Posts Tagged ‘religion’

My Religious Ways In Later Years

In my twenties I carried on reading books on philosophy and religion, but I tended towards Buddhism and Hinduism, which seemed very closely related to my family’s spiritualist beliefs. I practiced yoga, but being physically lazyish by nature, I preferred the more psychic exercises.

I meditated. I would not drink alcohol for 48 hours before the evening that I had asked for permission to meditate; then I would exercise, bathe and lie down in a dimly lit room. I used to begin by relaxing my body.

The course of action that worked best for me was to imagine tiny factory workers in overalls at each muscle and, starting from my feet, I would send them off for lunch. I would walk them all up into my head and out of my ears so that I was ‘paralyzed’. Then, I imagined a fissure opening up in the middle of my mind and I forced my thoughts jump over it as it grew wider.

Petty thoughts disappeared quickly, but even persistent, deep-seated worries would eventually fall down the crack. Then I would be left alone in me. I never got rid of ‘me’ strive as I might. The next step for me would be to pose a question.

An example is: ‘How can I tell the difference between a significant dream and my mind merely processing the day;s activities?’ Almost always I would see myself, from the back or over head, sitting in a cinema or a theatre alone.

Then someone would appear on stage and start a film. The person would commentate and stop and restart the film until I understood the answer to my question. The person was nearly always the same one, but if it was not, I made him tell me his name before I would pay any attention.

In this state, people who saw me reckoned that I was asleep, but I could hear each noise that was made in the house and on the street outside. People said I snored as well, but I could hear myself snoring.

To this day, if I relax deeply, I snore but I can hear everything and am not asleep. My wife often turns the TV off while I am listening to it. I know that lots of men say that, which makes it more, not less, true. It proves that meditation is natural and that we can all do it if we give ourselves the opportunity.

When I was a teenager, I got into the habit of scribbling my dreams down, because I have the type of memory that remembers items when I have written them down. I can throw the paper away then and I will remember|.

Anyway, I am able to remember my dreams now without having to write them down, but what is more valuable than that in my mind is that I have always known if I am dreaming. One last thing, when I walk in my dreams it is on two legs but if I run it is on all fours like a dog. Many people have called me ‘wolf’ or ‘bear’ in my life, have they seen something? (My wife says she sees me as a wolf too)’

I do not mean anything weird, but it is a bit of a coincidence or not? Last year, I was talking to a girlfriend of my wife and she said that she runs on all fours in her dreams too. She was flabbergasted when I said I did too. How many more are there?

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now involved with non-religious beliefs. If you want to know more go to What is Religious Belief?

Methods Of Getting Your Child Interested In Religion

Whether you yourself have an interest in religion or not, there may come a time when you consider it your duty to offer your child the opportunity to discover religion for itself. You might be an atheist or you may have a particular creed or religion that you prefer, but is that a reason to make your child follow you?

Most children do not connect church with fun (and you might well argue that fun has nothing to with it), so how to you inspire an interest in religion? There appear to be merely two methods: you can either make it more fun or you can compel them. We all know that compulsion tends to have the opposite effect from the one desired, so how do you make going to church fun or at least interesting?

The beginning of going to church alone for most children is Sunday School, so you could start there. This is not about you or your religious education, so whatever you believe, you could go along to the Sunday Schools of a few local churches and find out what activities they hold.

If the Sunday school is dull and boring, your child will not stay there and may be put off for decades or even life. Going to church or to Sunday schools should be about religious education and moral guidance not about coercion and indoctrination.

You do not have to have faith in everything your religious instructor tells you to become a decent, moral, religious person no matter which denomination you belong to. There are not many religious teachers in any church who would say that they ‘know it all’. If they did they would not have to to pray for guidance themselves!

Events that young children might find interesting are approximately the same as those they would do in a regular school, but with a slightly more religious bent. These include: painting, drawing, singing, reading, story-telling, playing and sports. The extra reading practice at Sunday school may really give your child the upper hand when it comes to the state school curriculum as well.

Older children will like sport, dancing (barn dances, line-dancing, ballroom dancing), singing, putting on plays and discussion groups. Children outside this environment will almost certainly never be in a play or never learn to Tango in their lives, yet it is a godsend in life to have done it at least once.

Debating is another skill that most people do not have either. Learning fund raising and public speaking are excellent skills that are not taught often in state schools any more either.

If your children do not like the Sunday school that you would like them to attend, let them go to another one. Any extra education is better than none or roaming the streets. In my case, my parents were Spiritualists, but my mother’s family were Catholics.

My school was Church of Wales (similar to the Church of England), the Boy Scouts I was in were Methodists, but they went to a Baptist Church because it was closer. I enjoyed the singing in all the churches and I still know the songs 45 years later!

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with Korean religious belief. If you want to know more go to What is Religious Belief?

Spiritual Connection With Nature

A spiritual experience in nature is exactly where you immerse yourself alone in nature for 3-4 days. This is among probably the most profound encounters I have ever before had.

What happens throughout a nature immersion is that the boundary of exactly where you end and nature starts melts from your consciousness. You also get to feel the one-ness of every thing about you. Your awareness of self dissolves and you get to feel straight in to the knowledge with the creator. You start to touch and be the essence of the real you.

Words are tough to portray exactly what the experience is like for in today’s culture we’re mostly disconnected from nature and also the feeling of connection with self and every thing around us. This sense of connection is always present and usually there, even when we ‘think’ we are not linked. This really is an underlying lore that becomes actual whenever you immerse your self in nature for an extended period of time.

Prior to immersing yourself in nature for 3-4 days, it’s important to understand why you feel drawn to complete it. Many people who feel drawn are at a transition point in a place of existence that’s essential to them.

For example, the transition might be inside a romantic relationship, inside your career, in finding your objective for being on the planet or perhaps a transition in a place of your health.

There are 3 phases to your nature immersion.

The very first stage will be the separation stage. This really is exactly where you actively separate yourself from your daily life and routine to be able to be within nature with out distractions. Within this stage 1 main activity you do is look through all your belongings and toss out something that is no longer you. Many people find this tough because they have to encounter a great deal of issues from the past that do not serve them. However, most people I speak to about this discover it liberating as they really feel a weight continues to be lifted off their shoulders.

Throughout this phase you also have the conversations that you have been staying away from which have also been weighing you down. The idea running this really is to create a clear slate for something new to come up. What you are attempting to do here would be to finish the past of every thing which has been niggling you in the back of your mind so that you can enter into nature with your empty cup.

Right now discover step-by-step the way you can get your own spiritual experience in nature and get solutions on any query you might have about your existence.

Vision Quest: Getting Clear In your Life’s Mission

Subsequently attempt to consciously broaden this fringe of your peripheral vision outwards. Attempt to push the boundary of one’s peripheral eyesight outwards, like you are placing power into expanding your peripheral eyesight outwards. Just as you practice doing this a couple of instances, you’ll notice you can actively push your peripheral vision outwards. It demands effort at the start, nevertheless you will begin to obtain the sense of becoming in a position to see what’s further out to the side of you. As you carry on to push your peripheral vision out further, some thing clicks and nearly instantly you will also begin to become conscious and get a sense of what’s also behind you.

You’ll discover that whenever you begin to ’see’ past your peripheral eyesight to incorporate what is also behind of you. This seeing is in your feeling, in your sensing. As you push the extent of one’s peripheral vision outwards, you’ll get a sense that you can feel what’s also behind you.

Once you’ve gotten this sense, subsequently go for a brief stroll and practice pushing the boundary of your 3-D eyesight to also feel what is behind you. This is like possessing a perception of the 360 degree field of vision. Once more, as you heighten this sense it’ll bring you nearer into the religious realm beyond the 1 we usually see. This is actually the way indigenous individuals in their organic state see the world. They invest about 90% of their time within their peripheral vision and about 10% of their time within their targeted vision.

You’ll most likely notice there’s less stress within the muscle tissue of one’s facial muscles and eyes while inside your peripheral vision. The reason for this is that it permits our mind to relax. For example, being inside your peripheral vision for just two minutes slows your brain wave patterns in the ‘beta’ or problem solving state down into the ‘alpha’ or relaxed state. Simply going into your 3-D perception of vision throughout the day will slow your thoughts down whenever you feel stressed. Plus you’ll pick up a lot more info within your visual field, particularly motion.

The next most used perception within our contemporary civilization and the vision quest is the sense of your hearing. However, in comparison with native indigenous people we have severely contracted our perception of hearing. Instead of having a perception of 360 degree stereo surrounding sound we’re often restricted within the amount we listen to.

Uncover exactly how you can do your personal vision quest immersed within the wonder and mystery of the wilderness.

Spiritual Enlightenment: Dropping Tension Is always the Straight Way to Enter into It

If you are inside a state of spiritual no-mind you will probably discover you are more conscious, more current to the present second. To what’s about you. Being with what you’re being with. Inside a state of no-mind. Much like the present moment gets to be longer. Like your view of current reality is slowed down.

I prefer to call this way of seeing the world as living in ‘innocence’. The reason is simply because this is how infants and youthful toddlers see the world. There’s not much heading through their mind. They’re in a state of innocence and therefore are merely being with what it is they are being with. Inside a being relationship with their immediate environment.

And you can tap into this state of innocence at any time, merely by placing your awareness, your attention on the gap in between your thoughts. It’s in this space exactly where the magic occurs. In the state of innocence. Regardless of what is going on in lifestyle about you, this gap of no-mind is usually present. It’s just a small point of shifting your focus from reasoning instead onto no-mind. This will naturally make you drop more in to the present awareness around you.

The other way the mind takes us away from tuning into with what is is through labels. For example, in the event you look at a tree, the labels you give to parts in the tree will probably be ‘tree’, ‘leaves’, ‘bark’, ‘roots’, ‘brown’, ’sap’, ‘branches’, ‘flowers’, ’seeds’, ‘trunk’ etc

However, if you shut your eyes, enter the state of no-mind by putting your focus on the gap after which consciously drop labels a rare factor begins to happen. By letting go of labels you are able to simply be with what is there to be with.

For instance, if you hold a stick in your hand and look into the stick then you would usually be with the labels of the stick like ‘brown’, ‘hard’, ‘light’, stick’, ‘wood’, ‘flexible’ and so on. Nevertheless in the event you let go of these labels in a state of no mind then you can experience what it’s like to merely be with the stick.

When you drop labels you will probably notice and see a great deal more detail inside the components of the wilderness in front of you. You’ll likely pick up a lot more in the small particulars. Maybe that it seems like you’re viewing these components for the very first ever time. And that you can invest a lot of time merely being with your element within your hands.

Your spiritual connection with your land will show you how to connect with your life more deeply.

On the Rite Of Passage Go At Your own Tempo To Create Your Perception Of Comfort

For too long now we’ve been separate from doing a rite of passage in nature. Separate from the oneness. The oneness we are with every thing. Everything within. And everything without.

Now’s the time. Time to regain our natural state. For it’s always there. Usually waiting. Waiting for us to drop into once more through the heart stroll.

For there is a small group that still exists. A tribe. A growing tribe. That always remembers. Remembers how you can drop into the wisdom of the wilderness. That remembers how to talk with the wilderness. That nonetheless communicates with the wilderness. For they enter the forests. They wander the deserts. The grassy plains. And drop into the wisdom. And deliver the wisdom back again. Back to contemporary civilization the wisdom comes.

Right before you get into this book I would just like to inform you a bit about myself to ensure that you receive a sense of who I am and exactly where I’ve come from.

I was born on the outskirts of a city known as Bendigo in South-Eastern Australia. Our property was surrounded by thousands of acres of bushland. As a kid I would invest numerous hours by myself (and with our puppy Zoe) exploring virtually each nook and cranny of that bushland.

I knew where to locate the quartz crystals. I knew where the ‘fairy grass’ grew. I realized where the turtles lived. And where the crows liked to hang out on scorching days. I knew exactly where to catch the best yabbies and where the ‘Chinese burn’ trees lived. I knew where the drinking water ran in heavy downpours. And I knew where the deepest mineshaft caves were.

In short, I knew the land.

And by this I do not just imply exactly where the physical objects were placed on the land. I realized her moods.

I realized how she felt within the heat of the summer time afternoon. I also knew how she expectantly opened up as thunder clouds started to brew around the horizon. I knew the crispness she was in the cold winter season mornings as frost blanketed the grass and small bits of ice formed in the edges of her puddles.

This is what I mean after i say I understand the land. Mush like how you know an old buddy. Their little nuances. Their small idiosyncrasies. What a certain type of chuckle and raise of the eyebrows means.

As I grew up I started to separate myself with the land. I invested lots of time running and have become a champion athlete. I put my head down, studied a lot, got into College and finished two degrees – a Bachelor of Engineering along with a Bachelor of Commerce. I moved to the cities and worked lengthy hrs as a qualified Civil Engineer.

Go on the rite of passage within the wilderness and discover your true life objective.

Inner Peace And Calm Is Saw Inside Nature

This really is the way it is to ‘be with’ a state of inner peace within the wilderness. Simply being with what it actually is you are being with. In a state of innocence. This really is when your state of present consciousness begins to slow down. Once the current moment begins to turn out to be an eternity. When time begins to distort and also you start feeling there’s no separation between your self and another object within nature. You’ll likely also start to see that what blocks becoming in the present is what occurs within your thoughts. And also you may probably begin to see that this way of living is always there and just waiting for you to drop into once more.

This experience of being with is really a powerful method to enter your heart walk. You will pick up a great deal more detail within the messages that nature is wanting to tell you. You will start to notice you can see your whole life inside a leaf. The phrase ‘leaf’ being but an additional label.

As soon as you are out of your mind and into a sense of inner peace, the next phase of the heart walk is to get into your senses. To be out of your thoughts and come into your senses. For this enables for your doorway into the religious realm to open up. To raise the veil in to the religious dimension.

You do that by heightening every of your five senses.

Conventional indigenous people who reside with the wilderness on the land have heightened and highly tuned senses. They require these heightened senses to make sure they are in a position to live. For instance they need a big field of vision to make sure they are in a position to pick up the subtle movements of game. They require a extremely tuned sense of what they hear in order to pick up the distant sounds of animals and birds. The necessity is to have a highly tuned sense of scent to pick up subtle scents of trails and animals in the distance. Similarly with their taste and the sense of feeling.

Once the five predominant senses are extremely tuned we will then turn out to be more attuned towards the sixth sense of perception. Towards the religious sense. To the power that moves us. To the synchronicities, messages and symbols the creator is continually providing us through nature. We are able to then drop into these messages to obtain direction and clarity on our purpose, as well as exactly where we are to go and what we are to do at every moment in time.

So the first spot to begin entering in to the spiritual dimension is by heightening each of one’s 5 senses.

Discover inner peace inside the wilderness and learn how to drop tension.

Rite Of Passage: Drop Into a Deep Comfort On the Nature Wander

Nevertheless on a rite of passage it’s feasible to again heighten our sense of smell by trying a few exercises while out in the wilderness.

The first way is to place your focus, your consciousness in your perception of smell as you stroll via nature. Simply placing your awareness on what you are smelling will once more get you away from your thoughts and into your senses.

While you become aware in the smells about you, the next step would be to heighten your sense of scent. You will probably notice that your perception of smell is really a lot stronger on the in-breath rather than your out breath. That is why dogs sniff a lot. By breathing in brief sharp sniffs they’re in a position to pick up more smells.

So to heighten your perception of smell in the wilderness, do as canines do and take in a number of brief sharp breaths whenever you notice a smell you’re feeling drawn to.

While you stroll around you’ll most likely also discover you will find much more smells closer to the ground and that the smells close to the ground are a great deal more powerful. Start to apply using short sharp breaths at head locations in addition to closer towards the ground and become aware of that which you pick up.

You’ll most likely also notice that while you walk next to, wet elements and objects in the wilderness have a stronger scent than dry objects. If you have a drinking bottle handy you are able to practice smelling objects once they are dry and then smelling them once more when they are moist. You will most likely notice the smells are stronger and you pick up much more small nuances within their scent when wet.

While you explore further into your perception of smell also attempt crushing a couple of leaves as you go and discover their smell. Attempt to gather up the little nuances within the smells. Like subtle flavors inside the smells.

An additional exercise you can experiment with during your rite of passage is inactive smelling. When you are using short sharp breaths you’re actively heightening your sense of scent and looking for smells. However in the event you sit on the ground in the same place, instead become aware in the smells that are coming your way. Allow the smells surrounding you and also along the wind to come to you. You will become conscious that at each second in time the air smells unique. Similar to taking a look at a wave on the ocean. Every moment is different. So too with the continual smells about you that are coming your way. Merely sit in the one spot and allow the different smells to come your way.

Learn how to do your own rite of passage immersed in the wilderness.

Getting into Enlightenment By Silencing Your Mind

I discover when many people get in to the forest this almost habitual method of looking at the planet is carried over. For the most part, when individuals go into nature for a hike they are going to be staring a few meters in front of them along the path they’re strolling down. And they miss out on a lot of what is happening about them. Lacking the feeling of what’s surrounding them in the wilderness.

To get a perception of being in a sense of enlightenment you can do a simple focusing exercise inside nature. For instance, while you look around, try and concentrate on one element inside nature for approximately two seconds. Then change your gaze and focus on an additional component for 2 seconds. And another for two seconds. Concentrating on the elements within nature both close to you and a long way away. Focusing for 2 seconds on an object after which shifting onto another object. Keep on doing this for a minute or so and notice how this feels.

You will probably notice a sense of tension within your mind and that it takes quite intense effort to become continually concentrating on objects inside nature. The reason for this is that around one third of our brain is equipped to interpret the visual perceptions that we are taking in. And it is known that we use as much power once we are pondering as when we are strolling, no surprise it requires some effort to be continuously targeted within this method of taking a look at the planet.

However indigenous people possess a totally different and more relaxed method of looking at the planet. In this mode they are in a position to absorb a great deal more of their surroundings. Rather of being focused on one point, they instead take within them a bigger realm of eyesight.

They spend about 90% of their time being in their peripheral vision and only about 10% of the time seeing the world in focused eyesight. This allows them to perceive a larger visual area and take in more motion. Taking in more of one’s surroundings by utilizing your peripheral vision does not use as much effort as the continual focusing we are taught in contemporary civilization.

In order to go into your peripheral eyesight and enter into a feeling of enlightenment, firstly pick a point towards the horizon which you really feel drawn to. Then rather than focusing on that point, consciously relax your facial muscle tissue, especially the muscles about your eyes. Let the stress within your facial muscle tissues to drop towards the floor. As your facial muscle tissues unwind your gaze will then start to soften. Allow your gaze to soften on that point you had been drawn to. You’ll naturally begin to go into peripheral vision while you unwind your facial muscle tissues and soften your gaze.

Enlightenment in the wilderness allows you to drop straight in to the creator.

How you can Form A Spiritual Link With an Object Inside The wilderness

To increase your peripheral eyesight even further, you can then place each of one’s hands out in front of you. Then slowly bring your fingers out to your side and notice the point at which you can not see your fingers. At this point, slightly wiggle your fingers so you can just see them in your left and right area of eyesight. This is the extent of one’s horizontal peripheral vision For many individuals they’ll get around a 180 degree field of peripheral vision to their left and right.

Next put both of one’s hands out in just in front of you once more. Then gradually lift one arm over your head and gradually decrease your other arm down and to your side. Whenever you begin to notice both of one’s fingers disappearing from your perception of eyesight, slightly wiggle your fingers. This is actually the extent of your vertical field of eyesight. For many individuals this will be about a 150 degree area of peripheral vision in the up and down directions.

Then as you play together with your spiritual field of peripheral eyesight in all directions around you, you’ll discover the extent of one’s peripheral vision is like a large oval of extended vision. This heightened field of vision is how indigenous people view the world.

I prefer to label this state of utilizing your peripheral vision 3-D vision. For example, if you transfer your head to the right and left while being within this peripheral vision you will notice that objects near to you may also have a tendency to move towards the left and right. Similar to placing on 3-D glasses at an iMax theater. While you go for your walk while in this state of extended 3-D eyesight, discover how you possess a much larger perception in your depth of field. As if the objects you pass seem more 3 dimensional. You will also discover you are able to pick up a great deal more movement whilst inside your peripheral vision.

So when I start my heart walk I will spend a few moments strolling about getting in my 3-D peripheral vision as it will get me much more into my senses and takes me closer to tapping in to the spiritual dimension past the one we usually see.

You can also take this extended sense of vision to an even deeper degree to be able to ’see’ what is also behind you.

To get this done, once more discover a point in the distance which you really feel drawn to and soften your gaze. Go into your peripheral vision once more by wiggling your fingers at the extent of your peripheral vision in both of the horizontal and vertical directions. Then again bear in mind of the extent of your peripheral vision by placing your awareness and focus on the oval in the extent of your peripheral eyesight.

Meditation is the key to forming a spiritual connection with your land.