Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Sunday – Who Am I? The Mystery of Soul

Tags

Anger, Fear, God, Greed, Life, Love, Lust, Mahanta, Soul, Undo Attachment, Vanity

Some of the religious teachings believe body and Soul are one and the same. In ECKANKAR we believe Soul comes in and takes on the physical body as a temple to use so it can move in this physical world.

Sri Harold Klemp – Touching the Face of God

This idea that Soul is the real you, is a novel one. It took me years of study to finally realize the truth of this statement. Whatever you believe is right for you. For me, this quote holds a special importance.

Once I realized that Soul is the real me, I began to realize that the ego or little self was not the real me. The ego is a necessary component of the physical body. Without the ego we would literally be everyone else’s door mat. So we need the ego to survive here, but boy that ego can get us into a lot of trouble.

The ego feels lust, anger, greed, undo attachment, and vanity. The ego loves awards, self-promotion, and badges of distinction. The ego loves to indulge in things. The ego gets angry when it’s slighted or feels insulted. The ego gets wrapped around the mentality of lack, where ownership of things is a zero-sum game. The ego believes its existence depends on looks, clothes, and ownership of things. I could go on and on, but I hope you get the point.

Soul is a happy being, but when it is asleep, the ego takes over and boy can it get us into trouble. You see when fear, anger, lust, undo attachment, and vanity take over, God’s love stops coming. It can’t get through. Feelings of guilt will also prevent God’s love from coming through.

Here’s a short video of Sri Harold Klemp discussing the importance of this life:

Soul, the real you, learns that it is not the body or the ego. It wakes up and realizes that it is the reality. It may take Soul millions of lifetimes to wake up and figure this out. Once it does, however, there is no turning back. Once it realizes the illusion of the ego and the body, it begins to search for a way out of these lower worlds. It knows this is not its true home, but doesn’t know where to go or how to start. This is when the Mahanta appears.

I hope this article gives you something to contemplate today. Life is a wonderful journey. It has its ups and downs, gains and losses, but each time we return to these lower worlds and start a new life, we pick up little things here and there that we take with us. We slowly begin to question this life by asking: “Is there nothing more?”

Then our adventure and journey back to God begins in earnest.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Sunday.

May the blessings be.

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Sunday – Life is a Merry-Go-Round

Tags

Escape, Hurt, Life, Love, Service, Sick, Soul, Spiritual Being, Stormy Sea, Tough

Life is acknowledged to be a stormy sea. Yet so often when the boat rocks we fly into a panic, as if a boat shouldn’t rock in a storm.

Sri Harold Klemp – The Spiritual Life

Life is tough. Life is rough. I could go on and on with all the trite expressions that explain how life is this or that. The thing is, we all know this, yet most are shocked when things go sideways in their lives.

We live in a human body that begins to deteriorate the moment we are born. We interact with other human beings that may hurt us, betray us, or even attempt to take this life.

These are the lower worlds, where every horror imaginable exists.

Yet, there is beauty here. There is love here. There is a perfection to this imperfect place that underlies everything.

When things go bad here, many ask: Is there no God? How could God let these things happen?

These lower worlds, by design, are Soul’s classroom. Soul does not die, but the body it uses to gain experience here does. It dies over and over and over again. Imagine millions of lives where you’ve hurt others and they’ve hurt you. Over time, Soul’s memory collects these experiences and begins to gain wisdom. Soul learns that love is better than hate. Soul learns that serving others is better than serving oneself.

Yes, this can be a horrific place, but when Soul realizes the wisdom of loving others, serving others, and doing right by others, regardless of what others do or do not do back, it gains spiritually. At some point, Soul awakens to itself. It realizes that this body is temporary, but that it, Soul, is eternal. Once Soul has this recognition, it also begins to realize that these endless lives are literally on a huge record player going round and round. Then it meets a spiritual being capable of ending the merry-go-round. This being shows Soul that it can get off the ride and stop this endless reincarnation into these lower worlds.

You can believe this or not. One thing I’d like you to think about: When life gets tough, what is the spiritual lesson behind it? Could it be to plan better? Could it be to eat better? Could it be to love more? Could it be to serve more? Think about this the next time you get yourself into trouble. You’ll find that in most cases, God is simply sending you a wakeup call to be more loving, serving, and loyal to your fellow Soul.

I wish I could show you how wonderful it is to be free of these lower worlds. To truly understand the game that is being played here. When you can rise above these lower worlds and leave the lust, anger, greed, attachment, and vanity behind. When you are both free from this feeble body and the tiresome emotions brought about by an ego (what we call the little self) who is never satisfied and can be upset by the slightest provocation.

Unfortunately, I cannot show you. This is something you have to experience for yourself. It is available to all of you. You just have to discover it yourself. And you will at some point. It may happen this lifetime or in one of the many lifetimes you experience in the future. In the meantime, love others, serve others, and do all for God, regardless of what life gives to you or does not give to you. Over time you will gain enough experience to earn the right to meet with a spiritual being capable of showing you how to get off this seemingly never-ending ride. There is no race. There is no time schedule. It is all in God’s time.

Have a great Sunday, folks.

May the blessings be.

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Sunday – Soul’s Journey

Tags

Astral, Emotions, Etheric, God, heaven, Intuition, memories, Mental, Soul

Soul is multidimensional. It shares all the aspects of God. Soul can be everywhere at all times, and all places at the same time. This is that part of God that you are.

Begin remembering your dreams to get an idea of who and what you are as Soul.

Sri Harold Klemp – Touching the Face of God

The shift in mindset that we are Soul and not the temporary covering of the body is a hard one to grasp for most people. You see these lower worlds are architected so well, they keep Soul imprisoned for eons. It is all designed this way in order to purify Soul enough to warrant a meeting with the Mahanta.

The Mahanta is the inner side of The Living ECK Master. There is always a Mahanta in the world, despite most people’s ignorance of him. When Soul meets the Mahanta for the first time, it may decide to stay with him or leave him for something else. At some point, Soul will decide to stay and begin its journey back home.

This journey starts in the lower worlds, exploring the emotions (Astral plane), memories (Causal plane), symbols and thinking (mental plane), and the intuition (Etheric plane). Each of these planes must be mastered before Soul can discover itself. When it does, it has entered the Soul plane.

The Soul plane is different from the lower planes because the emotions, memory, thinking, and intuition are all left behind. They cannot go with Soul. When Soul experiences this it finally recognizes itself and the reality it has been living in will be shattered. This is spiritual freedom. It is a freedom from the emotions of lust, anger, greed, undue attachment, and vanity. It is also liberated from the ego, which is the primary culprit for most of our woes in life.

The shattering of the illusion of the lower worlds can be quite upsetting to many people when they make this journey. For some, it is so disturbing, they leave ECKANKAR and the master for something else. That’s ok. There is no race to God consciousness. Soul simply continues on its own unique way to God.

For many Souls, the religions of the day are the solution. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Animalism, Pantheism, Confucianism, are but a few of the present-day religions Soul follows for a time. Some even follow Atheism, which is a belief system of sorts that fails to recognize any God at all. Soul’s journey back to God involves every religion, every belief system, everything. It must travel through all of these in order to mature. There is no race back to God.

The biggest illusions Soul discovers when it leaves the lower worlds is that matter, energy, space, and time are all illusions of the lower worlds. You see, the mind needs this illusion in order to survive the lower worlds. It also needs the ego in order to hold its own with other Souls here. When it leaves these lower worlds, these illusions are also dropped with the mind. Soul doesn’t need them and these illusions are not part of the higher worlds, most would call heaven. In these worlds, time collapses, space collapses, energy ceases, and matter is non-existent. All in the higher worlds is light and sound.

Some of you may be thrown a bit by what I’ve written here, but I have experienced these things during my journey in this lifetime. Many of the things I have experienced cannot be translated into words. Instead, they are a knowingness, much like many have when they are in love. You can’t prove you love someone. You just know it. The other person who loves you back, experiences the same thing–they know they love you and that you love them. It is this knowingness that Soul uses to bring back some semblance of the higher world experiences it has back to the lower worlds.

Well, I’ll end here for today. I hope all of you have a great Sunday!

May the blessings be.

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Sunday – The Soul Adventure Seminar

Tags

Covid, ECK, Eckankar, Freedom, God, Happiness, Love, Soul, Soul Adventure, Worldwide

All, ECKANKAR has a worldwide seminar that is available to everyone, whether you are an ECKist or not. When COVID hit, ECKANKAR began recording events for the public who could not attend. This year we finally had an in-person event (I did not attend), and in November they offer the public to watch key parts of the event online.

If you’d be interested in hearing Sri Harold’s talk, you can attend the event here:

https://www.eckankar.org/html/ECKSoulAdventure/index.php

Make sure you click on guest. The organization will need your address to send you the password to the event, and that’s it!

I hope all of you are having a terrific 2023. I am. It’s been a great year so far.

May the blessings be!

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Thomas Merton

Tags

Ambition, Experience, Happiness, Love, scholars, Soul, Thomas Merton, Wisdom Wednesday

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.

Thomas Merton

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Thomas Merton

When ambition ends, happiness begins.

Thomas Merton

We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly and thus also love others.

Thomas Merton

Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.

Thomas Merton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton

The above link will take you to Thomas Merton’s Wikipedia page. Wow, what a life! I encourage each of you to take a few minutes, and share a cup of coffee or tea with Thomas as you explore his life. It was truly an inspiring one. This is the first of my Wisdom Wednesday posts in 2022, and this was an awesome find. I continue to wish all of you health, prosperity, love, and high adventure in 2022.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Ted Talk Tuesday – Consciousness

Tags

Body, consciousness, Faith, Michael A. Graziano, Mind, philosophy, Science, Soul

I hope you enjoy this Ted talk on consciousness and how science continues to struggle to find out what it is. I hope you enjoy it, and are excited to see these again, after a two week hiatus.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The Law of God

Tags

higher worlds, Karma, Law of God, Ocean of Love and Mercy, Past lives, physical plane, Reincarnation, Soul, Spiritual Saturday

The Law of God: Everything has its origin in Spirit; divine truth is one and unchanging. A Cosmic Sea of Words: The ECKANKAR Lexicon.

The physical plane where we currently find ourselves is a classroom for Soul. Each time we return we learn new things, which add to the maturity of Soul into a greater being. In ECKANKAR, there is one key tenet of our belief system. It is: “Soul exists because God loves it.”

Many ask: “If God loves us, why do we die, why do bad things happen to good people?” The answer is simple: If you take reincarnation into consideration, every debt we create, regardless of lifetime, must be paid in full. This means that the evildoer of today will pay back his or her debts at some point in this lifetime or the next. There is no escaping the Law of Karma. The Law of Karma states that everything comes back in the end. The lessons we learn take many lifetimes to embrace and accept.

Another question: “If we do reincarnate, why do we not remember our past lives?” Some people remember their past lives in dreams, but can’t connect with that truth, because each lifetime we come here fresh. We must start anew each time we return, until we finally begin awakening to the reality of our past lives and can gain access to those records, which are not accessible to most. Can you imagine how disconcerting it would be if you had a recollection of every past life you’ve ever lived? It would be impossible to exist like that. God designed this place so that all of us start again and again, gaining what we need in this lifetime, and take small incremental steps back to our true home. This home is called the Ocean of Love and Mercy in ECKANKAR.

Trying to capture the idea of GOD, heaven, or other spiritual truths, is difficult when we are trying to understand the nature of worlds that do not abide by the Matter, Energy, Space, and Time of this place. In the upper worlds, there is no matter, energy, space, or time. Do you see how difficult it is for the mind to grasp these things? More on this in upcoming posts.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The Law of Fixidity

Tags

Experience, fixidity, higher worlds, Learning, liberation, lower worlds, Negative, Neutral, Physical body, Positive, Soul

In my religious path, we believe in two realms of worlds–the lower worlds and the higher worlds. The lower worlds are bound by matter, energy, space and time and are fixed, while the higher worlds are not bound by these same characteristics, and are unlimited.

The lower worlds are designed for Soul to learn. The design gives them the appearance of completeness, spaciousness, and accommodation, yet are beset with numberless restrictions. Subsequently, everything here comes with advantages and disadvantages. Everything has a “catch”.

A person is rich, but dies from a disease money can’t cure. A person commits evil acts and gets away with it (or so he or she thinks). Bad things happen to good people, without any rhyme or reason. Change is permanent here.

When we realize we are not this body, the fixidity of this reality makes sense. We live, we die, we return to do it all over again. Only when we realize the temporal nature of this place, we will begin to search for something beyond this. When we do, we find that Soul is the real us, and these many bodies and lifetimes we experience are just that–experience, so Soul can learn and become liberated from this ever-turning wheel.

Have a great Saturday!!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Mom and Dad Don’t Know Anything.

Tags

Compassion, Forgiveness, God, heartless, intolerant, Old, Soul, tolerance, Unforgiving, Young

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

George Orwell

It is hard to argue with the quotation from George Orwell. It was a while back, but I remember my youth. And this is exactly what I thought when I was younger. The older generation was cute, but didn’t know anything. Now that I’m in my later 50s, I have the same thoughts about the generation behind me. You haven’t experienced enough yet. Wait until you’re my age.

Ahh, the self-righteousness we all carry with us.

To reckon with this, I have adopted the following three characteristics: Tolerance, Forgiveness, and Compassion. As I’ve aged, I have become more sensitive to the mistakes of others and realized that most people don’t go out of their way to hurt, insult, or injure others. I’ve also realized that holding grudges is a horrible waste of time and hurtful to everyone involved. Finally, I try to be compassionate for those who are doing the best they can with what they have and still come up short.

Honestly, I have benefited from the tolerance, forgiveness, and compassion of others. So, I pay that back. I remember the nice things that are done for me. I remember mistakes I’ve made and how other people gave me a break. I remember the people who listened to me complain when that was all I could do.

You see, we’re all human. We are all learning and experiencing and doing the best we can. We all deal with our current circumstances, work through them, and hope for the best. If we can all take a moment and try to empathize with others and treat each person with dignity and respect, we would see some dramatic changes in the world around us.

In my religion, we look at one another as Soul, a spark of God. When I have difficulty with this, I imagine the person I am having a challenge with as a child. Can any of us be angry with a child? Even one that is being a brat? Sometimes. But for the most part, we cannot be angry with a child. Why? Because the child doesn’t know any better. The child is learning about his or her world. The child is making mistakes and learning. When you view other people as children, it takes some sting away when there are hard feelings between you.

Some would consider this idea madness, when you think about the outright evil in this world. Then again, what is good? What is evil? We all define these terms using our viewpoint. Good and evil are subjective terms.

When you read a book, you soon learn who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. What defines the good guy and the bad guy? The author does. As the reader, you have to either agree with what the author has described as evil and what he or she has described as good. But there are always nuances, particularly if the author is good at their craft. Darth Vader, for all the Star Wars fans in my reading audience, is the heavy in the Star Wars saga. He is the bad guy. But is he? He is redeemed in the end, right?

So the next time you are unforgiving, intolerant, or heartless, remember that the people who are older than you are, did the best they could. Those that are younger are learning and experiencing and figuring things out. You did the same stupid shit, the young people today are doing. You are now the pompous one, complaining that the younger generations ‘don’t know nothin’. Remember that each of us is a child of God.

There’s a quote prominent in my religion. It is this: “Soul exists because God loves it.” God loves the good, the evil, the young, the old, the animals, the plants, everything. God loves because that is ITS nature. When you are tolerant of others, forgiving of others, and compassionate for the trials and challenges others are experiencing, you take another step toward God.

Have a great Saturday, folks.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – We are Spiritual Beings Having a Human Experience

Tags

Anger, Attachment, Contentment, Detachment, Discrimination, Forgiveness, Greed, Humility, Lust, Passions of the Mind, Soul, tolerance, Vanity, Virtues

“Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Stephen Covey

Read more at: Brainy Quote

Have you ever wondered how you can think about thinking? What part of you is watching you? My religion is ECKANKAR and we call this you—soul. Soul is a spiritual being. It is the real you. It is that part of you that can watch what you are thinking, saying, and doing. Soul is what thinks about what the mind thinks and what the body does. Soul uses your body to experience this life.

I believe in reincarnation. To believe in reincarnation, there must be a something that outlives the body and takes a body when it is time to live another life. This is soul. Soul experiences. Soul learns. Soul needs a body to experience things here. It needs a body to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. It needs to experience the mind’s memory, it’s intuition, and its subconscious, automatic processes.

Soul is the real you. It is a spark of God. God creates soul and soul exists because God loves it. Soul is forever. It never dies, it merely moves to another realm of existence when the human body dies. In this realm it interacts with other souls to continue its learning on another plane of existence. It can return here, it can go to other dimensions or planes, it will go where it needs to go to continue its spiritual journey.

I know this may be a little mind-blowing to some of you. I like using Saturdays to move away from the self-improvement chats and all the rest to dedicate one day a week to discuss my religion and some principles and insights it offers. I am not here to evangelize or push my beliefs down your throat. I merely want to educate. In ECKANKAR, we believe that each soul chooses the religious path it needs during this lifetime. Some souls select Islam, some Christianity, some Buddhism, some Judaism, or Hinduism. Regardless of the religion soul chooses, it is the perfect religion for that soul at the time. As an ECKIST, I believe this to be true. Your religion is yours and yours alone. It is exactly what you need in this lifetime to move ahead spiritually.

The viewpoint of soul is the highest. When you come to realize that soul is the real you, life gets a lot easier. Life isn’t scary anymore, when you realize that you have an infinite amount of lives left. Soul never dies. Soul is infinite. This life will come and go, but soul is forever. Soul takes all its experiences with it when this body finally goes to sleep for the last time. Soul needs these experiences to learn the lessons it needs to gain wisdom and progress spiritually.

Think about all the things you learn during a lifetime. You learn about love. You learn about work. You learn about loss and suffering. You learn about joy and ecstasy. You learn about horror and evil. Soul learns why the passions of the mind like lust, anger, greed, attachment, and vanity are dead ends. Over time, it learns that the virtues are ever-lasting. These are discrimination, tolerance/forgiveness, contentment, detachment, and humility.

When you are lustful, angry, greedy, attached to material things or ideas, or vain, there is a coinciding feeling, a pit in your stomach, an ache in your heart, or some other discomfort. When you are discriminating, tolerant and forgiving, content, detached, and humble, the feelings are lighter. You have a feeling that is long lasting. Things are just right. Soul needs to learn these things through millions of lives and even more experiences. It is the only way.

You are soul, a spiritual being, learning and experiencing through a human body, not the other way around. I wish all of you a Happy Easter tomorrow (for those that celebrate).

Baraka Bashad (May the blessings be).

Until next time…

Dave