The Two Great Stories of the World ~ Michael Meade, D.H.L.

Recently, I have been on panels where people lament how the troubles of the world seem increasingly intractable. I’ve heard environmentalists suggest that evolution may have reached a dead end with regard to the human species. I’ve heard pained audiences decry political parties as well as social movements. I have found myself responding with ancient proverbs such as: “The great person allows universal imagination to work through them.”

It’s as if something quite old and truly resilient is required to face the dire array of modern problems, for most of modern life is arranged to take us away from ourselves. Not just from advertising suggesting that what we lack can be purchased, nor from the ever-growing number of clever distractions, but we also learn to abandon ourselves amidst expectations that the answers to crucial problems and solutions to great dilemmas must come from the world outside us.

Amidst radical environmental problems and massive changes throughout culture, it becomes easy to forget that there are two great and enduring stories found on Earth. One is the tale of the world writ large, the ongoing drama of creation and of destruction. The other involves the continuous and surprising story that arises from the dreams and longings, the inborn gifts and necessary frailties hidden within each individual soul.

We are not accidental citizens of a world gone wrong, not merely faceless members of an age group or statistical, biological blips without inherent meaning. Humans are living stories, each imbued with an inherent message and a meaning trying to find its way into the world. Each soul a living thread in the tale being woven as we speak, being shaped as we dream, being made anew each time we step more fully into the story trying to live through us.

No new idea and no old belief system can simply solve the dilemmas currently facing both nature and culture. Things have gone too far for that. Yet we abandon ourselves unnecessarily when we turn away from the stories already woven within us. We rescind the ancient and immediate heritage of living imagination that is laced into the body, cell by cell, and set within the bones of our collective memories. Neither wisdom nor genius, neither heroism nor love can be found except where the individual soul awakens.

Humans inherit a “narrative intelligence” capable of grasping the great dramas of this world. It can be only found by awakening to an inner story trying to live through us. As the world around us becomes more uncertain and less predictable, the inner story may be the only place to turn for any hint of security. The word security shares roots with “secret” as well as “cure.” The way to affect the great drama of this world is to discover and live the story secretly seeded within one’s soul.

The answers that sustain life and reveal meaning amidst the confusion come from within. The essential cure for what ails us hides within us. Until we know what story we came to life to live, we can’t know how to aid the ongoing story of the world. This world is made of stories, each individual tale a part of an eternal drama being told from beginning to end, over and over again. As long as all the stories don’t end at once, the world will continue.

In this highly anticipated book, renowned mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade explores the complex and mysterious territories of the human soul with daring and hard-won wisdom. Drawing on folktales and myths from many cultures and spiritual ideas from the East and West, he leads us to an undeniable truth: that the only story we came here to live is our own.

Meade shows how the limitations of family and fate form the inner threads from which our individual destiny must emerge. He explains how our wounds can become doorways to our deepest gifts, and how our greatest efforts in the world are intended to lead us to a treasure divinely seeded within us before birth.

Fate and Destiny speaks directly to young people looking to find a genuine path in life and trying to awaken to the dream they carry inside. It offers penetrating insights for those caught in life’s inevitable struggles and shows how the wisdom of elders depends upon re-membering the spirit of eternal youth. As one story puts it, god has only one question to ask you at the end of life: did you become yourself?

Weaving stories within stories, lacing pertinent psychology within cultural analysis, and mixing autobiography with myth, Meade opens the territory of fate and destiny to new interpretations and deeper meanings.

This World is Made of Stories

Storyteller and mythologist, Michael Meade explains how this world is made of stories. Michael is the founder and director of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultural healing through story, mythology, and poetry via work with at-risk youth, veterans, gang youth, prisoners, the homeless, and the culture at large.

The Dream and the Dreamer by Swami Amar Jyoti

According to the Vedas, Brahma first created ego, which is the root, the sense of “I”-ness with nothing beyond it. This level of I-ness can be compared to deep, dreamless sleep. There you and I exist, with nothing beyond it. In deep sleep we are not even aware of being “I,” unless we come to another level of consciousness such as dreaming or waking. And this “I” has a will–not Supreme Will but limited will–percolating from the total Will of God. As God willed first, ego then wills. But when ego wills, we call it desire. This desire is the first vibration we create from the unit called “I.” It expands and creates a wave, a vibration, what we call astral or subtle personalization of consciousness. The basis is Consciousness.

In that waveless ocean of Consciousness, the ego wills or desires. This produces motion in Consciousness and is the beginning of the dream. The total picture of any dream, whether complex or simple, vivid or indistinct, is due to many vibrations–meaning: wills and desires–being released by the ego simultaneously. Then the dream, which actualizes on the astral plane, becomes a physical materialization. It becomes grosser, more thickened and sensual, meaning: perceivable by the senses. But the dreamer who dreams is you and me, that unit called I-ness, the first creation.

The sense of I-ness, the ego or root, holds all these worlds together. I is controlling all your worlds, the dreamlands as well as the physical lands. Where you finish, your dreams finish. You may ask why dreams continue if we do not want them. Simply out of habit or karma already recorded. The recording has become so embedded in the fabric of our minds that the dreams just go on playing. If we could direct and control our dreams, they could be channeled or stopped, as with any other kind of recording when we know how to use the equipment.

There is a beautiful point in this: not only are these dreams, created by waves in the ocean of Consciousness, seemingly outside you, but the scriptures have gone so far as to say, “You are dreaming within you.” Within you does not refer only to your body, it means that ego unit. Within this one microscopic unit of I or ego–one dot or atom only–you have the universe inside you. It is very difficult to visualize this point, but if you concentrate, it can be very clearly understood. That is why the famous Vedantic aphorism: You perceive only what you are, which means: everything is within you. Not only within you, inside your heart or soul, but within that you or I unit, that nucleus, the whole phenomenon is taking shape. The formulation is within you, the waves on the ocean.

When you come back to your Self, when you Know Thyself, all this becomes synonymous. There you will find that this manifestation, this radiation out of you, is not outside you. When you enter that tiny door of your Self, when you truly go within, you will find that God is within you. In other words, the dream and the dreamer are not two. Subject, object and relationship–the trinity–join into one. Everything is within you. When you reach this realization, you will see that we are visualizing and seeing a creation of our own desires, nothing else. And “me” is the dreamer of those dreams, the creator of that creation. Not only so. Me is that creation.

When we say to be detached to this world, this dream, we are just telling you to be detached from the unreal. You are dreaming and your pain and miseries are within the dream. Why not go to the root cause of the problem? The root cause of miseries is satiety, running after fleeting mirages of changeful phenomena. Looking to transitoriness for satisfaction makes us miserable because it is not permanent. When we awaken, we come back to our Absolute Truth: I am. And that unlimited Consciousness is blissful.

Satsang cover Excerpted from The Dream and the Dreamer
given by Swami Amar Jyoti in May 1976

Thich Nhat Hanh and David Suzuki in Conversation About the Health of the Planet

Despair and anger are contributing to a feeling that people have no power to stop the destructive forces behind climate change, but the feeling can be reversed through personal hope and inner peace, an audience in Vancouver was told earlier this week by Buddhist monk, poet, peace and human rights activist, Thich Nhat Hanh.

In Vancouver for a week of teaching and lectures, Thich Nhat Hanh, sat down with Canada’s David Suzuki, a world-renowned authority on sustainable ecology, to discuss the path forward to a more sustainable way of living.

Their conversation, based on the premise that it is well-known that humans are harming the earth, destroying its ecosystems and disrupting the climate, focused on how to bring about the change in human behavior that is needed to put the world on a path that will ensure a healthy planet for future generations.

With contributions to the discussion from Vancouver’s mayor, Gregor Robertson, the audience listened for an hour to a thoughtful dialogue on tackling attitudes to climate change. The following clips provide a snapshot of the discussion. They will also be featured on the David Suzuki Foundation website and Plum Village, Thich Nhat Hanh’s website. A full version of the event is available for viewing here.

Thich Nhat Hanh said we have to accept that our civilization can be destroyed, not by an outside force, but by ourselves, just as many civilizations before ours have been destroyed. If we allow despair to take over, we will lose the strength to do anything to protect and preserve our civilization. Personal hope and inner peace will help build the strength we need to become instruments to protect the environment.

The conversation was structured around the following questions:

1. I would like your reaction to this economic advice a Lehman Brothers banker, named Paul Mazer, gave American business in 1930 when the age of consumerism was beginning: “People need to be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed… Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”

2. What gives you hope that we can bring about the collective awakening needed to restore health to the planet? Most of us know we are harming the earth, destroying its ecosystems and disrupting the climate. But we act as if it is not happening. How do we bring about the change in human behavior that is needed to put us on a path that will ensure a healthy planet for our children and grandchildren?

3. Oil industry groups over the past few decades have financed misinformation campaigns to cast doubt on climate science. Today 45 per cent of Americans mistakenly believe there is disagreement among climate scientists that global warming is even happening, this number is up 12 percent since 2008. The number climate scientists saying Climate Change isn’t happening is actually closer to zero. It seems to be very easy to pull the wool over the eyes of the public, why are we so gullible? What do you think we can we do to change from deniers of the environmental problems we face to responsible stewards of the environment?

4. What responsibility does government have for solving these problems? How do we motivate government to do the right thing?

5. Social science research in Canada and the U.S. shows that public mistrust is at an all-time high. People believe Government and business say one thing and do another. They don’t trust Government; they don’t trust business and wonder about each other. This is particularly true when it comes to the environment. This mistrust has led to a kind of social paralysis where people believe their own actions won’t make a difference. How do we overcome this mistrust?

Here are two short clips from the conversation:

David Suzuki & Thich Nhat Hanh

David Suzuki, Zen Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, and David Suzuki Foundation Chair Jim Hoggan sat down to discuss mindfulness, climate change and how to bring about the collective public awakening needed to restore health to the planet.

David Suzuki & Thich Nhat Hanh: Despair

David Suzuki, Zen Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, and David Suzuki Foundation Chair Jim Hoggan in conversation about mindfulness, climate change and how to bring about the collective public awakening needed to restore health to the planet.

In this video, Thich Nhat Hanh and David Suzuki discuss the challenges faced in protecting the environment and the importance of not letting despair cloud our ability to affect change.

What’s True, and Not, About Stress (Part 3) ~ Deepak Chopra

In two earlier posts (which I hope you will go back and read) we found that stress is a complicated matter that intertwines body and mind. Mechanical stress is simple. If you put pressure on a car engine or airplane wing long enough, it will weaken and eventually break down. But human beings are set up differently. The more we use our muscles, for example, the stronger they become, and if we fail to use the heart or brain enough, they atrophy. The damage caused by stress requires a deeper look than any mechanistic model can provide.

I proposed that the world’s wisdom traditions fill the gap. This doesn’t mean that ancient views of karma, although they have a lot to say about how stress works, should be adopted wholesale. Spirituality evolves along with everything else, and it’s up to us to find our own path. In the ancient world most people were ground down by excessive physical demands, and their lives brought primal suffering in the form of starvation, exposure to the elements, lack of basic sanitation and so on. By comparison, the stress we face today is different but not milder, since every life still contains pain, suffering, anxiety, doubt, insecurity and the other woes that were confronted by the great spiritual guides of the past. At the very least, spirituality contends that human existence is meant to be free of such suffering.

Karmic impressions (vasanas in Sanskrit) are basically the same as stress. Something sticks to us — a memory, a fear, a trauma — and keeps coming back in repetitive ways. Long-term depression and anxiety are repetitive; so are stress disorders, addictions and obsessive-compulsive behavior. The reason that modern therapies have not solved these maladies is that they don’t easily fit a medical model. No one is infected with an addiction; there is no vaccine or surgery for depression. Attempts are made to squeeze stress-related symptoms into a manageable scheme so that a patient can be handed the right pill after a fifteen-minute consultation. I won’t discount that some relief is offered, but for the most part drug therapy only masks the symptom without touching the cause of distress.

How do we get stress to stop sticking to us? How do we erase karmic impressions? How can we let go of past pain? These are profound questions, and they give ordinary people a strong reason to look into spirituality (and into therapies where the medical model has merged with the findings of wisdom). Personally, I don’t find that the kind of spiritual answers involved in prayer, faith, patience, hope and reliance on God work very well, much less those beliefs that deem suffering to be spiritually valuable for its own sake. Far more workable, I think, is the kind of spirituality that focuses directly on consciousness. Meditation, mindfulness, self-reflection, focused intention, energy work, hands-on healing and yoga all have their part to play. Karma or stress — call it what you will — is rooted in consciousness. We know this because karma and stress are unique with each person, forming patterns that no two people exactly duplicate.

If there is a state of consciousness that frees us from stress and the repetitive behavior that keeps us bound to the past, it should be a first priority to seek such a state. In the Indian tradition suffering is born of duality; healing is the end result of attaining unity. Duality comes down to the divided self, caught up in desires, thoughts, drives and impulses that form a confused and conflicting inner landscape. Unity is a self that is intact, clear, without contradictory impulses and present in the moment. Unity consciousness may be much more than this — it could be a state of grace that brings a person into intimacy with God — but without the basics, higher consciousness does us no good, in terms of freeing us from distress.

I’ve laid out a worldview rather than going into details, even though people always want how-to advice. The reason for being so general is that accepting a new worldview is the most important thing you can do. What is more basic than the decision to leave the battlefield rather than continuing to fight? Internal conflict is the problem, and doing more of the same, warring against yourself, judging against your bad impulses, suffering over your mistakes, projecting blame on others, finding that your highest expectations keep falling short — these are all forms of inner conflict. If you keep repeating them, you will persist in duality and the suffering it brings.

I almost never refer readers to my own writings, but two books, “How to Know God” and “The Book of Secrets,” lay out the big picture of how higher consciousness works, while a practical manual, “Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul,” gives the details.

Here, in three posts, I’ve tried to show that stress is, in fact, a spiritual issue. Materialism with its mechanistic explanations and conventional medicine are not complete enough to solve this huge problem, and in many ways they point in the wrong direction. It takes a shift in consciousness to end suffering. Such a shift is possible. The way to accomplish it is known and has been laid out in the world’s wisdom traditions. With that knowledge in hand, we can direct our lives in an evolutionary direction that was all but unknown a few decades ago. The solution to stress is inside each of us, waiting to be discovered.

Emptiness is the Potential of Everything – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Emptiness is the Potential of Everything, explains Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Transcendental Meditation is the direct means to realize this truth. http://www.tm.org

Eckhart on Karma

Q: You talk about Presence and Being as the keys to enjoying form, and creating positive circumstances, or softening circumstances. How does karma fit into all of that?

ET: Everybody is born into a certain external environment. Also, everyone is born with certain predispositions – they may be partly genetic, they may be other things. A person is born with certain patterns, in other words. We don’t need to examine where they come from, but the fact is that a human being is born into a certain environment. It may be violent, or it may be relatively peaceful. A person is born with inner patterns that you inherit. Even painbody is partly inherited.

There’s a whole set of conditioning that happens when you come into an environment. The environment conditions you further, and there’s no choice involved – it’s just influences. You find yourself in this world with certain unconscious patterns that have become the conditioning of who the person is. Karma, as I see it, is the unconscious conditioning that runs your life. Karma is partly collective, and partly personal. You can only understand karma not as an abstract subject external to yourself, you can only understand it by observing yourself, and then you know many other things. If you want to understand karma, you need to look at yourself.

I began to understand what karma is when something arose that was not part of karma at all. Here is the key – the arising of consciousness, or Presence, or spiritual awakening, is not part of karma. It is another dimension that breaks into the karmic realm. You do not become awakened by accumulating, as they sometimes say in the East, “good karma”. That’s fine on this level, you can make the walls or furniture in your prison a little more comfortable, but there’s something totally from beyond karma, that can come into your life at any point.

Re-birth is of course part of karma. The deeper meaning of re-birth is identification with form. We don’t need to even believe in transmigration, or whatever, you can look at re-birth in your own life. Every time you identify with a thought that arises, which is form, you are born into that thought. Your identity, your sense of self is in it. That’s karma. Your karma is the unconscious identification with these patterns that you have inherited – the conditioned. It is complete identification of consciousness with the conditioned patterns. Consciousness is dreaming, one could say. That is why we use the word “awakening” in many spiritual traditions. Consciousness is awakening, consciousness is in a dream-like state, when you are identified with the unconscious patterns. Many times a day, you are re-born into an emotional or mental reaction, into thoughts that arise.

Karma creates, in the external, confirmation that it is correct. So if you think the world is full of evil people, you will meet many evil people – in other words, unconscious people. Even people who are halfway between being conscious and unconscious, your belief will pull them into unconsciousness. Karma is the complete absence of conscious Presence. It is automatic. It plays itself out.

Time does not free you of karma. That is a misperception, that if you only spend enough time, eventually you can become free of karma. Karma renews itself and repeats itself. The only thing that can free you of karma is the arising of Presence. At any point in the wheel of karma, Presence can come in. It can happen to a criminal in prison, condemned to death. It can happen to somebody who’s never heard of anything spiritual. It can happen to somebody who’s been meditating for thirty years.

Presence frees you from karma. Not all at once. Karma has an enormous momentum. The thought patterns, the emotional patterns, the reactive patterns. As Presence arises, gradually karma diminishes and you will experience a fading out of those patterns. Not that it matters that much anymore, because once you are present, those thought patterns may still arise, but it is no longer problematic. They no longer cause the suffering that they would have caused before, because they are seen in the light of awareness. In the light of awareness, the patterns no longer dominate your life.

Painbody is part of karma, which may be strong in some and not so in others. As Presence arises, you are freed from karma. Then you have another completely different factor coming into your life. For example, for a person to become free of collective karma, you need a considerable amount of Presence for that to come in. It then will remove you, either internally or you may find yourself somewhere else.

For a person who is born into vast collective karma, it requires considerable Presence for one not to be drawn into that. When Hitler came into power, not many people were able to remove themselves. Some were, and they left. They could see what was happening and they were strong enough not to be identified with the collective. To take yourself out of that collective karma requires considerable Presence – and some people had it. It is our destiny, then, to go beyond karma by being the receptacles for Presence.

Everyone who is awakening will find that sooner or later that they become a kind of teacher to others. What a spiritual teacher does is point out the possibility of awakening out of identification with unconscious patterns. The spiritual teacher teaches you to go beyond karma. That is your function, and will become increasingly so, whether you become a formal teacher, or an informal teacher.

Spiritual awakening and stepping out of karma are the same thing. Many people will be drawn to you. Anybody who is going through the awakening process is already a teacher. Teaching means you find yourself listening from spaciousness, when somebody speaks or asks a question, or tells you about their problems. You may find that the answer comes out from that Stillness in which you listen. You don’t have a sense that “I’m going to teach this person now”. You will find that teaching is spontaneous. You will help people to step out of identification with unconsciousness, which means going beyond karma. This applies to everybody who is awakening.

As you teach, Consciousness is becoming aligned with your mind. Your mind is able to tune in to the deeper Consciousness and can be used as an instrument. Then the words come out of your mouth. There is ultimately really only one teacher, the awakened Consciousness is the teacher. It can only teach those in whom there is a degree of readiness. The teaching needs to be received. If there is only a density of mind, the teaching won’t happen.

You will be amazed when people are drawn to you – people who are ready – and you find yourself saying something that you didn’t even know yourself. It’s only when the question was asked, that the Consciousness responded. As you teach, you learn. Realizations come. Teaching and learning is the same process. A deepening happens, as you teach. You are here to help people go beyond karma.

The important thing to know is that time does not free you of karma. The egoic mind says “I need more time to become free”. The only thing that people may need more time for is that they need time to realize that they do not need time”. It may be another twenty years of suffering for them to realize that they do not need time. They may need to suffer a bit more before they realize the power of the timeless. The timeless is of course the end of karma.

KARMA AND REINCARNATION Unlocking Your 800 Lives to Enlightenment By Barbara Y. Martin and Dimitri Moraitis

Many of us use the word “karma”. We may accept our misfortunes as karmic retribution for past mistakes, or welcome small blessings as a reward for our previous kindness. Yet, do we really understand what karma means? Do we know where it comes from and how it can manifest itself in our lives?

Barbara Y. Martin and Dimitri Moraitis explain everything we need to know in their accessible new book, Karma and Reincarnation: Unlocking Your 800 Lives to Enlightenment. An internationally respected clairvoyant and metaphysical teacher, Martin was one of the first mainstream lecturers on the aura and human energy field. Along with co-author Moraitis, she founded the Spiritual Arts Institute in Los Angeles and instructs thousands on spiritual energy.

In this practical guide, the authors….

*Outline the mechanics of the reincarnation cycle

*Clarify the implications our past lives can have on our current life

*Empower us to pinpoint and resolve karmic conflicts

*Help us identify our karmic purpose and act on our spiritual goals

*Share transformative meditations and strengthening prayers

*Explain what happens on the other side, based on clairvoyant observations

Comprehensive in scope, Karma and Reincarnation covers all facets of our lives and our world, from how karma affects our relationships, careers, and physical health to karma’s power over entire nations.

To illuminate their teachings, Martin and Moraitis incorporate reincarnation stories from their many students as well as examples of prominent historical figures. Highly readable and informative, this definitive volume answers countless karmic questions for readers from all spiritual traditions.

Q&A with authors of Karma and Reincarnation

Many of us use the word “karma”. We may accept our misfortunes as karmic retribution for past mistakes, or welcome small blessings as a reward for our previous kindness. Yet, do we really understand what karma means? Do we know where it comes from and how it can manifest itself in our lives? Barbara Y. Martin and Dimitri Moraitis explain everything we need to know in their accessible book, Karma and Reincarnation: Unlocking Your 800 Lives to Enlightenment. They discuss the book in this Q&A…

Many people throw the word karma around without truly understanding what it means. What do you think our biggest misconceptions are about karma?

Not understanding how it works. Many people don’t realize the full scope of our past lives. They think that karma is a form of reward or punishment. Karma is a harmonizing law. The goal is to bring life back into balance and harmony. When you initiate a destructive action you disturb that natural harmony. Karma is the retuning process which can be painful at times. A constructive action accentuates the natural law of harmony creating more beauty in your life.

The other misconception is thinking everything that happens in life is karma. Karma is certainly a big part of our life but not everything that happens is karmic. There are other dynamics such as free will that come into the picture.

Karma and Reincarnation is a complete guide. What can readers learn here that has been absent from other books on the subject?

There has not really been an accurate depiction of the reincarnation process based on actual clairvoyant experience. All the material in this book is based on personal observations and interactions over a lifetime of study.

It is our hope the reader comes to understand the central part karma and reincarnation plays in the process of spiritual evolution. The soul takes approximately 800 lifetimes to reach maturity. In that time, we experience the joys and sorrows, the triumphs and tragedies of earth life. This builds character, making us rich and well-rounded. In addition, the book attempts to cover the board range of karma from personal to national and
even world karma.

You discuss how karma can impact entire nations. Does America have good karma?

It presently has both good and bad karma. The inception of America was built as a result of very good world karma. America is meant to be an example as to the potential that all countries have in the evolution of civilization. The global age is inevitable as humanity is growing and slowly, yet still painfully at times, heading into a more cooperative age. America has been at the forefront of this through its principles of liberty, equality and fairness.

Unfortunately, there have been times when America has taken advantage of its privileged position, and this creates negative karma. The recent economic crisis, although global in nature, definitely bears the mark of national karma. The actions we are taking now will determine whether we, as a nation, have learned the karmic lessons that these economic challenges have presented to us.

In Chapter 9, you analyze the karma of nature. What are the karmic implications of our current relationship with nature?

Nature is not there to use as we please. As with any relationship, there is give and take. Nature gives of its bounty to serve humanity and in return humanity is meant to help nature in its spiritual evolution. For example, how we treat animals is essential. When we show love and care to animals we help them in their own evolution. When we help animals, we are also helping ourselves to evolve. It’s our responsibility to treat them well. When we mistreat animals, we lose spiritual power and may find ourselves being mistreated in some way, not by animals, but by situations as a way to open our hearts.

Barbara, you’ve been to the other side and can recall your previous lives. What have you learned from those experiences? How have they informed the book?

The privilege of being taken consciously to the other side can only be described as sacred and holy. We are all familiar with the other side, but most of us do not bring back conscious memory. I have developed this skill over many years and it is always done as part of my own spiritual growth or in service to others, never just for the sake of curiosity. You realize there is so much more to life that you thought. You are never alone and there is a tremendous spiritual support system working with you at all times.

It is incredible to realize you have lived before and will live again. There is always wonder that such a thing is possible. Knowledge of past lives has given me much greater respect for life and for my own actions. You do not need to remember your past lives to progress, but you do need to make the most of your time here on earth.

What do you hope readers take away from Karma and Reincarnation?

To realize that karma and reincarnation is real. Too many people are not resolving their karmic challenges because they don’t realize what is going on. When you have the opportunity to resolve your karma but you turn away or react negatively, it gets tougher. So why wait? By working on your karma now, you progress faster and the karma is easier to handle. It is the hope that the reader will learn how to better use the gift of free will to make better choices that are in harmony with their divine purpose.

Japanese Spring ~ Karunesh

Music from the heart and soul, new age electronic sounds, Japanese spring by Karunesh.

Another awesome New Age musician of ‘Kitaro”s contemporary. For more of Karunesh’s music go to Resource Center/Tag at the bottom right hand column and click Karunesh.

Enjoy.

The Quickening

“The Quickening” was produced by Awakening As One

http://AwakeningAsOne.com

All around the planet hundreds of millions of people are waiting for events to unfold in the year 2012, that they… believe will bring either the birth of a harmonious new reality… or ‘the end of the world.

But what if those events were actually to take place THIS YEAR, in 2011?

In Awakening As One’s new film “The Quickening” we will explain why so many people have been experiencing the sensation that “Time is Speeding Up”; particularly since the Earthquake in Japan.

And we will also show how research indicates that this accelerated experience of reality could peak sometime around October 28th, 2011; culminating in a global experience of Unity Consciousness, which would then lead to the experience of a harmonious new way of being.

“The Quickening” will also take a look at the unfolding of current events and how they directly relate to Hopi and Mayan Prophecies, indicating that we are on the Cusp of Great Changes, which signify the shifting of the Age… and the Birth of a New World.

Credits:

We wish to acknowledge that without the work of these incredible filmmakers, and music producers it would not have been possible for Awakening As One to share its message of Peace and Unity with such beauty, heart and soul.

We invite you to support the filmmakers by visiting their webpages, and viewing their films. We extend our deepest gratitude and respect to the following films, and to all those who assisted in their creation.

All Else is bondage ~ Wei Wu Wei

These thirty-four powerful essays, based on Taoist and Buddhist thought, constitute a guide to what the author calls “non-volitional living”—the ancient understanding that our efforts to grasp our true nature are futile. Wei Wu Wei explains these venerable spiritual traditions in the context of modern experience, using wit and considerable precision to convey their profound insight into the very nature of existence. This essential Zen Buddhist classic, reissued after decades of unavailability, completes the collection of eight volumes by the masterful, elusive Wei Wu Wei.

WEI WU WEI

The identity of Wei Wu Wei was not revealed at the time of the publication of his first book. This well-considered anonymity will be respected here, though a few background details may help to put the writings into context. “Wei Wu Wei” was born in 1895 into a well-established Irish family, was raised on an estate outside Cambridge, England, and received a thorough education, including studies at Oxford University. Early in life he pursued an interest in Egyptology, which culminated in the publication of two books on ancient Egyptian history and culture in 1923.

This was followed by a period of involvement in the arts in Britain in the 20′s and 30′s as a theorist, theatrical producer, creator of radical “dance-dramas,” publisher of several related magazines, and author of two related books. He was a major influence on many noted dramatists, poets, and dancers of the day, including his cousin Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet (which in fact had its origins in his own dance troupe at the Cambridge Festival Theatre which he leased from 1926-33).

After he had apparently exhausted his interest in this field to a large extent, his thoughts turned towards philosophy and metaphysics. This led to a period of travel throughout Asia, including time spent at Sri Ramana Maharshi’s ashram in Tiruvannamalai, India. In 1958, at the age of 63, he saw the first of the Wei Wu Wei titles published. The next 16 years saw the appearance of seven subsequent books, including his final work under the further pseudonym O.O.O. in 1974. During most of this later period he maintained a residence with his wife in Monaco. He is believed to have known, among others, Lama Anagarika Govinda, Dr. Hubert Benoit, John Blofeld, Douglas Harding, Robert Linssen, Arthur Osborne, Robert Powell, and Dr. D. T. Suzuki. He died in 1986 at the age of 90.

—Matt Errey