Happy Monday to You!
I hope you all had a restful, restorative weekend.
I was brave enough to put my work down for a few days and give myself the gift of rest.
As I suspect you are all well aware of, it’s easy to get caught up in our stories and the follies of work and the world. We can easily forget to meet our own authentic needs on the road to meeting the expectations we accept from others, be they family members, co-workers, a boss, or the issues of the world.
Friday I enjoyed a day of art and a little play in my rock garden.
Saturday, my friend and student Troy Casey (The Certified Health Nut) and his beautiful wife Uri came to visit Penny, Vidya and I for the day.
We had a lovely time doing art together. Troy and Uri have two small children, so as you can imagine, they both have their hands full.
I was grateful that they could share a day of rest and play with us.
Here you can see Troy and Uri enjoying the relaxing scenery from my front yard. I was really impressed that Troy brought his tai-chi ruler and wanted to spend some time working on his gong! Great job Troy. We really enjoyed spending the day with you and Uri.
VARIETIES OF SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES
Today my soul guided me to read some passages in Paul Brunton’s book Inspiration and The Overself, Vol. 14, The Notes of Paul Brunton.
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I was guided to read several pages that described a variety of people’s experiences of the soul, The Light, and other experiences that may be described as experiences of God-Union.
Many people read books like this, or talk to others that have had such experiences, yet put little value on them because they often haven’t had such experiences.
I thought I’d briefly share some of my perspectives on varieties of spiritual experiences with you today.
What Are Spiritual Experiences?
That’s a question that isn’t usually addressed by people, which leaves them in their own projections as to exactly what “spiritual experiences” are.
To me, the spiritual person is simply someone who takes responsibility for what they create moment to moment in their life.
Many people claim to be “religious”, but don’t display the qualities of being spiritual. Many claim to be spiritual, yet ignore the variety of religious experiences others have, or don’t demonstrate any objective evidence that their spiritual experiences are aiding in their being more spiritual as per my own description of the word.
To have a spiritual experience, there is generally a sense that something is happening outside the construct of your own mental-emotional volition.
In other words, what we call “spiritual experiences” usually things that we express to others with leaders such as, “I was out in my garden and you won’t believe what happened”.
Initially, even when they happen to us, our ego-mind is quite confused because where truly spiritual experiences do occur, it is rarely ever something that we created of our own volition; when we turn the key in the car and the engine starts, we aren’t shocked or surprised at the noise because it came about by our own volition.
Here are a few examples of spiritual experiences one can have and ways they may come about.
Here you see my friend Csaba Lucas’ children sitting in the living room.
Csaba told me today that he waked into his living room to find his kids just like this, so he took a picture and shared it with me.
When we teach children methods for finding their own inner-stillness and don’t force it on them like a kid being told they must go to Sunday school or something bad will happen, they naturally play and have fun.
When we have fun with sound, chanting, toning and meditation techniques, our right-brain is open and we can truly have spontaneous spiritual experiences.
A very common experience is that of deep peace, or becoming one with All That Is.
Even one such experience usually has profound healing effects, sparks our curiosity, and often leads to a life of practicing.
Practicing because we want to, not because we think we have to. Great to see your kids enjoying themselves Csaba!
Here you can see me relaxing and enjoying the evening sun.
I meditate with the sun as it rises and sets most days. I don’t make a rigid practice of having to do this procedure or that.
I simply look at the sun with an open heart and mind. I often have mystical experiences.
Many times I’ve had lucid dream experiences where I’m transported to the sun and other planets to meet the beings that live there.
Sometimes I get to see people I’ve studied in their afterlife state. These experiences have really made me comfortable that there is life after death. God can’t die!
Sometimes, very heavy stones become light!
I’ve had big stones fall on me when I was deep on stone stacking meditation and to my surprise, I wasn’t cut and didn’t have any broken bones!
I found that if I was in a state of inner-stillness and my ego-mind wasn’t projecting it’s belief that “this should hurt” as the stone was falling, that I didn’t have any pain or injury.
It was as though the stone Buddhas were teaching me that how we use our mind is “everything” when it comes to the experiences we create, have, or draw to ourselves.
As I’ve worked in my zen garden, I’ve had many amazing mystical experiences.
I’ve had nature spirits communicate with me. They usually want to add something to what I’m creating.
They often seem to like to play with me and have me put odd sized or very pretty rocks in places that aren’t what I was planning.
It seems they want to be sure I’m aware that “I’m not alone”. Such experiences have taken away my fear of being alone in nature.
I use to have such experiences as a child too, but there never seems to be any adaptation to such beautiful mysteries; they are always fresh each time!
We can all have mystical, spiritual experiences.
The one key factor I’ve found that is commonly involved is that we “let go” of our ego mind and simply play without judgment.
When I’m there, I’m in heaven and I hope I see you there soon!
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
