Faith and tests

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Faith is the degree in which you have a good relation to God. The more you have grown in your religious life, the more you will have gained faith.
Faith is like a string, a wire or a piece of rope that binds you with God. The more difficult your mission is, the more complicated the situations are around you, the stronger has to be your connection to God. Through your faith you are bound to God. If you loose the connection to God, you are lost. It is like you would be a plant without roots, or an automobile without gas, or a house without foundations. If your faith breaks down, your relation to God breaks down, and then you are simply completely lost.
If you would go out with a boat on the wide ocean on a trip of several weeks, you are wise if you check whether your boat does function under most extreme conditions. You test your boat and all instruments on it before you dare to go on the ocean. In the same way, before God will allow you to do a new task, God will test your faith.
All the time in your religious life, your faith is being tested. How much do you love God when you come to stand without husband or wife? How much do you love God if you are without food? Does your love for God still hold if God asks you to give up your secure financial foundation? Do you go to God when your father or restoration parent treats you in a harsh way?
There are many tests of faith. If you come under a test of faith given to you by God, you will not know that it is a test. You find yourself in difficulties, and you don’t know why. But most important is how you respond to it. Do you go to God in faith and trust or do you resent God, that is the question.
To trust God or to not trust God, that is the question.
Maybe you feel that you love God and that you are giving everything to fulfill your mission, and then all of a sudden, there are said bad things about you in public. Do you go to God in that situation, or do you resent God and go away from God, that is the question.
Life of religion is a life of being tested.
Suppose that all of a sudden there is being told to you that you lost your mission. This actually always is a test of God. If you accept that you lost your mission, then you will really lose your mission, but if you know that your mission is given to you for all eternity, that your mission is stuck to you just as your own nose belongs to you, then you know that you cannot accept that your mission is taken away. Maybe you have to change your way of doing in order to fulfill your mission, but it cannot be that God would ever take away your mission.
All situations of daily life function as tests of faith in God. Unfortunately, many people do fail these tests of faith.
When Lucifer approached Eve, God saw this as a test of faith for Eve. It doesn't mean that God sent Lucifer to test Adam and Eve, but because God trusts God's children Adam and Eve, such a situation of temptation functions as a test of faith. Eve had to prove that she would obey The Commandment under these difficult circumstances. God did not intervene in this test. God hoped and expected that Eve would act right. When Eve did not act right and fell under Lucifer, God trusted that Eve would learn from her mistakes. When Eve did not really learn from her mistakes, God’s heart was broken, but all that God could conclude was that Eve had failed to pass the test of faith.
Once someone failed to pass a test of faith, God tries to lift the person up. Not always God is successful in this. But even though God’s heart was broken after the fall of Adam and Eve, and even though God did not manage to bring Adam and Eve back to God’s heart until the day of today, God could not ignore the outcome of the test of faith in which both Adam and Eve failed.

To have faith, this is man’s responsibility. God cannot intervene in this. God has to test us, because God must know if we are able to fulfill the mission that God wants to give us. If we fail the test, then we cannot fulfill the mission that God has given us. If we pass a test, then God can give us the mission for which we were created. God can safely let us enter a new stage without having to be worried that we are confronted with situations we could not handle.
To have faith, this is our personal, our own responsibility. To test us, this is what God has to do, because God has to know if we did fulfill our responsibility and if we are ready for the next stage or task of life.
Adam and Eve failed their test of faith, and God is still waiting for them to pass their test of faith and to reach individual perfection after they obeyed The Commandment. One day, both Adam and Eve will pass the tests of faith. God knows that this will happen, but God cannot force Adam or Eve or you or me to do what we don’t really want to do. God has to know if we are ready for new responsibilities, and therefore God is testing our faith. If we use God’s tests in the right way, then we learn from the outcome of God’s tests of ourselves. In that way, if we failed a test, we can find out what we did wrong, and then we can correct our mistakes and still qualify for the mission that God wants to give us. If we passed a test, then we can prepare ourselves for the following test.
To have faith, this is your responsibility, this is my responsibility. We must prove our faith in front of God and God can only know if we have faith by testing our faith. If we take these tests in the right way, knowing that through tests God wants to prepare us and help us, then we can advance in each situation in life, regardless whether we passed or failed a test of faith. Most important is that we keep trusting God, that we never think that God’s intentions were not so good.
The worst in life is when you failed a test and after it you begin to blame God for everything that happens to you. There always is a way back to God. God is always waiting for you to do what God expects you to do. Therefore, the very worst of all is if you give up your trust in God and begin to live a life without God, feeling frustrated about God and hating God and disliking God.

April 13, 2001

Shells in a personality

Photo art JE

The human mind is very complex. Just like the body has senses, also the mind has them. A body gives out by moving and acting and receives by sensing. The body also keeps itself in good shape by taking in elements from the world of nature, air, water and elements in food. The senses of the body are diversified into several such as seeing, hearing, tasting, etc.

The mind is not as diversified as the body. We usually recognize as main functions of the mind those of thinking, feeling and planning. The mind gives out and receives through these functions. These are functions of ‘acting’ as well as sensing. The mind also needs to be fed, just like the body. The mind feeds itself in interchange with products of the mind, for example thoughts and feelings expressed by others as expressed in books and forms of art and the beauty of nature. The mind also feeds itself when it comes in touch with determination in someone else.

On a still deeper level of our existence there is the heart of love. The heart is commonly not anymore divided in different sections, not when we study it in its original state. The heart loves and desires to love. The heart gives out love and it also is a sense for love. Usually we don’t have many words for love. Love is. The heart ‘acts’ love, ‘senses’ love and ‘feeds’ on love.

On the deepest level of our existence, still deeper than the heart, there is what we call the Source, God, the Creator, Cosmic Consciousness. On this level of existence we don’t even have a word to describe the functions. When we do try to do this, we get it all wrong because what we describe are expressions of God but not the original source.

Imagine the original condition of man. God lives in your heart of love, which expresses through your mind and then into various actions. Such an original person is entirely unified and all he or she does comes from the Source. There are no hidden levels in such a person, no contradictions in the mind, no doubts whether the love deep inside is trustable.

From a psychological viewpoint there is no subconscious or unconscious there and even the ego must be seen as entirely good. Self-centeredness of such a person is centered on the deepest core of the self, which lives in unity with God and therefore self-centeredness means also to be living for the sake of all and everything.

All problems in humans come from the separation from the Source deep inside. Something else has come here, something that is not united with the entire cosmos, something that is smaller and has desires to make that what is smaller stronger. This is what we commonly call self-centeredness and it makes that the mind splits into a part that thinks truth and goodness and another part that wants something not good and therefore produces untruth and what by some is called evil.

The result is confusion. Contradictions cannot co-exist harmoniously inside of us. Either the truth wins or the untruth, but as long as neither one is entirely controlling, there is confusion in the mind. Sometimes the untruth wins in a person and such a person expresses this untruth in most of his or her thoughts, feelings and actions, temporarily or for longer.

What mostly happens is that the mind and even the heart form layers. In the deepest layers there is what is hidden because it is ugly and dark. But hiding what is ugly and dark also hides what is good and original in those deepest layers of the self. Then a person begins to live estranged from the deeper self and life feels like acting. There is no direct channel anymore from the deepest love into a smile or a friendly word. Many people are not so aware that they do this. Their entire existence plays in these more external shells of the self.

Wishing each of you very much courage in the search inward where you find your deepest love but also your deepest ugliness and when the ugliness is recognized and overcome then all that remains is the Source inside which then can express unlimitedly through all what you are.

February 21, 2008

The search inward

Image by ecstaticist via Flickr

You want to know what you should do in life, you have to make a decision.

In us we have intuition. We feel deep inside what is the best choice.

The more we follow our intuition, the more we will be reinforced and know that to follow our intuition is right.

Sometimes we know what to do and then begin to think what consequences our actions could have.

This usually leads us to wrong conclusions because we just don’t know and cannot know what consequences our actions will have.

Does it mean we should not think about how to act? No, I don’t believe that this is what it means. We only should not deviate from the direction shown by our intuition.

Sometimes we come in difficulties. What does this mean? Does it mean we are on the right track or on the wrong track? It can mean both of these. When we feel connected to our deepest core we know that we have to overcome obstacles. When we feel estranged from our deepest self we may interpret difficulties as beacons telling us to deviate from the right course.

Sometimes we feel excited. Is this a sign of being on the right road? It sometimes is and sometimes is not. When we deepen our mind and pray and meditate and we feel confirmed that our excitement was right, we can trust our bright feelings. When we deepen us and feel doubts coming up in that process, our excitement may have been too external and not a sign of being on the right track.

When we are on the right track we feel united in ourselves, internally and externally there are no contradictions.

Contradictions in our own behaviour and thinking and feelings always are a sign that something is not right in what we pursue.

The road to truth is the road deeper into our self. This road leads us to find God in us. Such a road of finding the origin in us is sometimes long and difficult. On that road of finding our deepest self we will be hindered by many obstacles. These barriers are the shells of our tendency to live a make-up, cosmetic life. Those shells need to be pulled down, one after another, through our own effort to discover who we really are.

When deep darkness falls over us, something is wrong. Something may be wrong in our direction, or something may be wrong with people around us whom we trust. Internal darkness always means that something is wrong, but we still have to find out what is causing that darkness.

February 14, 2008

The Truth is one

Photo JE

The more that we go from internal to external, the more all is split and diversified. The world on the level of things, human beings and animals and plants and all that is made from minerals, is very heterogeneous.

On the next, more internal level of existence, that of the mind, the world of ideas and feelings, there still exist many different ideas.

When we look still more internal and we come on the level of the original heart of love which is connected to God, we find much more unity. In God, in the Source, all is One.

This diversification going from inner to outer reflects the process of creation. All what is created comes from one Source. From the Source out, God, who is most internal and who cannot be adequately described with words that are more external, the process of creation must have been one of expression into ever more different bodies and things.

Each human being is in essence a full and direct expression of God. We are created in the image of God means we can feel to be children of God. Children are like the parents, they have no lesser value than the parents and can be fully united in love. I believe that our relation to God can be so close, our love can be so deep, that we can say we feel God as our parents. With these words we describe the depth of our relationship to God which can only be comprehended on the level of love.

There is no creation without diversification. The essence of creativity is that something new is made. In the process of creation something new is added to the existing world. There was a time that the music of Bach did not yet exist. We can hardly imagine that now. Each painting, each music composition, each creation that we make adds a new entity to the world, changes the world in which we live and this world will never be the same again.

All creations that God made have their origin in God and are in their essence united with God. When we see the animals created by God we can feel God’s love, spirit and beauty in each of them.

Many creations in the world of humans are not anymore rooted in God’s love. Such creations were not made from deepest love, they were made only on a more external level and the value of such creations is diminished in comparison to original creations.

We people can also make original creations, when we are in a process of creativity that sprouts from the deepest love in us. Such human creations become part of God’s world of creativity and have an eternal value.

If all knowledge of the world had been developed in love for and union with God, there would only be one truth. All the knowledge of the world would be in a field of united love and there would not be contradictions in such knowledge.

Because all people are unique and look at the world from different perspectives, such knowledge would also still be diverse and reveal personal viewpoints and yet these points of view would not contradict one another. They would complement and harmonize instead of be in competition.

That there exists ‘knowledge’ that is in disagreement with other ‘knowledge’ is only because such knowledge came from a source that wasn’t the original One.

Do we come in touch with this kind of knowledge from more shallow sources then these always bring conflicts in our mind. Whenever there are conflicts in our mind it is because some of what we learned or believed is not rooted in the eternal, absolute truth, which is also diverse but in a unifying, harmonizing and expanding way.

To get out from this level of conflicts in the mind there is only one path to go, which is to deepen our search and connect to more internal levels of our own being where we do find God in ourselves.

March 13, 2008

External and internal training

Photo JE

We can learn many principles for internal life by studying principles for what is more external. The external aspects of a human body express the internal. The body expresses the heart and mind. This is the reason why many principles that apply for the body also have value for what is more internal, the heart of love and desires and the mind of thinking and feeling.

Let’s look at how we train our body and keep it healthy. We hear or read about guidelines for health and exercises for the body. What if we acquire much knowledge about exercises and good health but we would not act from it? It would not help our body anything and the knowledge we gather becomes empty.

What is true knowledge in this regard?

Let’s follow how it works for a certain body exercise. First we find out about such an exercise, then practice it over time. As we practice, our knowledge deepens and becomes our own. Also, our body adapts and responds to doing the exercise by growing and developing. After we have worked out, we need to recuperate. We take some extra rest and good food and after one or a few days we again practice the same exercise. Our body changes through this and when the exercise is good, our body develops in a good way. Also our knowledge increases and there is unity between what we know and what we are.

The same principle applies to internal life. We read something in a book or we get an inspiration. We could gather this knowledge like in an encyclopaedia and we could also teach others, but what use does it have if we don’t practice what we learned? Just like we do for the body, we need to practice the truth we learned. We need to go over to action and only that will really change our mind. Our mind becomes healthy and strong by practicing truth. Our mind begins to look like a dusty old library when we don’t practice.

When we bring internal truth into practice, this can be compared to a workout. Also after the daily workout of the heart and mind, we need rest afterward and we need to nourish our heart and mind with what it needs for its growth.

This nourishment could be new truth, but it could also mean that we need prayer or meditation, or a walk in nature, or meeting loving friends, or just a long sleep.

Just like sporting people apply schedules for optimum results, also in internal life we can find rhythms in which the stages of learning, practicing and recuperating unfold best.

If any of these stages are left out, our heart and mind will weaken or even get ill, just like the body deteriorates without daily good practice.

What should we practice? Just something that seems nice to us? We need to be careful here. Just like a body doesn’t develop well when it is only exercised in one particular way, for example only by extreme body building, also our heart and mind could grow crooked like a tree that was forced into one direction by prevailing winds.

When we learn truth, we need to practice and also pass it on to others.

When we feel love, we need to share this love.

March 4, 2008

Each soul is a mirror

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Each soul is a mirror.

Some mirrors are cleaner and shine more brightly. When you meet a soul like that, you can see yourself as you are. You hardly see the other soul, you only see your own reflection.

When you meet someone like that, you are very lucky because you have the chance to solve many problems inside of you. But when you don’t want to look inside of yourself in that situation, you will suddenly be confronted with all these bad feelings and thoughts. You never knew you had them and unless you become very honest with yourself then, you will tend to accuse the mirror.

“He, mirror, I see so many bad things in you. You are a bad mirror. I put you away and go back to my old, dirty mirror. In that blurry mirror I look beautiful. I can make my own image of myself.”

Sometimes the cosmetics fall away from our faces and we see who we really are. How many times does this happen in a lifetime? You are lucky if it happens to you one time. It is your chance to start changing, your one-time opportunity to enter the much needed path of deepest self-investigation.

And if you miss that chance? Then you can never forget how you looked in that shining mirror. You will feel dark inside and you desperately try to make life again as it was before you looked in that mirror. But you cannot manage. Whatever you try. You have to find back the way to that mirror again.

Each soul is like a mirror. Some mirrors are difficult to look in, especially when you are afraid to look into yourself. In such a mirror you see the same as when you look deep in you.

All souls function like mirrors to a certain degree, but there also are mirrors that try to show you a false image. These are the mirrors of flattering souls.

The psychological mechanism of projecting your own inferior qualities into someone else come from the fact that all souls are mirrors and projection is done when someone doesn’t want to recognize that clean mirrors don’t show themselves, but show you in a reflection.

Dare to look in that polished mirror!

February 10, 2008

Two friends

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Two people go to the same school. They compete for having the highest grades. They are friends. Everyone who sees them thinks they are very much alike. But one of them has dreams about getting rich and famous. The other friend has dreams about a life spent in service to others and worries about children dying of hunger and about many other miseries in this world.

Two people work on the same ship catching crab. It is extremely hard work and they sleep very little. They are friends. Everyone who sees them toiling thinks they are very much the same. But one of them dreams about spending his first earned money to buy drugs and become a drugs dealer. The other friend is saving money to start up an organization that will start up planting trees at the borders of desert land, so the land will be green and the rains will come back.

Two men end up floating around in the same lifeboat. They were on an ocean cruiser that sunk and they are the only survivors. They become friends. If anyone could see them, they would think these two men are very much the same. But they had a completely different life course. One of them had an easy life, everything was always given to him. The other man had to work hard to earn money to pay for his studies. He overcame many internal and external difficulties in his life. As days pass by, the situation on the lifeboat gets more urgent. Who is going to save whom? Who is going to keep up his spirit and whose spirit is going down and ends up complaining and pitying himself?

Two men are involved in a project to save children from hunger. They both have a family that they left behind. Days goes by and the famine gets worse. More children die and more help is needed. These two men are friends and become better friends as they go through severe difficulties together. At home their wives are waiting. The wife of one of these men begins complaining that her husband is away. The wife of the other man feels lonely too, but she prays and meditates to help her husband go through the difficulties. Both of the men feel what their wives are thinking. The one man feels supported and even though he left his family without money, he goes on in his rescue work. The other man feels accused by his wife and thoughts come up in his mind that other people should also do their share in saving these children. He decides to go home. The rest of his life he has nightmares about the children who died because he did not help them. His wife soon leaves him. The other man who stayed eventually also comes home. His wife welcomes him and told him how she managed to come through the difficult time. Their relationship has deepened and their love increased. Both men have sacrificed much for the hungry children, yet the eventual effect on their spirit is entirely different.

Who is who? What determines whether we gain spiritually from what we do? How can our sacrifices be offered in such a way that the merit comes back to us in such a way that our souls are vitalized?

Wishing you a day of deepening your mind!

February 9, 2008

Love lessons from trees

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It takes millions, even billions of years before a fertile top soil has formed. The rich and dark-colored layer of humus is the result of the growing and dying of trees and plants, which make their organic matter from gases in the air and minerals of the earth. From light of the sun, water, gases in the atmosphere and minerals from rock, life is produced and is passed on to the soil for later generations to benefit.

This is such a silent and patient sacrificing of earlier generations to give life to offspring. What a love is there! No demanding or screaming loudly for attention, but nearly visible and ongoing investment and sacrifice.

The trees and plants that later grow on these soils cannot but pay respect to what was given to them. They express their gratitude by doing exactly the same as what their ancestors have done. They live and bring forth and leave their produce for their own offspring. Their seeds fall in this rich ground and sprout filled with desire for life.

Humans and animals also profit from all this giving and they cannot but feel much love for the Earth and the Sun and the air and the water and the trees that gave to them the foundations to live.

Shouldn’t our love be like that? Quietly and silently giving without asking, loving without expecting, all for the sake of generations that come after us. Can we not be sure that when we give like that, for weeks, months, years, decades, those that we have obliged to us cannot but recognize who is their source of life?

It is our sacrificing and producing well in the stillness of the days and nights for those whom we love which will make them feel like they are leaves on our twigs, branches on our stem, and no branch will cut itself off from its life source. Just like the trees first invest in food by making the soil rich and productive for the seeds they later bring forth, so we can learn to prepare the soil for those we love.

How far should we go in this? When you give and sacrifice for your children, they will always love you. But when you give and sacrifice in exactly the same way for who are not your children, they too will begin to love you as if they were your children. We have it in our own hands, how much harmony we make and with how many loving us we will be surrounded in the eternal future. There does need to be no limit to such giving and therefore there will be no frontiers to the world of love we are creating.

It is such determination I feel this morning. A period has passed and a new time is coming. My certainty for the future lies not in calculated guesses but in the insemination of the soil I grow on and in the seeds of love I plant.

Let’s all join in building such a world of love!

February 6, 2008

Escaping the prison of our matrix

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All things that are alive or non-alive are formed from energy. All energies are formed from love.

We live in a world of invisible roads and tunnels, a restricted matrix really. We go where we think we want to go, but what we perceive of the world is only what we see. Outside of the world that we observe is a wider world, a higher level of existence. We think we are free when we move through the variables of the matrix in that we are stuck, but in really we may be extremely restricted by what is imposed on us.

How do we get awareness of in what tunnels we are imprisoned? What is making the world to that we are confined?

What we see is the visible reality. The visible reality may be that we have to pay our monthly mortgage bill and because of that we need a job and because of that we wake up early in the morning to go to work. Together with almost the entire rest of mankind we walk our path in the matrix of world society and someone may consider it to be a victory when he controls a few corners of that matrix. It's almost hilarious to realize that the controller may be a major puppet in the hands of stronger, invisible forces and actually is restricted more than the subjects who apparently are under his dominion.

How can we escape from the matrix in that we are stuck? It is only by realizing of what material the walls of the matrix have been built. These walls seem to be built of matter and of traditions in the material world, but in reality these walls are energy, and energy is in deepest essence love.

We are love in deepest essence too. But what kind of love are we? Are you in deepest essence love for money or love for power? Is your love in deepest essence love for the family and society in that you reside? What if your family and friend are part of the walls of the matrix in that you got stuck?

Your love determines everything. When your love extends the level of your daily world, you will be able to fly out from your matrix and enter a world of a higher level. Your flight may come with a high price though.

Stronger than any other force are the chains of love that bind you to the objects of your love. With words you may enter the higher realms, even some of your deeds may show your elevation, but when you haven't cut the chains to the daily world on that you are dependant, your hands and feet will remain in the shackles in that they always were.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean you are not allowed to love the people around you. What i mean to say is that your love should not stay on the level of the matrix in that you are, but should rise high above such daily dependencies. What matters is the quality of your love. Love comes in many qualities. Love to want to be pitied is of the lowest quality, really cheap to get. Love for a life of honor is superior, but the highest love is for the benefit of all and can only be acquired for a price that may well cost you your life.

The world in that we live is only what we see. What we see is only a symptom of what really goes on. When you see only what is observed easily, you cannot even be sure of who you really are. Your identity is not in the realm of visible things. It is in the realm of invisible energies that are controlled by a hand of love. What is the hand of love that initiated the energies that formed you? Is it a good hand, an original and oldest hand in the universe? Or is it a deceiving hand, a hand that tried to mold the cosmos into matrixes in that people crawl around like mice in a labyrinth?

Dec 27, 2006

Doing research about Korea

We know about the significance of the nation of Korea for the world. We also know about Korea's division that cuts deeply into the souls of the Korean people. When we think of this division and for how long it already continues because of a stalemate, we may feel very helpless.

But all problems of the world can be overcome through restoration. This is a hope that we carry. This hope is not based on blind faith but rests on solid principles, the Principles of Recreation. Restoration or recreation is possible for Korea when the principles are applied to restore what has gone wrong.

It is very clear that many things have gone wrong for Korea. The people of Korea have believed in prophecies for a great King or Messiah to come at least since 2,000 years, and probably for over 4,000 years. Such prophecies gave strength to some kings to reunite their people and to recover land that had fallen into enemy's hands. It also led Koreans to reunite their country when it had once again fallen into division and more than one kingdom ruled over the peninsula.

Korea has been much larger than it is today. It once occupied the old kingdom of Buyeo in what now is known as Manchuria. At one time Korea's territory spread into today's Mongolia and large areas of China, to the north of Korea but also to the east. China has been a very old friend, but sometimes also occupier. China also plays a major role in North Korea today. The division between the North and South of Korea cannot be solved without taking China into consideration. Also the United States and other Allied forces have come to play a main role as they helped to bring to an (almost) close the Korean War.

Seen from this viewpoint Korea is a frontline of worldwide struggles to gain influence. The balance of the world can be understood by studying the balance between North Korea and South Korea. To make the right choices for the restoration of a united Korea, we must know the historical background of this conflict. We need to know deeply what Korea is and what it signifies for the whole world.

It is to deepen my own understanding and that of readers that i have recently began a blog Research Topics and a major section of it is devoted to Korea. I am not giving there my own views but offer links to articles, videos, books, blogs that can give us insight in the nation of Korea, its culture, history, conflicts, architecture, language.

You can participate in improving my research and help the cause of Korea by offering your own ideas, manuscripts, links to interesting websites or videos. Send this to johneaglespf@gmail.com or post a comment on that site.

Your dreams and your spiritual life

If we want to get in control of our own spiritual life, our dreams take a major place. It is essential to learn to interpret dreams. To have a well-developing spiritual life it is necessary to interpret each dream that we have.

How do dreams come about? In essence, dreams are the result of energies that have come to you. These energies store in yourself and while being asleep and they translate themselves into images and feelings in dreams. How these energies translate into symbols is partly a personal matter. Some symbols that appear in dreams, like dragons or flowers or birds or storms have a rather universal character. But other symbols are more personal and have a specified meaning only for a certain individual.

How do energies store in yourself, during the day before the dream and also over longer time? Energies connect to you because of what you do, because of where you were and because of the people you met. All your experiences make you connect to certain energies. For example, when during the day you visit a hospital, energies from that hospital may attach to you and give you a dream during the night. Such a dream has no other meaning than that you picked up these energies in the hospital, maybe fear for dying or pain of being ill.

Sometimes dreams are very confusing. It means that the energies that you picked up are confusing and it is difficult to attach a clear meaning to a confused dream. Other dreams are very clear. When a dream is very clear, and even more so when such a dream repeats itself, that dream is significant and it is very worthwhile to interpret.

Your own fears may make you attract energies that cause dreams. When you are very afraid to get a car accident, you may often dream about that. Such a dream has not necessarily a predictive content, though your own fear may in time cause a car accident of course.

Other people send energies to you. People who love you, people who desire to have sex with you, people who hate you, they all send energies to you that you may not notice until they express in a kind of dream.

Some dreams are caused by the spiritual realm. Spirits may love you or hate you and cause you to have dreams. Sometimes spirits, for example your own ancestors, may want to meet you and then you could meet them in your dreams.

Some dreams are brought to you in a very direct manner from spirit world. Angels can make you to have special dreams. God the Creator can give you a dream. God is an independent being who can decide to give you a dream, even without mediation of angels.

Some of your dreams may predict your future. These dreams may have been given to you by God or by angels, or you unconsciously picked up the energies of plans of others.

There are also very special dreams. Sometimes you get into a trance while sleeping, or you come in a consciously elicited trance from that you remember something that feels like a dream. In such states of consciousness very meaningful things could occur to you. It happens that angels temporarily take your spirit out from your body and let you have experiences in the spiritual world. When you wake up, you remember this as a dream, but it was much more than a dream. It is very advisable to write down the content of such a dream immediately after you wake up and take time later to understand the meaning.

Finally, there is one more special dream that i want to mention. Not everyone will have such dreams, but some people do. Angels can establish a spiritual communication while you are asleep or they make you to fall asleep temporarily. Such kind of sleep feels almost as if you are unconscious. Your body is asleep, your spirit is awake. Angels can establish a connection between your spirit and that of someone else. This other spirit, who may be in spirit world but who can also be in a body on earth, speaks to you and you speak to this other person.

To advance our spiritual development it is advisable to write down each meaningful dream and to find the correct interpretation. Our dream life is part of our entire life and deserves to be taken seriously all the time. Sometimes messages in the form of dreams are given to you from the spiritual realm. When you take them seriously, you will probably attract more of such help. When you neglect them, your meaningful dream life will starve and your spiritual life will suffer.

June 10, 2006

Your own contribution to your own resurrection

Image via WikipediaVision of Ezekiel

How can you or how can i contribute to your or my own resurrection?

Resurrection is resurrection of the spirit. That we speak about 're'-surrection is to stress the fact that the spirit is not in the state it should be in. When there would not be obstructive forces in the universe, everyone's spirit would just grow normally like a tree that is treated well and has access to all necessary nutrients.

Some people believe they can grow by just consuming a lot of spiritual food. They do acquire much knowledge in that way, but will that make them grow in a healthy manner? Compare it to eating good food. What when you eat food all the time but you don't move your body, don't work out etc.? You get fat and ugly and will have a short life span.

It's like that with spiritual food. If you only try to get more knowledge, your spirit will not get resurrected. You might even get addicted to what is the spiritual equivalent of junk food. You consume knowledge but in reality that knowledge doesn't steer you to live a healthy spiritual life and will kill you in the end.

The key word for having a healthy spiritual life is 'faith.' The faith meant here is not faith in a particular religion or spiritual teaching. Original faith is faith in your own good relation to the Creator, it is faith in love and goodness, it is faith in yourself as a good being.

To have this kind of good faith is our own responsibility. When you loose this faith, you are lost. When you forgot to be a good person and when you forgot that you have a relation to your Source the Creator, your spirit will go down and come in need for resurrection. We all are in need of resurrection because we were not born in a good world. We were born as the outcome of a history of troubles and it is our task to elevate ourselves above that.

Faith is something that must be built up. You can destroy your faith or you can build it up. To destroy good faith can be done with one or a few wrong actions. After you made a big mistake, your faith goes down in a falling movement. To build it up, you need to invest yourself over longer time doing the right things. Faith cannot be built up in an instant, but you could lose it very quickly.

The question then is how to build up good faith. There are a few elements to build up a foundation of faith. The first element is you. There is a central person who must build up faith. This means that your faith is dependent on what you do. You can inherit some kind of faith by uniting in love with other people who have already built a foundation of faith, but eventually, to make your faith grow, you have to do it yourself.

What do you have to do to build up faith? This is what you have to find out. There are no general rules for this. Faith is your living relation to the Creator, to your own and deepest good core. You can't build up faith as if it were a kind of diploma for that you have to pass pre-described tests. You build up faith in your own personal course. Your course is different from that of everyone else's. So, your first task is then to find out what you must do, what you must accomplish as next step in your life. This you can only find out by yourself, as an individual, in deep meditation or prayer.

Once you know what you should do, you have to do it, whatever it is that you must do. What you must do is called 'the offering.' You offer yourself by giving yourself, sacrificing from yourself to God and for others. So you get a task and when you accomplish this task, it is called an offering.

This offering must be fulfilled over a certain time period. There are also numbers connected to your offering. For example, an offering could be that you should fast for three days, to prepare yourself for a task that comes after your fasting. Another offering could be that you should offer some of your money for people starving from hunger. Your offering could be that you should study a certain holy book, over a certain number of days. What you have to do should not be determined by yourself, but you yourself are responsible to find out what you should do.

If you make up your own mind about all this, you will be unable to do it from your original heart and your offering will not be connected to God. There will not take place resurrection. It may appear to you that you advance, but you are not really progressing because you made your offerings while disconnected from the Creator.

The central elements for building up faith are:

1. You yourself as the central person who must do it in relation to the Creator
2. The offering that must be fulfilled
3. A certain amount of time
4. Specified numbers that must be fulfilled.

When you build up your foundation of faith, your spirit will gradually be resurrected. This process of resurrection is actually a process of recreation. Because recreation is essentially a creative process, time and numbers are involved, just like the original creation of everything takes time and numbers. For example, an unborn baby spends 40 weeks in the womb of the mother. A week means seven days. A day is defined by the circulation of the Earth around its axis.

August 8, 2006

Resurrection

Image via Wikipedia

Here i shall explain a little about resurrection. Resurrection should always be understood in a spiritual way. Physical bodies don't get resurrected. Once they have gone to dust, dust they remain. The term resurrection implies that a fall has taken place that makes resurrection necessary. The fall that is meant is downfall of the spirit.

In the spiritual world there have always been angels with the task to resurrect those spirits who entered spirit world after the death of their physical bodies. Just after physical death, most spirits are in need of resurrection, quite literally meant here. These people can just do nothing in the spiritual world because they were not aware of themselves as a spiritual being, they don't know the world they have entered and many of them just don't know how to do a thing there. Angels go to such spirits, speak to them, bring them to a specially protected place, give them energies and wait until these spirits can walk, talk and use their minds again. Only few spirits don't need this treatment, some need weeks, others years and again others need millenniums.

The word resurrection is also used in other ways. There is a general resurrection that takes place with the advancing of history. When certain internal and spiritual truth becomes known to large groups of people, for example because of the teachings of an elevated spiritual person on earth, a widespread resurrection takes place for many people at the same time. New realms in spirit world are opened then. With the coming of the New Age in this frame of time we can expect such a general resurrection to take place.

For each of us, eventually resurrection always means resurrection of myself and yourself. When everyone gets resurrected but i don't, the concept will be of no meaning to me. So, what is your resurrection and what can you do to make it happen?

There is an original growth of the spirit that goes through several stages. Everything that grows, grows through stages. A tree is first a seed, then a seedling, then a young tree and finally it bears fruit and produces new offspring. A human being is first just two combined cells, a sperm cell and an egg cell, then grows as a fetus in the womb, then is born in a new world, grows up as a baby and a child, eventually will unite with someone of the other gender to have new children. Finally, you get old, your body dies and you enter a new spiritual life.

The stages are distinct, they don't just flow smoothly from one into another. An important concept connected to resurrection is that of rebirth. Rebirth means to completely begin your life all over again. Resurrection of your spirit always begins with a rebirth of your spirit. Before you can be reborn, you must go through a process of dying. This dying is the dying of the old self. When the old self got used to ways of living that hampered or even destroyed your spiritual growth, you must get rid of these habits as they have taken root in your heart of desires, your mind of stuck ways of thinking and feeling and your body of bad ways of acting. To do that feels like dying and is dying. Once you have determined to make a new start and you are strong enough, you need to get some kind of rebirth. Rebirth must be given to you. It essentially comes from the Creator who gave birth to you in the first place. Other people must have a role as well, functioning as a kind of spiritual father and mother. You cannot give rebirth to yourself. You can determine yourself to end your old ways if they are wrong, you can do a lot to grow up well after your rebirth, but rebirth is a gift of love that must be given to you by those in the position of spiritual parents.

In many religions, you get a new name as proof for your rebirth and your new identity. Not always such a rebirth leads to a satisfying resurrection afterward. Maybe your rebirth was not complete, maybe you didn't get good spiritual food in your stage as a spiritual baby, maybe you don't invest yourself enough and fall back in your old habits. At any rate, rebirth is the beginning of resurrection. It is the conclusion of a period of dying of the old self, but it is just the beginning of your new path of growth to become a spiritually adult and good person.

There is much more to be said about resurrection, about the character of the stages of spiritual growth that follow rebirth, about your own responsibility to live a life of faith and sacrifice for others so that you also really will grow, etc. For now i conclude with saying that resurrection of the spirits is taking place right now at a large scale.

August 8, 2006

Is all spirituality automatically beneficial?

Image by AlicePopkorn via FlickrImpressions of the spiritual path

Many people who try to embed spiritual values into their lives think that all spirituality automatically will benefit them. They see spirituality as contradicting to materialism and because they see all materialism as bad, they see all spirituality as good.

First, i don't think that all forms of all materialism are necessarily wrong. It also depends on what definition you use for 'materialism.' For example, some believe that money itself is bad. I know that the desire for money may easily destroy spiritual values in your life, but that doesn't mean that money itself should carry the blame for that. People who live for money will of course easily forget higher values in life, but should 'money' itself be held responsible for that or is it really the desire for money that causes the problem?

Money is an old invention. Long ago and even today, people used barter instead of money. Barter has some advantages, but when you for example want to pay something with a cow, that cow actually acting as money, it is easy to see that this is not always very handy. If your trade is with someone from another country, you may have to transport that cow over a long distance. People began to use certain small and valuable things as money, for example shells or beads. Later, such valuables were replaced with actual money, first coins of some kind of precious metal. Still later, paper money was invented. Today, money is often only transferred through bank payments. No actual visible money is used at all anymore. The money has become solely an entry in a bank computer.

Money may tempt people to become materialistic, but the problem is not in the money itself but rather in the greedy desires of people. While materialism may make you less open for the spiritual aspects of life, we do all have a physical body that also has physical needs.

Second, it also is not true that all spirituality is really beneficial for you. When spirituality means that you aware of spiritual aspects of life, it doesn't yet mean that you automatically use your spiritual abilities well. Originally, the spiritual world is a creative world, but also in the spiritual world there now exist self-centered beings who are not centered on love but rather on getting benefit for themselves. Some people who are very spiritual use their spiritual powers to get control over others. In your strife for spiritual life you may become a slave of such people, actually losing your freedom as a valuable and independent individual.

The question arises then how we can assure that the spirituality we aspire for will benefit us in an original way. The answer can easily be given. It is love. When our desire is to give love to others, we can be sure that our spiritual development will be beneficial. Here arises a new problem of course. Are all forms of love really so good? Don't we know of forms of love that make us feel to become imprisoned?

It is very difficult to give a definition of which love is good and which love is not so good. Personally i am convinced that love is not always used to help others but that it can also be misused by some to tempt others to come under their powers. Original love and original spirituality always are connected to God, the Creator of love.

June 6, 2006

Do you dislike the word 'sin'?

Image via WikipediaThe medieval Christian view of God creating the universe, "by number, weight and measure."

Some people don’t like the word ‘sin’. I also don’t like it, because I don’t like sins and their results. Please read on when you tend to back off as soon as you read the word sin. I am just trying to understand what ‘sin’ really means.

Some people don’t like the word sin because they don’t want to look at their own mistakes after they made them. Like when you know that your spouse or friend doesn’t love you anymore, but you try to maintain the image of a happy relation. Or when you know you are ill but don’t do something against it because you fear the truth.

The truth about ourselves can be frightening. Sins are being made all the time and their results are always bad. You sin when you act against the original principles of the universe. You also sin when you unite with those who made it their custom to live against the principles of the universe. Whenever you do this, you fill yourself with deathly and contagious energies.

The laws of the universe come from God. They exist regardless what we understand or try to make from them. They are also independent from what religious organizations or state authorities tell us. When we align with the laws of the universe, we find ourselves spiritually healthy and prosperous. When we go against the laws of the universe, we attract trouble from everywhere.

I know that many people reject the concept of sin because it was used against them to make them feel guilty. But feeling guilty is a sin in itself. When you make a mistake you must make it in order again. People who feel guilty are just busy with accusing themselves and never come to the point to restore what they did wrong.

Everything works based on principles. We are healthy when we understand and live according to good principles. This is true for our physical life and it is true for spiritual life. Maybe we need another word for ‘sin,’ or we need to understand better what is really meant with it.

Can our sins be forgiven? I am sure they can. But what about the mess we left behind? Is that mess cleaned up after we have been forgiven? Who is going to wipe out the trash from our world?

Jan 20, 2007