Spirituality does not imply religion. It involves connecting to our source and essence to find guidance and meaning.  Spirituality is the map that guides our journey.  The puzzle into which all the other pieces fit.

We can be successful in all the other areas of life, but if we don’t have a sense of meaning, we will ultimately find happiness eludes us.  On the other hand, if our spiritual compass is working properly, the other areas of our life will align more easily.

On the side menu, you will find pages devoted to particular spiritual teachers and gurus. Below is a list of all our posts dealing with the spiritual, the esoteric and the philosophical.

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As a Reiki master, I am also interested in various energy healing and alternative healing methods.

In the menu bar, you will find our pages on various teachers and practitioners in the Health and healing area. On those pages you will find wonderful healing books, healing programs and health techniques that can dramatically improve your life. Below you find a list of all our health and healing articles.

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How can we relate better to those around us, and handle issues of trust and intimacy? How can we be better partners, spouses and parents? In dealing with relationships, we investigate our connection to others on a conscious and subconscious level, including trans-personal and integral psychology.

We also consider psychological problems, including fear, depression and anxiety. In addition to professional help for these issues, how can we help ourselves? Finally, we consider the quirks and workings of the human mind. How an it sabotage us in our goals, and how can we use our mind to our advantage?

The authors and gurus featured on the side menu all have insight into these various issues. Below is a list of articles and reviews that cover these fascinating topics.

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If you feel like you are naturally disorganized or financially ignorant, these gurus can be life-changing for you. Even if you simply feel your life is just a bit too cluttered, exhausting or expensive, here is a place to find help.

On the side menu we feature teachers and gurus who can help you with your organizational and financial issues. Below is a list of articles and resources that relate to organization and finances.

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Leo, in his Zen Habits blog, writes that the problem with goals is that they may force us to work on things we aren’t really passionate about.

Goals as a system are set up for failure. Even when you do things exactly right, it’s not ideal. Here’s why: you are extremely limited in your actions. When you don’t feel like doing something, you have to force yourself to do it. Your path is chosen, so you don’t have room to explore new territory. You have to follow the plan, even when you’re passionate about something else.

The ideal life, according to Leo, is one in which we follow our inspiration and passion at each moment. This is the kind of life that produces truly great results. Coincidentally (or not), Steve Pavlina has been trying an experiment in which he tries to follow his inspiration and passion in each moment. In the past, if a flash of inspiration came to him, he would write it down for later planning and scheduling. Now (or at least for the next few weeks of the experiment) he just DOES it.

When an inspired idea comes to me, I act on it almost immediately. I know that I have about a 48-hour window — maximum — to write and publish that idea. Otherwise the energy is gone. Trying to create that same content later is possible, but it’s much more difficult and takes a lot longer.

The experience is like catching a wave. I might wake up one morning and get an idea for a new article, and I know I need to grab my laptop immediately and let it flow through me. In those situations I can write nearly as fast as I can type, without having to pause to think.

This is an interesting tie-in to something Eckhart Tolle said in A New Earth. If you do something – even the simplest thing – in complete harmony with your higher self (and I’m paraphrasing a bit) then what you do will improve the entire spirit of the planet – even if what you’re doing is sitting on a mat watching the birds fly by. On the other hand, if you try to do something wonderful, and it is NOT in complete harmony with your higher self, then – no matter how externally wonderful it may seem – you are harming yourself and everyone on the planet. You are bringing an energy of disharmony into the world, and ultimately, that energy is negative and will have negative effects. When we work from the higher self, we are a conduit for the Spirit into the world:

For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure (Phil 2:13 WEB)

Some degree of planning or scheduling is probably useful in a world where everything runs by the clock and people are expected to produce on schedule. But perhaps we overdo it. I’m going to reconsider the importance of goals in the larger scheme of things.

Of course, this can be risky. As Steve Pavlina puts it:

Dealing with the unpredictability of what’s going to happen next is extremely unsettling. In order to make it through this, I have to let go of trying to control anything. I have to let go and trust

Which is what faith is all about. It’s not about clinging tenaciously to a dogma. It’s about trusting that Spirit will see you through.

More about this guru

• The Trap of Perfectionism
• Personal Power II
• The Most Important Thing - Revisited
• The Purpose of Purpose

This morning I tried something different – adapting mindfulness or walking meditation to driving. This seemed like a good match, since it actually makes you MORE aware of your surroundings. Rather than going within, your focus is on being fully present in the situation.

The technique is very simple. Start driving. Turn off your radio or music. Focus entirely on the sense impressions of driving. Be fully present in the experience of driving your car, and don’t focus on any inner dialog or thoughts. If you become aware that you are thinking about something other than the experience of driving, gently return your focus to the road in front of you. Don’t judge yourself for your thoughts, but keep returning your focus to the road, the car and your driving.

Naturally, you should continue to check your mirrors, watch your blind spots and follow good driving practice. In fact you should be more intently aware of your surroundings than usual. Be aware of the road and your surroundings with the same calm intensity of a cat watching a mouse hole. This is probably a better technique to practice on a routine drive, like a commute, than when you are trying to find a new location, although it would probably work with any kind of driving.

No two meditations are alike, and no two meditators are alike – so don’t judge your own experiences. What you experience is what you experience, and it’s fine. But here are a few observations on my own meditation this morning. First of all, it was a bit tiring. Being mindful in a complex situation like driving can be slightly overwhelming. The trick was to relax and be aware of all the experiences in general, rather than trying to shift a laser focus of awareness between all the various things going on.

I also discovered that I have a habit of giving myself verbal mental directions while I’m driving, telling myself where to turn and when to shift. That was a bit odd. But at times during the meditation I felt a wonderful sense of joy. Life seemed so good. Happiness was staring me in the face, waiting for me to shut up long enough to notice it. During these times, I had the odd sensation that I was driving on a route I had never seen before. I actually wondered for a moment if I was lost. The truth is, I suppose, that I had NOT seen it before – not really SEEN it. In fact, the day before this experiment, I had one of those frequent experiences of arriving at a particular turn on my route and being unable to remember how I had arrived, because my driving was on autopilot while I was lost in thought.

The experiment seemed like a success to me. At the very least, I think it won’t hurt my driving at all. It may improve it. Give driving meditation a try and let me know how it works for you.

More about this guru

• A Gnostic Experience
• Transcending Fear
• Finding the Quiet
• Meditations for Manifesting
• Centering Prayer - Christian Meditation
• The Power of Now

All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream – Edgar Allan Poe

So I went to see Inception last night with most of the family. First a general review. It was an excellent and entertaining movie. It combined espionage, science fiction  and action with mind-bending psychological and metaphysical elements. I don’t generally go out of my way to see a Leonardo DiCaprio movie, but he seems to be getting better.

But my reason for commenting here is because of the use of the dream metaphor. Just as a warning, my commentary below may be considered a spoiler by some, so you may want to see the movie first.

The movie involves shared dreaming, dreams-within-dreams, and the strange phenomena that in dreams, we are often unaware that we are dreaming, and confuse dreaming with real life. As the characters struggle to avoid becoming lost in their multi-layered dreams and strive to wake up, a natural question arises – what if the waking world is actually yet another layer of dream, from which we need to awaken? In the film, this speculation is immediately and forcefully dismissed as pathological. But the director knows that he has planted a seed of doubt in our minds, and he subtly toys with that doubt right up to the end of the movie. Seeds of doubt are another theme that runs throughout the movie.

In fact, dreaming and waking have been used in various spiritual traditions for thousands of years as a metaphor for ordinary consciousness and enlightenment. In fact, the name “Buddha” translates as “the awakened one”.  In the Gnostic “Hymn of the Pearl” from the Acts of Thomas, the son of a King is sent on a mission to retrieve a treasure, but falls asleep and forgets who he is. His father sends a letter to remind him:

Awake and arise from your sleep,
and hear the words of our letter.
Remember that you are a son of kings,
consider the slavery you are serving.

Unenlightened consciousness is indeed very much like dreaming. We become entranced with the little details of our lives and the stories unfolding around us. We forget and become unconscious to a larger context around us. We forget our connection to our highest self and become attached to the particulars. Many enlightened teachers have confirmed that the process of enlightenment is like waking up from a deep and not very nice dream.

It’s interesting that several spiritual and psychological schools and techniques use dream work, dream journaling and lucid dreaming as tools for self-development. Ken Wilber suggests that dream work is one of the few resources we have for accessing our shadow aspects – which are normally invisible to the conscious mind.

Like the dream engineers in Inception, we need to become better architects of the dream world in order to become more conscious in the waking world – and ultimately – awake to the larger world of spirit.

More about this guru

• Four Easy Steps to Enlightenment
• Stay in Bed
• The Joy of Being Wrong
• Eckhart Tolle on Enlightenment
• A New Earth
• Dream Interpretation
• The Power of Now
• Beginning Lucid Dreaming
• More on Lucid Dreaming
• The Problem of Consciousness

Bishop Keizer

I’ve written elsewhere on this site about  Bishop Keizer, who is probably the most learned man I know on the subjects of esoteric and mystical Christianity. Bishop Keizer and the Home Temple are part of the Independent Catholic movement, has all the twenty two known lines of apostolic authority (far more than the Pope, as it happens). Bishop Keizer, who ordained me to the priesthood, has also been ordaining women for years.

Bishop Keizer explained that he took this action in honor of Mary Magdalene and the scores of other women in the early Christian period who served in positions of leadership and authority, but who were systematically written out of official church history – the Magdalene herself being falsely stigmatized as a prostitute.

The formal decree prescribing excommunication for those who ordain women comes from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a name changed in 1965 from the original (historically infamous) name of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Pope Benedict himself, in his former name of Joseph Ratzinger, presided over this body, which enforces the doctrinal decrees of the Vatican.

Below I’ve included the youtube video of Bishop Keizer’s announcement, as well as the texts of the rationale for the excommunication and the ceremony itself. Those women (and men) who feel called to priesthood are invited to visit Bishop Keizer’s website at www.hometemple.org and look into his seminary program.

TEXT OF RATIONALE

“I don’t excommunicate people. But I am excommunicating the Pope in order to empower a subtle and invisible spiritual process that will result in his removal from leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, and replacement by a Pope grounded in the true historical teachings of Yeshua, the Master Jesus, which are embedded in every human heart through the Image of Godhead and the Yetzer Ha-Tov or Good Motive, and opposed by the Yetzer Ha-Ra or Evil or Egoistic Motive. The current Pope represents the wrong-headed ideals of the medieval Council for the Inquisition, which resulted in massive injustice and genocide against my spiritual predecessors, the so-called heretics. The name of the Inquisition council was recently changed for public relation purposes to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or CDF, and before he was Pope, Joseph Ratzinger served as Prefect or head of that order, which deals out punishment for grave offenses against Catholic Canon Law. This week, in his role as Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger has ordered the CDF to deal out retribution against Catholic Bishops who ordain women Priests-another major wrongheaded step backwards in a series of Ratinger’s zealous revival of Inquisition-era mentality that will probably result in the future bankruptcy and demise of Catholic Christianity. I am an independent Bishop with all twenty-two extant lines of valid Apostolic Succession, even more Apostolic lineages than the Pope has, since mine also include the so-called heretical lineages. I have been training, ordaining, and consecrating women Priests and Bishops for over thirty years in the Home Temple, and I have great faith in the spiritual and institutional leadership insights of women in partnership with men.
Being a scholar/Bishop grounded in the authentic teachings of Yeshua, I have the right, the authority, the responsibility, and the power to excommunicate this Pope for the benefit of all beings, and for the sake of a future Catholic Church and the New Humanity that is now coming into manifestation as proclaimed by the Master Jesus, and that is need of spiritual leadership that represents the humanistic wisdom and compassion that emanate from the authentic Heart and Mind of Christ within.”

TEXT OF RITUAL DONE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE MESSIANIC SEDER MASS

“In the Name of Mar Yeshua, the Master Jesus, and for the Honor of the scores of women leaders of the original home congregations of Christians saluted in the authentic Epistles of Paul, but later denounced in the Pseudo-Pauline Epistles composed by a later generation who used Paul’s authority as a tool in their campaign to systematically ban women from church leadership, and for the great woman Apostle Miriam Magdalene, who was finally declared in the third century to be identical with the anonymous repentant prostitute of the Synoptic Gospels in a final attempt defame female leadership in the churches:
I, Dr. Lewis Keizer, Presiding Bishop of the Home Temple, validly holding and transmitting all twenty-two extant lines of Apostolic Succession from the Master Yeshua, training and ordaining both men and women Deacons, Priests, and Bishops for home ministry and volunteer interfaith chaplaincies for over thirty years, joined by Bishops Willa and Daniel, this day, Sunday, July 18, 2010,  do hereby Excommunicate from the community of the truly faithful the man called Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph A. Ratzinger, former Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or CDF, which was known in earlier centuries as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition. Pope Benedict XVI this week made the ordination of women into a crime against Canon Law equivalent in gravity to the crime of child molestation by Catholic priests, and making Bishops who ordain women to Priesthood referable to the CDF for punishment. Catholic Bishops cannot be excommunicated or stripped of their Apostolic Consecration, but they can be deposed from their sees and salaries. The Home Temple has no such rules regarding excommunication of Bishops, and thus we formally Excommunicate Pope Benedict XVI from the Body of Christ, which is the body of Bar-Enash, the so-called Son-of-man Messiah, the Second Adam, the New Humanity.”
[All Bishops put hands on candle and Lewis extinguishes it. Lewis declares: "So be it!" Willa and Daniel answer: "And so it is!"]
LEWIS: And now may the Spirit of the Eternal One and the Mind of Christ arise from within the heart of humanity to provide true spiritual leadership, not only in the Roman Catholic Church, but in all the Christian churches, based on the Halakah of spiritual life and the coming Sovereignty of God’s Way within the New Humanity taught and proclaimed by the Master Jesus. May the atavistic doctrines and dogmas of men opposing science, birth control, human love in all its expressions, and the leadership of women, be overcome and replaced by the love and wisdom of Christ that dwells in the heart of the New Humanity SO BE IT, AND SO IT IS! . Amen Amen Amen.”

Bishop Lewis Keizer,M.Div., Ph.D.  Presiding Bishop of the Home Temple www.hometemple.org See also www.wisdomseminars.org and the Home Temple Seminary distance learning program for ordination training at www.hometemple.org/PROGRAM.htm. Subscribe to Dr. Keizer’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/lewiskeizer and view the series entitled THE PRE-CHRISTIAN TEACHINGS OF YESHUA. For information about THE BISHOP’S WORLD BLESSING CIRCUMNAVIGATION go to www.hometemple.org/blog/ and watch the presentation at http://hometemple.org/BISHOP%20KEIZER’S%20WORLD%20BLESSING%20VOYAGE.WMV

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This bias also works on the positive side of course. We’ll gladly accept “facts” that confirm our opinions.

There is a substantial body of psychological research showing that people tend to interpret information with an eye toward reinforcing their preexisting views. If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn’t. This is known as “motivated reasoning.” Whether or not the consistent information is accurate, we might accept it as fact, as confirmation of our beliefs. This makes us more confident in said beliefs, and even less likely to entertain facts that contradict them.

Jumping to conclusions is actually a mental shortcut that served us well in survival situations. It can be unhealthy to stop and ponder whether this particular lion, unlike the last one you met, might in fact be friendly. Doubt and hesitation are unwelcome when decisive action is needed.

But this survival instinct can backfire, and it can be used against us to manipulate us by our leaders, our culture, and even our religions. Research shows that the stronger and more deeply held our opinions, the less likely we are to be swayed by any facts. And while we have no problem seeing this tendency in people who agree with us, the trick is to see it in ourselves.

The best defense against this and other cognitive biases is to be aware of them and to

Many of my most transformative and wonderful experiences in life have been the result of discovering I was wrong about something. I’ve gotten to the point where I actually relish the th

rill of uncovering some new opinion or aspect of myself where false ideas are lurking. To find them opens us up to new experiences and new learning. Learn to embrace them.

As for convincing the unwilling of their errors, the article in the Globe is less than optimistic. As Von Schiller put it, “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain”. Lord Acton was a bit kinder, and put it like this:

“There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.”

The Globe article tends to agree. While occasionally a brutal assault of facts will change an entrenched opinion, the only thing that seemed to work well in changing wrong opinions was an overall increase in the opinion-holder’s self esteem. This makes perfect sense, as when we become identified with our opinions, they become part of our ego structure. To lose an opinion to which we’ve become attached is to lose a part of ourselves. Only if we have a strong self-worth are we comfortable risking that kind of danger.

At the bottom of it all, the primary negative emotion in this and so many other things is fear. Our little ego’s fear of being further diminished by having the ideas it associates with damaged. By identifying, instead, with our higher selves, we learn to trust. We feel safe opening ourselves up to change, because we have faith that our true selves will survive that change. We develop an attitude of love and acceptance toward the universe, and, as the writer of First John says, perfect love casts out fear.

More about this guru

• Inception – a Review
• Transcending Fear
• Eckhart Tolle on Enlightenment
• Four Easy Steps to Enlightenment
• A New Earth

As a bit of background, psoriasis is a skin disorder that is currently thought of an auto-immune disease, with probable genetic components and various “triggers”. Basically, the body’s immune system attacks its own skin cells, causing those cells to die off at a much faster rate than normal. Everyone sheds skin cells every day, but in the case of psoriasis, the immune reaction causes itching, painful red patches that quickly form white scales and flakes, which shed like dandruff (in fact, some dandruff is caused by psoriasis).  If you’ve ever seen this on someone, rest assured that psoriasis isn’t contagious – just painful, aggravating and embarrassing. Among the things that can trigger outbreaks are stress, weight gain, lack of sunshine… but many outbreaks seem rather random.

Psoriasis is notoriously difficult to treat, and most of the treatments have dangerous side effects. For me, none of the treatments have ever done much good at all. Only one thing seems to have reversed psoriasis for me. On two occasions when I had gall bladder issues that were so bad I couldn’t eat for a week or more – the condition began to disappear. This caused me to wonder about the dietary triggers for psoriasis.

As it turns out, there have been alternative health practitioners for years (including Edgar Cayce in his trances) who have believed that psoriasis is a reaction to various foods, possibly in relation to so-called “leaky bowel syndrome”. The theory is that in some people, the intestinal wall becomes too permeable, and allows various substances to pass into the bloodstream that don’t really belong there, causing various problems including triggering psoriasis outbreaks. I’m not so sure about this theoretical mechanism, but I can personally attest that for some people, food and psoriasis are linked. Whether this is “leaky bowel”, allergies, or simply some interaction with the immune system I’m not sure.

In any case, many people, as it turns out, report some success with fasting, and with juice fasting as a treatment for psoriasis. Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who’s books I’ve discussed elsewhere, is a big proponent of therapeutic fasting.  I’ve tried fasting completely (taking only water) several years ago. It helped the psoriasis quite a bit, but I was unable to continue a complete fast more than a week without becoming too weak to function normally. And one of the things about treating psoriasis is that if you stop too soon – if there are patches left, the condition tends to simply come right back. If I had the resources to do a medically supervised fast, this might be an option. But at the moment it’s not.

During my gallbladder episodes, the only things I was able to keep down were lemon-lime soda and a bit of apple juice. This suggests that a juice fast might be able to do the job. Quite a few people report success in treating psoriasis with either a juice fast for a number of weeks – or alternating juice one week with fruits and vegetables the next.

So I’m giving it a try. I’ve been primarily on juices for three days now, and I’m already seeing about a 30% improvement in the psoriasis (I’m also losing a bit of weight, which is just fine). I am, however, making some modifications to the “ideal” juice fast which I feel are necessary for my situation.

1. Fresh, raw juices are said to be the best for juice fasting. I don’t have the time or money to go that route. I’m using store-bought apple, grape, orange and “green” juice.

2. If I get so hungry that I feel in danger of going off the diet, I’ll have fruits and veggies if needed. At the end of a week of juice, I’ll evaluate and decide if I want to stick with juice or alternate with a week of fruits and vegetables.

3. I’m occasionally expected to eat out on business. If this happens I’ll stick with a salad.

4. I’m allowing myself tea. I tried allowing coffee but it didn’t go over too well, making me suspect caffeine has been a problem. 

5. I take a multi-vitamin just to cover the bases.

So far, this is working out much better than the total fast. I’m much less hungry, my energy is good, and the results so far are as good as a total fast. It remains to be seen if this will continue.

If you or someone you know has psoriasis, you might look into juice fasting. I’ll report on my results here and tweak the diet as needed as I go along.

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• Eat to Live
• Amazing Raw Vegan Chocolate Mousse
• Raw Food Made Easy
• Raw Food and Weight Loss