Spiritual Metaphors

I find metaphors and their kind helpful to me when I’m pondering some spiritual [or other] point. A new perspective can allow me to see it from a completely different angle; the more angles, the greater the understanding, and the wiser the choices made and conclusions drawn…hopefully.
Fortunately, it has been my experience that this method works best, whether I’m trying to teach myself or others.
For example:
I find seeing Life as a book useful.
I am the Author. I wrote it, more or less, before I arrived here on School-House Earth, during that time between this life and the last one, when I wrote a completely different Life/Book that had many of the same players/souls, but as different characters with different parts to portray. The current life/book is always in a Final-Draft stage as I enter the Earth Plane and begin to read and experience what is written for each day. And each day, I choose whether to turn another page and go on to the next.
I am also my own Editor. I can choose to proceed with what’s on the page just as it’s written, or change any part or all of it. [Isn’t “Free will” great? Practically every religion or philosophy of higher powers advocates or acknowledges it somewhere in their writings, as your right to do anything, as long as you are willing to accept the consequences of your actions.]
So, as Author and Editor, I can change it any way I want, or erase, or even rip out the pages. But….the characters in the book have free will, also.
A life/book is created to help us learn those lessons that we have yet to master, some of which we may have been working on for many lifetimes. We write in the book what we can, while in the “in-between” many call the Astral. We write parts for souls with whom we have spent other lives, they helping us learn certain lessons, us helping them. We wait for them to return to the Astral, make agreements with them about the upcoming life; where our paths will cross, and how, in that life, and so on.
And through these arrangements and agreements, we enter a life with plans of certain opportunities to present themselves, throughout the length of the life, to learn those lessons that we came here to learn. You can’t learn your lessons if you don’t have the opportunities to practice, right? [A few of these lessons might be for Love, Compassion, Understanding, Acceptance, Universal Oneness, and many others.]
But, just as we can change our minds, so too, can all the others with whom you made arrangements, change theirs. Free will, remember?
Not to worry. The Universe [God] will provide, he just doesn’t say when. Sometimes, a soul with whom you have not reincarnated before, will have a similar Karmic configuration and be guided to cross your path in the same way you had needed of the other…and you're back on path.
Other times, you’re just going to have to wait until you’re back on the Astral again, and make new arrangements for the next life. You never run out of those and the Universe has unlimited time.
During daily life most of this is happening on an unconscious level, but we can become more conscious of it by learning to pay attention to what is going on around us at a deeper level. Just seeking to find the positive and loving in your experiences is a good start. Learning to ignore the negativity that you see will open up avenues to the positive. And simple meditation is very powerful. Join a group in your area and learn how. It’s easy and you’ll be pleasantly surprised how many things in your life begin to get better as you maintain daily practice.
Not enough books tell you this about meditation, so I want to make sure you hear it from me: The time that you spend in meditation is the time your body, mind, and spirit realign and retune themselves to the pulse, the heartbeat, of the Universe.
Consistent practice is most powerful. Fifteen minutes every day is much more useful than a one hour meditation every four days.
So, there you have my “Life is a Book” metaphor. I’ll be adding more, I’m sure.
I appreciate e-mail from any of you, commenting on what I’m writing.
If you would just like to hear one more person give their thoughts on any self-help area that is dear to you, ask away. The questions that get asked the most, get answered.
Love and Peace,
Jerry

Some Universal Truths

I spent most of my early years trying to find a religion, any religion, that would hold up to the scrutiny of an alert and logically questioning non-believer. Frankly, it was difficult.
I wasn’t trying to prove any of them wrong or wanting. Rather, I was playing a devil’s-advocate and hoped they had the answers for which I had been looking.
I would read their primary literature, either the words of their God’s or the teachings of their wisest sages. I would listen to their spiritual leaders in their temples and great halls. I would talk to the followers.
I found we all ask the same questions about life: Where did we come from?; Why are we here?; Where do we go when we die?; What happens when we get there?; among others.
The religions’ and wisemens’ books certainly had plenty of answers. And lots of people choose to accept the answers they find there as satisfactory enough, some times even seeing them as the end-all, beats-all. Either they accept them as true or Mum’n Dad will teach them the value of accepting what they [and others like them] tell them to accept, and they stopped asking questions about their God long ago and probably wouldn’t have a clue as what I am going on about, ‘cause you don’t question the word of God around here or we’ll kill you…been there, done that.
If that’s you I’m talking about, please move along…you’re probably not going to care for anything I have to say. It may be confusing and might even shake the faith of a few of the faithful.
That’s not what I’m about or after. If you have a faith that sees you and yours through the worst of times with strength, love, and great comfort, hang on to it. It does you well. It just isn’t entirely for me or a lot of people I know.
Still…there were plenty that had an open mind, and so did some of the literature. What was interesting was the gradual unfolding of the realization that most of the best, the most worth retaining for me, were for the most part, repeated through out the centuries, and all over the world….in other words;
-A Positive and Loving Universal Truth is a Positive and Loving Universal Truth.-
It doesn’t make any difference where you find it, whether you wind up discovering it for yourself from some ancient tome you’re translating at 3 in the morning, or a billboard that just flashed by your window on the Super-Train, or that really, really old guy in the back corner booth at the Rhino Bar & Grill, that you didn’t notice in the dark, for the whole 10 minutes you were arguing with HER, until she leaves screaming and the dark-in-the-corner says, evenly, “If you adopt the philosophy of “Shit Happens…” to your life, nothing else will change, but your life will be more peaceful.”
You just never know. You know?...
Love and Peace,
Jerry

Learning some spiritualness helps us learn some spiritualness, of course...

I was kind of driven [?], I’d guess you’d call it, from an early age to a life-long spiritual quest.
By six or so, I was starting to ask those unanswerable questions to which the grown-ups around me could only reply with tired old phrases they had memorized from their Sunday School days and beyond. They had asked the same questions back then, but had accepted as true, these same clichés they gave to us, long ago, and hadn’t questioned them since.
But, “…God moves in mysterious ways” and, “…Only the Lord knows”, and others answers like them, gave me little satisfaction.
And no one suggested that I look into other religions, because in the 40’s and 50’s there were plenty of areas in which you could grow up completely and never know that there was any thing besides Christianity that you might care to study, so that you might exercise your right of freedom of religion, supposedly guaranteed by our Constitution .
I’ll bet there still are area like that.. But, not many. We’ve learned a lot in 50 years. Now, we know that a very believable case can be made for a spiritual practice to include using the power of the mind to create, practice and perfect a “religion” of your own, whether it be completely new or incorporating and combining various “Universal” truths that seem to keep popping up in one religion after another, or some variation of any of these.
I prefer the combining/mixing method. I read, I talk, I observe and listen…If I run across something interesting, that appears may bring something positive to my life, might make my life better in some way, I look deeper into it.
I can “try it on like an old suit of clothes”, picturing it added to my life and seeing how it may change my life, positively or otherwise. This is usually easier in a meditation, but is not always required.
If I can see positive actions resulting from a short time with it, I will begin to add it to my life on a daily basis to learn the lesson[s] that I had it bring to me, in the hopes that I would learn it in this lifetime.
But this is just practicing with it. It doesn’t mean Mastery of it, the full adaptation of it into my life. That may take years…or only a few days. You just never know. I have a number of them that I’ll probably be working on for a few more lifetimes, having worked on them for more than a few lifetimes already. But, that’s the nice thing about eternity…it has all the time you need to learn all the Universal lessons that you came here to School-House Earth to learn, having made arrangements, before you ever got here, for this life to unfold in such a way as to present you with the opportunities by which you will learn them.....
[…continued soon]


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Self-help,Spiritual Awareness,Metaphysics, New Age,Psychic phenomena, and more; if it can make your life better in a positive and loving way, good.

…If it can make your life “Better” in a positive, joyful, more loving way…I’m all for it !

Yay, I’m back. But, only for a bit; surgery’s on Tuesday. [Thanks, in advance, for any and all well-wishes…”Thanks”.] [See, told ya’so]. And then I’ll be back for more. So, were off…

For over half a century, I’ve been studying, learning, picking out items that I considered especially worthwhile to me. Most anything that might help me gain insight or advancement of a part of my ever-growing spiritual awareness could do. I might stumble onto some pearl while mind-rummaging in the most unexpected places.
I would try applying these various items, techniques, [just a clue, here and there, really] to my life and practicing them as best I could, in hopes of mastering them just enough to see if they held anything positive for me; more loving, a tad more happiness, perhaps; …did they make my life better in some way?, If so, then I would continue to practice those particular ones. Maybe they would lead me closer to the answers to the big questions in life. Some did, others didn’t.
With some of these, a reasonable mastery, and incorporation into my life, was fairly easy. Just learning of them was often all that was necessary. [ I liked calling them “Ah-ha”s.]
I’m still working on others, some for many years now. Some I’ll probably be working on through many more lifetimes.
But, mastered or still practicing, all have changed me. And the longer I practice, the more they change me. In positive ways. If not, I search elsewhere.
Call me crazy [they have and I’m certain, will continue to do so], but I’m all for anything that:
Makes it easier to give and receive Love to and from all those around me;
Helps me be aware of all the positive things that I have to enjoy in my life,
rather than being disappointed about what I don’t…;
And brings to my life, what I like to call, “Betterment”.
You know, sometimes just knowing some particular thing seems to make your life work better. Maybe it’s a piece of wisdom you overheard, standing in line, or perhaps some affirmation that you have just come to truly understand for the first time. You may be able to put your finger on exactly why it does, or you may not have the slightest clue. But, you know that life, yours, even others around you, from now on, is better somehow…that’s Betterment. If you practice watching for it, you begin to see it pop up in surprising places, most every day. And, like most anything we want to learn, we get better, the more we practice.
That’s how most of the better learnings I have gleaned over the years have come to me; slowly, in growing bits and pieces like those in some cosmic puzzle. Eventually, they can lead me to enough greater understanding of myself and the world around me, to allow me to be able to see the higher-ways, to which this path that I have chosen will best take me.
I have chosen many paths to get here and practiced many lessons. Many helped me very little or not at all. I have pushed past those. Many were helpful, but had flaws or negatives too great to overcome at the time. I pushed past most of those, also.
But, some were exactly what I was looking for, right then, right there; positive, loving, honest, logical, believable, and more. Plus they were easy to practice and showed positive results in my life in a relatively short time.
And THOSE are the ones I want to share. I’ve been doing much of it eye-ball to eye-ball, one at a time, waiting for others to ask, but that’s just too slow.
The only way I know that will let me reach a lot of people, all at once is right here.
So, I’m going to start sharing. These are my “Secrets of the Universe”. I don’t expect any of them to be perfect for any one else.
But, they were, and are, for ME. And, I think that any of them COULD be helpful to a few, at least. I just can’t see them being of no good to any one at all, you know?
I’m figuring, if just one of my “secrets” helps even one person, then I should be writing this for them to see, think about, and then cast it out, like I have done to so many over the years, or… see promise in it for themselves and begin practicing it in their own lives to see if they are right, to try to make their lives work just a little bit, or a lotta bit, Better.
I’ve been on this search for over 50 years. Some time I’ll go into what drove me to start searching at age 5, but why is not important, now. No, most aren’t mine and I am standing on many giants backs to bring you what they have given to the world. But, some are my own conclusions. With all of them, pick only what interests you.
All of these have helped me, and usually others, in the past. I hope they bring to you what you need most, whether or not you know what that is. I'll be laying down the best I have. It will be up to you to pick any of it up. If you're already looking in a variety of places for help in your life of the non-tangible type; for more Love, Joy, Happiness, Peace, serenity, centeredness, confidence, energy, and overall aliveness... Well, here's a new place to come check out, to maybe find some of that Betterment that I have found in these. May you find as much and more.
…To be continued…


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