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  1. @datamonster Heres a quick tutorial, the struggle and the transformation to yellow. lolol i wonder how accurate this actually is. When all of greens attempts for change fail and out of desperation it calls for more insight, it unlocks yellow. lololol How does green defeat red? INSIGHHHHHHHHHHT.
  2. I would imagine all of the above honestly... there's no real telling. I have heard everything from, major life transformation to nothing really noticeable externally changing at all. It is very radical and fun to talk about so it does seem that there are quite a few that find a way to earn an income by sharing their communication whether by writing books, holding retreats and online discussion groups with those who are open-minded and interested in the message.... but it's obviously easier to find these people because of their popularity. Simultaneously I would imagine it must happen all over the world and I'm sure some don't really discuss it that much at all.... I heard a story about an awakened guy discussing it with some people at a bar and his longtime friend grabbed him by the neck because he was so frustrated with what he was talking about.... So one probably should be aware of the company he or she is talking to...lol. When Awakening occurred here for example I still had three years left in the military before getting a retirement pension for the rest of my life. It just made sense financially for our family for me to finish up and get that retirement. Just simply can't tell it's fair game afterwards ❤
  3. In general, it's healthy and natural to feel grief for the suffering of others. On the other hand, grief is a temporary state of experience, and once that energy has moved, it's a great opportunity to transmute it into passion that you put towards conscious actions. This could be working on raising your own consciousness or helping to create systems and opportunities for others to do so. Truthfully, grief itself is a form of love. If you didn't love the thing you were grieving, you wouldn't be grieving. As long as you're loving, you're helping on some level. But of course, there's endless actions you can take in addition to simply "being" loving, like donating to charities, buying a sandwich for the homeless person on your block, getting involved politically, doing personal transformation work, meditation, helping to protect the environment, taking courses or reading about racism/sexism/etc. The list is endless. Pick one thing and start there. You can't save the world, but you can do one thing today to make a difference. And another thing tomorrow. And a third thing the day after.
  4. I've encountered an interesting problem in the area of self-help. The "I", I am reffering to, will be ego in the following . So this is not only about ego transcendence, but also the transformation of ego, within it's own realm. Thus, I put it in the Self-Actualization sub-forum. Always, when I get triggered by others to a certain extent, I eventually start thinking like the subject I am critizicing. Very abstract, so here's a concrete example: For example, I see someone judging others heavily. At the first few instances, I don't really care, because I'm not the one who's judging. I'm fine with them judging. But after some time, when I see the same judgements over and over again, it starts to trigger me. Of course, from the very beginning, I know how judging others ultimately causes harm to your own wellbeing. Now when I start to get triggered, there's a very interesting shift happening: I start to criticize and judge the person, which criticizes and judges others! Suddenly, I am the one, who tells somebody else, how they have to behave. I adapt the very same pattern, which I was conscious of in others. Two more examples: I stay away from debates on this forum, as I'm not interested in them. But when they trigger me (not necessarily the content, but the unnecessity of the debate itself), I'm starting to feel like writing a post on stopping this debating stuff. What would I end up with? Starting debates on the forum. Loops back again. When others around me are super serious, and I get triggered by it, I lose my chill and start to get serious too - in order to try to make the other person less serious! Again a very interesting twist happening. I try to stay conscious of these dynamics, but they still sometimes find their way in. Very sneaky. Good thing though is, the more I notice this behavior, the more I can transcend it. But then again, from a practical POV, it can make sense in some instances to step in and take action. I'm thinking of situations with really toxic behavior. And also probably a few more subtler cases. What's going on there? (Not so important, but I'll still put it here: One of the insights I had, which I could connect to that, was: The things you don't like about other people, you also don't like about yourself. This whole situation also shows the power of nets (systems) and how they influence each other.) How would you balance both extremes out, so that you do not adapt the same egoic dynamics, which you are acting against or critizicing? (Yes, only an ego can get triggered or wants to act against something, but there must be a healthy way to cope with this - also in order to have a positive influence)
  5. @Lews Therin From my POV, you're trying to dream up imaginary characters who know what the real you need more than the real you does. Which came across to me as being counter productive, and I was trying to point to that. If you're coming from another perspective though, then I'd definitely recommend yoga, its an amazing tool for self transformation, regardless of how enlightened you are. Enlightenment never ends in this particular context.
  6. What is our relationship with reality? This can be a multi approach.. Many relationships or forms of relationships ? A neutral relationship - where you simply accept reality for what it is. And don't react much to it. Silent observer. ?Transformative relationship - where you actively work towards changing the reality. Action ? Understanding relationship - where you try to understand that this is the nature of reality and do whatever you can to suitably fit into it and try to make subtle adjustments to cope with it. You are not in denial. Matured approach. You begin to understand that reality is a product of human nature. You embrace the enemy. Compromising relationship. ?Deep relationship - where you understand that the hidden truths of life and the harsh nature of reality and realize the deeper interconnections between different aspects of reality. A nihilistic approach or relationship where you realize that sudden change or transformation is only a pipedream. A liberating approach ?Learning approach - constantly learning different aspects of reality and making the best out of such learning.. Not judging. Simply learning and optimizing this learning to personal advantage ?Denial Relationship - here you completely deny reality and put your own thoughts and ideas on it and expect it to turn out how you want it to. You just cannot accept how reality is. This leads to a lot of backlash, resistance, loss, protesting and clash. ?Differentiating relationship - here you try to differentiate between absolute or natural reality and perceived reality or conditioned reality. This differentiation helps you in keeping things simple and reducing the impact of reality in your life to a certain extent. In short you're screening reality to disengage with the drama of reality and only deal with its absolute form. You reduce the burden of reality by separating the wheat from the chaff. ?Embracing Relationship - embracing reality means accepting and loving what's happening. Understanding that whatever is going on is a function of karma and a function of cause and effect. It will happen the way its fated to happen. So there is a beauty or art to how the reality is panning out in front of you. Here you embrace reality for what it is rather than bitching about it. You look at it with amazement and simply go with it. You understand that everything that is happening around you is happening for all the good reasons and this was a masterful plan well executed and that in the end its all good even if currently it looks bad. ?Escaping Relationship - you escape reality ?, most commonly by playing video games. You just don't want to deal with it anymore. Better to escape than try to find a remedy or even take it's daily assault on your well being. You use all kinds of distractions from sex, porn, video games, drugs, relationships, excessive mental masturbation. On and on and on. ?Deflecting Relationship - here you deflect reality because you understand that sometimes trying to make everything right in the world doesn't work anymore. You try to ignore your responsibility in changing it. You remain content with yourself. You watch Terrible news on TV but instead of thinking how to change things, you simply put off the TV and go back to your business as usual. You reject and deflect reality since in your mind you think that there is no use in engaging in reality so much. You see the futility of it all. So you simply focus on your own self and your own progress.
  7. We are affecting one another on an energetic level, this changes our DNA codes. We are activating new strands of DNA. As this transformation takes place everyone has to undergo different energy imbalances within their system, this is manifesting in the world today as the deadly virus. To allow more light into the system helps with our ability to release the shadows stored in memory of past trauma. That’s why there is so much fear spreading in the world today, it’s like wild fire. It doesn’t really matter what your position or perspective is, it has a shadow. What do you do? Do you remain flexible and listening to the body to your gut, to the intuition that guides us through this uncertainty. You can be your own guiding light through the correspondence with others, so trust the resonance raising your frequency i’ve recently been drawn to light language, the light workers are here to add light to the collective aspects holding the masses down and keeping them stuck in cyclical thinking, beliefs and patterns of division. There is a hierarchy in energy, start tuning into those energies pulling you up, I repeat. You must let go of what is no longer serving. Trust yourself, stop giving away your power. Edited 2 hours ago by DrewNows User Quote Bookmark DrewNows Topic Starter DrewNows Member 4,569 posts Posted 2 hours ago (edited) · Every time we reach a wall or as I would like to call it, a mile stone, there will be resistance that comes from within, don’t mistake this resistance for dis-ease or ill intention (mistaken guides) Guides may be labeled as self doubt, quacks, conspiracy theorists, new agers, tier 1 level thinkers, undeveloped logical minds. Take every bit of information and energy back in to reflect. You may not be able to trust your gut say if it’s storing a lot of pain or toxic, tightly held (emotional) beliefs. When one is to lighten the diet, to cleanse the system, new links can be made to information accessed from different points or angles, among multiple verticals Transformation cannot be forced, it must be allowed. Stop seeking externally for all the answers, they will come with ease, in ease. If you backtrack don’t forget to loop back around. It is the process of cycling one’s own urine that creates or allows for this to occur inwardly. It is our best medicine other than meditation Backtracking is not only useful but necessary, to integrate some shadows that cannot be accepted in our judgments of still-stored toxins seen in the world in our reflections Edited 2 hours ago by DrewNows User Quote Bookmark DrewNows Topic Starter DrewNows Member 4,569 posts Posted 1 hour ago · In actuality, nature is only violent to us when we are or have been violent with her. We have the capability of storing the violence within us in our cells. This manifests into much needed violence against one another, the fight for survival, and an unharmonious way of life leading to death and destruction. As we ascend upward, power and balance is restored to the systems of nature and society. We are shepherds of the physical world, bound only by the cords of attachment in our very own division
  8. Every time we reach a wall or as I would like to call it, a mile stone, there will be resistance that comes from within, don’t mistake this resistance for dis-ease or ill intention (mistaken guides) Guides may be labeled as self doubt, quacks, conspiracy theorists, new agers, tier 1 level thinkers, undeveloped logical minds. Take every bit of information and energy back in to reflect. You may not be able to trust your gut say if it’s storing a lot of pain or toxic, tightly held (emotional) beliefs. When one is to lighten the diet, to cleanse the system, new links can be made to information accessed from different points or angles, among multiple verticals Transformation cannot be forced, it must be allowed. Stop seeking externally for all the answers, they will come with ease, in ease. If you backtrack don’t forget to loop back around. It is the process of cycling one’s own urine that creates or allows for this to occur inwardly. It is our best medicine other than meditation Backtracking is not only useful but necessary, to integrate some shadows that cannot be accepted in our judgments of still-stored toxins seen in the world in our reflections
  9. We are affecting one another on an energetic level, this changes our DNA codes. We are activating new strands of DNA. As this transformation takes place everyone has to undergo different energy imbalances within their system, this is manifesting in the world today as the deadly virus. To allow more light into the system helps with our ability to release the shadows stored in memory of past trauma. That’s why there is so much fear spreading in the world today, it’s like wild fire. It doesn’t really matter what your position or perspective is, it has a shadow. What do you do? Do you remain flexible and listening to the body to your gut, to the intuition that guides us through this uncertainty. You can be your own guiding light through the correspondence with others, so trust the resonance raising your frequency i’ve recently been drawn to light language, the light workers are here to add light to the collective aspects holding the masses down and keeping them stuck in cyclical thinking, beliefs and patterns of division. There is a hierarchy in energy, start tuning into those energies pulling you up, I repeat. You must let go of what is no longer serving. Trust yourself, stop giving away your power.
  10. Stage Turquoise Stage Indigo fused with stage Pink State stages are independent of structure stages, yet can be reached as a permanent, yet are interpreted through the lens of one's growth stage development. So, a blue experience of a non-dual experience would be most likely interpreted as mythic literal. God did do this to me. There is only one god he told me xyz. God gave me this book and told me to create this religion, all other religions are false, if they don't believe in one god. etc. I bet there are better examples. I can write down how it is mapped out, but the only reference point I have is the ones I chiseled for myself and the ones I am copying from the book now. Preface/Preliminary remark Vision-Logic (which includes teal and turquoise)" Not very important for those not familiar. Moral span is considered as what is deemed worthy of moral consideration. Above teal (turquoise) World view: cross-paradigmatic, developmentalism as a world process (integralism) Moral span: all humans without exception. Seeing not only hierarchies but healthy hierarchies and in total holarchies. Detects harmonics, mystical forces, pervasive flow states that permeate any organization. Unites feeling with knowledge. Universal order in a living conscious fashion instead of a blue or green external rule and group orientation. Holding up the mirror to society. Values: global order and renewal. Experiences the wholeness of experience through mind an spirit. Self-identity + What is important: Highly aware of the complexity of meaning-making, systemic interactions, and dynamic processes. Seeks personal and spiritual transformation and supports others in their life quests; creates events that become mythical and reframe the meaning of situations. may understand “ego” as a “central processing unit” that actively creates a sense of identity; increasingly sensitive to the continuous “re-storying” of who one is; may recognize ego as most serious threat to future growth; continually attend to interaction among thought, action, feeling, and perception as well as influences from and effects on individuals, institutions, history and culture; treat time and events as symbolic, analogical, metaphorical (not merely linear, digital, literal); may feel rarely understood in their complexity by others. Reframes turns inside out, upside-down, clowning, holding up a mirror to society. often works behind the scenes. Affect levels: world-centric altruism teal-centered (yellow) Integrates multiple contexts, paradigmatic. Moral span all humans without exception. (counts also for green in total, green, yellow, turquoise). Self-identity + what is important: Life is a kaleidoscope of natural hierarchies (holarchies which include heterarchies). Flexibility, spontaneity, and functionality have the highest priority. Differences and pluralities can be integrated into interdependent flows (integration and disintegration instead of association and dissociation IMO! see politics especially germans diversity of parties in context with the true "meaning" of pluralism and dissemination of power) Egalitarianism is complemented with natural degrees of excellence where appropriate. Knowledge and competence should supersede, rank, power, status or the group! (yes please). World order is a result of the existence of different levels of reality (memes) and the inevitable patterns of moving up and down the dynamic spiral. Good governance facilitates the emergence of entities through the levels of increasing complexity (nested hierarchy). Comprehends multiple interconnected systems of relationships and processes; able to deal with conflicting needs and duties in constantly shifting contexts; recognizes the need for autonomy while parts of a system are interdependent; recognizes higher principles, social construction of reality, complexity and interrelationships; problem finding not just creative problem solving; aware of paradox and contradiction in system and self; sensitive to unique market niches, historical moment, larger social movements; creates “positive-sum” games; aware of own power (and perhaps tempted by it); seeks feedback from others and environment as vital for growth and making sense of world. Affect levels: "compassion"(green), all-human love(green-yellow), world-centric altruism(yellow-tourquise) THIRD TIER! Psychic: (which is coral in my humble opinion and has been called indigo in the past) Characteristic: union with world process, nature mysticism, gross nature unity. Main focus: Being, non-controlling consciousness; witnessing flux of experience and states of mind. Emergence of a perspective that is ego-transcendent or universal; people holding this stage of consciousness seem to “…experience themselves and others as part of ongoing humanity, embedded in the creative ground, fulfilling the destiny of evolution” (Cook-Greuter, 2002); consciousness ceases to appear as a constraint but rather as one more phenomenon that can be foreground or background; an integration of feelings of belongingness and separateness occurs; multiple points of view can be taken effortlessly; the pattern of constant flux and change becomes the context for feeling at home; one is able to respect the essence in others, no matter how different they may be; one is in tune with their life’s work as “a simultaneous expression of their unique selves” and as part of their shared humanity. Affect levels: awe, rapture, all-species love, compassion Moral span: all earthly beings without exception Subtle: Characteristics: union with creatrix of the gross realm; deity mysticism, subtle realm unity. Moral span -> all sentient beings without exception in all realms without exception ( saintly) Affect levels: Ananda, ecstasy, love-bliss, saintly commitment. Casual: Characteristics: Union with source of manifest realms; formless mysticism Moral span -> all sentient beings without exception in all realms without exception ( saintly) including all manifest and unmanifest reality. (Self-liberation in primordial awareness). The habit of observing the self cease to observe imo. Affect levels: infinite freedom-release, boddhisattvic-compassion. Non-Dual: Characteristic: union of form and formless, Spirit and World Process, non-dual mysticism. Moral span -> all manifest and unmanifest reality. (Self-liberation in primordial awareness) Affect levels: one taste, compassion. I can or did not find more on the topic so far besides reading the traditions who actually practiced it to these levels. But, this even more complex IMO, since it then has to be abstracted towards the development of the most important lines. Cognitive, interpersonal, moral, self-identify, etc. Whatever is the most important. Hopefully, this is useful. Would love to read a summary from others. In case they found different information. Here is the link from the pdf, the rest is from the book integral psychology.
  11. Crushed summary of the following article- The heart is an organ of spiritual perception . Emoting is not the same of true feeling. When one is engaged in emoting, they are in a form of spiritual sleep. The Way of the Heart, by Cynthia Bourgeault From the Christian esoteric tradition, a path beyond the mind Post authorBy Cynthia Bourgeault Post dateJanuary 31, 2017 Photograph by Brandon Zierer From the Christian esoteric tradition, a path beyond the mind Put the mind in the heart…. Put the mind in the heart…. Stand before the Lord with the mind in the heart.” From page after page in the Philokalia, that hallowed collection of spiritual writings from the Christian East, this same refrain emerges. It is striking in both its insistence and its specificity. Whatever that exalted level of spiritual attainment is conceived to be—whether you call it “salvation,” “enlightenment,” “contemplation,” or “divine union”—this is the inner configuration in which it is found. This and no other. It leaves one wondering what these old spiritual masters actually knew and—if it’s even remotely as precise and anatomically grounded as it sounds—why this knowledge has not factored more prominently in contemporary typologies of consciousness. Part of the problem as this ancient teaching falls on contemporary ears is that we will inevitably be hearing it through a modern filter that does not serve it well. In our own times the word “heart” has come to be associated primarily with the emotions (as opposed to the mental operations of the mind), and so the instruction will be inevitably heard as “get out of your mind and into your emotions”—which is, alas, pretty close to 180 degrees from what the instruction is actually saying. Yes, it is certainly true that the heart’s native language is affectivity—perception through deep feelingness. But it may come as a shock to contemporary seekers to learn that the things we nowadays identify with the feeling life—passion, drama, intensity, compelling emotion—are qualities that in the ancient anatomical treatises were associated not with the heart but with the liver! They are signs of agitation and turbidity (an excess of bile!) rather than authentic feelingness. In fact, they are traditionally seen as the roadblocks to the authentic feeling life, the saboteurs that steal its energy and distort its true nature. And so before we can even begin to unlock the wisdom of these ancient texts, we need to gently set aside our contemporary fascination with emotivity as the royal road to spiritual authenticity and return to the classic understanding from which these teachings emerge, which features the heart in a far more spacious and luminous role. According to the great wisdom traditions of the West (Christian, Jewish, Islamic), the heart is first and foremost an organ of spiritual perception. Its primary function is to look beyond the obvious, the boundaried surface of things, and see into a deeper reality, emerging from some unknown profundity, which plays lightly upon the surface of this life without being caught there: a world where meaning, insight, and clarity come together in a whole different way. Saint Paul talked about this other kind of perceptivity with the term “faith” (“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”), but the word “faith” is itself often misunderstood by the linear mind. What it really designates is not a leaping into the dark (as so often misconstrued) but a subtle seeing in the dark, a kind of spiritual night vision that allows one to see with inner certainty that the elusive golden thread glimpsed from within actually does lead somewhere. Perhaps the most comprehensive definition of this wider spiritual perceptivity is from Kabir Helminski, a modern Sufi master. I realize that I quote it in nearly every book I have written, but I do so because it is so fundamental to the wisdom tradition that I have come to know as the authentic heart of Christianity. Here it is yet again: We have subtle subconscious faculties we are not using. Beyond the limited analytic intellect is a vast realm of mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities; intuition; wisdom; a sense of unity; aesthetic, qualitative and creative faculties; and image-forming and symbolic capacities. Though these faculties are many, we give them a single name with some justification for they are working best when they are in concert. They comprise a mind, moreover, in spontaneous connection to the cosmic mind. This total mind we call “heart.”1 The purification of Muhammad’s heart by three Divine messengers. Bal’ami. Early fourteenth century “The heart,” Helminski continues, is the antenna that receives the emanations of subtler levels of existence. The human heart has its proper field of function beyond the limits of the superficial, reactive ego-self. Awakening the heart, or the spiritualized mind, is an unlimited process of making the mind more sensitive, focused, energized, subtle, and refined, of joining it to its cosmic milieu, the infinity of love.2 Now it may concern some of you that you’re hearing Islamic teaching here, not Christian. And it may well be true that this understanding of the heart as “spiritualized mind”— “the organ prepared by God for contemplation”3—has been brought to its subtlest and most comprehensive articulation in the great Islamic Sufi masters. As early as the tenth century, Al-Hakîm al Tirmidhî’s masterful Treatise on the Heart laid the foundations for an elaborate Sufi understanding of the heart as a tripartite physical, emotional, and spiritual organ.4 On this foundation would gradually rise an expansive repertory of spiritual practices supporting this increasingly “sensitive, focused, energized, subtle, and refined” heart attunement. But it’s right there in Christianity as well. Aside from the incomparable Orthodox teachings on Prayer of the Heart collected in the Philokalia, it’s completely scriptural. Simply open your Bible to the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:8) and read the words straight from Jesus himself: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” We will return to what “pure in heart” means in due course. But clearly Jesus had a foundational grasp on the heart as an organ of spiritual perception, and he had his own highly specific method for catalyzing this quantum leap in human consciousness. I have written extensively about this in my book The Wisdom Jesus, in which I lay out the principles of his kenotic (“letting go”) spirituality as a pathway of conscious transformation leading to nondual awakening. You will see there how this goal formed the core of his teaching, hidden in plain sight for twenty centuries now. I will be drawing on this material from time to time as it becomes pertinent to our present exploration. For now, the essential point is simply to realize that the teaching on the heart is not intrinsically an “Islamic” revelation, any more than it is a “Christian” one. If anything, its headwaters lie in that great evolutionary incubator of Judaism, in which more and more in those final centuries before the Common Era, the great Israelite prophets begin to sense a new evolutionary star rising on the horizon of consciousness. Yahweh is about to do something new, about to up the ante in the continuing journey of mutual self-disclosure that has formed the basis of the covenant with Israel. The prophet Ezekiel gets it the most directly, as the following words of revelation tumble from his mouth, directly from the heart of God: I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land I gave to your ancestors, and you shall be my people and I will be your God. (Ezekiel 36:24–28) A new interiority is dawning on the horizon, a new capacity to read the pattern from within: to live the covenant without a need for external forms and regulations, simply by living it from an inner integrity. And for the first time in Western history, this capacity to see from within is explicitly linked to the heart, and specifically to a “heart of flesh.” Without any attempt to end-run the massive theological and historical parameters that have grown up around this issue, my bare-bones take on Jesus is that he comes as the “master cardiologist,” the next in the great succession of Hebrew prophets, to do that “heart surgery” first announced by Ezekiel. And his powerfully original (at least in terms of anything heretofore seen in the Semitic lands) method of awakening heart perceptivity—through a radical nonclinging or “letting go”—will in fact reveal itself as the tie rod connecting everything I am talking about in this book. Do I Really Mean the Physical Heart? Not to be naive here, but yes. We are indeed talking about the physical heart, at least insofar as it furnishes our bodily anchor for all those wondrous voyages into far-flung spiritual realms. Again, the Eastern Orthodox tradition is not in the least equivocal on this point. Lest there be any tendency to hear the word as merely symbolic of some “innermost essence” of a person, the texts direct us immediately to the chest, where the sign that prayer is progressing will be a palpable physical warmth: To stand guard over the heart, to stand with the mind in the heart, to descend from the head to the heart—all these are one and the same thing. The core of the work lies in concentrating the attention and the standing before the invisible Lord, not in the head but in the chest, close to the heart and in the heart. When the divine warmth comes, all this will be clear.5 The following instruction is even more specific: When we read in the writings of the Fathers about the place of the heart which the mind finds by way of prayer, we must understand by this the spiritual faculty that exists in the heart. Placed by the creator in the upper part of the heart, this spiritual faculty distinguishes the human heart from the heart of animals…. The intellectual faculty in man’s soul, though spiritual, dwells in the brain, that is to say in the head: in the same way, the spiritual faculty which we term the spirit of man, though spiritual, dwells in the upper part of the heart, close to the left nipple of the chest and a little above it.6 Mosaic, Jungholz, Austria While the sheer physicality of this may make some readers squirm, the contemporary phenomenologist Robert Sardello is another strong advocate for a full inclusion of the physical heart in any serious consideration of the spirituality of the heart. When he speaks of the heart, as he makes clear in his remarkable book Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness, he is always referring to “the physical organ of the heart,” which merits this special consideration precisely because “it functions simultaneously as a physical, psychic, and spiritual organ.”7 It is this seamlessly tripartite nature of the heart’s field of activity that bestows its unusual transformative powers. While there are many spiritual traditions that focus on “the heart as the instrument through which religious practices take place,” Sardello feels that “these traditions do not focus on the inherent activity of the heart, which is already an act of a spiritual nature.”8 To demonstrate what this “inherently spiritual nature” of the heart might feel like, Sardello leads his readers on a profound voyage of discovery into the inner chambers of their own heart. Wielding those two classic tools of inner work, attention and sensation, he teaches us how to access the heart through concentrated sensation (rather than visualization or emotion) and there discover its inherent vibrational signature as “pure intimacy…intimacy without something or someone attached to that intimacy.”9 I have to say I followed that exercise several times and was astonished by the results. I had experienced something of that “pure intimacy” before, as that sort of golden tenderness that sometimes surrounds a period of Centering Prayer. But never had I experienced it with such force or clarity, as a distinct inner bandwidth resonating in perfect synchrony with (in Kabir Helminski’s words) “its cosmic milieu, the infinity of love.” No wonder the embodied aspect of heart spirituality is so important! For it is only through sensation—that is, “attention concentrated in the heart”—that this experience of utter fullness and belonging becomes accessible.10 Sardello is not the only voice in the field. There is now a substantial and growing body of “bridge literature” linking classic spiritual teachings on the heart with emerging discoveries in the field of neurobiology. I have already mentioned the pioneering work of the HeartMath Institute, but I want to call attention to two other fascinating and useful books for the spiritually adventurous nonspecialist: The Biology of Transcendence by Joseph Chilton Pearce11and The Secret Teaching of Plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner.12Marshaling considerable scientific data in a format easily accessible to a lay reader, each of these books demonstrates how contemporary science has taken us far beyond the notion of the heart as a mechanical pump to revision it as “an electromagnetic generator,”13 working simultaneously across a range of vibrational frequencies to perform its various tasks of internal and external self-regulation and information exchange. (An “organ of spiritual perception,” after all, can be understood in this context as simply an electromagnetic generator picking up information at far subtler vibrational bandwidths.) Both books call attention, as does the HeartMath Institute, to the intricate feedback loops between heart and brain—almost as if the human being were expressly wired to facilitate this exchange, which Pearce sees as fundamentally between the universal (carried in the heart) and the particular (carried in the brain). As he expresses it, “The heart takes on the subtle individual colors of a person without losing its essential universality. It seems to mediate between our individual self and a universal process while being representative of that universal process.”14 While such bold statements may make hard-core scientists writhe, from the spiritual side of the bridge it is easily comprehensible and brings additional confirmation that “putting the mind in the heart” is not merely a quaint spiritual metaphor but contains precise and essential information on the physiological undergirding of conscious transformation. The Weighing of the Heart from the Book of the Dead of Ani. c. 1300 B.C. British Museum What Gets in the Way? According to Western understanding, the heart does not need to be “grown” or “evolved.” Every heart is already a perfect holograph of the divine heart, carrying within itself full access to the information of the whole. But it does need to bepurified, as Jesus himself observed. In its spiritual capacity, the heart is fundamentally a homing beacon, allowing us to stay aligned with those “emanations from more subtle levels of existence” Helminski refers to, and hence to follow the authentic path of our own unfolding. But when the signals get jammed by the interference of lower-level noise, then it is no longer able to do its beaconing work. Unanimously, the Christian wisdom tradition proclaims that the source of this lower-level noise is “the passions.” As the Philokaliarepeatedly emphasizes, the problem with the passions is that they divide the heart.15 A heart that is divided, pulled this way and that by competing inner agendas, is like a wind-tossed sea: unable to reflect on its surface the clear image of the moon. Here again is a teaching that tends to set contemporary people’s teeth on edge. I know this from personal experience, because the issue comes up at nearly every workshop I give. To our modern Western way of hearing, “passion” is a good thing: something akin to élan vital, the source of our aliveness and motivation. It is to be encouraged, not discouraged. At a recent workshop I led, a bishop approached me with some concern and explained that in his diocese, following the recommendations of a church consultant, he had managed to boost morale and productivity by significant percentages simply by encouraging his clergy “to follow their passions.” Well-nigh universally today, the notion of “passionlessness” (a quality eagerly sought after in the ancient teachings of the desert fathers and mothers) equates to “emotionally brain dead.” If you take away passion, what is left? Madonna and child. Saint Augustinus Church, Miguel Hidalgo, Federal District, Mexico So once again we have to begin with some decoding. If you consult any English dictionary, you will discover that the word “passion” comes from the Latin verb patior, which means “to suffer” (passio is the first-person singular). But this still doesn’t get us all the way, because the literal, now largely archaic, meaning of the verb “to suffer” (to “undergo or experience”) is literally to be acted upon. The chief operative here is the involuntary and mechanical aspect of the transaction. And according to the traditional wisdom teachings, it is precisely that involuntary and mechanical aspect of being “grabbed” that leads to suffering in the sense of how we use the term today. Thus, in the ancient insights on which this spiritual teaching rests, passion did not mean élan vital, energy, or aliveness. It designated being stuck, grabbed, and blindly reactive. This original meaning is clearly uppermost in the powerful teaching of the fourth-century desert father Evagrius Ponticus. Sometimes credited with being the first spiritual psychologist in the Christian West, Evagrius developed a marvelously subtle teaching on the progressive nature of emotional entanglement, a teaching that would eventually bear fruit in the fully articulated doctrine of the seven deadly sins. His core realization was that when the first stirrings of what will eventually become full-fledged passionate outbursts appear on the screen of consciousness, they begin as “thoughts”—logismoi, in his words—streams of associative logic following well-conditioned inner tracks. At first they are merely that—“thought-loops,” mere flotsam on the endlessly moving river of the mind. But at some point a thought-loop will entrain with one’s sense of identity—an emotional value or point of view is suddenly at stake—and then one is hooked. A passion is born, and the emotions spew forth. Thomas Keating has marvelously repackaged this ancient teaching in his diagram of the life cycle of an emotion,16 a core part of his Centering Prayer teaching. This diagram makes clear that once the emotion is engaged, once that sense of “I” locks in, what follows is a full-scale emotional uproar—which then, as Father Keating points out, simply drives the syndrome deeper and deeper into the unconscious, where it becomes even more involuntary and mechanically triggered. What breaks the syndrome? For Evagrius, liberation lies in an increasingly developed inner capacity to notice when a thought is beginning to take on emotional coloration and to nip it in the bud before it becomes a passion by dis-identifying or disengaging from it. This is the essence of the teaching that has held sway in our tradition for more than a thousand years. Now, of course, there are various ways of going about this disengaging. Contemporary psychology has added the important qualifier that disengaging is not the same thing as repressing (which is simply sweeping the issue under the psychological rug) and has developed important methodologies for allowing people to become consciously present to and “own” the stew fermenting within them. But it must also be stated that “owning” does not automatically entail either “acting out” or verbally “expressing” that emotional uproar. Rather, the genius of the earlier tradition has been to insist that if one can merely back the identification out—that sense of “me,” stuck to a fixed frame of reference or value—then the energy being co-opted and squandered in useless emotional turmoil can be recaptured at a higher level to strengthen the intensity and clarity of heart perceptivity. Rather than fueling the “reactive ego-self,” the energy can be “rejoined to its cosmic milieu, the infinity of love.” And that, essentially, constitutes the goal of purification—at least as it has been understood in service of conscious transformation. Gravestone, Jewish Cemetery, Olesno, Poland Emotion versus Feeling Here again, we have an important clarification contributed by Robert Sardello. Echoing the classic understanding of the Christian Inner tradition (I first encountered this teaching in the Gurdjieff Work), Sardello points out that most of us use the terms “feeling” and “emotion” interchangeably, as if they are synonyms. They are not. Emotion is technically “stuck” feeling, feeling bound to a fixed point of view or fixed reference point. “We are not free in our emotional life,” he points out, since emotion always “occurs quite automatically as a reaction to something that happens to us.”17 It would correspond to what Helminski calls “the heart in service to the reactive ego-self.” Beyond this limited sphere opens up a vast reservoir of feelingness. Here the currents run hard and strong, always tinged with a kind of multivalence in which the hard-and-fast boundaries distinguishing one emotion from another begin to blend together. Happiness is tinged with sadness, grief touches at its bottomless depths the mysterious upwelling of comfort, loneliness is suffused with intimacy, and the deep ache of yearning for the absent beloved becomes the paradoxical sacrament of presence. “For beauty is only the beginning of a terror we can just scarcely bear,” observes Rilke, “and the reason we adore it so is that it serenely disdains to destroy us.”18 Such is the sensation of the heart beginning to swim in those deeper waters, awakening to its birthright as an organ of spiritual perception. And it would stand to reason, of course, that the experience is feeling-ful because that is the heart’s modus operandi; it gains information by entering the inside of things and coming into resonance with them. But this is feeling of an entirely different order, no longer affixed to a personal self-center, but flowing in holographic union with that which can always and only flow, the great dynamism of love. “Feeling as a form of knowing”19 becomes the pathway of this other mode of perceptivity, more intense, but strangely familiar and effortless. The great wager around which the Western Inner tradition has encamped is that as one is able to release the heart from its enslavement to the passions, this other heart emerges: this “organ of contemplation,” of luminous sight and compassionate action. For what one “sees” and entrains with is none other than this higher order of divine coherence and compassion, which can be verified as objectively real, but becomes accessible only when the heart is able to rise to this highest level and assume its cosmically appointed function. Then grace upon grace flows through this vibrating reed and on out into a transfigured world: transfigured by the very grace of being bathed in this undivided light. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” In this one sentence, the whole of the teaching is conveyed. What remains is for us to come to a greater understanding of how this purification is actually accomplished: a critical issue on which Christian tradition is by no means unanimous. This will be the subject of our next chapter. ♦ 1 Kabir Helminski, Living Presence: A Sufi Guide to Mindfulness and the Essential Self (New York: Tarcher/Perigree Books, 1992), 157. 2 Ibid., 158. 3 Sidney H. Griffith, “Merton, Massignon, and the Challenge of Islam,” in Rob Barker and Gray Henry, eds., Merton and Sufism: The Untold Story (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1999), 65. 4 For extensive bibliographical information on this work, see “A Treatise on the Heart,” trans. Nicholas Heer, (ibid., 79–88). 5 E. Kadloubovsky and E. M. Palmer, eds., The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 194. 6 Ibid., 190. 7 Robert Sardello, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness (Benson, NC: Goldenstone Press, 2006), 82. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 86. 10 No wonder the embodied aspect of heart spirituality is so important! For if Sardello is right here (and my own work confirms that he is), then the stunning conclusion is that there is no lack. That primordial hunger for intimacy and belonging we so frantically project onto others in our attempt to find fulfillment is fulfilled already, there in the “infinity of love” already residing holographically in our own hearts, once we have truly learned to attune to its frequency and trust that with which it reverberates. In this sense, our physical heart is the quintessential “treasure buried in the field.” 11 Joseph Chilton Pearce, The Biology of Transcendence:A Blueprint of the Human Spirit (Rochester, VT: Park Street Place, 2002). 12 Stephen Harrod Buhner, The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature (Rochester, VT: Bear and Company, 2004). 13 Ibid., 71. 14 Pearce, 64–65. 15 For a particularly clear and forceful discussion of this point, see E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer, trans., Unseen Warfare, trans. E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 241–44. 16 Reproduced in Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2004), 136. 17 Sardello, 72. 18 Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, trans. J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1939), 21. 19 Sardello, 72. From The Heart of Centering Prayer by Cynthia Bourgeault © 2016. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. From our current issue Parabola Volume 42, No. 1, “The Search for Meaning,” Spring 2017. This issue is available to purchase here. If you have enjoyed this piece, consider subscribing.
  12. @VincentArogya Thats true. @inFlow I know, i didnt write : "i want do die" from Ones perspective. But this transformation right now is insane. It is like switching light on and off all the time. And when its off, sense of separation is so big, im burning. Literally I go from total Peace to total depression and suicidal thoughts. But i know this is necessary, cold showers, grounding and meditation will do its miracles. Thanks for advice <3
  13. Yes there is a lot attachment left Thanks for scaring the shit out of me ? I am kidding, i can feel this is only the beginning, and there is no end for transformation.
  14. Attention lovely people, lost souls, leo minions, and the taintly auspicious Leo Guru, this is a message and quote from myself, the joker, a rabbit hole jumper, conspiracy theorist, brain re-washer, spiritual truth seeker/humanitarian: From one quack or conspiracy buff, to another, as above, so below, from the shallow/skeptically minded see-r's to the deep divers, I mean no ill intention, i have compassion for the complexities of all the "times" current spider webs of deception, lies, deceits, fears, and revelations. This is the year of transformation, we have 2020 vision, allow all perspectives to share the same space of unity, but do not lower yourself to the lies of the many, to give power away, take your power/sanctuary within. Create space, develop humility, question the biggest conspiracy theorists of them all: mainstream media, then allow all answers to flow your way. Do not take them as a belief, your shadow/fear is not what you think it is, it is not what needs to be pushed away, or written off. Meditate, always return home, and reflect on what information, dark or light, is coming to your search for higher truths. We don't have to agree, i know everyone is on a unique path, so i work to love you all, but the question is, can you love me? Can you love the devil, the ignorant, the hated, the politically inclined, the followers, worshippers, perfectionists, realists and liars? To withhold judgement long enough to see truth of what is given. so many of us claim to think in systems, and judge others for not being able to communicate intelligently using these systems, ignoring the different modalities of individuals, over-valuing left brain logic; my question is “on what level do you not know, yet claim and fool yourself into thinking you do” “to what degree can you smell your own shit” I’ve been connecting with my butthole all year long so I can allow myself to play with a double edged sword of life, Please don’t make fun of it we all have one
  15. I've been practicing Vipassana for around 3-4 months consistently. I have completed 1 10-day retreat, and just recently served a 10-day retreat. Felt like my first 10-day retreat was rather introductory and surface level, and good for just establishing myself in the technique. I've managed to maintain on average at least an hour and 40-50 minutes a day of Vipassana meditation since my first course in June. In terms of results, they definitely seem to be slowly trickling in. My concentration overall has clearly improved, and in general, I am slightly more equanimous, however I intuit that in order to deepen my practice I must strengthen my samadhi - thinking of running a self-course of strictly anapana until my samadhi is strong. At the moment I am lacking guidance, so I am going to purchase either Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha or The Mind Illuminated. If you guys have any advice on choosing either of these two books that would be greatly appreciated. I also have the opportunity to do a sit-serve program at a Vipassana centre, where I can stay there for 3 months or longer. That will enable me to sit a 10-day, then have a break, serve a 10-day etc in a fairly isolated environment, where I can keep building momentum. I have been listening to a few of Shinzen Young's talks which have also been deeply inspiring. One idea that keeps me patient is the (apparent) fact that meditation is all about momentum. Results begin to grow exponentially over time. I can't help but be curious about other techniques, specifically Kriya Yoga. Leo's video on "The Importance of Real Yoga" definitely inspired me. I also met someone (while serving) who practices Sadhguru's program of yoga, and they strongly agreed with pretty much everything Leo talks about in that video - that yoga is faster, more effective, and more integrated. They also believed that there was nothing dangerous about mixing Vipassana with Yoga - although the person I was talking to didn't seem like a long-term practitioner of either path. I know in the past I have dabbled around using different techniques, and I certainly don't want to make that mistake again. I can accept that real change and transformation will take time, persistence, patience, and focus. I am still very young (20). And am grateful to be where I am in life at such a young age. Essentially my goal is to just keep growing spiritually. Purifying my mind, and experience true insights. What do you guys think? Should I focus on Vipassana for at least a year - which would give me ample opportunity to give the technique a fair go, or plunge into Kriya Yoga and keep exploring that world? Or is it possible to do both (at different times of the day)? Are there any dangers involved? Thank you all. Let me know if you have questions.
  16. @No Self you are absolutely right. I wouldn’t want anyone to believe a leader or a teacher needs to be perfect. Nevertheless there is a threshold for tolerance of what is acceptable level of ‘imperfect’ and what’s no longer tolerable, and I Am figuring that out, and allowing others to find this threshold themselves by being open about my process of healing and transformation, as well as being clear about the issues that can no longer be overlooked.
  17. Salutations Jahmaine, Basically there's too few people who can claim to have gotten initiated to cannabis in any other manner than socio-toxic, e.g. vilifying and then turning new adepts into more agents of self-vilification... The vectors ain't too difficult to recognize, once one knows what to consider. For starters the heavily unbalanced distribution of genetics as a function of THC-centric selection and now Full-CBD displays with bold graphical evidence when plotted it seems, but that's not all. Now that it's "legal" here and there such fractured distortion only amplifies, with some odd voids in the 2:1, 3:1 or even 4:1 THC:CBD ratio groups i think. Now, if we agree that 1:0 THC:CBD is already nearly as extreme as 1:0 or even 0:1 then it should become evident this opens the door wide open to mis-guided 3rd-party interference since in The Commonwealth we could live our lives one generation after then next and never heard of alternative between the 2 extremes, which then inspires me this most elementary question: how's a bad start supposed to turn good? Because not only it's typically some extremely unbalanced THC:CBD ratio (even when "legal", actually!) which people initiate with, but there's a lot more vilification awaiting ahead, mainly under the form of chronic self-poisoning caused by the by-products of combustion combined to contamination with savvy non-detection Pest Control Product soups formulated to optimized their synergy... Imagine, HCN a Level-3 item of the Chemical Waepons Convention is even involved with combustion and it happens that myclobutanil changes into the infamous extermination gas formerly known as Zyklon - ah, and the most ironic if not cynical aspect of it is the fact that it's the end-consumer himself who finds no better consumption method than combustion, hence being his own enemy. Etc. So, unless you got direct access no Nature's enlightening cannabis (treated with respect) i think the usual path is as that with help from a vilyfing social setup where we'll eventually fall victims of one among multiple traps and finally wonder a few decades from now. Etc., etc. One good rule-of-thumb which is easy to remember and apply is this though: Generally try to follow "The Shortest Path of Lesser Transformation"... So, IMO if one has a push-button consumerist attitude expecting the substance to work like an elevator, euh... M'well maybe i shouldn't forget to include that as a vilification vector too. At least it's my perception that cannabis is only a facilitator, some mood amplifier or probe so to speak, and Tolerance/T-Break issues are an early vilification sign raising a red flag of course. Good day, have fun!!
  18. Assuming she is my wife / girlfriend she shares some of my core values regarding the interest in truth. So it would not be a problem if she had some Mary-Magdalene-like transformation years ago.
  19. Long story short, it sounds like you're going through an inner transformation which will manifest outwardly sooner or later. I'm in a similar boat right now as I am in graduate school and feeling highly dissatisfied with it. I'd say pick up some "Emotional Mastery" books on Leo's book list and work through them. Especially Loving What Is, by Byron Katie. What you'll come to realize is that you are perfectly okay where you are and things will fall into place. Trust your highest intuition. Strategize. Do some contemplating and introspecting and you'll start getting answers. As @Origins said, it's your decision. Best of luck!
  20. If I can add my direct experience here: Do as a few of us have said and get a therapist. My therapist is doing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Eye Movement Desensetization and Reprocessing (EMDR) with me and I am starting to feel amazing. And the better I feel, the easier time I have interacting with women. More and more I have been noticing girls looking at me and giving me signs of interest. Take at least 6 months off (imo) to heal yourself. Work on your trauma. Especially your family trauma, and especially especially your relationship with your mother. Because all of this weighs you down and makes you needy, submissive, etc. Your negative attributes are exacerbated by your trauma. We all have trauma, some deeper than others. Based on the fact that you are an incel at 31, I'd guess you have more than most. Not saying this to put you down, but to highlight the fact that there is some work you need to do. And I am giving you this advice because I have taken it myself. I started April 1 this year working on one thing per day as it pertains to relationships and dating, using meditation as my tool. Later I added therapy. MDMA has helped recently as well. My transformation in the last 6 months is nothing short of that, a transformation of who I am at a fundamental level. Read The Truth by Neil Strauss. This book will break you in the best way, and inspire you to heal. Because what you really want is to be healed. And what the girl really wants is for you to be healed! P.S. listen to Leo's advice. It's gold.
  21. The thing is that local & global consciousness is not there yet. I cannot even imagine how massive the transformation would be even if taken with the smallest steps possible. The transition must be intently planned & coordinated from yellow/turqouise pov.
  22. @datamonster Thanks for your response! I understand your perspective, and it makes sense. I think for me I'm in the privileged position of being able to step outside of the system to some extent, and I feel called to do this when possible. Ultimately change happens when people create the change they wish to see in the world. The best way I know how to do that is to embody that change myself. Whether that's by removing my money from the stock market, switching from big banks and to a local credit union, shopping at local stores and co-ops vs chains, donating money to community-led organizations, saving and reusing items vs purchasing new stuff, discovering my Life Purpose and taking the steps to find a vocation that helps others and pays the bills, downsizing my house and reducing my expenses, taking public transit more often, etc. These are all small drops in the bucket, but if millions and then billions of people take these steps they will lead to a much more rapid evolution and transformation of our current systems. The macro systemic changes are much more multi-faceted and complex, but on an individual level we all have to start somewhere. Just my two cents...no pun on words
  23. I did unplug from society. Because where is society? Then answer is that society is in my mind! So the trick is to realize that one's own mind is making all those kinds of separations. And that's why our civilization is still at the "caterpillar" stage, because everybody is running around with the same delusions of separations in their minds. That's the personal stage. There will be a massive transformation of society I believe but it will come as a result of us individuals shifting from the personal to the transpersonal stage, and that's a process that probably takes decades just to get started in any significant way. Although the process is I believe already going on and the coronavirus crisis signifies the end of the caterpillar stage.
  24. 1.) What is the very first thought you become conscious of, when you wake up? Is it about the depression of the current civilization or the thrust to pull us out? 2.) When we break out from the cuccoon (childhood) to a free willed butterfly (adulthood), the zeal childlike enthusiasm sheds from us, any thoughts when/ at which moment in our transformation does it happen?
  25. Just released last month. Ordered me a copy today. Editorial Reviews Review “If ever there was a teacher who could gather the reins of the mind to gallop into the land of the heart (and take us with her), it is Cynthia Bourgeault. This exquisitely written love story distills the intricacies of the esoteric Western traditions into a transformational elixir—both rigorous and luminous—simultaneously intoxicating and sobering. This book is nothing less than a map to the meeting of the worlds at the crossroads of our own souls, one the mapmaker urges us to abandon the minute our heart sees the way.”—Mirabai Starr, author of Wild Mercy “In Eye of the Heart Cynthia Bourgeault invites us on a journey that is profoundly personal and opens us to a truly fresh and panoramic vision of the purpose of human existence. In bringing to our attention the importance of the imaginal realms—the levels of consciousness between our physical reality and our ultimate divine source—she fills an enormous gap in the current conversations on spirituality. Cynthia has an amazing ability to take potentially complex ideas and to explain them with clarity and kindness. Only someone who has actually traversed these realms and knows them well could accomplish such a feat, and she does so with beauty and grace. Any serious student of the Western traditions ought to partake of these teachings. You will be grateful you did!”—Russ Hudson, co-author of The Wisdom of the Enneagram “A brilliant synthesis that both situates the imaginal world and gives it more meaning than it has previously had. . . . [Bourgeault] is a true representative of the Western spiritual tradition.”—from the afterword by A. H. Almaas “Eye of the Heart is an immensely original piece of thinking, feeling, writing. There is nothing like it. It opens new terrain, plants new seeds, starts them on their way toward the light.”—Roger Lipsey, author of Gurdjieff Reconsidered “By weaving together mystical wisdom, the Fourth Way, and the authority of her own experience, Cynthia Bourgeault masterfully charts a new path of interior transformation through the heart's ability to know and choose the way of love and service. I learned a lot from this book, and I bet you will too.”—Carl McColman, author of The Big Book of Christian Mysticism “Reading Eye of the Heart is a powerful and clarifying experience. The weaving of personal, metaphysical, and contemporary political insights is amazing, seamless, and intercessory in and of itself. We need this kind of weaving and interpenetrating in our culture just as we need it between the realms.”—Tim Shriver, author of Fully Alive The following is from: