Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The Law of God

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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

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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.

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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

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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

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

God, Happiness, Love, Soul, Spiritual Enlightenment

“The reason for spiritual enlightenment is not to escape life, but to learn how to live it richly, to enjoy it.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

When many of us think of a spiritually enlightened individual we tend to think about a monk in a cathedral laboring over a manuscript or in a cave contemplating the greater things of life. Spiritual enlightenment is something that should be shared with the world. This is what this quote is about.

Spiritual enlightenment, regardless of each of our personal definitions, is about connecting with God. In Eckankar, we call this connecting with the light and sound. The light and sound are metaphors for what we hear internally and what we see. We are taught that when you gain spiritually, these gains are gifts. These gifts, in turn, should be shared with others. It’s almost like a fountain. The fountain works because it sprays its waters upward, the drops return to the pond surrounding it and the fountain uses the same water over and over.

Just like the fountain, we can look at love like water. If we get love, we share it. In turn, that love comes back around to us and the cycle continues over and over. This is simple right?

Think about this for a moment. When do you really feel good? When you serve others.

Serving others isn’t about working for them or giving them gifts. It can be as simple as saying hello or passing along a smile. It can even be the act of wishing others well in a non-personal way. It is this passing along that gives us the greatest joy.

Yeah, when you get a brand-new car or a new techno-toy it’s terrific, but the joy is fleeting. I’ve found that the giving of self to others delivers a longer-term happiness, a happiness that goes deep down to your core. It is hard to explain.

When you give your son or daughter a birthday party, the feeling you get when they are smiling and excited and happy is priceless. When I was a young boy, maybe around the age of 6 or 7, I remember being so happy on my birthday that I cried and hugged my Mom. At that moment, we were all in the family’s only car late at night to pick up my father from work. Even at a young age, I knew we didn’t make much and the gifts and the little cake my Mom made were what they could afford. I didn’t care. It was the passing of love from Mother to son that made the whole day.

It’s interesting when you think about these little moments that stick with you. They stick with you because the love that came through was true and pure and selfless. This is the same way you can feel when you realize that you are here because God loves you. You—Soul.

“Soul exists because God loves it.” – Sri Harold Klemp. This is one of our core beliefs in Eckankar. When you think about others, when you do things for others, when you serve others, you’ll discover that the feeling of love inside grows and grows. This love stays around. We call this divine love. Divine love is composed of all types of love, even romantic love. The key to understanding what divine love is is to simply understand that it is charitable. Divine love is giving, serving, sharing, selflessly without regard for reward, it simply is.

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Wednesday Wisdom – Ridding Yourself of Fear

Tags

Fear, Love, Soul, Wisdom Wednesday

“The secret to getting rid of fear is opening the heart.”—Harold Klemp
The Language of Soul

Love and fear cannot exist within the same space. It is really this simple. What is fear? Fear is “an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fear

There are times when fear can be your best ally. When you are in true danger of injury or being hurt, fear can help you become your most creative self. At other times fear can be your worst enemy. The fear of approaching someone about something they did that hurt your feelings or made you feel uncomfortable, the fear of standing up for yourself, the fear of making a public speech or presentation, are all examples of fear at its worst.

There are some of us that believe that our physical bodies are not really us. Soul is us. You are Soul. Soul is infinite. If you can truly believe this truism, fear falls to the wayside. How can anyone be fearful of death if it is no longer an issue? I know for some of you, this is a hard concept to grasp. The ego or “little self” is a hard thing to contend with.

Now does that make fear really go away? No. The concept of Soul is truth, but the human mind, the ego, will get in the way. One must slowly focus their efforts to realize that Soul is who they are and not the ego. Soul, being a spark of God, is nothing more than love personified. Love is everything and all-powerful. Love builds, love binds, love gives life. God loves. That is God’s nature.

If one can rise above the emotional states (like fear, anger, greed, lust, and undo attachment), the only thing remaining is love. There is nothing else. This is why love and fear cannot exist in the same space. Love is above fear and anger. Love is.

I hope you enjoyed today’s Wisdom Wednesday. Have a terrific week.

Until next time…

Dave