Nikolai1

Thanks, I always took that to mean spiritual teacher and I also never heard him say that he stopped doing it because he couldn't buy into people's problems. It interests me because it happened to me. Thanks anyway!

Actually that is how I see it as well. But those who are trying to use the message to manifest wealth and fame are the same people who haven't got the sincerity and single-mindedness for it to work. The desire for fame, and the fear of failure are the same thing and coincide in the same people. And the fear prevents the manifestations the naive people desire. This is why it is possible that the Law of attraction industry can be simultaneously liberating and fraudulent. There are very few people who are spending thousands of dollars on conferences and re-couping the money on lottery wins. Dyer and Hicks were sincere people, who didn't have the intelligence to see how wildly misunderstood the message can be. If they had more sensitivity, they couldn't have promoted the message so gleefully. There would have been a sober ethical sense of the inner transformation that must occure before the Law becomes ours to use at will.

Dreambliss, the best channels for the law of attraction teachings never held themselves up as good practitioners. Jane Roberts was as confused by Seth as anyone, and studied the teachings as any student would - despite the fact that they issued from her own mouth. Exactly the same was true for the channels and transcribers of the Course in Miracles. Jerry Hicks and Wayne Dyer did present themselves as living proof of the message. They could not help but do otherwise because they had such strong faith in what they did. But to anyone of any spirtual discernment it is quite obvious that were just ordinary people, made wealthy by selling a message. There is a whole world of difference between watching Eckhart Tolle videos and Wayne Dyer videos. There is a gulf between them. If you thought something spiritual would happen when you went to see Dyer then that was pretty naive of you, but it seems that it has been a helpful learning experience. But most importantly, take the message to heart, not those who sell it.

They are probably inundated with this enquiry. I have no doubt that it is very deliberate that they don't mention the fact the he has been dead for four years.

Dreambliss - by the way, as you know, I understand and know the deep wisdom in the law of attraction teachings. I also thin that neither Dyer nor Hicks had any ability with it, and could only promote it. The law of attraction is a very deep insight and can't really be used to our advantage except in very advanced stages of devotion and insight.

Are you sure about this? I have never heard that Tolle was a therapist. Do you have a reference? Interestingly I used to be a therapist and I had to quit for exactly the same reasons. I saw very clearly that my role was actually reinforcing their belief in their problem, a problem that was nowhere except in their belief.

Not mentioning his death explicitly is justified by the 'he's not really dead, he's just invisible' argument which I'm sympathetic to. But if they truly believed this, I think they would be comfortable saying in his designated bio that Jerry is no longer physcially alive. But they don't, and this is because it is bad PR for a movement which is heavily about using a method in order to get physical health. Real physical health and longevity is what people want, and this is why they are being shielded from the reality. We are even invited to look out for them:

The box is what we are in when we refuse to take ourselves and our experience as sovereign. When we demote ourselves we promote the Matrix. As I've been telling you since you first came, you are in a most unfortunate trap. Your method, objective reason, is a capitulation of your own experiential sovereignty. You are afraid of your own sovereignty, and call it bad names like mysticism. Through your fear you then entrap yourself, and then rail against faceless agents who entrap you.

The fact that you think this is possible shows that you either; a) haven't used your reason to explore, through philosophy, why this statement is problematic. b Have explored the problem of knowledge, but are placing all you faith in a logically unjustified objectivism. Either way, you lack.

In the case of Jerry Hicks there is a certain amount of denial about the fact that he has been dead for nearly four years. On the official website http://www.abraham-hicks.com/lawofattractionsource/index.php the latest courses and cruises are kept scrupulously up to date. Yet the About Jerry and Esther section reads thus: And then we get more detail about Jerry: Perhaps the fact that he is dead is slightly off-putting to those who want to buy into the dream and buy into one of the cruiseship courses. Ultimately, they know that their target audience is a bit simple minded, and will ask 'Why didn't Jerry use the law of attraction to stay alive?' Better to try and conceal his death for as long as possible.

So our personal chi is partitioned off from the universal store, until death?

Well then the question is, can we become universal Chi while the body still lives?

You've summed up the problem that is Karl! He can't relate to a lot of what is discussed. But rather than see this is an issue of relating, he sees it as an issue of everyone here being wrong about something that he wishes to correct in us.

So should we be saying to ourselves 'I do not accept that I will die.' Or perhaps we should suppress the thought of death if it ever arises? What's the technique?

I don't disagree with you on this actually. I think that bravely accepting the reality of death can and does transform our behaviour. But I still see this as a staging post. Beyond accepting death, there is seeing its fundamental unreality. This is spiritual iberation. If you don't believe in its possibility then brave stoicism is still major progress.

Upon realising the true self this question becomes very easy to answer. Body and mind become the same substance and alternate in your reality like rapidly cycling seasons. Without realising the true self, the question you answer will remain the great imponderable - just as it has for centuries without any consensus resolution. Questions like these must be settled for ourselves.

To discover the deathless self is to realise that there are two components to your identity: The Nikolai component and the X component. These have nothing to do with each other and the Nikolai is as remote from the X as can possibly be. They belong to completely different orders of being. But there is still an association between Nikolai and X. I live that association. But because they are also transcendentally separate, and this association isn't necessary, there is no reason why X couldn't be associated with any mumber of other Nikolai type beings. In other words, to realise that X is part of you is to realise that all living beings are part of you.

Yes, I'm the same - I don't remember past lives. But what I have experienced is the deathless self, which is the space of pure being within which all living and dying occurs. It is the empty container but it is chock full with the most vivid sense of identity and and impersonal personality. This makes me open to those who say they can remember their past lives. It also makes me curious about my own unique afffinities for things that aren't at al in my personal history or the history of my family.

There's a brave realism in this that I like, and you are partly right about what you say. But the incisive action you talk of is only intelligent action when death is totally banished while we live. Unless we do this we may be led into a reckless carpe diem type attitue which doens't gove death it's due. In reality nobody overcomes death with the 'when it arrives you will have no knowledge of it'. In our deepest recesses we all doubt this to be true.

I honestly think Wayne Dyer was a well-meaning chap but he was one of those lucky few who made money selling hope. Jerry Hicks was exactly the same. Because they got lots of money and fame, they imagined it was the method (Law of attraction) that was working. Actually all they did was happen upon a product that sells. When it came to applying the method to anything except selling the method it was clear he was a complete amateur. Two examples from There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem: He recalled becoming angry at the “thunderous noises” made by workers mowing the lawns on his estate on the Hawaiian island of Maui, until he learnt to “send a silent blessing” when they arrived. In another anecdote he recalled how, on a lecture tour to promote his philosophy, he had worked himself up into a rage when he could not get a sandwich delivered to his hotel room because room service was not available. The crisis passed when, remembering what he had been preaching earlier in the day, he took a deep breath and went downstairs to get a sandwich for himself. This guy was very far from enlightened!! A person with even a modicum of spiritual peace wouldn't even need to remember the method in these scenarios. All this doesn't mean the Law of Attraction isn't valid - it is, for those pure enough in heart and spirit to make it work. What it means is that Wayne Dyer was not able to demonstrate the method any more than the next salesman. he was just an ordinary guy who people believed in.

Hi spotless Yes, when the mind is given the opportunity to go still it can perceive animation - vitality - in anything. Last night I was walking back through the village in a very peaceful state of mind. It wasn't quite dark but the car headlights were on and the slightly smoky air (people are burning their leaves a lot) refracted the car light beams, and made them so intricate they were like suns you could look at. It was mesmerising. Then one of the cars indicated onto the road I was just crossing. The slow blink of the orange light seemed ponderous and deliberate. It was like a old person tapping out the beat of an old slow waltz, fractionally mis-timing the odd flash. And seeing this made me feel the indicator was adorable and venerable. Just a flashing orange light! - but it presented itself to me as something animate and alive and doing me a favour and therefore worthy of love. Whether something is conscious and alive, or dead and inert, depends on us and our state of mind. The liifeless stone is the symbol of our own lack of awareness...actually the stone IS our lack of awareness. If one thinks a stone is dead and nothing then that means you yourself are dead to the exact same degree! The corpse itself is alive and kicking! Anyway, I look forward to more of your really enlightening posts.

Could you point anything that Spotless has written that is in disagreement with the Buddhist tradition of awakening?

The pitfall of trying to write in a fresh and arresting way about the spiritual life, is that you are going to contradict the scriptures. Or, more accurately, you will be read by people who don't have te eyes to see the similarity between what you and the scriptures are saying. And...your editor won't let you liken it to Alzheimers because it's not politically correct, and the Alzheimers Society will write you open letters in the press inviting you to one of their care homes because you seem to be under a misapprehension about the reality. That's Life!

Why were you disappointed?

The mindset I described was when I was 19 years old, twenty years ago! What shocks us as youths, we come to terms with and accept. My attitude now is very different. It is perfectly possible to see the beauty of 'the rage against the dying of the light'. It is the energy that makes the world go round. But it is not the only virtue.