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Outside Inside |
Having understood some of the ways with which we work with our guides leads us to use the knowledge in our daily lives. Much intellectual and emotional work has been put into the process of awakening our spirit and intuition, not to integrate the fruits of our efforts would give little meaning or purpose to them. Having looked inward for some answers we now need to work outside to put them into practice. No need in making life difficult try and make it easy. We do love to make our lives complicated when a simple solution is staring us in the face. If we think it has been easy then we tend to think it was not right. Of cause certain decisions we have to make and plans we have to put into action are not easy. Pace yourself its no good eating the pie before its been put in the oven, ingredients have to be acquired and prepared, then used in the right order to achieve the desired end product.
All the time I am reminded that my experiences and thoughts are my reality. Whether guides are real for any one else is part of their reality and not to be confused with universal truth. The universal truth in this situation is that we all have a wish to improve our lives, the lives of other and the world that we live in. The way in which we do this is down to the individuals background and the way that they want to get through life. Doubts will always be raised as to the validity of an individual belief and that to me is a very healthy situation. Running away with fanciful ideas that cannot be lived out in our daily lives is all far too easy to do. The proof is living what we believe. We can all be wonderful when the sun shines on a lazy afternoon, but do we still feel wonderful when the rain comes and lightning strikes pushing us into despair and chaos? Our minds are complex organisms, even when we think we have understood our own, we still have to react and interact with every body elses reality, whatever that reality is. For someone who does not believe in guides or any of that weird stuff has there own equally valid reality. Acceptance of each other can only become a reality if we dont get bogged down in dogma and personal conflicts. Doing this we miss the point that it does not matter who is right and who is wrong, arguing over some minor detail until tempers are raised and conflict sets in, we are all working for spiritual enlightenment to achieve our highest possible future selves. I look forward to the coming together of all beliefs and all humanity to better our existence.
No one has the one perfect answer; we all have our own. When these individual answers are seen reflected in other peoples beliefs we know there is a common thread weaving its way through every one. To do that we need to discuss our ideas and beliefs with all sorts of people not just people of the same opinion as us. This may help our confidence to know that we are not alone in what we think but for it to exist only in closed circles suggests to the outside world that we are not acting in truth and are afraid of any body finding holes in our belief. Operating a closed shop only fuels the opinion that there is something weird going on. We all have brains and we all think, that is not weird.
For a long time science has appeared to be against any form of spirituality, always wanting fact and proof. The way that science approaches any idea is the same way that we all do, we make a stab at the answer and then try to prove or disprove it. Each time new ground is broken then a new vision of the answer exposes itself, usually up turning the earlier theory, nothing is certain and anything can be found to be right or wrong. On subjects such as telepathy, the historical existence of Christ and the lost city of Atlantis science tries to provide an answer for our wandering imaginations. At one time we believed that the earth was flat now we now better, science proved that what some believed was not true is in fact a reality. Not only that it has shown in practical ways how incredible almost ridiculous notions are in fact true. Elizabethans would have burned anybody who said it was possible to fly to the moon. It was a childish fantasy carried on by lunatics and mad people. Someone had a vision and proved them wrong a few centuries later. That vision was driven by our thirst for knowledge of our surroundings and a vivid imagination believing in the impossible. This can be said to be the same of our thirst for knowledge of our inner space. What we may think of just as imagination and equally crazy as teleportation could easily be proved to be a reality by science. I never rule anything out including the fact that I might be totally wrong about everything or absolutely right.
After a period of learning we have to try and put the lessons into practice or at least start to use some of the knowledge gained. To do otherwise would be a complete waste of time and energy. The last few months had reminded me that whatever I thought I knew about guides had changed, rather than being almost a bit of a hobby in my spare time could have profound consequences in the way I lived my life. I had always tried to integrate the things that had been told to me into my daily philosophy. To hide what I felt would be hypocrisy. I had seen this all too clearly in the past when I had attended church and had no wish to become that which I despised.
That was an easy thing to write, but what did I actually despise and why? My main gripe had been that the philosophies were so removed from actual reality that they were not practised in every day life for fear of being misunderstood, this was only my view of the situation then. Others people were comfortable with Christianity and did not encounter the problems that I did. When I was young and attending church, the mere mention that I was a Christian would somehow preclude me from everyday conversation in case I would not approve of anything so ungodly as sex or swearing. I did not want to be excluded from society but if I attached myself to a religion that made people talk to me unnaturally then I was not getting a true picture of my environment. I wanted to be real, interacting honestly with others and being true to myself. Just because I used certain phrases or understood the workings of the body and some of the complex structures of society surely did not mean that I was not spiritual. The honesty to myself meant more to me, by being honest with myself I could be honest with God whether or not my views fell into the strict rules of the church. I had felt that keeping God to Sundays or only talking to Christians made the whole thing rather unhealthy, separating the church even further from society. It also meant that certain topics of conversation were frowned upon when in church meetings. Questions on life and spirituality were segregated as though they were not connected. Any theories that did not conform to set rules were dismissed out of hand. I can only speak from my own experience but Christians did not seem to have much fun. Using the idea that all things are a reflection of oneself, ultimately I despised myself.
My opinion was formed early on that groups of people who claimed to have more answers than anyone else without thinking that there may be a possibility that they were wrong or at least that someone else may be equally right meant nothing more than dogma. All dogma does is get peoples backs up. I am always aware that if my philosophy cannot be translated into the world that I live in then it is of little use to me. Neither do I want to segregate myself from society for periods because my beliefs will not stand the test of questioning. I have been down that route and it is a very lonely, humourless and boring existence. We are born to this world and so have to live in it, we can have our spiritual lives but they must exist as well as not instead of or apart from society. There has to be a balanced outlook that is why humour is such a great leveller. If through our beliefs we cannot take the rise out of ourselves and our beliefs then in my opinion they cannot stand up to much. I always apply this to my own beliefs and to the beliefs of others. It is probably why guides have such a hard time with me. Constantly questioning and validating and asking for the point of all their protestations and ideas. I rarely get the answer I wanted or expected.
Many years later having come into contact with many more groups of people I view the situation with a less narrow focus and can see the inherent good in many organisations. Each with different ideas that I can learn from, if nothing else guides have taught me to be open and to talk of spiritual things without thinking of a straight jacket of belief. In many ways I am grateful for my grounding in spiritual matters as a child and through my experience I hope that I can help others.
We can talk of the reason for world disasters, rape and murder, but try telling them to a parent whose fourteen-year old daughter has just been raped and left for dead. Telling them that it happened because she needed to burn some karma would probably result in a bloody nose, and rightly so. Saying that it is the will of God is equally incomprehensible. It is not the job of a philosophy to explain the past but to change the future for the better. History is of cause interesting and many lessons can be learned from our own mistakes and those of others. In hindsight we may be able to understand why certain things happened and try to avoid making the same situation arise again. The way each individual does this is entirely up to them. So was born the term own truth. Hopefully these own truths coincide with others to make our world an on going biological phenomenon, with all faiths eventually becoming part of one great faith.
As I explained at the start of this book our biggest creative space is inside our minds, through it we build up an image of the world around us and its where our ideas start and our conditioning begins. Generating thoughts to make us do the gardening, go to work and change the environment we live in. Thoughts and patterns of living are eventually transferred into rules that we base our lives on. Many of these rules become so solid that it is hard to think that they are mutable. We say to ourselves "Weve always done things like that, so they must be right". When our spiritual life is awakened some of these rules are questioned and perhaps modified or dispensed with. The more superficial ones are easy to change but those that are deeply entrenched can be hard to recognise let alone change. They appear to us as blocks that have to be worked through. Unfortunately we grow accustomed to them and treat them as a security blanket becoming blind to the fact that they are blocks at all. When they are pointed out to us we still may not want to recognise them, even if we know deep down that they exist. Ignoring them hoping that they will go away will work for a while but eventually something has to be done about them.
Working with guides helps us to understand the way we think and act and from there we can examine ourselves and start to put things right if we think that they are wrong. This is the start of our spiritual knowledge having a positive effect on our lives. Fear of change is always hard to get over initially, so if we start with small things and a beneficial result is obtained then our confidence grows. A very simple example from my own life was the fear of talking in certain situations. I would keep quiet because I felt that would be laughed at in a derogatory manner. Kidding myself that I did not speak because I was not meant to, appeased me for a long time. Subconsciously I was protecting myself from being questioned about what I thought and to re-enforce this I wore a neckerchief. Of cause there are sensible reason for wearing something round ones neck, which have no bearing on any problem. This article of clothing was preventing my throat from being free to be used, restricting what I said. I was not aware of the significance of the neckerchief until someone pointed it out to me.
For a long time I had become aware that I wanted to say things to people, but the words that came out of my mouth did not correspond with the intention of my thoughts. Talking to a friend in circle about this she suggested that I was restricting the flow and that the restriction around my throat was symbolic of the block. I agreed that it made sense and we carried on talking about something else. mid-way through a sentence she said, "Well arent you going to take it off then?" "What?" I replied. "Your scarf, that is the restriction we were just talking about." I was suddenly shocked and scared at the same time, surely my neckerchief couldnt be the restriction. Id always worn one, and I had no intention of taking it off now, I would feel undressed. She could see my apprehension and pushed me further. "If it is just a piece of clothing then it wont hurt to take it off. If it is symbolic of the block you will know instantaneously. Your fear of removing it proves that something is going on so take it off." This was ridiculous, of cause it was just an accessory no need to wear it at all, but the fear inside gripped me. Recognising the fear made me realise that I had to take it off, but it took a lot of cajoling to do it. As soon as it was removed I felt free but insecure this proved that it had been the problem.
This episode showed me how attached we become to our blocks and how relatively easy it is to remove some of them. Within a couple of days my throat felt less naked and my mouth started to say things that corresponded with my thoughts. I am sure that some people wished that I had never taken the scarf off but you cannot please everyone. I had created a block in my mind without realizing it and all I had to do to remove it was to remove the frame it was hanging on. The physical action prompted my mind to address the balance, letting the subtle body to get on with its job. Being aware of the subtle energies and acting on spiritual knowledge had a direct and beneficial effect, improving my communication skills.
Spotting these blocks can become fun even if removing them is harder. There are hundreds of these little hurdles in our make-up, some good and others debilitating. The more small ones we find the greater chance there is of finding a big one. Hopefully with the experience gained in dispatching the small ones the easier the larger ones are to deal with. The changes that occur when working through blocks are real proof that the spirit has a direct influence on our lives and that we have a choice to change. That choice depends on our own will and the will to follow the best possible path even if we are not sure what is going on.
The world is changing in major ways with the awareness of spiritual energy. The language of subtle earth entities and other dimensions are filtering through to everyday conversation. Even if this is only on a superficial level it means that the terms of the spirit enters our vocabulary, in doing so vibrations are increased however small. In the same way as a mantra produces a meditative state in the individuals mind then using spiritual words can increase the collective vibration. I have always maintained that if everyone in the world thought the same thing at the same time then it would happen. At some point in the future this may become a fact but for the moment it is good to feel that there are others amongst us who think the same as I do.
Musicians and poets have always been inspired to describe the worlds that they live in and to offer some solutions or solace. As I listen to many songs, I am compelled to think that the inspiration for the words has come from a higher energy. The more people that listen to them even if they do not feel particularly spiritual the higher the vibrations are going to get. Many times the line in a song has prompted me to rethink my view on things. Of cause, music is great for raising the vibrations or changing the mood that we are in the same way that some meditation uses sound as a focus. Take any contemporary song and listen to it as though it was a part of a meditation and I know that you will be able to find some part of it that resonates with you. If this is beginning to happen then is it not possible that there is an awakening in all walks of life.
Our own personal development very often means the breaking down of barriers and rebuilding ourselves. The same is true of any planetary development. The restless world trying to better itself has to go through many transformations to be cleansed. What these are I do not know and would not like to hazard a guess. Guides are continually talking about the raising of awareness and many changes that are on their way. As with information on our personal development we are only told of the next steps even if the future is hinted at. We have the ability to change our collective futures just as we do to change our own lives.
Everyone has a part to play in the unfolding story, the awareness of guides is one way which I can help to raise the vibrations of others around me and participate in the continued survival of our planet and our race as human beings.
© Phil Ironside