Create Good Things

Posts Tagged ‘Spirituality’

With each New Year comes the opportunity for all of us to embrace a brand new beginning. Whether 2011 was good for you or not, you can now choose to draw a line under it, assign it to the mental compartment marked ‘The Past’ and leave it alone. With that decision made, you can then focus the whole of your attention on making this year even better than the last, and here are a few ways in which you can start doing just that…

Be Mindful of Mortality
First, be mindful of the fact that life itself is a terminal condition, and that none of us will ever get out alive. Whilst many people try to avoid thinking about their mortality as much as possible, staring the fact of eventual death square in the face and accepting it can be a very good way of getting some perspective in life. So start by reminding yourself that all of us have a limited lifespan, and that none of us really know how many more days, months or years we have left.

Set New Priorities
Having reminded yourself of your own mortality, set new priorities for your life based on how you think you would like to spend whatever time you have left. Perhaps you would like to give more of your time, attention and efforts to other people, or to a specific good cause that is important to you. Maybe you think it would be appropriate for you to overcome an addiction to time-wasting activities and invest that time in more fruitful endeavours instead. It could be that you would like to finally write that book you keep thinking about, or learn to speak a foreign language or play a musical instrument. Whatever the case, decide to make the pursuit of your chosen objectives a new priority in your life.

Renew Your Commitment
Our third piece of advice is for you to renew your commitment to your own path of spiritual and personal development. Whether you follow a designated spiritual path or you learn from a variety of traditions, consider doing so with a fresh sense of commitment and enthusiasm. Personal development practices such as meditation, mindfulness, generosity and so on can all become good habits that give your life structure and meaning, so be sure to make the most of them.

We hope that these ideas help you to make a new beginning in 2012. Happy New Year!

As people all over the world prepare to celebrate various winter festivals, now is as good a time as any to rediscover the magic of giving. Most traditions which celebrate winter festivals include the giving of gifts to friends and family members, but to really unleash the magic of giving it is a very good idea to make a point of giving to someone who isn’t a part of your ‘inner circle’. You could do this by giving money to a homeless person, by giving some of your time to a charitable project or simply by visiting individuals in need and offering them your friendship and support.

This kind of giving does not come with strings of any sort – you aren’t giving your time, money or support with a view to getting anything in return. Instead, you give as an expression of your humanity, and as a way of reminding yourself that ‘we are all in this thing together’. In essence, you are doing something which takes you out of the usual ‘individual against the world’ mindset and adopting a ‘part of the same team’ mindset which brings its own rewards.

When you remind yourself that nobody exists in complete isolation and that you are in fact part of a global society, you will rediscover a sense of connectedness which is much more lasting than any tangible gift that might be found under a Christmas tree. Giving to strangers at this time of the year (or indeed at any time of the year) helps to put your individual life in proper context and takes you out of the skewed perspective that there is any such thing as a stranger.

To paraphrase Will Rogers, ‘A stranger is just a friend that you haven’t met yet’, and perhaps the best gift you can give to yourself this year is to go out and finally meet a few of the friends that you don’t yet know. Not only will this enrich your life and help to give you a much broader perspective on things, it will also enrich the lives of the people you give to. Even if they don’t fully appreciate your gift of money, time or support straight away, they will certainly begin to appreciate that they are not alone.

We wish you all a peaceful and happy time over the festive period, and we look forward to giving you plenty more things to think about in the coming year.

Namaste.

Right now you may think of yourself of being an individual, of being separate from other people, of living ‘your own life’. But no matter how strongly you believe in this illusion, that is all it is – an illusion. Even now you are simply energy and that energy exists in all times and in all places. You are even now an infinite and eternal being with no limits. In case you need us to say it just one more time, you are energy. Or, to express the idea in the bluntest and most direct way, you are God.

So what is this life all about? If you are God and we are God and we are all the same God, why do we perceive ourselves as being separate, of being individuals?

Our notion is that this physical life is nothing more than a training ground or ‘dream’. God, being infinitely creative, desires to experience every possible permutation of human life, and so it experiences this through physical life. It experiences existence as a single mother and at the same time as a member of royalty. It experiences abundance and lack. It experiences pain and it experiences ecstasy. It experiences being black, white, yellow, male, female, old, young, able and unable.

If you have battled hard all your life against poverty then this is God experiencing poverty. As God you can turn this poverty into abundance, and so learn more about the way that poverty and abundance work in your particular situation. If you decide not to turn poverty into abundance then that is something you will learn at some point in the future – perhaps in another ‘dream of life’.

We would like to talk more about this ‘dream of life’ belief, and perhaps the best way we can do this is to tell you a short story…

Once upon a time a man called Jack who fell asleep and had a dream. He dreamt that he was walking through the spiritual plane when he came to a small amusement park. In that amusement park there was a man selling tickets for a ride on his new Virtual Reality machine.
     “Would you like a go Sir?” the man asked with a smile.
     “Is it good?” asked Jack.
     “Good? It’s the best! In sixty seconds you will experience a whole other life as though you’re really there.”
     “And what’s the point of that?” asked Jack.
     “Well, wouldn’t you like to learn more about yourself?” the man replied. “Wouldn’t you like to know how you’d deal with different circumstances? Wouldn’t you like to try life as a completely different person and see how well you could cope?”
     Jack nodded. “That sounds good. What programs does your machine offer?”
     The man smiled. “More than you could handle in a million years of being in this place. You can be black, white, male, female, poor, rich, sick, healthy, relaxed, uptight, tall, short, thin or fat. You can live in London, Birmingham, Fresno, San Diego, Acapulco….”
     “I think I get the idea.” Jack said, knowing full well that this friendly salesman could probably go on forever. “I’ll give it a spin.”
     The man smiled again and helped Jack get aboard the machine. A helmet was placed on his head and gloves on his hands to make the Virtual Reality experience as plausible as possible.
     “Hold on tight, Sir. You’re Virtual Ride starts now!”
     Before he had time to say anything, Jack was catapulted into another world. He was born and experienced life as a baby, learning to walk and talk. Then he went to kindergarten, then school, then college, then university. Then he found himself a great job as a lawyer, met a beautiful colleague and a couple of years later they married. They had children and watched their children grow into adults themselves. Jack took vacations, played golf and grew old. And then he died in the arms of his wife. And just as everything went black….
     Jack opened his eyes and found himself on some sort of ride.
     “Where am I?” he asked.
     The man standing next to him smiled. “The ride is over, Sir. Now tell me, what did those sixty seconds teach you?”
     And then Jack remembered. He wasn’t really a lawyer at all. It was just a ride. “Sixty seconds? It felt like 70 years! And I learned a lot,” Jack answered. “But I could do with learning some more. Could I take another ride?”
     The man nodded. “Sure you can. Any place in particular?”
     Jack shrugged. “Oh, I don’t really mind.  But it would be good if it was a life in which I had the opportunity to learn more about the deeper aspects of the universe and about who I really am as a spirit being.”
     “No problem,” the man said, and helped Jack put the helmet and gloves back on. “Now hold on tight because this life is going to be a lot more challenging than the last. You’ll encounter difficulties at every turn, but it’s all for teaching purposes so you’ll be fine.”
     Jack nodded.
     “Okay then.  Your Virtual Ride starts now!”
     And then Jack woke up.

Now, which one was the ‘real’ Jack in the story? Was it the Jack who was dreaming in bed and finally woke up? Or was it the Jack who was strolling around the spiritual plane taking ‘Virtual Reality’ rides to learn more about himself as a spiritual being?

Think about your own physical life. Have there been times when your life got so crazy and out-of-perspective that it seemed more like a ride or a dream than reality?

Then maybe that’s just what it is…

Since the beginning of time people have searched for the meaning of life. They have asked the questions we have all asked at one time or another: Why are we here? Where did we come from? Does any part of us continue beyond death? And if so, where does that part go when our bodies die?

This search for the meaning of life has led to all manner of teachings and theories about heaven and hell, purgatory and paradise, but still something seems to be missing. In this series we will attempt to offer our own ideas about why we are all here on the earth plane and where we will go when our bodies become obsolete.

Of course, we could never be presumptuous enough to say that our ideas about the meaning of life are any more or less accurate than others that have been put forward. We offer this series simply as one possible explanation for our existence on this planet and in the universe. If you have strongly-held opinions about the matter which are not in agreement with the ideas in this series then you should feel free to maintain them. The universe is a big place and there is room enough for all attitudes, approaches and beliefs.

That said, we do hope that you find this series to be both insightful and valuable as you progress further along the road of your life…

If you are like most people, you probably view the beginning of your existence as the time when you were born on this earth. If you are a little more thoughtful, you might view the beginning of your existence as the moment in which you were conceived by your parents.

Whilst either of these events could be viewed as the beginning of your most recent earthly existence, neither of them are accurate in describing the beginning of your existence as a spiritual being. The fact is that spirit is eternal. It has no beginning and it has no end. Therefore you as a spirit being have no beginning and no end. You have always existed and you always will exist. This is the meaning of the word ‘eternal’.

This view of your existence throws up much more than the question of where you will go when your physical body expires. It also throws up the question of where you came from before your physical body came into existence.

If you study the scriptural texts of any major religion or philosophy, you will find that – in the majority of cases – one point is agreed upon. That point is that, in the beginning – before anything had manifested itself on the physical plane of existence – all that existed was pure potentiality. This potentiality, from which all things were created, is traditionally referred to as God.

Now most people have broken free from traditional views and come to the conclusion that God is not a white-bearded man sitting on a celestial throne and wielding a big cosmic stick. God is simply energy, and can probably be more accurately described as a Universal Intelligence (which may or may not be related to the so-called Dark Matter which many scientists believe to occupy 96% of the known universe). It knows all because it is all. It is everywhere because no place exists without it. It can do all things because it is all things.

Now if all things came out of that one energy which we call Universal Intelligence, then everything which exists in the universe is a part of that Intelligence. On a quantum level everything that exists is energy. In other words, everything you see around you is a manifestation of the same energy. You are energy. Your cat is energy. Your next-door neighbour is energy. All is energy and nothing is not part of the same energy.

So the question of where you were before you were born physically onto this plane is both simple and complicated at the same time. You were everywhere, because you are energy. And where will you go when your physical body dies? You will go everywhere, because you are energy.