I have been doing the ‘Compassion Walk’ meditation that is in our subscriber section, and am finding that it offers a profound change of energy. For those of you who are not subscribers, it’s quite simple. You do it by directing your attention to your physical sensations and away from your mind while walking among other people, say in a mall or along a sidewalk. (Don’t run into anybody or fall over anything, and certainly don’t do it while driving.) It causes you to turn off, however briefly, the ‘judge’ that is in us all and dominates our functioning when we are among others.
What happens to me are two things. First, what is usually a vaguely uneasy experience becomes rich and joyous. I have to work to keep my attention on my body, so much pleasure comes from seeing the way people and animals and plants simply ARE. Everything is dancing with life and being in it is just plain fun. Second, I begin to see myself from the outside. I find myself as a smaller part of a larger world. It’s the opposite of the usual perspective. Usually, we see from ourselves as the center of our reality. The Compassion Walk enables one to see oneself in a more realistic perspective, as a small part of a large reality.
Which has led me to the question: who are we and where are we? Ever since I started having close encounter experiences, these have obviously been burning questions for me.
I think, now, that I can express my ideas on the question clearly and succinctly. First, we are injected into bodies that are themselves embedded in physical reality and set to flowing along a time stream. Where we are in terms of the physical universe isn’t of primary importance. We are on a planet somewhere. What is crucial to understand is that we are in a configuration that causes is to receive the vast majority of our impressions from our physical senses. Where we are is in the physical.
We weren’t always this way and we won’t always be this way. But the combination of the intensity of physical impressions and our knowledge of the eventual end of the body causes us to prefer to live as if we will never die. But it is possible to live another way entirely, to move through time with awareness, not blindly. It’s a change of perspective, and an important one. It leads to one becoming much more objective about one’s existence. There’s no breast beating involved, in the sense of feeling despair over the reality of death. To the contrary, its very freeing to include one’s whole life in one’s self-image. Frankly, it is so freeing to embrace the reality of death that it gives meaning to the ancient idea that the Sphinx–a human being in a balanced, or conscious, state–rises above life on eagle’s wings. This means that the adept becomes objectively conscious, and the key to doing this is not by embracing death or imagining it, but by taking it for granted rather than ignoring it.
We may be a natural development or we may be an outcome of technology, or both, but to me it is clear that we came from somewhere and are going somewhere. I cannot agree that physical life is the beginning and end of being, for the simple reason that I have had too much personal experience of other levels of consciousness. This includes meditating for years with a man who identified himself as somebody who was between physical lives. (I describe this relationship in detail in Solving the Communion Enigma.)
Physical life opens us up to the rich impressions of this world, but also swamps our ability to perceive things that are not associated with taste, touch, smell and sight. We become soul blind, and the richer our material lives become, the more soul blind we get.
I think that we are supposed to be soul blind. Indeed, I think that we enter physical life so that this will happen. Most of us, probably all of us, have been in being a very long time, and quite possibly forever. What we do in the physical is flood ourselves with impressions that overwhelm what are probably very long and vastly experienced memories, and rather clear knowledge of probable futures. In effect, we become children again, and live as children do, unaware of a larger perspective that would make us too wise to act from our core essence.
In other words, we abandon wisdom for innocence so that we can discover our deepest truth. Doing life, for better or for worse, will reveal us to ourselves. Physical life is a breathing in of impressions. Afterward, spiritual life is an exhaling or letting go. Physical life is the active side of a triad, afterlife the passive or contemplative side.
There is hidden between them a level of being that we hardly ever address at all, let alone directly. This is the part of us that finds balance between the two opposing energies of life and afterlife. It is this part that one can taste on a Compassion Walk, when for a brief time the judge that is in us all falls silent, and we taste instead of the joy of being.
Where are we? Somewhere in the physical. What are we? Travelers on the road to joy.
Subscribers, to watch the subscriber version of the video, first log in then click on Dreamland Subscriber-Only Video Podcast link.
Nicely perceived and stated.
Nicely perceived and stated. I think I agree with the whole thing, both intellectually and intuitively. I also have thought that rather than our physical lives being some kind of curse of suffering or something best escaped (like that whole karma theory), it might actually be almost like a vacation from some larger awareness that might not be so much fun at all. Whichever is true, isn’t it better to emphasize the “wow” of life over the “ow”? It might be the most fundamental choice we make all the time.
Wow, cool take. ..like so
Wow, cool take. ..like so much knowledge is imparted to us in the “inbetween afterlife” leads us to “partake” once again In Spite of the “ow” to make things better, or do what we feel needs to be done, said etc….
Nicely perceived and stated.
Nicely perceived and stated. I think I agree with the whole thing, both intellectually and intuitively. I also have thought that rather than our physical lives being some kind of curse of suffering or something best escaped (like that whole karma theory), it might actually be almost like a vacation from some larger awareness that might not be so much fun at all. Whichever is true, isn’t it better to emphasize the “wow” of life over the “ow”? It might be the most fundamental choice we make all the time.
Wow, cool take. ..like so
Wow, cool take. ..like so much knowledge is imparted to us in the “inbetween afterlife” leads us to “partake” once again In Spite of the “ow” to make things better, or do what we feel needs to be done, said etc….
Dear Whitley,
This may an
Dear Whitley,
This may an offbeat request but please bear with me:
Maybe in a future Dreamland or Journal entry you could focus on humor. I don’t say this to be coy, but rather because I feel the subject of visitors and other-worldly encounters, in its current state, would benefit greatly from a humor infusion. As the Master Of the Key said “Better bring your sense of humor with you” 🙂
I feel totally odd when making this request to you as it’s a spur of the moment thing that I decided to go with. I have no idea why this came into my head at this time. I can only hope you won’t take this the wrong way – but something tells me that humor is a powerful “weapon” against fear and darkness. I apologize if I’m not making any sense.
Best wishes,
El Gringo 🙂
PS: I do not have any encounter experiences (at least nothing that I can remember) but when I heard you talk about changing dimensions (as in your story about how you drove with your son’s friend and entered, for a brief time, another dimension) I was jolted. This has happened to me quite a few times but I never knew what to make of it.
Dear Whitley,
This may an
Dear Whitley,
This may an offbeat request but please bear with me:
Maybe in a future Dreamland or Journal entry you could focus on humor. I don’t say this to be coy, but rather because I feel the subject of visitors and other-worldly encounters, in its current state, would benefit greatly from a humor infusion. As the Master Of the Key said “Better bring your sense of humor with you” 🙂
I feel totally odd when making this request to you as it’s a spur of the moment thing that I decided to go with. I have no idea why this came into my head at this time. I can only hope you won’t take this the wrong way – but something tells me that humor is a powerful “weapon” against fear and darkness. I apologize if I’m not making any sense.
Best wishes,
El Gringo 🙂
PS: I do not have any encounter experiences (at least nothing that I can remember) but when I heard you talk about changing dimensions (as in your story about how you drove with your son’s friend and entered, for a brief time, another dimension) I was jolted. This has happened to me quite a few times but I never knew what to make of it.
I’ve been doing something
I’ve been doing something akin to the Compassion Walk for years, and it can not only be incredibly enriching, but the external effects can be profoundly validating as well. I started doing this because of two things: first, because I’m habitually claustrophobic in crowds, and the expansion I use helps that. Secondly, I know how it can affect the people around me, and hey, you never know whom that might help.
.
I have a number of stories from this practice, but one that comes to mind is one time I was seated on the streetcar, headed downtown. It occurred to me that I wasn’t practising expanding my energies, like I like to do, and so I did so. At that moment a man that was standing beside me suddenly said, “oh, sorry”, and backed up a step, as if he had bumped into me… even though we hadn’t physically touched. The interaction can be that potent.
.
The issue of our identity has also been a major question for me for years, after I started accepting the nature of my previous incarnations. It’s true, we’re not supposed to fully know who our larger, divine selves are supposed to be, since that would ruin the immersion that this reality requires. We’re much like characters in a massive video game, limited in what we can do while playing here–except that for the immersion to work, we can’t remember who we are as players…
I’ve been doing something
I’ve been doing something akin to the Compassion Walk for years, and it can not only be incredibly enriching, but the external effects can be profoundly validating as well. I started doing this because of two things: first, because I’m habitually claustrophobic in crowds, and the expansion I use helps that. Secondly, I know how it can affect the people around me, and hey, you never know whom that might help.
.
I have a number of stories from this practice, but one that comes to mind is one time I was seated on the streetcar, headed downtown. It occurred to me that I wasn’t practising expanding my energies, like I like to do, and so I did so. At that moment a man that was standing beside me suddenly said, “oh, sorry”, and backed up a step, as if he had bumped into me… even though we hadn’t physically touched. The interaction can be that potent.
.
The issue of our identity has also been a major question for me for years, after I started accepting the nature of my previous incarnations. It’s true, we’re not supposed to fully know who our larger, divine selves are supposed to be, since that would ruin the immersion that this reality requires. We’re much like characters in a massive video game, limited in what we can do while playing here–except that for the immersion to work, we can’t remember who we are as players…
El, you’re in luck, as there
El, you’re in luck, as there is a meditative practice based on laughter, called Hasya Yoga. Give it a google, it’s actually a suprisingly easy practice. 😉
El, you’re in luck, as there
El, you’re in luck, as there is a meditative practice based on laughter, called Hasya Yoga. Give it a google, it’s actually a suprisingly easy practice. 😉
Someone has taken to write on
Someone has taken to write on the funeral notices on the community board, instead of born, died, they write sunrise, sunset, with the dates written beside. Has this been caught on from somewhere. It is rather nice, not so harsh. My sun rose on this date, my sun set on this day. Yes, not so bad at all.
Someone has taken to write on
Someone has taken to write on the funeral notices on the community board, instead of born, died, they write sunrise, sunset, with the dates written beside. Has this been caught on from somewhere. It is rather nice, not so harsh. My sun rose on this date, my sun set on this day. Yes, not so bad at all.
Whitley,
You have hit the
Whitley,
You have hit the nail on the head! You have expressed in words what I have failed to communicate to my close friends and family, now I can share your journal as to my journey. I am sure life impressions have changed me, from seeing my father drop dead in front if me in my teenage years to the visitors showing up in my life. Death I do not fear! And without question we continue a journey well beyond our physical being. My early pursuits centered on when or if the visitors would reveal themselves, now it’s about my journey and I’m sure they will reveal themselves in greater detail when many more of us pick up that walk……
Whitley,
You have hit the
Whitley,
You have hit the nail on the head! You have expressed in words what I have failed to communicate to my close friends and family, now I can share your journal as to my journey. I am sure life impressions have changed me, from seeing my father drop dead in front if me in my teenage years to the visitors showing up in my life. Death I do not fear! And without question we continue a journey well beyond our physical being. My early pursuits centered on when or if the visitors would reveal themselves, now it’s about my journey and I’m sure they will reveal themselves in greater detail when many more of us pick up that walk……
I had a very profound
I had a very profound experience a couple of years ago that lasted a few hours. It was the aftermath of a regression session. I was in a realm where I could see/feel the life spark in everything around me. I was moving through crowds on the street, subway, etc and instead of the usual day-to-day rushing about, all I saw in people was the miraculous life energy they were made of. It occured to me that this is how the visitors see us. Life is precious and when you are in this state, war, strife, and any degree of meanness is incomprehensible. I have tried to reach this degree of wonder again, but I can only get fleeting awareness. It was, I believe, a gift of insight from the guide I contacted in my regression. Now it’s up to me to work back to this state!
I had a very profound
I had a very profound experience a couple of years ago that lasted a few hours. It was the aftermath of a regression session. I was in a realm where I could see/feel the life spark in everything around me. I was moving through crowds on the street, subway, etc and instead of the usual day-to-day rushing about, all I saw in people was the miraculous life energy they were made of. It occured to me that this is how the visitors see us. Life is precious and when you are in this state, war, strife, and any degree of meanness is incomprehensible. I have tried to reach this degree of wonder again, but I can only get fleeting awareness. It was, I believe, a gift of insight from the guide I contacted in my regression. Now it’s up to me to work back to this state!
Sunrise, sunset…the Sufis
Sunrise, sunset…the Sufis sometimes say, “So-and-so completed his breathing exercise on such-and-such a day…”
Sunrise, sunset…the Sufis
Sunrise, sunset…the Sufis sometimes say, “So-and-so completed his breathing exercise on such-and-such a day…”
I can seem to find this
I can seem to find this Compassion Walk meditation in the subscriber area…. it sounds wonderful.
I can seem to find this
I can seem to find this Compassion Walk meditation in the subscriber area…. it sounds wonderful.
This is a beautiful piece of
This is a beautiful piece of writing, perhaps one of the best things Whitley has written (together with his recent Change of Being entry. This quote below is astonishing:
“…we abandon wisdom for innocence so that we can discover our deepest truth. Doing life, for better or for worse, will reveal us to ourselves.”
We readers are lucky to have such profound insights transmitted to us as clearly and honestly as this.
This is a beautiful piece of
This is a beautiful piece of writing, perhaps one of the best things Whitley has written (together with his recent Change of Being entry. This quote below is astonishing:
“…we abandon wisdom for innocence so that we can discover our deepest truth. Doing life, for better or for worse, will reveal us to ourselves.”
We readers are lucky to have such profound insights transmitted to us as clearly and honestly as this.
I agree with Whitley. And
I agree with Whitley. And with Jane Roberts’ Seth, who said humans are
seekers of sensation during our physical incarnations. Seth compared
life to a play — play, in the sense of a game, and in the sense of being
a piece of theatre in which we’ve chosen, as Whitley says, to lose, and find, ourselves in our roles.
Sure doesn’t always feel like a game, though.
from a famous poem by T.S. Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
I agree with Whitley. And
I agree with Whitley. And with Jane Roberts’ Seth, who said humans are
seekers of sensation during our physical incarnations. Seth compared
life to a play — play, in the sense of a game, and in the sense of being
a piece of theatre in which we’ve chosen, as Whitley says, to lose, and find, ourselves in our roles.
Sure doesn’t always feel like a game, though.
from a famous poem by T.S. Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Makes me remember Carlos
Makes me remember Carlos Castaneda’s fight with silencing his inner judge in order to see Don Juan’s magic. Don Juan would try to shake Carlos’s judge with drugs but Carlos was so stupid/stubborn lol. Very entertaining reading lol. Don’t know how much of it is true, but certainly a good read. At least I got am understanding of how shamans see the world (without a judge) and what they see. Without the judge/inner talker in Our heads the world is very different. More like the childrens world. But a dangerous place if You don’t have help. A place to become lost or eaten.
Makes me remember Carlos
Makes me remember Carlos Castaneda’s fight with silencing his inner judge in order to see Don Juan’s magic. Don Juan would try to shake Carlos’s judge with drugs but Carlos was so stupid/stubborn lol. Very entertaining reading lol. Don’t know how much of it is true, but certainly a good read. At least I got am understanding of how shamans see the world (without a judge) and what they see. Without the judge/inner talker in Our heads the world is very different. More like the childrens world. But a dangerous place if You don’t have help. A place to become lost or eaten.
Actually, the world is a much
Actually, the world is a much less dangerous place in that state. Since said ‘judge’ is part and parcel of a set of filters that blind us to what others around us truly are, potential trouble is more readily apparent when they’re dropped.
Actually, the world is a much
Actually, the world is a much less dangerous place in that state. Since said ‘judge’ is part and parcel of a set of filters that blind us to what others around us truly are, potential trouble is more readily apparent when they’re dropped.
There are billions of people
There are billions of people on this planet right now. It’s difficult to generalize from the experience of one person to speculate on the nature of humanity itself.
Certainly, humanity as a whole has become Westernized to a frightening degree. This has happened at the same time that people in the West have had more access to Eastern Mystical practices, that have the aim of spiritual development.
The difficulty in trying to understand ourselves, is with our subconscious mind. Very few of us have any access to it, yet I could make a good case that the subconscious mind, is the dominate force of our existence. To me this is the primary reason that spiritual growth seems to come from alternative experiences, that aren’t subject to conscious control, like dreams, music, or visions. Letting go of the mind seems to be a necessary part of the experience.
In the past those that suffered from epilepsy were considered to have direct contact with the spirit world and often became Shaman’s.
It may be that our minds are developing into some form of conscious energy, that has sentience outside of the body. And that this may be necessary to complete the development of the soul.
Reason, although necessary for us as humans, seems to have little to do with our access. Experience when lived, explains itself, without the need to figure things out.
I am not sure who said it, but I prefer to view man from the perspective of the saying, “Man is God in Ruins”. Or rather we’re on the road to elsewhere.
There are billions of people
There are billions of people on this planet right now. It’s difficult to generalize from the experience of one person to speculate on the nature of humanity itself.
Certainly, humanity as a whole has become Westernized to a frightening degree. This has happened at the same time that people in the West have had more access to Eastern Mystical practices, that have the aim of spiritual development.
The difficulty in trying to understand ourselves, is with our subconscious mind. Very few of us have any access to it, yet I could make a good case that the subconscious mind, is the dominate force of our existence. To me this is the primary reason that spiritual growth seems to come from alternative experiences, that aren’t subject to conscious control, like dreams, music, or visions. Letting go of the mind seems to be a necessary part of the experience.
In the past those that suffered from epilepsy were considered to have direct contact with the spirit world and often became Shaman’s.
It may be that our minds are developing into some form of conscious energy, that has sentience outside of the body. And that this may be necessary to complete the development of the soul.
Reason, although necessary for us as humans, seems to have little to do with our access. Experience when lived, explains itself, without the need to figure things out.
I am not sure who said it, but I prefer to view man from the perspective of the saying, “Man is God in Ruins”. Or rather we’re on the road to elsewhere.
Excellent thoughts Whitley.
Excellent thoughts Whitley. Having had my various experiences, I know they can be really physical on a certain level. And I don’t mean my hair turnging green inside a crop circle either 🙂 I have found watching the news, in a “witness state”, (something I’ve worked on for years) very helpful. Don’t judge- just watch. It’s hard at first but very revealing of where some of our energy can be stuck. It takes away the “victims” and “perps” energy. Just- “oh look what happened there….”
I’m so happy you’re doing meditations again too!!!
Excellent thoughts Whitley.
Excellent thoughts Whitley. Having had my various experiences, I know they can be really physical on a certain level. And I don’t mean my hair turnging green inside a crop circle either 🙂 I have found watching the news, in a “witness state”, (something I’ve worked on for years) very helpful. Don’t judge- just watch. It’s hard at first but very revealing of where some of our energy can be stuck. It takes away the “victims” and “perps” energy. Just- “oh look what happened there….”
I’m so happy you’re doing meditations again too!!!
Hello Whitley,
You posed the
Hello Whitley,
You posed the most ancient of questions with “What are we and Where are we?”
A very wise healer/teacher answered this so simply that it took my breath away when he uttered it during a group meditation many years ago. It is not a new idea; in fact, it is probably the first and only idea…
“We are nothing more or less than the Infinite, Impersonal Universe expressing Itself as us.”
The Gnostics drew a symbol of a circle with a line tracing the radius from the center outward to illustrate this principle. The center representing Infinite Creative Potential (ICP) which is in the process of becoming aware. The radius line, dim and faint at first, presses out toward its potential, thus, awareness becoming consciousness and eventually conscious of Itself. The first stirrings of ICP expressing as individual soul begins here. As the soul presses further into consciousness the further away it gets from ICP and the more it mistakes or gets caught-up in the sensation of individuality and eventually forgets that it is, in reality, ICP expressing itself. The outer circle represents the physical, material realm, in which, soul identity gets absorbed and is at its furthest point away from the ICP.
Of course the symbol is incomplete and incapable of total understanding but it illustrates the simplicity of the experience humankind calls the Dance of Life.
Infinite Creative Potential expressing Itself as the Impersonal Universe and everything within it… including me.
This is my meditation point.
I like that.
Hello Whitley,
You posed the
Hello Whitley,
You posed the most ancient of questions with “What are we and Where are we?”
A very wise healer/teacher answered this so simply that it took my breath away when he uttered it during a group meditation many years ago. It is not a new idea; in fact, it is probably the first and only idea…
“We are nothing more or less than the Infinite, Impersonal Universe expressing Itself as us.”
The Gnostics drew a symbol of a circle with a line tracing the radius from the center outward to illustrate this principle. The center representing Infinite Creative Potential (ICP) which is in the process of becoming aware. The radius line, dim and faint at first, presses out toward its potential, thus, awareness becoming consciousness and eventually conscious of Itself. The first stirrings of ICP expressing as individual soul begins here. As the soul presses further into consciousness the further away it gets from ICP and the more it mistakes or gets caught-up in the sensation of individuality and eventually forgets that it is, in reality, ICP expressing itself. The outer circle represents the physical, material realm, in which, soul identity gets absorbed and is at its furthest point away from the ICP.
Of course the symbol is incomplete and incapable of total understanding but it illustrates the simplicity of the experience humankind calls the Dance of Life.
Infinite Creative Potential expressing Itself as the Impersonal Universe and everything within it… including me.
This is my meditation point.
I like that.