Spiritual Beings
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We are Energy, We are Spirit, We are Immortal
Many have heard the adage, "we are spiritual beings having an earthly experience." Most religions will agree on this fact but the debate stems from what happens after this particular life. This is where all the vast, complex, and wide-ranging disparities come into play. This is what causes most wars to be fought and historically, has created major dissension. Unfortunately, many future conflicts will stem from religious nonconformity.
This lens will enlist the assistance of some of the greatest thinkers of our time and associate their thoughts with those of the author, and contrast it with general public opinion. In the case of religion and "man-made-spirituality" most of what we know about the subject, comes from "Mom and Dad," Uncle Louie, Aunt Mildred, your Sunday School teacher, Bill, who for some odd reason always had a weird "twinkle" in his eye when he was around children, and of course, Pastor/Bishop/Minister/Priest Johnny. The reader knows where I'm going with this so before you utter the phrase, "I don't receive the word from MAN/WOMAN, I get "God's Word" from my "Savior." Maybe you do, but it's been filtered through the aforementioned. For example, David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite, and Jim Jones all led mass religious movements that ended in horrific tragedies and their members could have, and probably did say the same thing, "I get the word from God." Of course these are extreme examples so let's just stick to the pedophiles, whore-mongers, and avaricious men of today that make up a good percentage of the clergy around the world. If you sit in that synagogue, mosque, temple, or church, and listen to someone who is not morally correct, your instruction is not coming from a Loving, Divine, Presence that we refer to as God, iIt's coming from Pastor Fred, regardless of how you slice it.
So lets take a look at some of the time tested aphorisms uttered throughout the ages that ring true to this authors heart. What I'd like the reader to do is compare past writings from erudite citizens with your experience over the years with your religious/spiritual teachers. I will translate what their sayings mean to me and how it resonates in my soul.
This lens will enlist the assistance of some of the greatest thinkers of our time and associate their thoughts with those of the author, and contrast it with general public opinion. In the case of religion and "man-made-spirituality" most of what we know about the subject, comes from "Mom and Dad," Uncle Louie, Aunt Mildred, your Sunday School teacher, Bill, who for some odd reason always had a weird "twinkle" in his eye when he was around children, and of course, Pastor/Bishop/Minister/Priest Johnny. The reader knows where I'm going with this so before you utter the phrase, "I don't receive the word from MAN/WOMAN, I get "God's Word" from my "Savior." Maybe you do, but it's been filtered through the aforementioned. For example, David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite, and Jim Jones all led mass religious movements that ended in horrific tragedies and their members could have, and probably did say the same thing, "I get the word from God." Of course these are extreme examples so let's just stick to the pedophiles, whore-mongers, and avaricious men of today that make up a good percentage of the clergy around the world. If you sit in that synagogue, mosque, temple, or church, and listen to someone who is not morally correct, your instruction is not coming from a Loving, Divine, Presence that we refer to as God, iIt's coming from Pastor Fred, regardless of how you slice it.
So lets take a look at some of the time tested aphorisms uttered throughout the ages that ring true to this authors heart. What I'd like the reader to do is compare past writings from erudite citizens with your experience over the years with your religious/spiritual teachers. I will translate what their sayings mean to me and how it resonates in my soul.
Contents at a Glance
Eternal Beings
One way or the other, we are eternal beings. We will live eternally, some say in 'Heaven' or 'Hell' either way, it's eternal life. Eternity in Heaven or a state of Nirvana and a blissful reunion with God, or eternity in a dark void, in "Hell" or a permanent separation from God, if that is what you choose to believe.We are eternal beings, made of energy; energy that was never created and can never be destroyed. We're immortal, so do you suppose your immortality started on the day you were born? If that were the case, you would not be immortal.
Time is only a factor in the physical, earthly realm, it plays no role on the immortal, eternal, spiritual plane. "The Soul is Timeless." Heaven or Nirvana, our spiritual home, has no starting date, has no ending date; it is eternal. Therefore, you have no starting date, no ending date, and no spiritual expiration date. If your birth date, or date of incarnation was January 1, 1970, and you are an immortal spirit, made in the spiritual image of God, you have no starting date, and you have no ending date. If your date of physical death is January 1, 2040, that date will not be your spiritual expiration date. If you comprehend and follow this concept there can be no "Hell."
B. E. Shaw
Water Evaporation - Soul Incarnation
Think about water for a minute. In a cold, thunderous storm, water often forms into hail; while in a blizzard, water becomes wondrous snowflakes that flutter to the ground.
In both instances, water has solidified into an icy or nearly solid form, but once it hits the ground and begins to warm up, it turns back into water. Water eventually evaporates into moisture in the air and travels back up into the atmosphere and repeats the cycle again .. and again.
So, water changes form, but its essence, or spirit, remains the same. Likewise, our energy changes form when we leave the physical world, but our spirit remains the same. In other words, we never disappear. We continue to exist.
Let's try another analogy. Imagine the ocean as the place our spirit comes from. Some call this Heaven, Source, Divinity, the Universe. Now imagine a teacup filled with some of that ocean water. That cup represents your physical body and the water inside it represents your spirit. When the cup cracks, or when the body dies, your spirit spills out and returns home.
Goethe
We appear on Earth as separate beings with diverse destinies; but as each separate raindrop is a part of the sea, so are we each a part of the Ocean of Awareness, the Body of God. Find love and inner peace deep within the highest truth that we are all one Family. Leave behind the baggage of fear, envy, and resentment; fly aloft on wings of understanding, to enter the boundless Land of Compassion.
Dan Millman, "The Laws of Spirit"
The source we came from is pure Love. That is why we generally feel good when we do good things and we feel either indifferent (for those who have no conscious) or a little down when we do spiteful things. Remember the euphoric feeling we had as Americans respected one another in the aftermath of 9/11? You could feel love emanating from our spirits. We felt this way because collectively, for a couple of days or so, Americans bonded. Everyone was nice to one another and for a brief moment in time we were able to capture a small glimpse of our true divinity.
B. E. Shaw
In both instances, water has solidified into an icy or nearly solid form, but once it hits the ground and begins to warm up, it turns back into water. Water eventually evaporates into moisture in the air and travels back up into the atmosphere and repeats the cycle again .. and again.
So, water changes form, but its essence, or spirit, remains the same. Likewise, our energy changes form when we leave the physical world, but our spirit remains the same. In other words, we never disappear. We continue to exist.
Let's try another analogy. Imagine the ocean as the place our spirit comes from. Some call this Heaven, Source, Divinity, the Universe. Now imagine a teacup filled with some of that ocean water. That cup represents your physical body and the water inside it represents your spirit. When the cup cracks, or when the body dies, your spirit spills out and returns home.
Goethe
We appear on Earth as separate beings with diverse destinies; but as each separate raindrop is a part of the sea, so are we each a part of the Ocean of Awareness, the Body of God. Find love and inner peace deep within the highest truth that we are all one Family. Leave behind the baggage of fear, envy, and resentment; fly aloft on wings of understanding, to enter the boundless Land of Compassion.
Dan Millman, "The Laws of Spirit"
The source we came from is pure Love. That is why we generally feel good when we do good things and we feel either indifferent (for those who have no conscious) or a little down when we do spiteful things. Remember the euphoric feeling we had as Americans respected one another in the aftermath of 9/11? You could feel love emanating from our spirits. We felt this way because collectively, for a couple of days or so, Americans bonded. Everyone was nice to one another and for a brief moment in time we were able to capture a small glimpse of our true divinity.
B. E. Shaw
Spiritual Literature
Yung and Tolstoy
My life as I lived it had often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had to be born again because I had not fulfilled the task that was given to me.Carl Jung
How interesting it would be to write the story of the experiences in this life of a man who killed himself in his previous life; how he now stumbles against the very demands which had offered themselves before, until he arrives at the realization that he must fulfill those demands. The deeds of the preceding life give direction to the present life.
Tolstoy
The Law of Cause and Effect
O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the Gods, know that if you become worse you shall go to the worse souls, or if better to the better, and in every succession of life and death you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of heaven.
Plato
"As you sow so shall you reap" is more of a universal law than a biblical one because you truly get out of life what you put into it. And if your particular life seems a bit unfair, off kilter, or imbalanced, then you're dealing with karmic effects. The Law of Cause and Effect is just as real as the Law of Gravity, the only difference is one is immediate and the other occurs over time, either in this life or the next.
B. E. Shaw
Plato
"As you sow so shall you reap" is more of a universal law than a biblical one because you truly get out of life what you put into it. And if your particular life seems a bit unfair, off kilter, or imbalanced, then you're dealing with karmic effects. The Law of Cause and Effect is just as real as the Law of Gravity, the only difference is one is immediate and the other occurs over time, either in this life or the next.
B. E. Shaw
Only Love is Real
This is a marvelous story about how love transcends time and is eternal. Excerpt from, "Only Love is Real" written by Brian L. Weiss"From the time she was a little girl, she let her hand hang over the side of her bed, another hand would lovingly take hers, and she would be reassured no matter how anxious she was feeling. Oftentimes when her hand accidentally went over the bedside and the grasp surprised her, she would reflexively jerk back her hand, and this always broke her embrace.
She always knew when to reach for the hand and to feel comforted. There was, of course, no physical form under her bed. As she grew older, the hand remained. She married but never told her husband about this experience because it seemed so childlike.
When she became pregnant with her first child, the hand disappeared. She missed her loving and familiar companion. There was no hand to take hers in that same loving way.
Her baby was born, a beautiful daughter. A little while after the birth, while lying in bed together, the baby took her hand. A sudden and powerful recognition of that old familiar feeling flooded her mind and her body.
Her protector had returned. She cried with happiness and felt a surge of love and a connection that she knew existed far beyond the physical.
Brian L. Weiss, "Only Love is Real"
What About Our Existence
We reside in a world inside the world of those closest and dearest to us. I have my consciousness and your daughter, son, mother, father, sister, brother, grandparents, friends, and even any nemesis you may have, all have their own individual consciousness.When one consciousness is removed because of its physical (earthly) demise, the subconscious or spirit (immortal consciousness) remains in tact. This applies to each and every soul in your circle and beyond. The spirit-consciousness transitions back to the source from which it came while still remaining a part of the soul group and earthly inner circle. That same inner circle will still be in tact 200-400-600 years from now. The only exception will be that, in future incarnations the participants will take on different roles.
You can compare this spiritual phenomenon to the same group of actors who perform in different movies. Often it's the same cast of thespians portraying different characters, in different movies with altered themes, story lines, and messages.
The actor dies on the movie set and no longer takes part in subsequent scenes. Months later you will see him in another role, just as the soul will appear in myriad upcoming roles. Somewhere, there is always life. There is no death; we live eternally.
B. E. Shaw
Marcus Tullius Cicero
"It is again a strong proof of men knowing most things before birth, that when mere children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as to show that they are not then taking them in for the first time, but remembering and recalling them."
"A home without books is a body without soul."
"Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body."
"A home without books is a body without soul."
"Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body."
"Every many takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." Arthur Schopenhauer
Bound by the ties of Love
Words and Inspiration of Mahatma Gandhi
- Scientist tell us that without the presence of the cohesive force amongst the atoms that comprises this globe of ours, it would crumble to pieces and we would cease to exist, and even as there is cohesive force in blind matter, so must there be in all things animate, and the name for that cohesive force among animate beings is love.
We notice it between father and son, between brother and sister, friend and friend... Where there is love there is life. - Believing as I do in the theory of rebirth, I live in the hope that if not in this birth, in some other birth I shall be able to hug all humanity in friendly embrace.
Mahatma Gandhi
Holy Man
Many may never have entered a church or a mosque or performed any ceremony. But if he realizes God within himself and is thereby lifted above the vanities of the World; that man is a Holy Man.
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I love to write about Spirituality and the Soul. My quest to finding my truth about this earthly journey is interesting, important, and very significant in my life. Notice I wrote, "my truth," therefore what resonates in my soul as Truth, may not be yours. Your comments of course are welcome because one thing we do share is that we all (those who frequent these sort of pages) have a passion for reading and/or writing.
Rebecca Rosen, "Spirited"
The soul of man is like to water;
From Heaven it cometh
To Heaven it riseth
And then returneth to earth,
Forever alternating.
Other articles by taskeinc
Spiritual in Nature
- Affirmations Work
- Affirmations are a metaphysical phenomenon that very few have a solid understanding of, or can explain. Myriad books, including "The Secret," have broached the subject of affirmations and it's been talked about for centuries.
- At the Bottom of the Well
- I fell in a hole that turned out to be a Water Well. One of those Wells from days gone by used to access water in the ground. The Well sits in the middle of about half an acre. You've been warned to stay away, to be careful around this Well because there is no longer a canopy signifying that it's there. You only know it's there because of a few remnants left behind. Over the course of time it is covered by debris and it's an excavation that has long been unkempt and forgotten, but it's still there. Now, low and behold, you find yourself inexplicably, at the bottom of the Well.
- Five ways to tap into your Inner Awareness
- Five relatively simple ways to find the "inner you," to connect with the Divine Source that lies (usually dormant) within all of us.
- Hoodwinked, Babboozled, Led Astray
- Even as a kid, things had to make sense to me, things had to be somewhat logical. You couldn't just tell me anything and I'd believe it, no matter what it was. Therefore, my quest for the truth regarding religion began at a fairly early age.
- Parents have power to end Hereditary Religion
- Most definitely, parents have the power and I believe it is their duty to end hereditary religion. Many won't do so because they don't believe it's "hereditary" but believe that's the way "God would have it." They believe by teaching their children exactly what they were taught about religion, about worship, and everything else related to their religious beliefs, they are doing their child a favor. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Appeciate your comments
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mirichandler
Dec 29, 2010 @ 2:46 pm | delete
- Quite simply a lovely spiritual and intuitive lens. Thank you.
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by taskeinc
Barry Shaw, founder of Work Home Union, over 25 years in Information Technology, web/graphics design, network marketing. WHU aka taskeinc has written... more »
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