Spirituality 101? Is this what you are looking for?

“What you are looking for is what is looking”
--St. Frances of Assisi--

My purpose in this thread is the same purpose we all have. To learn what I don’t know, and teach that which I do know. Walk your path, ask questions, and seek answers. Embark on a journey to the center of your consciousness, strive to understand yourself, and everything else may very well fall into place.

I believe the smarter you are the smarter humanity is. I believe the smarter humanity is the smarter I can be, the greater our potential will be. I know the key to the truth is laying aside our prejudices, our objections, and the precepts we have accepted as truth. History has proven that the majority of the precepts we accept as truth are the majority of the time, incorrect. The precept that the world is flat, or that the entire universe revolves around the Earth, both proved to be untrue.

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
--Albert Einstein--

“To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.”
--Stephen W. Hawking--

Have you ever contemplated what instincts truly are, if not the “cliff notes” of the accumulated knowledge which stems from the experiences of the consciousnesses that have preceded you? Are instincts not inherent knowledge? And if they are inherent knowledge from the consciousnesses that have preceded us, somewhere within us may be the inherent knowledge of the singularity, the consciousness from which we all originate. I don’t need to ponder how much of that inherent knowledge is dormant, hidden, tucked away in many, because they need to influence the world to know they exist. Curious enough, the observer is intangible. How real can reality be when the self that is determining it to be real is itself intangible?

Random Thought: I wonder if it is possible to create something so beautiful that no one would desire to destroy it.

Have you ever given much thought to how much limitation exists within your mind and how it perceives the world around you? For instance I guess what I am wanting you to ask yourself is: Is the way the world feels to me and the way it truly is the same? You as the observer are only capable of perceiving what you capable of understanding. We learn through association, it’s how our brain functions. If there is no pre-existing knowledge your brain is capable of associating with something already known to it, you simply won’t see it.

Your brain takes in 400,000,000,000 bits of information a second, yet you are only consciously aware of 2,000 bits of information. Your brain simply does not integrate it at a conscious level. We are really mostly only aware of three things: Our environment, our bodies, and time, and perhaps all of these are relative.

Random Thought: Choose between your opinion and truth. Try to separate all you take for granted as truth and disregard it. Try to separate your opinion. Stop observing the world from the portion of your brain that supports the self, the identity, and observe it for awhile with no prejudice, no judgment, devoid of your self. There may be more irony in that statement than you first realize.

SPIRITUALITY vs. RELIGION: Here are some inspirational quotes:
“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we so not know, that is true knowledge.”
--Copernicus—

“If those who lead you say to you, “See, the Kingdom is in the sky,” then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, “It is in the sea,” then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you will dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.”
--Yehoshua Ben Yosef (AKA: Jesus)-- (All the sayings of Jesus gathered from ancient sources and compiled into a single volume for the first time. Compiled by Ricky Alan Mayotte) From “The Complete Jesus”. (Page 71)

“Know thyself”
--Socrates--

“It gives me a deep comforting sense that things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.”
--Helen Keller--

“The spirit down here in man and the spirit up there in the sun, in reality are only one spirit, and there is no other one.”
--The Upanishads--

“Cease from the practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words, and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.”
--Dogen--

“Although each of us obviously inhabits a separate physical body, the laboratory data from a hundred years of parapsychology research strongly indicate that there is no separation in consciousness.”
--Russell Targ--

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
--Carl Gustav Jung--

“The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind.”
--Emily Dickenson--

“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.”
--Winston Churchill--

“Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same. Every wonderful sight will vanish; every sweet word will fade, but do not be disheartened, the source they come from is eternal, growing, branching out, giving new life and new joy. Why do you weep? The source is within you and this whole world is springing up from it.”
--Jelauddin Rumi--

“Knowledge is structured in consciousness. The process of education takes place in the field of consciousness; the prerequisite to complete education is therefore the FULL development of consciousness – Enlightenment. Knowledge is not the basis of enlightenment, enlightenment is the basis of knowledge.”
--Maharishi Mahesh Yogi--

“That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it… We so not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourselves.”
--Philipus Aureolus Paracelsus--

“….Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself.”
--Plato—

“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of force …. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
--Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning Father of Quantum Theory--

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
--Albert Einstein--

“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.”
--Confucius--
“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
--Winston Churchill--

“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.”
--T. S. Eliot--

“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.”
--John Maynard Keynes--

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.”
--Democritus of Abdera—

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same GOD who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
--Galileo Galilei--

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters to what lies within us.”
--Ralph Waldo Emerson--

“You can not see anything that you do not first contemplate as reality.”
--Ramtha--

Are you ever intrigued by the fact that there are similarities between all religions that formed in different geographic, different times, and different cultures and races that seem to contain the same message. Perhaps the message was always more important than the messenger. Perhaps the deliverer of the message was still confined by the limitations perceived of one’s self within the messenger.

If GOD is GOD, then GOD is omnipotent, and aware of the dealings of every conscious. If you define consciousness as being able to interpret its environment, react to its environment, affect its environment, and you still operate with the precept that GOD is omnipotent, then GOD is within you, and aware of the dealings of each and every one of your individual cells. Sub-thought: “OUR CELLS”, do we own our cells, or do our cells own us? Who is behind the driver’s seat in your mind when you react to your emotions, or respond to them?

Perhaps we are not fully conscious of what’s going on because our subconscious judges our actions and intentions and it is ourselves who deem us worthy of such knowledge. Just maybe every religion has it right and is based in spirituality, the truth isn’t out there, and it’s in here.

Back to your precepts and how you just take for granted the truths you believe to be true. How easy it makes it for others to see you as you really are, and not the face or façade you where for others. Think of it, for a moment. Are you the same person when addressing your grandma as you are with your mate, as you are with your mom, as you are with your best friend, as you are with a child. How many personalities or personality traits do you have, and which one is the real you? Why don't you know who you are?

Your precepts and imbedded truths you incorporate into your daily life, which makes it easier for others to “read” you. Since you were a child you have been taught that heaven is up, and heaven is positive. Therefore through the rules of association which our brains incorporate new thoughts and ideas has accepted the fact that up is good. Meanwhile you also know through what you’ve been taught that down is evil, down is hell, and down is negative. How much those two precepts help others determine who you really are, when you yourself may be oblivious to it. We live in a culture whose language is both written and read from left to right. Therefore what you’ve read/written inevitably is in your past, and the past is to your left. Where you are going, where you are reading is to the right, therefore the right is the future.
So: the precepts or already accepted knowledge in your brain tells you the following:
UP=GOOD
DOWN=BAD
LEFT=PAST
RIGHT=FUTURE
The fact that man knows more about the surface of Mars than what mankind knows of the surface of the ocean floor substantiate this claim.
At any rate you incorporate these precepts in your handwriting and especially your signature. Your signature is the literal manifestation on paper of who you are. Cursive letters where presented to us all the same, but we do not write them the same. When you sign your name, it is how you view yourself. Where do you dot your i? Is it to the right, or left. Do you have bigger below the line loops such as lower case y, q, j, f, g, z,? Is the volume of each lower case the same, or inconsistent? What emotional baggage are you lugging around in life?
When you sign you last name, your surname, do you lift the writing utensil to break up your family name? Were you taught in grade school to carry that first capitol through to the second letter in your last name, but yet you do not? 9 times out of ten when there is a break in a person’s signature when they sign their last name, I KNOW they come from a broken home. Whether it be that their parents are divorced, or one parent has passed on. If you knew yourself and why you do the things you do, then this knowledge would just fall in your lap. There is much more to handwriting analysis (which FBI, and the CIA utilize) than I can share here. But, another thing you may want to know is that if the letters lean towards the right there is a person on a path, reaching forward, maybe not totally focused on the here and now. If there letters lean towards the left (and they are not left handed) there is a person who is having problems coping with the current events in their lives. They may feel they can not keep up mentally with the stresses and problems they currently face, and may be suicidal. Curious though, how serial killers seem to have almost flawless handwriting. Also size matters, People who write small tend to be smart, educated, and conservative (literally).

I’m going to end this thread here, and begin a new one. Please continue on whatever path you are on. I have faith it will lead you to where you are going. The last bit of advice I wish to offer is a quote that I can’t recall who said it, but it went something like this:
“Don’t destroy the world you don’t want, create the one you do want.”
--Unknown--


I'm craving your input .........

[edit on 3-5-2005 by Esoteric Teacher]

[edit on 3-5-2005 by Esoteric Teacher]