There's a lot of talk about introverts and extroverts lately, and quite frankly, I don't believe viewing yourself as either of those things is very healthy. I think we all know the dangers of defining ourselves through the ego, and that's exactly what calling yourself an introvert or an extrovert does, it's an ego definition. It limits how you see yourself, and it limits your behavior too.

An introvert is focused upon the inner, while an extrovert is focused upon the outer. Who can say their lives are fully either of those things? The inner and the outer are constantly interacting, you bring up the inner and share it with the outer, that's self-expression. Likewise, you take what you see in the outer and integrate it into your inner world, that's how you experience life. The inner and the outer aren't really separate at all, but deeply interconnected, and the "line" between them is largely an illusion created by your mind.

We live in a materialistic, outward-focused society, and it's difficult to fit in if you don't conform to this paradigm. Spiritually-oriented people can't help but feel alienated in this type of society, because it discredits and ignores the inner world. The more empathic beings generally withdraw into themselves, and pull away from society because it offers little that really feeds the Soul.

So the introvert is more comfortable alone, and the extrovert is more comfortable around others. Let me rephrase that so the problems with seeing yourself and others based upon this dualistic paradigm is more clear. An extrovert is less comfortable being alone, and an introvert is less comfortable around others. These are both dysfunctional behaviors. You can't live your whole life alone, nor can you live your whole life surrounded by others, so if you view yourself as an introvert/extrovert, you're always going to have uncomfortable situations.

If you don't like being alone, you really need to look deep within yourself and ask why. There's a problem you have with yourself, and your own self-image is likely defined heavily based upon how others see you. Releasing those bonds will lead to greater self-confidence and help create a stronger social presence.

Humans are social beings, and avoiding interacting with other people is not healthy. Relationships are powerful things, and your own growth and development is assisted by our interactions with other people. Just like the extrovert, an introvert is usually overly concerned with how other people see them, but to avoid the issue they just limit their social interaction. There's a nasty trap there because then social skills start to atrophy, which leads to more awkwardness in social situations, which leads to even less social interaction.

If we had a society that really accepted people the way they are, introverts and extroverts would disappear, there'd just be happy people. I really see an introvert as someone who needs to work on their outer world, and an extrovert as someone who needs to work on their inner world. Then you can truly be a holistic being, and not defined by such shallow labels.

The Galactic Free Press
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http://soundofheart.org/galacticfreepress/content/transcending-introvertextrovert-duality

If you're like most people, you live almost entirely in your mind. There's a constant internal dialog going on, the mind always talking to itself. "I need to do this...", "What if that...", "Yesterday I...".  As soon as one thought is finished, another pops up. This is going on non-stop, so much so that really paying attention to all these thoughts would start to drive you nuts, so all the thinking starts getting pushed into the unconscious where it goes on automatically, habitually.

This is dangerous though, and the fact that nearly everyone else is doing it too doesn't make it any less so. Your thoughts influence enormously how you perceive your world. In new age jargon, this is the "you create your reality".  Your beliefs are the lens through which you see the world, though for most, it's more accurate to say your beliefs are your world. To let the mind ramble on unconsciously is very dangerous because it will go on absorbing, and modifying beliefs without any conscious direction from you, and these beliefs will direct your whole life.

When you're unaware of your own thoughts, you're like a leaf blowing in the wind, and it becomes very easy for people to manipulate you. The media can just repeat something over and over again, and whether or not it's true, the majority of people will start repeating it as fact. Most mainstream forms of media, advertisers and politicians have refined manipulating people into an art. They even know the emotional triggers people have that feed into unconsciousness, one of which is sex. Get people a little bit aroused, get the mind excited and it becomes easy to sneak thoughts into them. Other common triggers are things like violence, fear, or the promise of money. If someone can convince your mind that they can fulfill your desires, they can very easily control you.

When you're caught up in your own mind, it's difficult to really hear what another person is saying too. Your own thoughts take precedence in your mind, and they can very easily distract you. You go on half-listening or half-reading what another is saying and at the same time you're listening to your own thoughts. You get overloaded, too much to take in at once, and so you go on auto-pilot and you operate almost entirely unconsciously.

Unconsciousness reacts, and a reaction is always based upon the past. If you live unconsciously, you will just repeat the past over and over again. It's very easy to live that way, and it's very safe, at least by societal standards. I said it's very dangerous before because you allow yourself to be manipulated by psychopaths who exploit you for their own power and greed, all the while denying your own Soul, but by societal standards living unconsciously is very safe. There's a comfort in knowing your life is already all planned out for you. It may be deeply unfulfilling and maddeningly repetitive, but there's a feeling of security in that consistency and a deep fear of breaking out of it.

In my life, I have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow, I don't even know what's going to happen this afternoon. If you truly live in the moment, if you really live consciously, all you know for certain is what's occurring in this moment, the past is just echoes, and the future is endless possibilities. In living presently, everything opens up, life moves from the known to the unknown to the Unknowable, the Ultimate. For the unconscious person, this is terrifying. When the unconscious mind is faced with the unknown, it starts jumping to all the negative possibilities. It starts focusing upon what it might lose, and in dwelling upon all these negative possibilities, the mind actually puts energy into creating them. A conscious person knows that they don't know what's going to happen, that they can't know, it's an unconscious person that believes they've got their whole life figured out.

If there's any sin, any evil, any wrong in the world, it's living unconsciously. You can blame the warmongers who control your governments, but they're only there because they can manipulate the minds of the unconscious masses. It's unconsciousness that's the root of all these problems. Unconsciousness is the greatest evil, though you've been conditioned to believe otherwise, you've been taught that consciousness, that having your own thoughts, leads to wickedness. Of course, nobody told you that so plainly, you were taught it in a much more subtle way.

Most religions teach that people are inherently evil. In fact religion has to teach this, it's survival is dependent upon that belief since if you were inherently good there'd be no need for religion, would there? Even in the absence of religion, society still operates this way, that's why you need to be taught virtues and ethics, to be taught what's right and what's wrong, and it's why society needs rules to enforce these behaviors. You never really learn to tell right from wrong with these systems of morality though, what they actually teach is how to behave mechanically, unconsciously. You're taught to listen to this external system of morals and to trust in the "authority" of the people in charge. Through this contradictory system, which is supposed to make people good, one of society's greatest evils is perpetuated, war.

People aren't inherently evil though, that's little more than an ancient myth that unfortunately still lives in the very core of our society.  Science has recently shown that it's in our base nature to be caring, compassionate and helpful. Not only that, but we naturally feel better when behaving that way. From an evolutionary standpoint, of course this is true, because helping each other out makes us stronger as a whole. Even for a materialist, it's giving love and being loved that leads to lasting happiness.

We're taught things like greed. In the madness of our capitalist society, we're even taught that greed is good. We're taught that there's not enough for everyone, and that we've got to get what's ours before someone else does. We're even taught that the richest and greediest are helping society as a whole, and through giving them more money and power, everyone prospers. I get the feeling that most people are starting to see that belief for the ridiculous lie that it is, but the selfish greed we've been taught still remains. It disguises itself through rationalizations such as making "good financial sense".

All these things work against consciousness. Consciousness is always fresh, always new, always seeing things in different ways. It's not something planned out beforehand, it's something that happens entirely in this moment. We've been taught that behaving unconsciously makes us good people though, and that truly making our own decisions, by breaking free of the rigid societal structures, we'll bring chaos upon ourselves and threaten society as a whole. It's true in a sense, consciousness is a threat to unconsciousness, but behaving consciously won't make you evil, quite the opposite, you will discover a much deeper sense of right and wrong. You will have your own compass, your own direction. People behaving this way would be an enormous benefit to society as a whole, but the people currently in power would lose all the precious illusion they've built up, so they're aggressively against true consciousness.

It's not just our governments that are corrupt, it's people's minds. That's the only place corruption really exists anyway. The most helpful thing you can do to free yourself from the current system is not to fight against it, but to look within yourself, pay close attention to everything you think and feel. Free yourself from all corruption, all unconsciousness and fear. It will not be easy at first, nor will you be finished overnight, but you will be giving yourself a priceless gift. If people were only as devoted to their own awareness as they are to their jobs, the world would already be vastly transformed for the better.

The things I'm talking about here may seem fairly mundane, not nearly as exciting as chakras and higher dimensions, but what I'm talking about here, awareness, is the key that unlocks all those things. Spiritual people are always talking about awakening, but what is awakening? Isn't it simply awareness? Isn't that what happens every morning when you wake up? You were sleeping, and now you're awake, now you're more aware. Spiritual awakening is just a heightened level of awareness, it's awareness of more than just the physical realm. You don't need a bunch of bells and whistles to get there, no need for a spiritual books, gurus, chanting, all you need is awareness.

Greater awareness of the body and mind will naturally lead to awareness of the Soul. It's the unconsciousness of the mind that distracts from the Soul in the first place, but unconsciousness cannot thrive when the being is aware. Pay close attention to everything, do not let your mind ramble unconsciously. It will likely drive you a little nuts at first, and while the manic state of the mind is not a pretty thing to watch, keep at it. Really, all you're doing is acknowledging the way your mind really is. With awareness, little by little, the mind will start to calm. Not by fighting against the mind, not by struggle, but through simple awareness. The worries and fears that thrived in unconsciousness start to shrink when exposed to the light.

I've noticed a lot of people use spirituality like some mental bubble gum. You chew on something for a while, then when it has lost its flavor you spit it out and look for something new to consume. It's a form of entertainment, some excitement and distraction from an otherwise boring life. I don't want to give you any distractions from your life though, I want you to pay very very close attention to all parts of your life, so close that it becomes impossible to ignore any part, whether ecstatic joy or extreme pain. In this you will be transformed, your feelings will become guideposts in how to live your life, not as an imitation of someone else, but as a celebration of your true self.

The Galactic Free Press
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I want to describe the process I go through to clear stagnant energy from my subtle body and open up the chakras. This is something that has brought enormous joy into my life, peace into my heart, cleared away anxiety and depression, and also brought much greater health and energy to my physical body as well.

I've learned to not worry, and to work with life instead of struggling against it. It's also brought greater intuition, empathy and artistic talent into my life. It's been a holistic change, and I could easily write a whole article just listing the benefits alone.

Before I get into the process more, I need to do a bit of a disclaimer. This is not something to be done ritualistically. It's not meant to encourage unconscious, habitual repetition, in fact it's meant to break you out of that. This is about living life, your life, and how you do that is up to you. You are beautifully unique and this isn't about telling you the right and wrong ways to live your life. This is what has worked for me, and I'm sharing it with the intention that it may assist you as well.

Now the first step is to quiet the mind. To consciously clear the energetic body, you need to be aware of it, and that's very difficult when an overactive mind is constantly demanding attention. This is where meditation comes in, learning to let go of the mind and embrace Consciousness. Meditation is simply quieting the mind, it doesn't matter so much how you do it. I started with sitting closed-eyed, alone, in a quiet room, then gradually expanded the meditation to encompass every aspect of my life. Eventually I stopped needing a peaceful outer environment to have a peaceful inner environment, though at first, a peaceful, quiet spot was very helpful in quieting the mind.

Here's a couple tips when meditating: First, you can't force the mind to be quiet. That's using the mind to try to quiet the mind, which is only going to excite the mind more. Thinking about quieting the mind at all is just going to feed into it more. Meditation is letting go of thinking, which is an enormous paradigm shift from the thinking-based world most people live in. Don't try to silence the mind, don't fight it, don't resist at all, simply observe. Watch your thoughts, be aware of them, but don't get caught up in them. This is difficult because most people operate on the ego level where you believe yourself to be your thoughts. You become very emotionally-invested in all your thoughts, but you really don't need to worry about all that. Wouldn’t it be a relief to just let them go? Watch your thoughts, become the observer, and the more you do this, the less power they'll have over you. The mind is like a parade, let it march on by. It likely won’t happen instantly, but if you can keep watching your thoughts without losing yourself in them, then mind will start to slow down, and then the real cleansing of the energetic body can begin.

While there's similarities between the physical and energetic bodies, they're quite different as well. The feelings that come from the energy body are fundamentally different than the physical senses like sight and smell. It also doesn't help that our language is almost entirely based upon the physical realm so describing the feelings that come from the energy body is a bit of a challenge. It really has to be felt directly, understanding it intellectually isn't enough. Joy, bliss, ecstasy, child-like wonder, those are the kind of feelings that come from a healthy, free-flowing energy body. On the other hand, an unhealthy energy body can create negative emotions like fear and anxiety. Remember that these are just words, and there's a depth to the feelings that goes far beyond such simple labels. The activation of the energy body can also produce sensations such as feeling pressure, tingling, and energy rushing through you. These feelings can range from gentle and soothing, to very very intense.

The most effective way I've found to clear the energy body is to work directly with the energy itself. The mind just gets in the way, it tries to interpret, label and analyze the feelings which makes things unnecessarily complicated. What's needed is a switch from a thinking-based paradigm to a feeling-based one, which assists greatly in understanding the Higher Realms too.  This is also the difference between doing and being, doing is always done with expectations of results, while being is simply present. Presence is essential to feeling the subtle energy body within.

I bring my attention inward, not necessarily to any specific place, though the energy coming from the chakras is usually the easiest to feel, so that's a good place to start. You can also direct your attention to any place you feel muscle tension, discomfort, pleasure, tingling, really any sensation is fine. Look at it, simply feel it, and one of two things will happen. The first possibility is that it will come alive, the feeling may grow, move around, pulsate, and change. This is really what's happening within and around you in every moment, but the movements of these subtle energies only happen subconsciously for most people. These currents of energy flow up and down our bodies, from the base of the feet to the crown of the head, and in and out and through everything around us as well. When you start to tap into this realm of energy, a whole new dimension will be added to your life.

Now I mentioned something else may happen when you bring your attention inwards, something not quite as miraculous, but still equally important to be aware of. In the "past" you had traumatic experiences, and these things you still carry with you. We're taught to not deal with negative emotions fully, but to seek ways to distract ourselves from them. Through TV, computers, food, work, drugs, all these are types of addictions, ways of dealing with negative emotions by distracting ourselves. The emotions aren't cleared at all, but simply pushed into the unconscious. It's like cleaning your house by sweeping all the dirt under the rug. It's all still there, it's just unseen.

When you quiet your mind, and bring your attention inwards, this stuff can't help but come up. When you store all this negative energy in your unconscious, it's really being stored in your energy body and disrupting it's natural flow. By attempting to avoid all your negative emotions, you horde them up, and through this you become a magnet for fear, pain, and disease as well. The energy body, the physical body, and the mind all mirror each other. Imbalance in one is reflected in all the others.

So when you bring your attention inwards, and these negative emotions come up, these memories of the past come up, worries, anxiety or stress comes up, simply be aware. Don't react to them, simply be aware of them, feeling them. Don't try to fight, don't run away, just be aware. It’s only energy and when it’s seen fully for what it is, it can be transformed and released. The mind is going to want to start thinking about these things, and then your attention will shift back towards your mind instead of the more subtle feelings. The emotional baggage you carry stays with you because the original experience was never completed. You didn't want to feel the pain fully, so the emotions were pushed into the unconscious mind, where they remain.

It's good to feel these things, it creates the opportunity for true resolution and healing. That's something that can't happen when you're trying to avoid your pain. Look at the feelings directly and they will start to lose the power they had over you. Hidden in the darkness of unconsciousness, the parts of yourself you don't want to confront can seem like big scary monsters. When brought into the light of consciousness though, they don't seem so big and scary anymore. The old energies are transformed, the once stagnant energies become alive again, and the more you do this, the more you become alive again.

When you really pay attention to your energy field, another miracle starts to happen. The lines between the inner and the outer start to blur. You start to see how the inner and the outer worlds are deeply connected, and how your energy field is constantly interacting with everything around you. When this happens, you can't help but start to feel energy from other people as well.

Now when feeling energy from others, it's very easy to take on that energy yourself. Emotions are contagious, even for people totally unconscious of the fact that they're absorbing energy from other people. These emotions excite the mind, which then draws attention away from the subtle energy body, and makes the kind of healing I'm talking about here all the more difficult. For this reason, the healing of the energy body is generally done alone or with others who are at least somewhat balanced themselves. However, simply because it's easier doesn't mean that's the best way of doing it, and being able to find balance around unbalanced people is enormously beneficial.

Personally, when I'm around people who carry a lot of negative emotions, I have to keep clearing my energy and grounding. If you’re not centered, it’s very easy to start taking on other’s problems and this world is full of people who are more than willing to share their problems with you. I’m not suggesting that you don’t help people, or ignore what they’re going through, but you can do those things without making their problems your own. In fact, by not getting caught up in someone else’s emotional world, you can assist people much better in transcending their problems. Of course, whether or not that occurs is ultimately up to them, not you.

Every moment of your life is an opportunity for growth, healing and expansion. This moment, right now, is the only moment that healing actually occurs. Don’t put conditions on it, don’t push it into the “future”, just be present and aware.

The Galactic Free Press
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http://soundofheart.org/galacticfreepress/content/how-i-clear-my-energetic-field-balance-chakras

A new year, and a number of failed predictions for the previous year from various sources. I see the same patterns repeating themselves, so this message seems relevant again:

This is something we get asked continually, "When is Ascension?", "When is First Contact?", "When is The Event?". I wonder if people have any idea how long these questions have been asked? This whole idea that a day or a series of events would come along to solve humanity's problems is ancient, it can be found in Zoroastrianism which predates Judaism. And this belief that it's all going to happen "soon", do you know how long people have believed this? It's part of the bible, so at the very least around 2,000 years, probably much longer.

For thousands of years this day has been predicted over and over and over again, and yet it hasn't come. Even today, we seem to get a new prediction of when "it" will happen at least once a week. It's a shortcut to popularity by predicting something will happen, people like that. We see the stats on our site, and we know how popular those messages are. People really want to believe this, and I wonder if they're conscious of the same patterns repeating over and over again?

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

We've watched more of these predictions fail than I care to count. Even now, I know there's at least one prediction of something happening sometime this week, and another predicting something 8 days from when I write this. So easy it is to just believe someone else and wait, but is that how real change occurs? How long have people tried this for?

His disciples said to him, "When is the Kingdom going to come?"
Jesus said, "It is not by waiting for it that it will come. No one will say, 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it."
Gospel of Thomas 113

What's a better source of telling where humanity's consciousness is at? Looking at the way they actually behave, or believing a channeler? The fact that we rely upon channelers to tell us where we're at, instead of looking and seeing for ourselves, says a whole lot about where humanity's consciousness is at.

Is humanity ready? Well, ready for what exactly? I know a lot of people think ETs are going to come share advanced technology with Humanity, yet I don't believe the ETs are that dumb. You don't give a gun to a 3 year-old, and you certainly don't give something capable of far more destruction to a race of beings who demonstrate daily they're not ready for that level of responsibility. How many wars do you think are happening right now, how often do people still kill each other? The more naive might believe the world is at peace right now, or there's only a couple isolated wars. I count 43 wars that have had at least some killing since 2013, and there's around 20,000+ deaths from these in 2014 alone [Update: Now 45 wars, and a total of around 175,000 deaths in 2014]. Is this a race of beings ready for Higher Consciousness?

On the internet, we have the ability to search the whole world for news stories, and cherry-pick only what we want to hear. You can believe the people in countries like Egypt are "waking up", standing up for themselves and doing something about a corrupt government. We even reported about this on the Galactic Free Press. Now that they have a new government, do you know what it's up to? Have you heard the recent news? They're planning mass executions, how incredibly barbaric! An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and I do not have much hope for the new Egyptian government when they behave just like the old one. Revolutions are often like that, ones that make substantial progress instead of just keeping people spinning in circles seem to be the rarity. I wont even get into the horrors happening now in places like South Sudan and Syria.

Is this what it looks like when humanity is ready for "ascension"? I don't believe that, collectively you would begin creating Heaven on Earth, not killing each other and poisoning the Planet. Even now when the incredible corruption of the business, banks and governments has been revealed, they still get to operate like they're "above the law". Collectively, people have reacted with apathy. They don't want to look at the ugly reality of what humans are doing, they want someone else to come fix things. So many people are waiting for an honest politician to come fix things, religious people are waiting for God to come fix things, new agers are waiting for ETs to come fix things. Meanwhile, the mess grows bigger while everyone waits for someone else to come clean it up.

This whole myth of external salvation is part of what keeps people apathetic and complacent. Every day I see it though, people claiming someone or something is coming along with the solution to all our problems. Meanwhile I don't see much lessening of our problems, at least collectively. The world's drama goes back and forth, progression happens, but so does regression.

Part of this disease is people believing it's up to a single person to fix the whole world. Often people believe that they're the "Chosen one" with the "solution". I personally know multiple people who believe they're the second coming of Jesus, the new "world teacher" or the Matreiya. It's a common delusion, and one our society actually encourages. People want someone else to come along and fix their life, to tell them exactly what to do. This is a form of ignorance, it stems from people not wanting to take personal responsibility, yet all the unauthentic religious and spiritual teachers encourage it.

You're not going to fix the world through avoiding personal responsibility. The world you have now is a result of what this collectively creates. You are responsible for the way your life is, not someone or something else, and when the majority of people really understand this, they'll start creating the world they've always wanted. They'll realize what a beautiful Planet they're already living on, and human beings will reflect that beauty instead of working to destroy it.

To some, it may seem like I don't believe in ascension, but this isn't true at all. What I don't believe is that the current behaviors of Humanity are going to get them there. There is slow progress being made, but it's not the kind of radical transformation yet that brings people to God. Collectively you're still inching forward, and when people are truly ready for Peace, they will collectively be choosing Love, not the fear that's still being spread.

I'm not even sure what exactly is meant by "ascension" for most people, it seems to me this idea seems caught up in the Christian religion. People want this day to come when all the "evil" people get what's coming to them, and the "good" people rise up to Heaven. To me, ascension is the realization that you never left Heaven, and it's the reawakening into your own Multi-Dimensional Nature. You don't need to go anywhere or wait for anything, in fact doing those will just push Heaven further away. Individually, you can choose this for yourself right now, though don't expect it to happen overnight. It's a process, and it's far more about living your own Life than expectation or beliefs.

When people are ready for ascension they will actively be creating Heaven on Earth, they wont be just believe and wait for it to come. Waiting and believing isn't really change, it's repeating the same mistakes of the past over and over again. I wonder if it has occurred to people that perhaps the ones who don't want change are the ones telling people it's coming soon and they just have to wait for it? It's a wonderful recipe for slowing real change, even politicians use it. Remember when Obama was the "change we can believe in"? And yet the U.S. government is remarkably similar to what it was before, in some aspects even worse.

I wonder if the "new age" movements are even really growing now? I know when 2012 didn't bring the changes so many were spiritual teachers and channelers were promising, a lot of people got very discouraged. I often see people getting fed up and leaving after putting so much faith in a failed prediction. These types of things seem to create division just as much as they unite people. I feel much of the "new age" movement is working to create new religions and belief systems instead of real change.

On the Galactic Free Press we learn though, we don't just try to repeat the same failed patterns again. We've switched focus recently to the kinds of messages that encourage personal transformation instead of faith in some channeler and their predictions. As a result, we've alienated many of our previous readers, I've noticed people would rather be told when the "new world" is coming instead of how they can work to create it. This speaks volumes about whether or not people are really ready for the Higher Realms.

So when is "it" coming, this miraculous thing that fixes our lives? For the people that didn't just wait for it to come, for the proactive people, the ones who understand what it really means to be a human being, Heaven already Here. There's nothing keeping you away except for what you believe in your own mind, what you hold on to yourself, what you alone are responsible for.

When will it happen collectively? So long as humanity perpetuates the current patterns they're in, it's not going to happen. They could break out of those chains tomorrow, or it could take a thousand years, I don't really know. What I do know though is that repeating the same patterns isn't working, and that the spiritual community can do a whole lot more to help things along than just waiting and believing.

His disciples said to him, "When will the rest for the dead take place, and when will the new world come?"
He said to them, "What you are looking forward to has come, but you don't know it."
Gospel of Thomas 51

For more of an explanation about why we get so many failed predictions, I recommend reading A Message To Those Who Read Channelings And The Channelers Themselves.

The Galactic Free Press
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"You have to do things my way!" I see this quite often in the spiritual community, whether it's in regards to specific practices, diets, or beliefs. There's always a few people are eager to spread a new set of commandments for being "spiritual" and are quick to condemn those who don't follow. I'm not going to tell you that you have to do things my way though, in fact, I'm going to tell you the opposite, that if you truly want to realize God, Source, Enlightenment, however you choose to conceptualize it, you have to find you own way.

Your own way, your inner beauty, your Uniqueness, your gift to Creation, your True Self, is your connection to God. You can't find God without finding Yourself, and you can't find Yourself through following someone else. A true Master can assist in this process, they can help clear away the crutch of belief systems, they can help direct your attention inwards, but ultimately it's up to you to take the step. A true Master doesn't make you reliant upon them, they help you rediscover self-reliance, self-responsibility, and self-empowerment. The phoney-baloney master will give you a list of rules, requirements, disciplines, practices, the standard religious fare, and usually things that didn't even come from the "master" themselves, they learned it from some other phoney-baloney master. Much like a disease, these beliefs systems are spread from person to person through the generations.

What I'm telling you is fundamentally different from that sort of thinking. Don't look to me to tell you what you should do or shouldn't do, and also notice the paradox in me telling you that. You want to become a Hare Krishna? While I wouldn't recommend it, if that's what you really want to do, go for it! Just be aware.  Are you really being yourself? Or are you imitating someone else?

Many of these spiritual practices do produce results, but not because of the reasons most people believe. If you repeat some chant over and over again with the intention of feeling peace, chances are you will feel peace sooner or later, at least temporarily. This isn't really because of the practice though, but because of you. Those feelings were already within you, all you did was give yourself permission to feel them, albeit in a rather complicated manner. Your own Consciousness holds incredible power, yet you give that away when you put faith into these external systems.

Awareness is what's needed most, but all your shoulds and shouldn'ts, all these preconceived notions and belief systems, work against awareness. When you already know how things are supposed to be, there's no need to pay attention to the way things actually are. If you believe some practice is going to bring you happiness, then you repeat it mechanically. Finding happiness in this life is no more complicated than breathing, but something so simple is also the most difficult thing in the world. Your mind is fixated, almost non-stop, on the things that drain your energy and take your happiness away.

You can't just simply breathe because of the hysteria of the mind. It needs constant attention, or else all the precious nothingness you've horded in there would start to disappear. Most are too proud to admit that the vast majority of their lives have been wasted on things they find no real joy in. They've been building castles made of sand, empty and trivial things. Admitting this is such an enormous blow to the ego that very few people can do it, at least not until the inevitable comes and they realize they have no choice but to let go.

A nurse started recording the regrets of those who were dying, she even wrote a book about it, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Here's the #1 regret:

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

That's the whole point of what I'm saying here, for you to live a life true to yourself. It's also the path back to lasting peace, joy, and Source. Exactly what that means is unique to you, and that's part of what makes you so amazing.

"Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." - Helen Keller

We live in a world full of people who are more than willing to run your life for you. Parents, governments, bosses, teachers, spiritual gurus, spouses, while many are good intentioned, it's ultimately a form of self-denial to listen to them over your own feelings and it's also a recipe for misery. If you can't find your own direction in life, you're like a leaf blowing around in the wind, being pushed around by external forces.

You're supposed to feel obligated to serve this external system, you're supposed to be dependent upon it, yet the system that's been created has no use for individuals. It needs machine men, predictable automatons. A unique individual is a threat to the system, a unique individual can't be predicted, they can't be fit into a little box. They threaten the whole stability of the system of greed and ignorance that runs this world. It's no coincidence that unique individuals who stir things up often end up with holes in their heads. Psychiatrists even drug children now simply for being outside of the norm. Everyone is supposed to learn the same things in the exact same way, and if you don't you're "diseased". It's really the norm that's the disease, a type of madness that refuses to see its own self-destructive nature.

Society is literally self-destructive, that's no hyperbole. A bit of you has to die, or at least be suppressed, just to fit in. That's exactly why people who are dying wish they'd been true to themselves. They can finally be honest with themselves and others, the old and the dying don't have anything to lose anymore. But you, you're not allowed to be yourself, you're too weird, so you need a cookie-cutter personality if you want to avoid being mocked, judged, rejected, and perhaps even locked away.

I know according to the New Age belief systems, I'm supposed to think only positive thoughts. It's all supposed to be rainbows and butterflies, and while the Planet has plenty of that, the human world still has a ways to go. I don't believe you can just ignore away the negative, in fact, ignorance itself is a type of negative thought. I seek the roots of negativity, the roots of dualism, I want to heal the core, not gloss it over. Too much focus upon the surface without seeing what's underneath is why society has become so superficial. We need awareness, especially inner awareness, and not more denial. We need joyous self-expression without judgment.

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This is perhaps the most popular of all the current spiritual platitudes, "let go". Even in mainstream society you can't avoid this advice, "Let it go" is the main musical number for a very popular movie at the moment. Despite it being a generic piece of pop culture, there actually is some very deep wisdom to letting go, but it needs a little more explanation than simply telling people to let go.

Let's go straight to a situation where letting go is the most difficult, the bond between a mother and her child. If I tell the mother to let go of the child, what does that mean? Does she just drop the baby on the floor? Does she pack up supplies for her 5 year-old and send him off to make his own way in the world? Does she become emotionally cold to her teenager? The kind of letting go I'm talking about has nothing to do with any of those situations. Letting go means releasing the expectations we have for another person, which actually leads to a deeper love, an Unconditional Love.

Desire gets in the way of Love, it can easily destroy a relationship between a parent and a child. What happens if the child doesn't live up to the expectations the parent has? It leads to conflict and resentment, the very things that interfere with love. Letting go of a child is simply allowing the child to be themselves. It means still loving them no matter what they do, without conditions, whether they become a doctor or a criminal. It means so longer judging the child based upon the parent's value system. Letting go is about releasing control, releasing our desires for another, that's what true letting go is about.

This isn't anything new either, this kind of letting go is the same as Buddhist detachment, the releasing of desire. Even the Christian Bible talks about this too: "Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" This stuff has been around thousands of years, the current "let go" fad is a new spin on some very ancient advice, advice that society as a whole has yet to fully understand.

Letting go is about being present too. Let go of your expectations for the future, let go of your attachments to the past. Then all that's left is the present, and that's all there can be if you've fully let go. Because of this, letting go is about forgiveness too, releasing the wounds of the past so you can grow and find deeper Love.

Just like anything else, the whole idea of "letting go" can be twisted and abused though. It can be used as an excuse to avoid taking responsibility and trying to escape one's own life. You have to be truly honest with yourself in these situations, are you truly letting go, or are you motivated by conflicting desires? Letting go is about finding balance in the present and then finding direction in your life starting from that place of balance. It's never about running away or trying to escape, those are sure signs that real letting go hasn't happened yet.

So beyond the genericness of the expression, letting go is really good advice, so long as you understand the deeper meanings.

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This is a very important question, can we have a spiritual awakening while society remains the same? Can we collectively change the inner without changing the outer? I ask this because I observe many people who behave as if this is the case, chasing after their own happiness and fulfillment while ignoring the issues Humanity faces as a whole. I can certainly see the appeal of doing so, places like the political world are very ugly, but ignoring them is not the answer. In fact, that kind of apathy is exactly what allowed politics to become so ugly.

To me, the answer is obvious: we need both an inner and an outer revolution. We need a revolution that erases the line between the "two". Your inner battles aren't unique to you, there are millions going through the same things. The self-destructiveness of fear, that affects every one of us, and we collectively manifest that in our wars, business and politics. You may believe it's only an elite few responsible, and while that's partially true, it's the responsibility of the masses to change things. Without the unconscious participation of the people, the systems of corruption would collapse instantly.

I see a great potential within the spiritual community to assist with this change. People like Martin Luther King and Gandhi, their connection to the Divine played a huge part in the social changes they helped to create. They took what they found Within, and shared it with everyone. They bridged the inner and the outer.

There's a need to look deeply at what it means to be "spiritual". I've shared my own feelings about that word, and I don't believe being "spiritual" necessarily makes you any closer to Spirit. Many, if not most, "spiritual" people started down that path because they weren't happy with their lives.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it often means their spiritual quest is rooted in a very negative image of the material realm. Their spirituality comes from a rejection of their "normal" lives.

Religion works this way too, for instance, Christianity teaches that the Earth is the realm of Satan. The natural world is supposed to be evil and brutish, and man is inherently sinful. Absolute rubbish, but the damage from these beliefs has been done. We've been indoctrinated with this idea that the spiritual realm is someplace else, and we get there by denying the physical. The spiritual realm and the physical realm are at odds with each other, they're supposed to be opposite and conflicting paths.

Just because someone applies the "spiritual" label to themselves doesn't mean years of this conditioning suddenly disappear. These religious beliefs have been firmly embedded in our societal values, even if you took religion away, they'd still be there. So spirituality has become largely about denial of the material, just look at meditation. For many, meditation is about blocking the material realm, blocking out the physical senses. That's why you're supposed to get into a comfortable position, in a quiet place, with eyes closed. The physical senses are viewed as distractions from inner peace. The outer is chaos, the inner is peace.

I'm telling you something completely different though, that the outer chaos is only a reflection of the inner chaos. While this is understood in spiritual theory, it's often denied in spiritual practice. Beware the practices that dull the senses, beware of practices that seek the Divine through denial of the material. In drawing a line between the inner and outer, you cut yourself in half. You have your "normal" life and your "spiritual" life, and this is the kind of spirituality that I caution people about. The kind that creates separation.

For me, meditation is something that can happen anyplace and anytime.  It's simply presence and awareness, no more complicated than that. It has no requirements, no preconditions. I cringe a little when people tell me they don't have enough time or money to really be spiritual. To connect with the Divine, you don't need time or money, all you need is Now, and you've always got Now. If you want to view the material realm as a distraction, that's exactly what it becomes, but it doesn't have to be that way.

God Is Everything, but this is impossible to experience for someone who is divided within. You may believe God Is All, it's a popular belief now, but is it truly your experience? Do you see God within everyone and everything? If not, that's okay! This is about self-healing, not self-judgment, and the key here is to erase the line between your inner and outer worlds.

Now back to the political world, I'll bet there's many who were hoping I wouldn't bring that up again, but turning a blind eye to the problems are exactly why these problems have gotten so enormous. This is all interconnected. Here in the US a portion of our honest work goes to spreading murder and terror. This is totally unacceptable and it's up to all of us to fix it. If you're a "spiritual" person, yet you ignore these things, you have no business claiming you have anything to do with Spirit. There's nothing spiritual about ignoring the plight of your brothers and sisters. The individual who ignores the collective is ultimately denying a part of themselves.

On the Galactic Free Press, we often feature political stories, things many wouldn't consider spiritual at all. Not just positive ones either, but stories of massive corruption and ignorance. This isn't to promote a negative world-view, simply a realistic one. A negative person will react negatively, promoting things like cynicism and apathy as a way of coping with this kind of news. A more proactive person though, will start looking for ways of fixing things, both inner and outer. These are the kind of people we're here for, not people who simply wait and hope for change, but the people who truly are the change.

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From the Soul's perspective, from that place of Oneness, the thought that everything is exactly as it should be is completely true. You could nitpick about the "should", as the whole concept of "should" is rooted in the mind's judgments, but since we're talking about the Soul's perspective I won't get into that yet. To the Soul, everything is divine perfection, not a single atom is out of place. Everything comes and goes at the precise moment it is "meant to".

That's the Soul's perspective, but most human beings on Earth don't operate from the Soul's perspective. They operate from the mind's perspective, which is a totally backwards way of looking at things compared to the Soul. To the mind, "everything is exactly as it should be", is never really true. If everything is as it should be, there would be no use for desire, and without the energy of desire, which is what feeds the mind, the mind would fall away.

Trying to understand things through the mind turns universal truths into spiritual platitudes. The mind takes "everything is exactly as it should be" and turns it into a belief system. Despite it never really being true for the mind, the mind can hold contradictory beliefs, which is a big part of why living from the mind inevitably results in suffering.

If your house is burning down, you don't sit down and tell yourself "everything is exactly as it should be". Instead you'd get out of the house, correct? Yet I've seen people whose lives are a mess because of their own choices use the belief that "everything is exactly as it should be" as an excuse for inaction. Like the Universe has some external plan for everyone, and your personal choices are meaningless. I guarantee that's not the Universe's plan for you, and I guarantee you are not separate from the Universe.

The Universe operates precisely as it's "supposed" to, that's what is meant by "everything is exactly as it should be". If you send out negative and fearful thoughts, you are creating those things for yourself. That's simply the way things work, and you have input into this process, either consciously or unconsciously. If you're creating unconsciously, as most people do, then you can really screw yourself up believing "everything is exactly as it should be". You are the creator of your life, you make up the "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" for yourself. If you don't like the way your life is CHANGE! Don't just sit there and believe it's the way things "should be". Creation works far better for you when you're an active participant.

 

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So often there's talk of eliminating negativity. Really look at that approach, it's using negative thinking to try to get rid of negativity. Then there's the idea that we just focus upon positive thoughts, which at it's core is still based upon rejecting the negative. Then there's another approach, which is to combine the positive and the negative together, which is supposed to create a whole, though all I've seen it create is confusion in people. If you try to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind, something most people's minds are already full of, it just creates chaos.

The issue with all these approaches is that they're based upon the assumption that the positive/negative duality is something valid. Positive and negative are inventions of the mind, you're not going to transcend them using the same kind of thinking that created them. The mind tries to take all of Creation and divide it into separate categories. The mind takes the richness and freedom of Creation, the uniqueness of every single atom, and narrows it down to either one thing or another, good/bad, light/dark, positive/negative. The mind interprets everything dualistically, and that kind of incredibly limited thinking makes the unlimited wonder of Creation seem dull and boring.

It's dualistic judgment that divides things into positive and negative. If you really want to release the negative, you must transcend that paradigm altogether. It's not about combining the "two", it's about the realization that there was never any division to begin with. You must go beyond the mind, and into the inherent wisdom of the Heart, then God begins to speak to you, though you, and As You.


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As with just about everything else, people have interpreted pride into both positive and negative aspects. It's easy to see the self-destructiveness of the negative aspects of pride, especially within other people. How pride leads to arrogance, an enormous ego, and thinking you're better than others. But then there's the "positive" aspect of pride, feeling good about yourself and your accomplishments. On the surface it may seem like this sort of pride is helpful. I have achieved something, so I allow myself to feel proud of my accomplishments. This kind of thinking is encouraged by our society, it's very common.

Realize that this is just as much a recipe for misery as the negative meaning of pride. It's linking your happiness and your self-worth to your accomplishments. If you really want happiness in your life, don't put restrictions on your happiness. Don't tie your happiness to accomplishments. Life isn't always going to meet your expectations, not all you endeavors are going to be successful. If you tie your self-worth to your success, what will you do when you're not successful? Do you see the problems you set up for yourself through pride?

You've got things backwards, you think some major accomplishment or achievement is going to lead to self-worth. It's supposed to transform you into someone you can be happy with. That's part of the lie of pride. I say it's backwards because your accomplishments will be all the more grand if they begin from a place of self-worth and happiness. That's part of the "secret" to success, starting out from a solid foundation.

Pride is linked to judgment. The "positive" type of pride is associated with "positive" self-judgment, while the "negative" type of pride is associated with negative judgments of others. Judgment is always going to lead to misery and I recommend learning that lesson ASAP as it's a lesson people repeat for themselves over and over again. Don't judge yourself based upon your "successes" and "failures", use those experiences to learn and grow. Though this, even that what you believe to be a "failure" will still lead to growth. No longer will the "failures" lead you to question your own self-worth.

I believe that pride comes from a desire for self-love, it's good intentioned, but you know what they say about good intentions... Pride is self-love that's been twisted by filters of duality, it's not real Love, it's narcissism, and it's usually based upon comparing yourself to others.

God sees great value in your Being, especially because you originated from God, and you are in no way separate from God. You don't need beliefs like pride to see your inherent value, you have only to realize the truth of Love and Equality. Then you can see your own worthiness, as well as the worthiness of everyone and everything in Creation.

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