Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday/Sunday – Book Discussion Series

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Dreams, ECK Wisdom Series, Eckankar, Fear, Healing, health, Inner guidance, Karma and Reincarnation, Life After Death, Meetup, Sould Travel, Spiritual Freedom, spirituality, Tools, wisdom

I will be hosting a 9-session book discussion on a series of books in ECKANKAR’s Wisdom Series. These will be hosted and run on ZOOM. If you would like to attend, join my Meetup. Here’s the link: https://www.meetup.com/the-path-of-spiritual-freedom-eckankar-port-huron/ I will be posting these events on my Meetup one at a time. Each event will require you to register, but do not cost any thing, other than the .99 cents the books cost on Amazon. Here’s a link to them: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08M38HNZ6?ref_=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_tkin&binding=kindle_edition

These events will be 100% online via ZOOM and are open to the public everywhere on the globe. The dates and topics are below:

Conquering Fear – Mar 18, 2021
Solving Problems – Apr 15, 2021
Health and Healing – May 20, 2021
Inner Guidance – Jun 17, 2021
Life After Death – Jul 15, 2021
Karma and Reincarnation – Aug 19, 2021
Dreams – Sep 16, 2021
Soul Travel – Oct 7, 2021
Spiritual Freedom – Oct 21, 2021

I wanted to make sure everyone of you knew about my upcoming book discussions. You’ll get to see and hear me live. You can connect via ZOOM or just call in. These will be posted on my Meetup, advertised on Facebook, and I will continue to notify all of you as the book discussion dates approach. I hope some of you can make it.

You do not have to be an ECKist to attend these events and there will be no solicitation whatsoever to join ECKANKAR. These books were written as a public service and offer real tools to help you in many areas of your life. If you are interested in any of these topics, I highly recommend coming. These books will offer you some real benefits, and provide you with some tools you can apply right away.

Hope to see some of you there!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The Law of Consciousness

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Awareness, Belief, consciousness, expansion, Growth, Saturday, spirituality

Have you ever created a picture, poetry, or a physical object like a table or bookshelf? When you began you stared at a blank canvas, piece of paper, or a pile of wood. What gave that life? You did.

The Law of Consciousness dictates that the thought or idea has to start from the inner, to be expressed later in the outer form. You have to have the story, poem, music, or design in your head before you can create it.

The same process occurs spiritually. You have to have an idea of what you are seeking before you can seek it. You have to realize the existence of something before you can explore it. You have to believe before you can experience something. Without the belief or awareness of something, you cannot conceive it.

To be conscious of something, you have to gain the realization or belief that what you are thinking is possible. Then it is easy to manifest.

Where do ideas come from? They come from the real self–Soul. Soul is not bound by matter, energy, space, or time. It is infinite. It is omnipresent. Subsequently, Soul sees the whole picture. When Soul tries to communicate to the mind, the mind censors it, particularly if the information that is transmitted is too much for the mind to handle. Subsequently, our spiritual progress is slow and measured. This is the way it has to be, but progress is made, regardless of your awareness of it or not.

This is the Law of Consciousness. Have a great Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The Law of Spiritual Revolution

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Learning, Past lives, Reincarnation, self-improvement, Spiritual Saturday, spirituality, The censor

“No matter what we were in the past during any other life, we are spiritually greater today.” – Sri Harold Klemp – The Loving Heart

Do you believe in reincarnation? If so, this statement will make some sense. My religion, ECKANKAR, and it is one of the key tenets of the path. The reason is simple: Your body is not the real you. What is the real you, you ask? Soul.

You do not possess Soul, you (Soul) possess a body. It uses this body to experience and learn. Since Soul, a spark of God, is infinite in nature, these finite bodies come and go, but Soul remains. To give you an idea of what this is, think about your own thinking. The part of you that is thinking about what you are thinking is Soul.

With each life you live in this physical realm, Soul learns. Unlike the mind, which is nothing more than an automaton, the Soul remembers everything it experiences. So, even if the mind cannot understand that it existed in many forms, places and times, Soul understands.

Why don’t we remember our past lives? The mind of a newborn has to start this life like it has every other. If it could remember every single past life it ever had, it would be so overwhelmed that it could not function. Some young children remember many of their past lives in youth. But the mind, slowly develops what we call the censor. The censor blocks out things that the mind could not handle. For example, if you experienced a traumatic death in a previous life, the mind will tend to censor out those experiences because they would be too shocking to the person’s psyche. Since the censor is developed along with the child’s brain, younger children tend to have nightmares, particularly during the time the censor is developing. During this young age, the censor is undeveloped and those nasty nightmares make their way into the dream state of the young child.

As the censor develops, the nightmares disappear. Some nightmares continue into puberty and adult life, but these are part of this life, not a past life in most circumstances. Nightmares can be sourced from violent books, movies, or even video games. I remember as a child watching horror movies on the weekends with my Dad. They were nothing compared to the movies of today. I’m talking about the old black and whites like The Wolfman, The Mummy, and Frankenstein’s Monster, played by the likes of Lon Chaney and Bela Lugosi.

Soul works with the mind by giving it impressions. These impressions are like feelings or prompts. These come from Soul’s huge amount of knowledge and experience—experience it gained over the many past lives you have had on this Earth plane. With each life, Soul learns. When it occupies a new body for another life here, it applies these learnings to the new life, hopefully avoiding the mistakes of past lives that may have even resulted in your untimely death. Subsequently, you are better in this life, than you were in previous lives, merely because you know more than you did before. You have more wisdom to draw on.

Does this learning ever end? Fortunately, no. I say fortunately, because if there was a true state of all-knowingness, what would be left? Nothing. When considering that Soul is infinite, it would be an absolute hell, knowing there was nothing else to learn, nothing else to experience, nothing to improve, right? This is where The Plus Factor comes in.

“The law of spiritual revolution presupposes inequality in all things and beings and their continued effort for self-improvement in life” (Klemp, 2010, p. 537). This continuous improvement occurs infinitely for Soul, as it strives for self- and God-realization. There are always new worlds to explore, new things to learn.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Happiness

Tags

Control, Happiness, Internal, Spiritual, spirituality, stoic, stoicism

Each of us fluctuates from being happy or sad or find ourselves in between these two opposites. I became interested in this a few years ago. I began a study of what made me happy and what made me sad. This led me to a philosophy called stoicism. A few of the famous stoics were Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. The core philosophy of stoicism is only worrying about what you control and let go of the rest. When you pursue this line of thought further, you realize that the only thing you have control over is your attitude about the circumstances or happenings in your life.

If someone does you wrong, a natural reaction is to get angry about it. This is one reaction. Another reaction could be gratitude. You could be grateful for learning about another person’s character. This knowledge can be used to avoid that person in the future, or at least to avoid expecting this person to do anything requiring trust.

There are many things outside of us that could affect our mood. The weather, what a government official says, what a person does or doesn’t do, and the list goes on and on. When you think about all the things that impact your mood, there are many. So what are you supposed to do?

The key to living a happy life is understanding that only you can decide to be happy. Happiness is within you. Happiness is an attitude that springs from your core. This doesn’t mean that you are happy all the time; it means that you are happy most of the time, with intermittent points of disappointment, anger, sadness, and all the other emotions. This requires you to look for the good in every situation. It requires that you look for the lessons that are there, just for you.

It is easy to react. Someone does something that upsets us–we get pissed off. You read a news article about some politician doing this or that, and we get pissed off. You lay some plan for an outing and it blows up and you again get pissed off or disappointed or a combination of the two.

Our emotions all spur from something outside of us in most cases. We are unhappy with our jobs, our partners, our friends, the weather, you name it. When you truly aspire to be happy, regardless of your circumstances, your life will change for the better. You learn that you are in control of your emotions, not the other way around. You are in control of how you react to outside circumstances. When you realize how much control you have, life gets a little easier.

Have a great Saturday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Religious Study

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Benefits, Christianity, community, emptiness, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, mores, norms, Religion, spirituality, Values

The Global Religious Landscape

I put the link to an article that provides some data on religion today across the planet. Religions with the largest number of followers are Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. Interestingly, 16.3% of the world’s population are not affiliated with any religion, a higher number than the number of Hindus presently.

There are many advantages to religious practice. Religion provides a community of support that individuals can depend on in times of trouble. Religions offer the ability to connect with other like-minded individuals in a social context. These organizations also offer a system of values that one can rely on when moral dilemmas arise in one’s life.

If you consider yourself non-religious, that’s ok. As the above information shows, there are many who do not affiliate with any religion. I would recommend pursuing a religious belief system if you find that your life is missing something or is empty. You can’t put your finger on the “why” of this emptiness, you just know that it exists.

If you believe you would like to try religion or explore religion as a solution to this emptiness, I would recommend learning about the various religions to figure out which one fits you the best. Learn about Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and any other religion you have an interest in.

There are many books out there that can give you an idea about the basic tenets of each religion, what they believe, and how each one operates. Next, you could visit a religious institution and meet with the religious leader of that organization to discuss when they meet and so on.

If you attend the meeting, get to know people in the group that attend the meetings. Ask them why they believe what they believe. Read through the books they use. Once you have been there for a while, you can make a judgment about continuing your attendance and pursuit of this religion or decide to move on and try something else.

I’m confident you’ll find something that aligns with you. If you are still in doubt, about the benefits of having religion and spirituality in your life, do a Google search on benefits of spirituality, benefits of religion, or something along these terms. Test out what these articles claim.

If you find something, congrats! If not, keep searching. It is a worthwhile endeavor. I enjoy the religion I follow. It provides many benefits to me and my family.

I hope you have a terrific Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Watch What You Let In

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Books, Movies, Negativity, News, Positivity, social media, Spiritual Saturday, spirituality, Video Games

I read an article a little while back and the article was about a spiritual leader who realized that the negativity in our lives is due to what we let in. He went on further to explain that negative books, movies, video games, music–anything that brought in any type of negativity would result in projecting that negativity in the world. 

Have you ever analyzed how you feel after you’ve watched an hour of the news? How about reading the news? How about watching news on YouTube? How about discussing a posted news article on Facebook? I’ll tell you how I felt. I felt like throwing my laptop through a window. 

Who wants to be bombarded by COVID, lives being ruined by riots, cities on fire, etc. Who wants to watch news reports of “non-violent” riots with buildings burning in the background?

I gave up the news months ago and already notice a huge difference in my stress levels. I’m just calmer. I still scan the news, but don’t watch it, don’t listen to it, and do not obsess over it. Yep, COVID is still around. Yep, the riots are still going on across the country. Yep, Biden and Trump are still at one another’s throats for the election. Not much has changed.

If you are stressed out or negative, take a look at what you are letting in.You may be impacted by what you read, watch, or listen to. Pay attention to how you treat other people. If you notice a change or realize people are being more negative toward you, this is the indicator. You see, the world reflects what is inside you. The more negativity you let in, the more negativity you broadcast. Conversely, the more positive you bring in, the more you broadcast positivity. 

Take a look at what you are bringing in. My simple act of reducing my news consumption has made a huge difference in my life. 

Have a great Saturday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – A Spiritual Life

Tags

Bible, Choice, Lou Holtz, Personal, Religion, Religious path, Spiritual, spirituality

I believe that having a spiritual life is so important in everybody’s life.

Lou Holtz

What is spirituality? What is spiritual? It is what you decide it is. For some, it’s reading a Bible and going to church. For others it is meditating. For others, it is being in nature or spending a quiet afternoon with family.

Each of us gravitates to what we need. I enjoy reading my Bible daily, doing my spiritual exercises, working through my yearly discourses, journaling, and doing my best to live up to the things my religious path requires.

I believe that each of us chooses the life we want. We choose what we believe and ignore what we don’t. It was Henry Ford that said, “When you believe you can do a thing, or not, you’re right.” I believe this quote fits what I’m trying to say here. Whatever spiritual beliefs you hold are right.

Each of us lives our lives the way we want to (with certain limits). For me, having spirituality in my life is a wonderful thing. For others it may be a bunch of “mumbo jumbo”. This is OK. Each of us needs to follow our own path. That path is perfect for us.

Now, if you are unhappy with what you’ve chosen—change it. Go out and investigate various spiritual paths and start experimenting. If you put your effort into this, you’ll find something that aligns perfectly with what you need.

My path is exactly what I want and need. It fills gaps in my life that would be empty without spirituality. If you feel yourself feeling “empty”, this may be what you are missing. You are the only one who can make that decision.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – What is the Lesson?

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Attachment, backup, creativity, Problems, redundancy, Resilience, Spiritual, spirituality

I missed yesterday’s posting because of a laptop that decided to die on me. I thought we lost power in the house, but actually it was my laptop battery. HP laptops need a working battery, despite being plugged in, before the operating system will kick in (My brother is a professional techie, and helped me figure it out).

Not a big deal since I have a desktop, but my desktop has been unused for about 6 months, and now I’m dealing with all of the updates that I didn’t do. Oh, well.

What does this have to do with spirituality? It is a lesson in undue attachment. I thought I was living a pretty detached life, but then this laptop thing happened and I went into a bit of a tizzy. The lesson was clear. I am not as detached as I thought I was.

Well, I’ve got a battery on order and things are back to normal, but wait….I don’t have a webcam anymore. Oh no!!!! Not a problem I’ll go to Amazon and place an order. Webcams are out of stock on Amazon, Best Buy, Staples, and Walmart. Logitech, a manufacturer of webcams is out too. I thought for a moment. It’s the remote work that has increased one thousand fold since the lockdown.

To overcome this, I’m using a Bluetooth keyboard and my iPhone app to make today’s posting. My PC is updating and is only at 24% so it was time to get creative. It was also a keen lesson on the importance of backup systems and redundancy. Lesson learned on a few different fronts.

I missed yesterday’s posting due to this debacle, but now I’m back on track.

The moral of the story. You always have room to improve and you are never safe from unexpected issues that pop up. It’s how you handle these problems and continue to strive forward that matters.

Well, folks. That’s all I got for today as I stare at a blue screen with 24% on it. I hope each of you has a terrific Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The Love You Give Returns

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Altruism, Charity, Giving, Goodwill, Love, Saturday, Selfless, spirituality

What is spirituality? Some folks believe it is attending church, a mosque, or a synagogue, and following the rituals associated with their religions. Others meditate and read and learn about mindfulness and themselves. Still others do the best they can for their families, contribute or take part in charities, and follow the golden rule. Based on what I’ve written here, it is what you make of it.

Spirituality, at its most simple level, is serving others. It is giving and receiving love. It is putting everything you have into something. Putting love into it. It is extending your goodwill to all. It is expressing your love for others without trying to control them or forcing them to be who you want them to be. This is a detached love. It is loving someone for who they are, nothing more. It is a love without strings attached.

When you do something selflessly for someone else, there’s a good feeling that comes with it. It’s like love leaves you and goes where you are putting your efforts. Then, that love returns to fill you right back up. The more love you give, the more you get. This universe is just that simple. It is we humans that make it hard. The human mind loves complicating things.

Have you ever decided to love someone and serve them, regardless of what they do or don’t do? It is a very selfless act. It is also hard. It’s hard to serve and love someone that does not return that love. Yet, it still comes back. The more love you give, the more you get.

Think about a dog. Dogs are selfless lovers. When you walk in the door, they are so excited to see you. When you are watching TV or reading a book or whatever, that dog is always there. Right there with you. Can you imagine how much love that dog feels? They love without regrets, without demanding something in return. This is a perfect example of selfless love. The more love you give, the more you get.

Are you in a difficult relationship? Remember how wonderful it was when you first met? Over time, little things build up. Little slights. Little trespasses. You wake up one day and things aren’t right anymore. How do you get it back? You guessed it. Love your partner. Love them. Serve them. Expect nothing. Don’t fix them. Let them be who they are. The more love you give, the more you get.

The more love you give, the more you get.

Have a great Saturday, folks.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – In Times of Trouble…

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Bible, God, Inner Peace, Meditation, Prayer, Religious Practice, Spiritual Exercises, spirituality, The Calm

They say that we seek comfort during times of trouble. Many reach out to friends and family. Others use activities to take their mind off of things. Some turn to their religious beliefs.

It’s hard now because they’ve banned public gatherings across the country. Religious institutions are closed. No one but families in the home can get together. So how do you get comfort?

Some religious institutions are offering worship services online. Others are doing charitable work in the community by delivering food and other items to those less fortunate or at risk. Some will read their Bible or religious tome and rely on the faith they have in their hearts. I fall into the last group. I have a faith belief that all things happen for a reason and that whatever happens is exactly what should happen. “Everything is in its rightful place in the worlds of God.” – Harold Klemp.

How you comfort yourself and your family is up to you. I am comforted by the timeless principles in the scripture I read daily. I am also comforted by the daily spiritual exercises that help me reach the calm within. It is always there—waiting.

I hope each of you finds the calm in your own way. It is a tremendous place to be during calamity, disaster, and chaos, when the world seems to get more frightening daily.

Be safe. Follow the guidance provided by authorities. Take care of each other. We will all get through this together.

Until next time…

Dave