Contemplations
Contemplations on healing and meditation "... deep relaxation is the key to emotional and spiritual healing ..."
What is religion? "... provides a historical record of the exploits of spiritual explorers. They provide hints or guidelines for us to conduct our own spiritual exploration. The value of these records diminishes as the politics of greed and power take over and distort the spiritual messages"
Spiritual insights "... the natural goals of life are exploration, discovery ..."
Contemplations on exploration
Where does this come from?"...After deep meditation, you will sometimes feel a wise presence. Sometimes, if you are lucky, this wise presence will offer you a message - an insight..."
"To ensure a healthy future - humans need to continue exploration and discovery - both outer and inner - in the spirit of kindness, compassion, and forgiveness - and with respect for the Earth's life processes and all that supports them."
The better side of religion offers us:-
Religions provide opportunities to learn from the hints or guidelines offered by these spiritual explorers or ancient wisdom teachings. With the right perspective of religion, we can be inspired to broaden our own spiritual exploration.
The value of these religious recordings diminishes as the politics of greed and power take over and distort the spiritual messages - reducing religion to a vehicle for propaganda.
The value of religion also diminishes whenever it is used to support the suppression of imagination, creativity, wisdom, intelligence, sensitivity, critical and analytical thought. If we become too dependent on our leaders then we fail to engage in our own spiritual exploration. These conditions arise when tribal allegiances and territorial instincts dominate the minds and hearts of those who carry these religious teachings.
Contemplations on exploration ....
Moral guidelines as an aid to spiritual exploration
Spiritual exploration is a powerful need. Ignore it and we suffer. Tend to it and we grow.
Fear, hate, rage and violence lead us away from spiritual exploration and prevent the seed of wisdom from growing within us.
Encourage inner and spiritual exploration. This seed of wisdom will then grow into an inner force that makes compassion, generosity and forgiveness take root in our lives.
In the beginnings of all religions you will find someone who has been touched by this wisdom. Out of compassion they seek to help others touch this wisdom for themselves. But out of fear, greed and hate, people transform their message into propaganda and tribal dogma.
Most religions claim that their morality is the "Only/Best/True Morality". The fact is that all living creatures have a tendency to be moral, and humans have always cherished moral behavior - regardless of the dominant religion at the time. Several religions twist the facts by claiming that humans are basically immoral - and present a set of laws claimed to be from God.
Religious leaders will point to a few destructive people or incidents as proof that we are immoral - that is - they use a form of propaganda to support their belief systems. Their analysis can always be shown to be wrong - and you must aways challenge them otherwise you will fall into their trap of deception and ignorance.
Some of those so-called religious moral laws are really natural morals - these leaders plagiarize nature's morality in the name of their religion. "Thou shall not kill/murder" is restating a natural tendency to avoid killing/murdering. Usually religion is employed to encourage people to feel good about killing and murdering during wartime.
Ignoring religious-based morality and seeking the natural source of morality will be doing God and future generations a great favor. But remember that since religions have stolen from natural morality - the leaders of these religions must find ways of making your natural sense of right and wrong look like wrong. The best way to deal with their deceptions is to simply acknowledge and spread the word about the true source of morality - it is rooted in the spirit of nature. The real sin - that leads us astray from our journey of spiritual exploration - is to become entangled in fear, hate, anger and greed.
There is Yin Morality and Yang Morality. Yin is the feminine - the nurturing, gentle, feeling. The Yang is the masculine - forceful, pushing, shaping. Religions will emphasize one or the other. Spiritual healing requires attentiveness to both Yin and Yang aspects - seeking a balance.
If you are seeking a way of life that opens yourself and others to spiritual exploration, then study this alternative view of spiritual ethics:
While on the journey of spiritual exploration, you will often encounter something unfamiliar, overwhelming, powerful. It may begin to arouse fear, hate, greed. At this point - ask for an awakening of compassion, forgiveness, kindness, gentleness, humility - and learn to let go of your fear, hate or greed. This is one way that moral guidelines can assist you in your spiritual journey.
The nature of the human
The mind is physical. The mind evolves from a complex integration of many senses - not just smell, taste, touch, sight, hearing - but senses that emerge from the fabric of memories and feelings.
In it's broader meaning, the word "sense" refers to a collection of any kind of processes - including sensory and neural - that brings information about the state of the world (inner as well as outer) to the attention of the mind. These "sensing" processes can be emotions, moods, sense organs, the feeling of thoughts and memories.
Every substructure in the brain and nervous system is associated with a distinctive collection of feelings. These feelings are part of our inner sense. They are connected via an intricate flow of life-energies. Some of these energies are in the form of ultra-low level radiation fields, electrical, molecular and cellular processes.
The ego is a thread of interlocked desires and energies. These threads wander through our memories, feelings and experiences - attaching to whatever serves its purpose.
The ego is fueled by basic drives common to all living creatures - attraction and aversion. Attraction - to food, sex, pleasure, security. Aversion - to pain, insecurity, deprivation, ill-health. Over time, the ego accumulates a complex web of attachments in addition to a complex web of avoidances.
"I am" is the sum of desires, attachments, fears, aversions, attractions.
Consciousness is a feeling.
Feelings are patterns of inner forces drawing on many parts of our being. Each feeling, each pattern, is a unique combination of many states of arousal.
"I am conscious" - is kind of like "I sense that I experience".
There are many kinds of consciousness. At some basic level we are conscious of raw sensory experience. At some higher level, we are conscious of both the sensory experience and of the brains interpretation of the experience, and the memories that are awoken by the experience.
At even higher levels, consciousness is a collection of feelings of other collections of feelings. It is a higher order "sensing" of the web of feelings within us. Experience, memories, even the body arouse all kinds of familiar and sometimes unusual feelings.
Each state of consciousness emerges from the integration of many other forms of consciousness. The structure of consciousness is not static. Our state of consciousness changes constantly.
The framework of our conditioned lives restricts the range of consciousness to a narrow speckle in the spectrum of endless possibilities. As time goes by we might come across a new sense, a new kind of awareness and we may either integrate or reject this new consciousness into our existing consciousness. We may discover new "tricks" for integrating consciousness. New forms of consciousness are created by new forms of integration.
By exploring the fabric of consciousness in meditation we can create new forms of consciousness.
In each moment - consciousness is a snapshot "feel" of the sum of all the feelings and states of being. Each snapshot is registered with the ego - over time the ego accumulates memories of its states of consciousness. This web of memories gives us the feeling of self.
This ego is that thread of attraction-aversion-energies - which at any instant can switch mood, viewpoint, perspective, state of consciousness - often without you even noticing.
The unconscious is the accumulation of all feelings and states of being that the ego instinctively avoids. Without the unconscious, the ego would be overwhelmed. Without the ego, there would be nothing to overwhelm.
That which is tossed aside takes on its own life in the realms of the unconscious. There are many egos living within us. Only a small number of them manage to take control of consciousness, mind, body.
Does some part of us live beyond the death of the body? All that is of the body dies with the body - the ego, the mind, the feelings - at least in the forms that we know them. The question of life after death remains unanswered until either we die, or we discover some web of connections between our inner being and the life force - the spirit - that moves outside the realm of the knowable.
Falling into darkness
Emotions are aroused by other people and through our experiences. Within ourselves - emotions are also aroused by our inner patterns of thoughts, memories, moods, feelings.
Emotions also arouse and shape patterns of thoughts, memories and moods. The influences between mind and emotions move in both directions.
Ideas are patterns of thoughts. An idea can arouse emotion. The idea can arouse primitive survival drives. When we treat a collection of ideas as essential for our existence - they arouse all the emotions associated with territorial instincts. The idea becomes the "Idea".
Going unchecked, we become more attached to the Idea. Threats to our Idea arouse fear, rage, hate. Unquestioning attachment to our Idea feeds the roots of aggression, greed, demand for power, lust for domination.
Emotions become intensified. A little anger becomes a lot of hate. Hate shapes the patterns of thought and memory. Shaped this way, our thoughts intensify our anger and hate even more. We become trapped in an uncontrollable spiral, driving us deeper into the darkness of fear and ignorance. These tornadoes of emotion lead us to believe the most sinister things - for example, that war and terrorism are viable options, that we have a God-given right to expand our territories, or to impose beliefs, or to impose allegiance to a narrow dogma.
The fundamental instincts that give rise to all the forms of attachment and aversion eventually give rise to our fall into darkness - from which we see violence, domination, hate and fear as the only way to protect our existence. If we can not explore an idea without arousing fear, hate, rage, greed - then our journey of spiritual exploration is halted.
Realistic solutions to the problems of conflict emerge when we see the need to look for alternatives to all those things that led to our fall into darkness.
Learning to let go of anger, fear, hate, narrow-mindedness is an essential step towards release from this darkness. Mindfulness is an essential step towards letting go. Our Quest is to discover the healing processes that change our darkness into light.
Moods set the tone of thoughts, memories and feelings.
For the sake of inner healing, seek ways to bring about moods that encourage exploration, compassion, generosity, forgiveness.
Knowing, believing and their limitations
Knowing is a feeling. We "feel" that we know. Our knowledge "feels" a certain way that fits our criteria for knowing. We "sense" something is correct.
Knowing is a feeling associated with our psychological model of the world.
We build our world model in our minds in the framework of our feelings.
Tempered by self-criticism, analysis, disciplined investigation, willingness to explore and to let go - the accuracy of this world model can be improved.
"Belief" is a also a feeling - similar to the "feeling of knowing" - but twisted by a desire to avoid the pains and hardships of self-criticism, analysis, disciplined investigation.
Falling into the grip of this desire, we seek the pleasure of feeling convinced that we right - even if the consequences are dangerous to others or ourselves.
Being attached to our beliefs is the root of many evils. Believing you are "right" leads to territorialism in the realm of ideas - which in turn leads us to hate, rage, violence and war.
This attachment to "idea" forms boundaries, leading to a sense of "threat" from others, and a feeling of the "fort" around the ego.
This attachment to "ideas" drives our own animal instincts towards hate, rage, violence and war.
Being misled
Question: When are our freedoms and rights threatened?
Answers:
We are all looking for someone or something we can trust. We feel a longing for faith. We want to feel we can depend on a faith - whether it's in a person, religion, political group, institution or whatever. We want to believe that we can get comfort from their teachings, ideas, decisions, doctrines.
It makes us feel good when we believe we can turn to someone to get our answers and directions. When we "feel the faith", we often too willingly give up critical analysis. We are too willing to ignore our instincts telling us that something is wrong with this picture.
In the extreme cases leaders will make aggressive use of manipulation, deception, violence and fear to bring you in line with their beliefs, ideologies, ego - you find examples in suicide cults, fascist movements, political propaganda, religious fundamentalism. You'll find less extreme examples in common religious organizations, when there is over-zealous faith in political organizations/leaders, and when there is widespread alliegence to ideologies. Leaders seek to suppress the spirit of individual exploration - channeling your energies to suit their own egos. They seek to impose a conformist "group think"- and the worst offenders are political groups (from all sides), religious groups and powerful greedy business leaders who see no harm in imposing powerful large corporations on the so-called "free market".
The alternative is to have faith in your own ability to explore and discover for yourself. Nurturing the spirit of exploration is your best bet for finding a meaningful faith. To nurture this spirit, you need to develop respect for each other's freedom and basic rights. You need to develop your creativity, intelligences, imagination. You need to plant the seeds of generosity, compassion, forgiveness, gentleness. You need to learn that aggression never leads to sustainable solutions to any problem. You need to be critical of anyone with power.
And be careful of those who exploit the idea of "freedom" to serve their own agendas. Whenever someone brings the idea of freedom into discussion, ask them what they mean by freedom. Pin them down. Make them provide details. Check them out. Don't fall for fuzzy feel-good explanations of what "freedom" means.
In fact, to avoid being misled, whenever someone uses a word that has emotional weight, they are probably engaging in some kind of propaganda. They'll apply the word/phrase in an argument to diffuse criticism, encourage acceptance. Chances are that a feeling is aroused by their use of this word. You will then probably overlook specific details of their argument. This is a sign that they are trying to divert you from the details. Question them. Change the discussion towards getting more detailed about the meaning and definition of the word. Examples of such words and phrases: freedom, religion, flag, nationalism, support the <item of the day>, God, faith/trust our leaders, etc. Ask them to explain precisely what that word/phrase has to do with their argument. They will try to play down your line of questioning - a sure sign that they are trying to push their agenda.
Those who are convinced they know are both the deceived and the deceivers
Being "convinced that one knows" is simply a sign that one does not understand the nature of knowing.
Knowing is rooted in feeling. Knowing is inherently uncertain and should be treated as such. But some refuse to accept this.
One who is "convinced that one knows" will almost always criticize others for being emotional instead of factual.
Those who are arrogant believe they are better able to judge and lead. They are convinced of their "rationality". Don't trust them. Their rationality is an illusion - they suppress recognition of the emotional foundation of their belief that they are rational. Their true irrationality is merely suppressed - disguised.
They are often unwilling to question their unvoiced premises, prejudices, biases, obediences - sometimes claiming that they are "common sense", "beyond questioning" - but mostly they just don't even consciously register their own premises, prejudices, biases.
This is especially true of politicians, dictators, militants and many leaders of any large or powerful organization. It's also true of all those who follow them without questioning or doubting them.
Their belief in the rationality of their most cherished notions is simply another form of religion.
They propagandize - selling all forms of justification for their narrowness, creating all kinds of excuses for their lack of imagination.
Their ambitions - for power, control - come from fear.
Ambition goes hand in hand with misunderstanding, lack of insight, strategic placement of ignorance.
They become arrogant and out of touch with humanity and spirituality - using religion to disguise their true intentions.
They are afraid of doubting their fundamental premises, biases, prejudices, obediences.
The beauty and danger of consciousness
Consciousness is the outcome of integrating many types of sensory mechanisms. Not just outer senses, but higher-order inner senses of emotions, thoughts, concepts, impressions, memories of all these things.
Conditioned by parents, genetics, neural chemistry, environment, culture, peers, playmates, experience - our consciousness becomes shaped by emerging personal ambitions, needs, goals, expectations, and so forth.
Meanwhile our consciousness shapes those things that shaped it.
Many aspects of my ego are similar to your ego.
The specific balance between all these components of consciousness gives rise to the feeling of "me" - the ego - that distinguishes from others, giving us a sense of uniqueness. Our individual set of drives emerges from all of this programming. This is where our sense of individuality comes from. Yet we are all very similar in terms of the basic processes, feelings, emotions, patterns of cognition.
Its our antique territorial instincts that create division, conflict, violence and war. When the territorial instincts take hold of intelligence, creativity, insight - the potential for war increases, because there are more territories to battle for.
Exploring and creating new states of consciousness is possible when we seriously set out to discover what we are - to watch the self - to see the conditioning - to stretch consciousness - to integrate a wider variety of senses, awareness, feeling, analysis, creativity.
Consciousness means recognition. Pure consciousness means awareness that does not arouse a response - sometimes referred to as witnessing.
Some religions seek to establish a permanent state of pure consciousness, identifying it with God, the Ground of Being, sometimes attributing it with mysterious and subtle connections to the quantum levels of existence.
Healing states of consciousness are a kind of gentle, quiet awareness that tip-toe around the brain in such a way that they minimize arousal. In this state we are able to sense the nature and source of inner pain, fragmentation, and of our limitations. This quiet awareness has the potential to heal the inner scars left behind by our fears, hates, rages, greeds.
The act of pursuing these states of consciousness can be counterproductive - it has the potential for reinforcing the sources of our inner pain. This pursuit can potentially boost the destructive components of the ego. This pursuit can convince us that we are one with God, the Ground of Being, the Infinite - while we are still trapped in the tiny confines of the conditioned self. Under these conditions:-
Let's say you have a genuine experience of expanded awareness in meditation. You become aware of the positive aspects of the experience - these states of consciousness give rise to healing. They feel good, they make you feel safe. You feel connected to something bigger. You feel a sense of absolute correctness.
Then you come out of this state - this is normal - it is OK.
What's not healthy is that you want more. Anything that fuels this "want" is a diversion.
Anyone who promises to make these states permanent leads us into potentially dangerous waters. Like any wonderful experience - we want more. Those who promise more of this experience might be motivated to exploit our weaknesses. These weaknesses makes us receptive to those who sell systems (belief systems, spiritual training, religion, etc) that offer ways to fulfill this promise. We must be careful, because they are just as deceptive and manipulative as those who use any form of deception - including for example - fundamentalism, propaganda, terrorism.
One of the dangers of seeking permanency of a particular state of consciousness is that you lose the potential for exploration and creation of new states of consciousness, new ways of being aware, of seeing reality, of touching the unknown.
Another danger is that the ego becomes obsessed/convinced in the belief in its immortality, ceases to question its own nature, and narrows its range of awareness. During this period of self-deception - the ego is deceived into believing that it is touching something rooted in infinity.
The strangest kinds of self-deceptions come from trying to hold onto expanded states of awareness. For example, if your religion teaches that an enlightened being is humble and at peace, then even though your heart and mind are burning in the emotional hindrances (fear, rage, greed, etc), you may find yourself believing that you are humble and at peace. The ego can create a wide range of self-deceptions while following someones religious promise.
The best protection against these types of deceptions is to question and doubt everything - especially when someone promises anything of "spiritual" value.
You need to have faith that doubt will lead to new discoveries in your journey of spiritual exploration.
Pure awareness - in some philosophies and religions "pure awareness" is considered the "stuff of God" - that the Great Spirit is "pure transcendental awareness". They teach that the awareness we personally experience is simply a "speckle of light" in the "infinite light" of cosmic awareness. They will encourage you to believe that you can experience this connection between your personal awareness and the pure awareness that is God for yourself.
Others consider awareness to be something that emerges from matter through evolution.
In meditations on the nature of consciousness, you can discover alternative perspectives - some of which may combine these last two conflicting views of awareness. For example, you may sense that the Great Spirit endlessly breaths new universes into existence - and that it is the Great Spirit's love of creation and exploration that nurtures awareness (and therefore life) within these new universes. In this way, awareness is both divine, and formed from matter.
Life - accumulation and replication - letting go and creation
At the molecular level, life within the cell begins by replicating something that accumulates.
DNA is a molecular accumulator. It collects memories over many generations. These memories are in the form of patterns of protein sequences and recognition of changes in the biological environments of the body. DNA is part of the bio-molecular process of replication of these memories. DNA carries the recipes of biomolecular processes that (when they work together) "grow" a living creature. DNA is the memory of that creature's evolution. Evolution is a complex chaotic process - leading to a diverse range of life forms.
Small variations (mutations) in DNA occur every hundred or thousand years. Sometimes these small variations have no effect on the life form. Occasionally, they accumulate to create a dramatic sequence of changes.
Occasionally - after millions of years of evolution - a life form becomes capable of accumulating complex ideas and develops abilities to manipulate ideas, to make models of their world. This is what we call the emergence of intelligence.
When intelligence first began to emerge - it was subjected to the influences of the fight-or-flight-or- freeze responses. These responses originate in those parts of the brain that have evolved to satisfy basic survival of the species.
While dominated by the fight-flight-freeze response - intelligence remains limited. Whenever the opportunity arises - a moment of freedom from these survival drives - the mind is able to discover - it notices the new.
The evolution of intelligence is a bumpy ride. In some rare moment - we were discovering the new. Then the older mechanism of fight-flight-freeze takes control - the new becomes the territory of the old.
Intelligence gives birth to ideas. Innocent minds will create and entertain ideas - and can let them go just as easily as they are created. However, when these ideas are shaped by the survival responses - they also tend to arouse the survival responses even when there are no triggers in the outside world. This is a process of self-arousal. This is a process that continues today. This process is also the origin of war.
One of the greatest discoveries of all time is that - by letting go - we discover - we create - we find new ways of using the imagination.
Nature is the womb of spiritual wisdom
The voice of Spirit does not communicate with words - it's communications are made through the stirrings of wisdom, generosity, compassion, forgiveness, gentle nurturing. Spirit will deposit a wordless message in our minds and hearts. Spirit does so when we are inwardly still and open. This wordless message is full of insight, meaning, healing. It is our mission to understand this message, to treat it with care, to learn how it's meaning and insights translate to our lives. Our Quest is to invite messages from the Spirit, to unravel the message, to guard against our conditioned-mind's misinterpretations of the message, and to be open to how others have interpreted the message.
When we don't hear these messages of the Spirit correctly - we create dogmatic forms of religion. When we let religious belief harden our minds and hearts, and when we let dogma replace our God-given instinct for exploration and inquiry, we loose our spirit of exploration, our love of the genuinely spiritual life. Spirit has no interest in dogma.
Nature is the web of life. Nature is the womb that gave birth to the myriad forms of consciousness. Nature is the teacher. Integration of many forms of consciousness and the creation of new forms of consciousness is the goal of evolution (it never ends).
The most basic lesson from Nature is to teach us survival strategies, developing basic biological and strategic ways of getting food and avoiding becoming food. Nature's basic lessons are tough - at this most primitive level - they teach us how to handle life and death. Nature teaches us how to survive. All life forms have the basic instincts that help us to handle threatening situations and handle life-sustaining opportunities.
It is our mistake to believe that survival is all that Nature has to teach us. The hardest lesson is to figure out how to move outside the sphere of influence of these basic instincts.
Nature's overlooked and ignored teachings tell us to listen to the voice of spirit - to explore compassion, forgiveness, generosity, gentle nurturing and encouragement.
While trapped in the web of basic instincts, driven by grasping and aversion (and their offsprings of greed, lust, fear, rage, hate), the mind, body, senses and feelings are trapped in their own conditioning. Trapped by our conditioned nature, we feel the pain of suppression of the voice of our inner spirit - whispering a message to let go, to explore, to be guided by compassion, forgiveness, generosity and gentle nurturing.
The body carries memories of its past. Memories of your body as a child are carried by your current body. As we get older, we still feel the presence of our younger self. This feeling is your body's memory of your past. Recalling these memories is like recalling any other memory - awakening feelings and energies associated with the past. Our planet is a body of Nature and also carries memories of it's past bodies.
The world of the human is obsessed with the notion that evolution favors the survival of the fittest and the most adaptable. Such a state of affairs is artificially created when we dictate that the game plan is defined by the conditioned mind. The real Game Plan is much more expansive and complex than the conditioned mind can comprehend - it emphasizes cooperation, integration, nurturing, compassion, sensitivity. Pursuit of peace and understanding is the way of the wise. Violence is the way of those who are held in the grip of an angered, frustrated inner animal - their limited conditioned mind.
The emergence of intelligence is a consequence of Nature's lessons - it grows hand in hand with the evolution of creative forms of adaptation, complexity, cooperation, understanding. With these abilities we can create a better world. However, these new abilities can also lead to increased danger - because when these new forms of intelligence are constrained and twisted by the raging emotions of the conditioned mind (as they are in the cultures of aggression that dominate this world) - they are a dangerous threat to Nature.
Nature has no choice but to give us some time, hoping that we will grow out of this dangerous period - in which our intelligence serves the destructive emotions of fear, greed, rage and hate.
Nature's prayers can be heard when she begs us to move beyond the confines of the fight-flight-freeze brain - which fuel greed, fear, hate and rage - otherwise - we will develop more sophisticated methods of destruction - that will eventually bring an end to the ability to sustain life on this planet.
Nature or nurture? The question leads in the wrong direction. Nature nurtures. Nurturing is born of nature. The gene evolves in nature. Without diverse experience there is no diversity in the gene. Without diversity there is no creativity. Without integration and unity within diversity, there is no chance of being touched by the spirit. Without sense and awareness there is no chance of intelligence and wisdom. Without compassion there is no understanding of the web of life.
Vision and hope for the future
Nature's diversity ensures that a broad spectrum of consciousness can be evolved. Over time - diversity increases - new forms of biological complexity emerge. Intelligence emerged and we discover new ways of learning about ourselves and the world. Creativity emerged - and we transform the human race. Spiritual awareness starts to sparkle - and we begin to explore the undiscovered inner landscape and the worlds of the spirit.
In a wholesome future, we will continue to explore and discover - new kinds of science, new forms of consciousness, new ways to connect to each other, the world and spirit.
In a dark future - our minds will stagnate as we remain trapped in our primitive conditioned nature.
To ensure a healthy future - humans need to continue exploration and discovery - both outer and inner - in the spirit of kindness, compassion, and forgiveness - and with respect for the Earth's life processes and all that supports them.
Where does this come from?
After deep meditation, you will sometimes feel a wise presence. Sometimes, if you are lucky, this wise presence will offer you a message - an insight.
Try to protect these messages. The ego habitually tries to bend their meaning to conform to it's own biases, prejudices, programming. Our ambitions and fears distort these gentle whisperings of the spirit.
The key to discovering the wisdom of the spirit lies in learning to let go of your attachments to what you know and believe. "Letting go" of the known, of the familiar, and of your comforting notions is the only way to prevent these spiritual messages from becoming distorted so much that they are rendered worthless. You need to understand that there will always be some distortion of truth - no matter how hard you work to avoid it. Your quest is to explore ways to minimize those distortions. Be questioning. Question the accepted. Look for alternative perspectives and interpretations - be attached to none - never impose one perspective on another - always resist those who seek to impose one perspective on anyone - this is what the Spirit longs for us to do.
No dogma is intended here - and no absolute sense of truth is implied. These insights emerge from the perspective of one who believes in the importance of the spirit of exploration, compassion, and healing. There are countless other perspectives.
These messages are thrown out to you - in the hope that you will begin to explore your inner world and your connections to the web of spiritual energies that touches and offers a uniting wisdom to all things.