” Lieberman says. “I’d bet on that strongly as a mismatch.” If children are using their eyes in different ways today, we should get them outside more, he advises. What’s more, he suspects that eyeglasses are helping to keep genes for myopia prevalent in the human population. If so, that’s an example of dysevolution. See My Experience at 83

The gulf between unicellular and multicellular life seems almost unbridgeable. A single cell’s existence is simple and limited. Like hermits, microbes need only be concerned with feeding themselves; neither coordination nor cooperation with others is necessary, though some microbes occasionally join forces. A single cell, which is a seed from which all life forms evolved from, doesn’t become old or die because it is immortal, for it keeps dividing and doesn’t die. In dividing it constantly creates copies of itself, but as it does so it gathers new experience, it changes what is copied, so becomes the ‘seed’ for multi-cellular organism. We all started from the original one cell, and we, you and I, are the result of gathered experience.

No plant or creature grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memories in you. But in this life you developed a new brain, and the memories, education and programming you gathered this time are what you built your personality from, but beneath that is a very ancient self.

Finding this very ancient self, hidden as it is by all your personal thinking and opinions, you find you are free from all the painful emotions, suicidal urges and personal hurts. To explore it see Opening to Life

One day I was standing in the toilet peeing into the water. This created lots of bubbles. As I looked at these bubbles I notice each one has an eye looking at me. Fascinated I bend lower to look back at these eyes. When I do so I see they are not ‘eyes’ but ‘I’s’. Each is a tiny reflection of myself looking back at me. Amused I ponder this multitude of me. Each tiny being, with its own individual sense of self, its own eyes and legs and fingers, could feel it is separate from its fellows – and it is. But what they don’t realise is that their awareness, their consciousness is a reflection of me. I am their god. Out of me all have their being. Then suddenly I realise I am myself a bubble. I too have a sense of being independent, with my own eyes, fingers and legs. Yet in reality I am only a reflection of one great life – One Self Existent Awareness in all its diversity and multifarious forms. I felt afraid. I realised that any attempt at killing myself is foolish because as part of the great consciousness I cannot die, I would only be hurting myself.”

Einstein said that “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust – we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper”.

As an even better example: In a dream my wife, Brenda, saw a baby that she knew belong to a friend, and a voice from behind her told her the child was ill. Its illness, she was given to understand, was serious, and would need to be treated with a drug taken every day of the child’s life. The reason for this illness and the drug use, she was told, was because in a past life the being now born as the baby had committed suicide using a drug.

I sent an account of the dream to the parents of the baby who lived a long way away. Living in the UK and surviving on low wages we did not have a telephone. About a week later we had a letter from them saying that the letter and dream had crystallised their already existing anxiety about the baby. It had not been feeding well and was fretful. On taking it to the doctor nothing definite could be found but special tests were made in hospital. From these it was discovered the baby was dying. It lacked an enzyme that was needed to digest calcium. To compensate it was given a drug, which it has had to take every day of its life to make up for the lacking enzyme.

If you live only on the surface you miss a huge part of your possibilities in every area of your life. But if you explore your inner life you will see for yourself that you can never be alone but belong to the hidden and wonderful you have within.

The Magician and the Audience

By Dina Glouberman

I’ve recently gone through a period where I’ve been quite happy, positive and optimistic in the daytime, but quite troubled at night. I would wake at night, and feel frightened or depressed.

And then I’d start to attack myself for the fact that I ended up in such an unhappy place, because obviously if only I’d done this, this and that then I would be okay. Every night it would take me a couple of hours to get myself to a place where I could sleep again, if indeed I could.

Even worse, I had this sneaking suspicion that the nights were showing me the real state of my life, and that all my daytime attitudes were just bravado. If the nights were bad, this must prove that I was not all right.

Slowly but surely I learned to take care of that child or that younger me who was so distressed at night. I began to understand that what I needed was a kindness and compassion and comfort, rather than blame. And as I did this, and as I started also to do my meditations at night to bring myself back to centre, the nights got easier.

I learned that the things I thought about where a kind of spam. If I was unhappy, I trotted out all the old explanations of what I had done wrong, and they were very old and worn indeed. At the base of it was some old fairy tale belief that if I had done it all right, then I would be a princess and live happily ever after.

Then, the other night as I brought myself back to centre, I saw, really saw, how distressed I was. And I really turned in a completely loving way to comforting myself, and telling myself how much I loved myself. The penny dropped that this was distress from the past, and that I didn’t have to attach a story to what would have made it okay. There was never going to have been a life in which I had no distress.

The next morning it came to me that the person I am in my waking life is actually the real present me who has gone through a lot of internal changes and transformations and is feeling good and strong. This is not bravado.

That person I am in my night life is like a child from another time, indeed another world. And I don’t really know what is troubling her, though I can see that when I am stressed by life in some way, this triggers her unhappy feelings more. And no matter how much personal development work I do on myself, I may never know the whole story. It may not even all have to do with my present lifetime. It might be remnants from the lives of my parents or ancestors, or even past lives of my own, or racial memories. Who can really know?

It is as if I have adopted a child, and though I am giving her all I can right now, she is still waking up with nightmares that result from her experience before I knew her. So although I don’t know what is bothering her, nor is it my fault that she is distressed, it is my love that can care for her now and bring her through

It is hard to express how important this understanding was. If we go back to the idea of identity, I was no longer identified with my troubled self, but with that larger self who could care for the troubled self. The troubled self is part of me, but it is the larger self who runs the show.

I now really identify with she who has struggled all her life to become larger, more developed, more in touch with herself, more loving, and honest and true. I have succeeded to some great extent though not totally and I can be proud of that. If there are pockets of distress, this is a reminder that I am human. It hurts to be human and it is human to hurt.

I am reminded of my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh saying,” We all have a Buddha nature. To be a Buddha is not to be somewhere in the sky perfect. To be a Buddha you have to be human.”

So in a sense what I had come to was that I was going to identify with my Buddha nature, and be compassionate toward my human hurt. And in so doing it was as if I expanded a few meters and was now a larger being,

I was now like one of those Russian dolls with the round bottom that no matter how you pushed it around, it still came upright. I had found a way to be stable in the midst of challenge and change.

I also contained within me a whole series of smaller dolls. And if I but had eyes to see them, perhaps there were a whole series of larger dolls around me which were my potential beings waiting for me to expand into them.

So once again I am amazed at how transformative it is to see where we place our notion of who we are. As long as I identified with the smaller part of me, that regressive part that woke me at night, I was always ready to blame myself for being in such bad shape. But as soon as I identified with my largest part, then everything fell into place, and I realized how strong I was, and how much potential I had to take care of the vulnerable me, and to grow even stronger in time.

This is not the first time I have been woken up by difficult feelings. I am reminded of a time when I and my husband had two young children, a centre in Greece, and we also were moving house and starting a new centre. I also had a full time job, clients and weekend personal development groups.

I was so challenged by what I had to do that one day I had what I thought was a brilliant insight : There only needs to be two of me and that will solve my problem! I even went so far as to investigate cloning, only to realize that you needed to start very tiny as a clone. Mad as I was, even I had to give up.

There wasn’t time for cloning. I had to change my life or my attitudes.

And I kept thinking and thinking: Why am I in this situation? What am I needing to learn to handle it? And finally I got this understanding:

There is a magician inside me that is managing to do all these things. The magician knows the trick of doing it, and has practiced enough to be perfect. But the audience, that doesn’t understand what magic tricks are, can’t believe that what the magician claims to be able to do is possible.

It was the audience that was waking me at night worried.

It seems as if in my life, there is always either an audience that is doubtful of the magician’s skills, or a child who is still going through past pains, or just some part of me that is in trouble. The one who doubts, suffers, and fears is more alive at night, but can appear at any time in the day too.

But there is also always that magician.

I could choose to identify with either the magician or with the sufferer. Either way I might wake up at night. But if I am identified with the magician I will use my power and love to put myself back to sleep, and if I am identified with the sufferer I will drive myself into a frenzy with self attack.

Preparing for changes in our lives makes all this more urgent. In times when we will all be really challenged in life, as we will be if major change hits us, the choice will become more and more stark.

We are likely to be more fearful, more frightened, more worried and doubtful on one level. Yet the magician will become more and more resourceful at the same time. There is nothing like a crisis to bring out our magical powers.

Which one will we trust to run the show?

Not much contest there. I choose the magician. And you?

I Don’t Want To Be Normal

Thoughts from the 1980’s

Yesterday I realised so much about myself I have woken today like a dragon. I don’t mean angry dragon, just one breathing fire. I feel I have been holding myself back for years, living this crazy half life.

Years ago I did things without realising the consequences, and ended up sexually castrated myself – not physically, but certainly effectively.

Part of the reason for my violence against myself – and if you look around you can see it everywhere in others who act violently against themselves even if it is in an internal way as I did – is that I lost all respect for my elders and authority figures. I lost all respect for the ordinary, normal people around me. I didn’t want to be normal – like those I saw murdering each other either in body in the thousands as I lived through World War Two, or in the way they related to each other. I see it here in this tiny hamlet where I live, neighbour turned against neighbour. And I still don’t want to be normal like that. Perhaps those you see quietly dying around you didn’t have the courage to feel the agony of that, and so in a quiet self-murder allowed themselves to die. It is happening all around us.

As a child in school I was thrashed with sticks as thick as a walking stick, that was in the early 1940’s. I still don’t want to be normal like that. I had a taste of it when I was trying to live a normal married life, and started beating my own children. I killed out love and lived the ‘moral’ sick life of those around me. And it made me ill enough to recognise that something was wrong. Something was very wrong. You too might be experiencing the pain of normalcy. The world is crazy, still on its killing spree. Still locked into its segregation and hatred of anyone or anything different or outside their sphere of understanding or control. Still desperately avoiding any tiny movement toward self awareness, toward actually meeting their own internal craziness.

Well, what I see is that if you have been broken in some way as I was, or you haven’t got the right body shape or skin colour, be proud. Please don’t try to be normal. Normal is sick, grasping, compulsively locked into loveless sex, national aggression, against being part of society, or so lost in consumerism that they are destroying each other and the world.

So stand up, even in a crooked body, and realise you have a doorway to a new life. Your pain of existing in a ‘normal’ society has taught you lessons the normals haven’t even glimpsed.

You know that to survive you have had to find a life inside yourself somewhere. Okay, it may have been a life full of anger or aggression, or loaded with despair. But listen, you also have in you the spirit that has survived despite all of that. Whatever your forebears did, whether they were deceitful and lying or courageous and strong, whether they had honour or were cowards, whatever they did, and perhaps over time they did everything, their lives were the drama that brought us into being. Their lives have given us the substance of our body and our personality. We are the heirs of that drama. What we grew from is what they left us. It was the heritage from the past. Be proud of that and help it to grow. Learn from it and open to the life beyond your distorted self. See Opening to Life

What I learned was that no matter who I had become, at the core of me I was still an amazing expression of the universe, of life. I had survived whereas as millions had failed in the enormous journey of lives or of the sperm to the ovum. And though birth and life were difficult, here I am, still with that miracle of life beating my heart. I realised if Life in me could do that, then it could do other miracles.

So get hold of that, open to it, let it grow you till what was broken inside is mended. Don’t ever try to be normal though. In that direction lies craziness.

The Hidden Bible

This is a new realisation about Genesis. We thought Genesis was a fantasy and fairy tale dreamt up to make people have a fantastic view of God. But science has only recently managed to say something exactly what Genesis told us thousands of years ago

Let me explain so you too can see it for yourself. God created the Earth so we were told, but first it says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

The name “Elohim” is one of the many different names, each with a clearly defined meaning, which are applied in the Bible to “God” considered under various aspects. But Hebrew was a misunderstood language and translators did not understand that each letter of the Hebrew language had very definite meanings as Alpha and Omega does in Greek. But when looked at in this light Elohim does not translate as God but gods.

So it can be said that “Elohim” as “He – the – gods,” or “the Unity of gods,” or “the Activities of the Eternal One,” i.e., God expressing and revealing Himself outwardly in creative activity. For the creative forces that created the universe were unknowable. Exactly as science says about the Creation in it theory of the Big Bang. For it says that unknowable Something created and explosion and Natural Forces worked toward making the universe know possible.

That was the first thing, but the second was, “darkness was on the face of the deep; and the Spirit of the gods – natural forces moved – upon the receptive forces – which I changed to try to give it its original meaning.

Therefore, at the risk of making many mistakes, I will give a free rendering.

That which moved not and remains always unknowable expressed out of itself seven creative forces. There was conceived within the one purpose of these the plan and living spiritual reality of the whole cosmos. From beginning to end, all existed as divine realities in this conception. But, it was not yet made real in time, space and motion. But the creative energies began to bring into being the forces and archetypes that would be the spiritual body upon which the physical universe would later hang.

The basic receptive substance of the universe was in darkness, chaotic and unmoulded, as yet without form. All the elements of existence were in chaos and unknown. But the creative forces extended into the unformed. Beyond time and space the divine energies caused a great symphony of vibratory energy to express. The Word, which through its patterns of vibrations would be the pattern of creation.”

Science states that after the creative explosions the universe was in darkness for 300,000 years. Then, “Electrons combine with protons and neutrons to form atoms, mostly hydrogen and helium. Light can finally shine.” Let There Be Light.

“And the forces of nature worked to create light so Let there be light, and there was light’.

“And on the seventh day the gods ended their work which had been made; and the rested on the seventh day from all their work which they had made.”

A day is translated as a period of time, and science points out that it took it took seven great periods pf change to reach the situation we know know.

Here are uncovered all the ridiculous myths we have been taught, such as the demeaning of women in the Bible, and the fact that Adam is not an individual but a force in nature – and ADAM is both female and male. Here it is all explained, along with description of our status as fallen angels who are learning how to rise again through many lives. also the influence of heavenly bodies on our fate and fortunes.

Read it here – The Secret Bible

It is also available in the USA and UK and also in Australia – Brazil – Canada – China – France – Germany – India – Italy- Japan- Mexico – Netherlands – Spain – Turkey

You may need to put the name of the book you are interested in in these countries.

Learning How to Love

After a long life of loving different partners, and failing miserable in some, I write this from long experience of mistakes I and others make. My experience also arises from having worked as a therapist for 25 years, also from the experience of working with thousands of dreams people have sent me.

Includes

Ages of Love

Recognising the Face of Love

Surviving Love and Relationships

What Attracts us to a Partner

To Love or Not to Love

Cosmic or Spiritual Love

The book is available in the USA – the UK and also in Australia – Brazil – Canada – China – France – Germany – India – Italy- Japan- Mexico – Netherlands – Spain – Turkey

You may need to put the name of the book you are interested in.

The Awful Pain of Loss Transformed

I experienced an unusual dream about the house of my ancestors, and while awake I tried to explore the huge house and its basement and here is what happened.

I saw we were walking in a large underground space like great catacombs. The light was dim but we could see our surroundings, and not very far into the cave like space was a tomb on our right. It had the form of a low wall about a foot high in an oblong, and the wall surrounded a long stone in the centre, which was roughly body shaped.

As we drew level with the tomb an enormous change occurred in me. Suddenly I became a woman. It was no longer imagination. I was now completely experiencing myself as a woman whose tomb we had approached. As such I was torn by an immense pain of loss. As my complete identification deepened my body curled up with the pain as I was torn by wretched crying. Suzanne told me my voice changed as I cried out again and again for release from the pain of losing all my children, my husband, even my parents. My hands were clawing my legs in an effort to express the misery, and I was screaming that I could not bear to live any longer with such pain. I cried out to God to take me, for there was nothing left for me to live for. “Why? Why did this happen to me? Why has everything I loved been taken from me?”

There was no response to these awful cries and tearing sobs. But slowly a shift began. It seemed to me as an observer witnessing this awful pain, that by entering this place the spirit of that woman had woken in me. But as she had died in such unresolved agony of loss, that is what was met when she awoke. But gradually she realised she was alive again in a new way. She began to recognise that I was holding her within me. Because I was not frightened of pain and emotions, the misery could play itself out in me. And because my understanding of what was happening flowed into her awareness, she slowly saw and felt her loss in a different way. In fact we were both realising she was experiencing resurrection, and that in turn meant there was no final death as believed by many. Therefore there was no loss as she had originally felt it.

At this point something truly incredible occurred. She and I both realised she was one of my past dwelling places. But for her the viewpoint was slightly different; for she saw me as a continuation of a life that she had failed to be a part of because of the awful pain of loss. It had kept her from flowing into what was her future as my life.

From my perspective she was one of the past dwelling places the spirit that was at the core of my present personality had lived in and as. She was not one of my past lives, because the personality that I am was is unique and had not lived that woman’s life.

In knowing me the woman’s grief melted away, for in our meeting we both realised we gained existence out of an eternal spirit flowing into our lives. I could feel the change in her as she knew she was part of ongoing life here in the present, and the children and family she thought dead were also part of that river of lives.

As I felt her integrating into my present life I asked her what she brought to me. I asked because I wondered what quality or ability this enormous experience brought to my present life. Her simple reply was, “A woman’s love.”

A quotation from The House of the Ancestors

The Hand Book

The Hand Is An Expressive And Ever-changing Part Of The Body Which Can Reveal A Wealth Of Information About Your Character And Life. For Thousands Of Years, Hands Have Been Studies And Interpreted To Attain A Deeper Understanding Of People’s Strengths, Weaknesses And Their Approach To Life Experiences. This Book Will Explain How You Too Can Tap Into This Great Source Of Information And Insight.

Highlighting the art of Chinese palmistry, a step-by-step guide explains what such things as a thumb’s length, the lifeline on the palm, and the white flecks on fingernails can tell readers about an individual.

The universal interest in palmistry is addressed in this comprehensive and practical book. It offers clear and stimulating insights into hand analysis and its potential for information. Traditional views are combined with recent scientific findings and the authors’ own research.

It is available from the USA and UK and also in Australia – Brazil – Canada – China – France – Germany – India – Italy- Japan- Mexico – Netherlands – Spain – Turkey

You may need to put the name of the book you are interested in.

Introduction to I Ching – Book

Apart from being a book of wisdom in the ancient Chinese tradition, the I Ching was also consulted on questions of state, warfare and personal decision making. It is this aspect of it which is dealt with here. Consulting the I Ching does not present us with statements of what will happen as a fated future. The wisdom behind the book does not see the future as unalterably fixed, but rather like a constantly shifting flux similar to the seasons, with which we can interact. What we receive in a consultation is like a conversation with a wise and experienced friend, who through their experience might point out that if we take our present course within the situation as it stands, the results might be in a direction we do not wish – but if we take another attitude circumstances could change, then we can act more forcefully and effectively.

The I Ching intrigued me, not so much because it is a very ancient book, the culmination of many great minds and a great culture, but because it was largely couched in symbols. My work with dreams and the way people use imagery in thinking and expression, made me want to tackle the I Ching. I wanted to see if I could put into clearer English what is usually said in rather poetic and indefinite prose.

It can be purchased in the USA and the UK and also in Australia – Brazil – Canada – China – France – Germany – India – Italy- Japan- Mexico – Netherlands – Spain – Turkey

You will need to put the name of the book in the search panel.

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Tony Crisp