Entering The Realm of Stillness
The Way of Meditation A few months ago, I had the privilege of looking after a kitten. Never before had I taken care of a young cat, so it was very much to my amazement that I discovered just how observant cats are. The Essence of Life Unlike humans, cats do not have any form of mental chatter within their minds. This allows for an intense presence to flow out of the animal and into what they do. This presence comes from the Source and is intrinsic to Life.
The Source may also be referred to as life itself, the Universe, God, the soul, being, stillness…whatever you wish to call it. But know that the Source is eternal and timeless and allows for all the visible to exist. A label cannot truly define it.
Whether you are religious or not, I kindly ask you now to read these words with complete awareness and feel — not think about — the energy within you and, ultimately, the Being you are.
The Art of Non-Judgement http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science/what-universe-real-physics-has-some-mind-bending-answers-180952699/
Have you seen how a cat stares out of a window for long periods, watching the movement of living beings and objects without the slightest irritation or impatience?
Most humans would struggle with this simple activity. But why is this? It’s merely to do with judgement.
“This is boring,” says the mind. “I’ve got more important things to do. I haven’t the time for this.”
You may argue that a cat does not have to go to work, pay bills, or say…arrange a family reunion. However, if you are able to see beyond the stress in your life experience, you will be able to feel an energy that is beyond what the mind can comprehend.
This is the energy in which a cat dwells — and fundamentally fuses with.
I am talking not of an abstract idea that we can think of, but of that infinite Being which you are — one that is easily concealed by layers of mind-related stress, a conditioned past, and a fictitious future.
I ask you now to see beyond your conditioning and allow your true self — the essence of who you really are — to shine forth.
You are divine and infinite. Know that the same essence that is within us is present within everything — cats, in particular. In humans, however, this essence is clouded by thought and thus out of alignment with Life itself. Do you see now how our inner states are reflective of our outer world, and vice versa?
Cats watch with their souls, not their minds.
These fascinating beings are truly in alignment with Life. The very nature of Life exists in all beings, but is obscured in some more than others.
Death
What is death to the infinite, timeless, and formless Being that you are? Absolutely nothing.
A “no-thing” cannot be destroyed. Only things — external forms — die.
Our outer form may age and eventually our bodies will fail, but ultimately, we can view death similarly to how we view the ego.
Once the ego is destroyed, Life flourishes. Ego implies identification with everything you are not. And so when the ego diminishes, what we think of as loss is actually only the destruction of a socially-molded false self.
Similarly, when the body dies, behind that “lifelessness” still exists an eternal aliveness that gracefully returns to the Source — the Universe.
You are now most likely thinking: “How do you know this?” Quite simply, I do not.
I choose not to get entrapped in thought and instead be grateful and appreciative of every moment I have.
Nevertheless, I do know for certain that our perceptions have great influence. If our minds (forms) suffer before we realize our true self (formless) then who is to say that all is lost when our bodies (forms) die?
In this sense, death does not really exist and is only an event in time.
Dissolving Pain With Presence
Realize how your mind creates resistance to life and how it avoids the natural flow of life by projecting into the future or dwelling in the past.
Notice how the mind repeatedly invents scenarios that have not come into existence and how it constructs stories that did not actually happen.
This is not to say that we should never use our minds productively, or learn from our past, or use our imagination in exciting and creative ways. We should do all these things, but know that compulsive thinking is destructive.
It is an addiction that the majority of humans suffer from. It denies us from accessing the moment. Know that what has happened and whatmay happen are not important compared to what can be found in the moment, in the Now.
In fact, when we free ourselves of past and future and live only in the present, we actually create a better future — one that arrives as a present. That being said, whatever it is you are holding on to, let it go, and whatever it is you wish to do, do it now rather than waiting and saying: “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
Remember that tomorrow will arrive as the present moment. In Alan Watts’ words: “The Future is just a concept, it doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now.”
Lao Tzu stated: “By letting go it all gets done.”
This is true. Cling to nothing.
Letting go implies that you choose to release negativity, and so you become completely present and therefore able to do what is required in the moment.
Buddha said: “The root of suffering is attachment.”
If we are identified by our minds we will suffer greatly. To bring about detachment, we must first know that our minds do not define who we are. We are far deeper than that.
A useful analogy to bear in mind (yes, you can still use your mind for practical purposes) is to think of the mind as waves and of our Being as the vast, still ocean beneath the waves.
The deep ocean allows the waves to rise and collapse, never feeling threatened by the ripples it creates.
So why are you feeling threatened by thoughts, feelings, and emotions? Have you, the ocean, not yet realized your wholeness? Why are you bothered by these waves of feelings, thoughts, and emotions that emerge and collapse?
This moment offers joy, grace, and peace. So why not merge with it by diving into the depths of your Being — which does not live in time (pastor future) — instead of trying to control the size of the waves and the frequency with which they arrive?
Essentially, the Now is life unfolding moment by moment — a continuum of events — and as such, the concept cannot be interpreted or labelled by the mind. It has to be felt by the soul.
If you try to label this moment then you may miss this moment. And if you try to understand this moment, you will become lost in thought through compulsive thinking.
The Now will only greet those who welcome it. And my, what gifts it has to offer. Do not run from this moment, even if overwhelming feelings and emotions exist — such as fear and sorrow. If you do not resist the fear or sorrow and allow it to simply be, then these feelings and emotions will become transmuted into grace and peace.
When you live in acceptance your vision becomes clearer, and what you once perceived as a nemesis will be revealed to be something that threatens only your ego, not your being.
Underneath the feelings and emotions, there is a gift. A gift that will not only dissolve pain, but enhance your vision. So when unfavorable circumstances arise, you will actually be able to choose to not suffer.
Merge with Life itself. Live in the moment.
Be still. Observe. Be at peace and at one with the moment and the Universe itself. Be as content as a cat.
After suffering a family tragedy, Mack Phillips spirals into a deep depression that causes him to question his innermost beliefs. Facing a crisis of faith, he receives a mysterious letter urging him to an abandoned shack in the Oregon wilderness. Despite his doubts, Mack journeys to the shack and encounters an enigmatic trio of strangers led by a woman named Papa. Through this meeting, Mack finds important truths that will transform his understanding of his tragedy and change his life forever.
Hubble found that stars are not uniformly distributed throughout space, but are gathered together in vast collections called galaxies. By measuring the light from galaxies, Hubble could determine their velocities. He was expecting that as many galaxies would be moving towards us as were moving away. This is what one would have in a universe that was unchanging with time. But to his surprise, Hubble found that nearly all the galaxies were moving away from us. Moreover, the further galaxies were from us, the faster they were moving away.
The universe was not unchanging with time as everyone had thought previously. It was expanding. The distance between distant galaxies was increasing with time.The expansion of the universe was one of the most important intellectual discoveries of the 20th century, or of any century. It transformed the debate about whether the universe had a beginning. If galaxies are moving apart now, they must have been closer together in the past. If their speed had been constant, they would all have been on top of one another about 15 billion years ago. Was this the beginning of the universe? Many scientists were still unhappy with the universe having a beginning because it seemed to imply that physics broke down. One would have to invoke an outside agency, which for convenience, one can call God, to determine how the universe began. They therefore advanced theories in which the universe was expanding at the present time, but didn’t have a beginning.
They would heat your pizza only to minus 271 point 3 degrees centigrade, not much good for defrosting the pizza, let alone cooking it. You can actually observe these microwaves yourself. Set your television to an empty channel. A few percent of the snow you see on the screen will be caused by this background of microwaves.
The only reasonable interpretation of the background is that it is radiation left over from an early very hot and dense state. As the universe expanded, the radiation would have cooled until it is just the faint remnant we observe today.
Although the singularity theorems of Penrose Hawking, predicted that the universe had a beginning, they didn’t say how it had begun. The equations of General Relativity would break down at the singularity. Thus Einstein’s theory cannot predict how the universe will begin, but only how it will evolve once it has begun. There are two attitudes one can take to the results of Penrose Hawking myself. One is to that God chose how the universe began for reasons we could not understand.
This was the view of Pope John Paul. At a conference on cosmology in the Vatican, the Pope told the delegates that it was OK to study the universe after it began, but they should not inquire into the beginning itself, because that was the moment of creation, and the work of God. I was glad he didn’t realize I had presented a paper at the conference suggesting how the universe began. I didn’t fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition, like Galileo.
The other interpretation of our results, which is favored by most scientists, is that it indicates that the General Theory of Relativity breaks down in the very strong gravitational fields in the early universe. It has to be replaced by a more complete theory. One would expect this anyway, because General Relativity does not take account of the small scale structure of matter, which is governed by quantum theory. This does not matter normally, because the scale of the universe is enormous compared to the microscopic scales of quantum theory. But when the universe is the Planck size, a billion trillion trillionth of a centimeter, the two scales are the same, and quantum theory has to be taken into account.
What is consciousness? Consciousness includes a number of things. It’s how we perceive our world, our thoughts, being aware, our intentions and more.
“Looking for consciousness in the brain is like looking in the radio for the announcer.” – Nasseim Haramein, director of research for the Resonance Project
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” – Max Planck, theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918
“It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.” Eugene Wigner, theoretical physicist and mathematician. He received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963
The statement that “consciousness creates reality” comes with a number of different questions. Does this mean we as individuals (and on a collective level as one human race) can shape and create whatever reality we’d like for ourselves? Does it mean we can manifest a certain lifestyle, and attract certain experiences? Does it happen instantly? Does it take time? How do we do it?
Although we might not be able to answer these questions with absolute scientific certainty, we do know that yes, a correlation between consciousness and our physical material world does indeed exist in some way, shape or form. The extent of that correlation (again from a modern day scientific point of view) is still not well understood, but we know of the correlation, and we know it must have some sort of significance.
Although this is one of the most popular experiments used to posit the connection between consciousness and physical reality, there are several other studies that clearly show that consciousness, or factors that are associated with consciousness are directly correlated with our reality in some way. A number of experiments in the field of parapsychology have also demonstrated this.
Sure, we might not understand the extent of this connection, and in most cases scientists can’t even explain it. However they are, and have been observed time and time again.
Below is a video demonstration from the film “What The Bleep Do We Know.”
Preview YouTube video What the bleep do we know “full movie”
Modern day science, especially quantum physics, has been catching up to ancient mysticism and concepts that are/were so deeply ingrained in various cultures throughout the ancient world. One great example of this is the fact that everything is energy , and nothing is solid. You can read more about that here.
“We are what we think, all that we are arises with our thoughts, with our thoughts we make the world.” – Gautama Buddha.
As soon as we recognize that the mind is a product of evolutionary processes, our view of the mind and its place in nature is radically altered. A recurring idea in the belief systems of the world is the notion that human beings are composed of two separate and separable parts: a physical body and an immaterial mind or soul. Not everyone has held this view, but it’s not (as commonly claimed) unique to the Western tradition. Many people have believed that the mind stands outside nature; it is a part of us that transcends the material world and our biology.
Evolutionary theory completely overthrows this view. From an evolutionary perspective, it is impossible to maintain that the mind stands outside nature. Instead, it is a tiny fragment of nature, valued only by those tiny fragments of nature that possess it. Mind is not something separate from matter; it is a process embodied in matter.
Now here’s the point: When we fully digest that the mind is the activity of an evolved brain, it radically transforms our view of the mind’s place in the universe – and our view of the universe itself. The physical universe ceases to be an unconscious object, observed and explored by conscious minds which somehow stand above or outside it. Conscious minds are part of the physical universe, as much as rocks and potato peelers. Our consciousness is not simply consciousness of the universe; our consciousness is a part of the universe, and thus the universe itself is partially conscious. When you contemplate the universe, part of the universe becomes conscious of itself. http://kjmaclean.com/CreationofUniverse.html
The history of the universe looks very different from this perspective. For billions and billions of years, the universe was here and no one knew about it. More to the point, for all that time, the universe itself had no idea that it existed. But then, around 13.82 billion years after the Big Bang, and almost four billion years since life first evolved, something strange began to happen: Tiny parts of the universe became conscious, and came to know something about themselves and the universe of which they are a part.
Eventually, some of these tiny parts of the universe – the parts we call ‘scientists’ and ‘scientifically-informed laypeople’ – came to understand the Big Bang and the evolutionary process through which they had come to exist. After an eternity of unconsciousness, the universe now had some glimmering awareness that it existed and some understanding of where it had come from. This might sound like a strange thing for a universe to do, but perhaps it’s not; perhaps many possible universes would become conscious of themselves given sufficient time.
So much for the history of the conscious universe; what about its destiny? There are many competing suggestions on this topic, some more optimistic than realistic. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit palaeontologist, suggested that the universe will continue to expand into greater and greater degrees of awareness, finally coalescing into an integrated, universal consciousness, which he dubbed the Omega Point and identified with Christ. Modern cosmology indicates that such suggestions are more interesting than they are plausible. Although the universe is conscious of itself at present, the projected heat death of the universe makes it all but certain that the time will come when the lights go out and the universe slips back into unconsciousness.
The Bible explains why the heavens and the earth exist. This is the mystery of the universe, and this mystery is God Himself. Romans 1:20 says, “For the invisible things of Him, both His eternal power and divine characteristics, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being perceived by the things made, so that they would be without excuse.”
The universe was created by God and declares the existence of God (Psalms 19:1; Acts 14:15-17). When we see the heavens,… the earth, the stars, the sun, and the moon, we cannot deny that there is a sovereign God (Psalms 8:1, 3). Even after billions of years, the order in the universe is maintained, and we still enjoy the distinct difference between the seasons and the definite timing of day and night. Through the universe we can see a glimpse of God’s power, God’s glory, and God’s divine characteristics.
The universe was also created because of God’s purpose to enter into man (Revelation 4:11). Without God, the entire universe is empty and dead, and without God, man is an empty vessel. John 4:24 tells us that God is Spirit, and Zechariah 12:1 tells us that God created man with a spirit to contain Him, a spirit that is as important as the heavens and the earth. You only need to open your heart and pray to Him, and God will enter into you. Then you will become a person with meaning, and you will enjoy God as the mystery of the entire universe.
The explanation to this mystery can be found in two places: in the universe itself and in the Bible, which is the word of God (2 Timothy 3:16). Over two thousand and seven hundred years ago, Isaiah wrote that God sits above the circle of the earth (Isaiah 40:22). More than a thousand years before that, Job said, “He [God] stretches out the north over the void; He hangs the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7). Today it has been confirmed by science that the earth is indeed round and not flat, and that the earth is hanging upon nothing. Science confirms that the elements of the human body are simply the elements of dust. However, the Bible told us long ago that the human body was formed out of dust.
“Oh God!
You are the Creator of the heavens and the earth,
and You are the mystery of the universe!
Without You, my life has no meaning.
Lord Jesus! I open my heart to You. Come into me
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Sorry if I am getting to Biblical. I am looking for the meaning of Life 
O:)
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” – Unknown
If we look at the world and examine it on a collective level, what do we see? How do we perceive it? Right now, the masses perceive it as being born, going to school, paying bills, raising a family and finding a “job” within the current paradigm to support yourself. No judgement here, but many people on the planet are not resonating with this experience. They want change. We’ve been repeating and perceiving our reality this way for a very long time, with very little information about what is really happening on and to our planet.
It’s almost like we are robotic drones that are trained and brainwashed to accept things the way they are. To not question what is happening in our world and to continue on with the status quo, only caring for ourselves and our own lives. As Noam Chomsky would say, our consent has been manufactured. If we continue down this path and continue to perceive and view reality as “this is just the way it is,” we will, in essence, prolong that type of existence and experience for the human race without ever changing it.
What’s also important about teachings from new physics is that, if factors of consciousness are associated with the creation of our reality, that means change starts within. It starts with the way in which we are observing the outer world from our inner world. This touches on the earlier point of how we perceive our reality. Our perception of the external world might very well be a reflection of our inner world, our inner state of being.
So ask yourself, are you happy? Are you observing, perceiving and acting from a place of love? From a place of hate or anger? From a place of peace? All of these factors are associated with our consciousness, with our observation, the one (or the many) who are doing the “observing” might play a large role in what type of physical world the human race manifests for itself, what do you think?
We are indeed the observers, can we create change and break patterns to open up new possibilities, change our direction, all through the way in which we observe ourselves, others and the world around us.
I believe that the human race is in the process of waking up to a number of different things, simultaneously. As a result, the way we perceive and “observe” the world around us (on a mass scale) is starting to drastically change. So if you want to help change the world, change the way you look at things, and the things you look at will change.
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Ghandi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ujWVbjKBCo
This Katy Perry Video Offers Up A lot About Science & The Universe 🙂