Nikolai1

No 22! I'm becoming quite the expert!

Hi spotless Obviously I'm speaking from a British perspective, but here psychological therapy for nearly everyone is provided by the NHS. Clinical psychologists are a profession with a protected title and a standardised training route. Spiritually is NOT a part either the guild worldview or the training of this profession. Quite the contrary. I have met literally hundreds of clinical psychologist in my career I have never met one who has undergone that change of mind that distinguishes the spiritual. For me personally, it became almost impossible to practice once this has occurred and I would think this would commonly be the case. Clinical psychology in the UK and spirituality are almost like oil and water. It is true that spirituality is given more recognition in those clinicians dealing with illness and issues of death. But even here spirituality is often understood as referring to everyday issues of love, meaning and community. While not entirely missing the mark, it is a far cry from the understanding of that person who has come to see that the deepest identity transcends the world, and time and space and is in fact liberated from suffering. For a clinical psychologist to so much as suggest the possibility of spiritual liberation, whether in Christian, Buddhist or Taoist terms, to a client would be a disciplinary offence and I am not exaggerating. This I don't doubt, and in my experience many psychologists I have met have been into yoga, and meditation. But attending a Qi Gong class and the authentic spirituality we see in Dreambliss are not necessarily the same thing. I would say that a continued interest in the psychological sciences is continued evidence of spiritual ignorance. Or to put it another way, once the deepest truths of our identity are revealed it becomes very hard to sustain the interest in the view of ourselves as individual psyches with needs and neuroses. I think interest in the psyche sciences may be staging post, but one that is left behind. Whoever these people are, they are likely to feel a huge intellectual gulf between themselves and the standard representative of their profession.

Spotless said: This is such a fascinating statement when you think about it. We so often imagine that clairvoyance is about passively seeing some future truth. And the more we imagine ourselves passive to some external flow of events the more we will consider ourselves powerless to change. But reality is never certain. We are either convinced by our clairvoyance or we aren't. And if we aren't convinced then that gives us the space to modify it as it suits us. All this is firmly in keeping with the Seth Teachings. We are surrounded by an infinite matrix of possibility, all of which is occurring simultaneously and simply requires conscious manipulation in order to make manifest. To believe in actual truths is to lose the power to manipulate. To believe in potentlal truth is the power to shape reality.

Dreambliss is right, the average psychologist is working from a completely different worldview. The moment we waken up to the reality of spirit, our whole world reverses. What is understood as being unhealthy and pathological from the worldly perspectice, can be viewed as beneficial to the spiritual mind. And vice versa: what the world views as normal and healthy and well-adjusted is what the spiritual person is so desperate to chnage in themselves and leave behind. Dreambliss, beware of anyone who doesn't see your health and wealth. Beware of anyone who doesn't see and understand and endorse exactly why you have lived your life the way you have. I wrote about this more here: http://thedaobums.com/topic/33644-through-depression-we-regain-our-spiritual-bearings/

Hi all, No worries about all the tarot stuff - its fascinating!. In my mind its not off-topic anyway because it raises a lot of the same questions as the 11:11 stuff. On 11:11 I found this article which I think is pretty good: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2009/02/1111/ It's the way your eyes are drawn to the 11.11, the way in which your head turns to see it that is so convincing to those who experience it, and separates them from being sceptics. I'm really interested in the difference between the sceptic and the believer in such things as 11:11, and divination - so I have a question for Michael: My wife was struck by all the stuff on the Hermit, but still saw it as coincidental. In her words: "Are you seriously saying that all people born on August 23rd 1976 are intensely searching Hermits like you? Michael (and anyone else), how do you answer this question?

Hey Dreambliss - if you think that this person was saying things that were mean and spiteful then this is further reason to discredit her in my view. If she was telling you the truth and you didn't like hearing it then that is another matter, of course. But all this aside, it seems like the death prediction was based on you cycling from WA to Some kind of high mountain settlement in CA. Were you really planning on doing this anyway? Ojai by the way is where J. Krishnamurti called spiritual home. A wonderful place to live or visit I'm sure, and a thinker well worth studying if you haven't already.

Thank you! - its 24 March 1981

This was pretty much my response to this as well. I think a small amount of psychic ability is quite common. I think it is very rare for a person to have reached such a space of inner stillness that they can easily distinguish prophesy from inane mental chatter. if your friend is a tranquil, wise, balanced counsellor of obvious spiritual attainment then bear what she says in mind. If she is just a regular person who has, out of immense vanity, has attached to her infrequent successes and so considers herself a medium then bear this in mind as well.

Hi Michael Thank you! One of the most beautiful, most rewarding moments on the Path is when your own biography, so puzzling up close, starts to make perfect sense. Having arrived, you can look back and see how everything brought you to this point. It is hugely comforting, and you really feel a benevolent force shaping your life. I think five years ago I wouldn't have realised my own inner Hermit so clearly. Or to put it another way, the Hermit was there but showing the more negative sides of the character. I frequently lamented my own isolation, but at the same time considered arrogantly that many people were incapable of understanding me. These aren't attractive qualities. Another thing is that, in my case, my Hermit nature was often experienced as fear of the everyday world. Though they have stopped now, I frequently dreamt that me and my friends were forced to cross a field where lions and tigers were loose. Nobody else was afraid except me, and I ended up taking the long way round by walking all the way around the fence! My feeling that the world couldn't satisfy me, and fear of the world were the same thing. If my mood was high I would disdain those below me, when low, I would be very self-critical of my own cowardice and uninvolvement. Well the lust card seems very out of place, to be honest. The past year has been a quiet, reflective time characterised by hardly any changes in my outer circumstances. Internally, I have really noticed a lot the way in which my state of being switches between lower fear-based moods, and confident, loving 'everything will be fine' moods. I've had to be very careful to stay very centred and not let either side capture my attention so long. Because I have managed this mostly very well, the shifts from side to side were always quite subtle and not passionate and uncontrollable (Lust). My own metaphor has been the 'walking the razor's edge' or the Game of Love (i wrote about this here). But, I can immediately relate to the Justice card, if we imagine a person with a set of scales in their hand. I imagine that its been like trying to walk with a full cup of water. I've been moving slowly and carefully, and developing power and poise over myself, staying aloof to my own shifting moods. In my terms, this inner power is going to be vitally important if my Hermit's return is going to go well. If the strength that I have gained in seclusion is not enough or if it turns out that I am only strong when I hide away, then I will lose the balance of the scales and things will turn out badly. I have been sharing your words with my wife, and we are both astonished at how closely the Hermit resembles me. I am like the living cliche of the Hermit! So, we tried the same with her according to you method and we got nothing of any real meaning. This made me wonder why people respond so differently to things like the tarot and I started another thread on this theme. I'm wondering whether spiritual practice somehow reveals, or brings to the forefront those aspects of our selves that are in line with the oracles. All the best and thanks for everything

This isn't something that I know much about, but I do have lots of questions, that hopefully provoke some discussion. 1) Some people use divination as a guide for life. Readings are deeply meaningful and practically helpful. Others consider it absolute bunk, and can hear nothing except irrelevant gibberish when they get their reading. What is the difference between these people? 2) Does one have to learn how to understand the language of the oracles? 3) Is affinity with the oracles a sign of spiritual maturity? Do we grow more achetypal in our nature as we mature, and do our lives start to conform with the deeper esoteric patterns that the oracles describe? 4) Is rejecting the oracles, only natural to someone whose whole identity is not archetypal, but based on the mores and conventions of their particular time and place. Does the person who passively absorbs modern attitudes, make themselves blind to the oracles? 5) Are well always affected by the stars and planets but only in our deepest unconscious selves? Can we awaken to our deeper selves and to the importance of the planets? Or is a turn to such matters actually a regression from the days of superstition? Many thanks for your thoughts

Hi Nunglai and Bes, This issue of drain and personal resources is a very tricky area, and I think any therapist will find themselves encountering it time and time again. Firstly, our resources available are proportional to our spiritual maturity. A person who is very much in the egoic state of being in a world of time and space will automatically be low on resources. Their consciousness is very individuated. It therefore follows that any giving of love or assistance will at some level be believed to be squandered energy. On the other end of the scale, a person whose consciousness is liberally spread out across all selves will be able to vicariously appreciate the help they themselves give, as if they were the receiver. Giving and loving is therefore a perfectly energising behaviour. It is indistinguishable from being selfish. When we have children, who are so close to us genetically and other wise, it often comes naturally that we gain energy through caring for them. Their well-being is our own well-being, and this can come as a revelation. Childcare is a powerful yoga, and parents can often see the lack of this yoga in their peers who have not had children. But, some people, like Nungali said, are not spiritually strong enough to have children. They are so egoic that they still consider the care they give, at some level, to be squandered energy. They may even say to their own children: "Do you have any idea what I have sacrificed for you?" When these egoic people are women an extra problem in our society occurs. All their limited love goes to their children, and the father of the children, whether he is loving or unloving, can start to be viewed as an outright drain. The woman becomes incapable of contributing any further to their adult-adult relationship, and may start behaving in ways to the father that are intolerably selfish. Unless the father is a very strong person, with high resources, the relationship will fail and the women is left in an even more desperate situation as they will be the one left with the children Subjectively, they may feel like they are the ones abandoned, but all this is due to them never learning the simple lesson: if you want love and energy, you need to give love and energy. The therapy rooms are absolutely full of people telling the same old narrative: "I gave too much to others, and too little to myself. Now I need to take more care of myself." This narrative is a very unfortunate trap. If they were actually being selfless, they would not feel drained - quite the opposite. They feel drained because they don't understand anything except the selfish mode. It is intrinsic to their state of being, but they were forced into a caring role they weren't equipped for. Any suggestion that it is now time to be more selfish will just delay the needed insight, growth and healing. We have probably all noticed that the most selfish people in life are often full of indignation about other people's selfishness. And from their own perspective this will make perfect sense. They will genuinely feel very drained. It takes something very special and perhaps drastic to provoke the necessary change of heart. In my experience, everyday therapy never had this power. It must come from a different place, perhaps a place that despairs that even therapy can help.

Hi Michael, Actually it was Songtsan's birthday over the weekend, but I shall pass on your regards to him I've got another 3 months yet..!

I think we can assume this thread is finished.

I am a double graduate of the sciences, an erstwhile Clinical Psychologist, an ardent student of Western Philosophy, an existentialist , a one-time nihilist and current practitioner of Zen and mindfulness meditation. I am no longer a seeker, but one who has found. Despite only scant familiarity with the Bible, I proclaim myself authorised to teach in the tongue of the Christian, (although my nation's Church does not agree). Nevertheless, good people, be pleased to hear the Good News spoken to you this day: 1) You are already loved By God. Do nothing more to earn this love. It is already there burning in your heart. Stop, be still, and feel it. Feel it, and let it kindle and glow. The embers have never gone out, and will never go out. 2) You are not in Sin, and you have never sinned. Sin is a figment of your imagination. Your inability to believe this is the only Sin that God would consent to call that name. To refuse the gift of Love is sin. To believe you need to earn Love, is sin. To believe you need to rid yourself of sin, is sin. 3) When the Apostle Paul told you that Jesus atoned for your sin, it was a benevolent lie for your childish minds. If a child believes there is a spider in their bed, we must tell them that we killed the spider, though we could not find it because it was not there. 4) Jesus was a human like you. The only difference is that he understood points 1 and 2, whereas you do not. Your elevation of Jesus is nothing other than a perverse attachment to your idea of being a sinner. Were he to meet you, he would despair of the infantile worship you show him. He would see you as a Pharisee. He would lament that there is nothing new under the sun. 5) Your Christianity is a grievance to Jesus. Repent Ye, for the Love of God is ever at hand. Go in peace etc.

When we fall in love we always do so with the deepest, most essential aspects of our identity. This is why it is always such a deeply meaningful activity, and feels like it has the sanction of the Gods even if the love doesn't work out. To 'get over' a person, is simply to allow our everyday, more conditioned selves to take back over. At our deepest levels we are still very much in love, and will be eternally, but of course we live our lives pretty much blind to our deepest selves. We truly believe we are 'over them'. Any reconnection with our deeper selves is likely to cause our deepest loves to re-emerge. If you are seeing your lover frequently in your dreams, it is as a consequence of some upwards shift in your identity. Assimilating this shift will require you to understand that you never got over this person and never will. I understand that this is quite a hard thing to realise. I'm guessing that you are waking up with some feelings of longing in your heart. But it's actually a very beautiful thing to realise that we can love a person very deeply, and still be able to allow them to be a distant presence. In medieval times, loving a person with no hope of fulfilment was considered a lofty and spiritual condition. It may sound like a paradox, but when we love someone with our deepest selves, we don't actually need to be with them in everyday reality. The more we re-connect with our deeper selves, the more we feel that love is always with us anyway and we don't need to find it on the outside. So, I'm not saying that your dreams are some kind of prophecy, but this lover is simply part of the landscape of your true self - and a beautiful symbol of Divine love. Hope this helps

One of the big problems nowadays is that people are repelled by the word Sin. They allow the word to create connotations of angry judgement from up high, usually from the mouths of hypocrites. Sin is a much softer word, and more beautiful than we think. Etymologically it simply means to 'miss the mark'. Sin is the exact same principle of suffering in Buddhism, avidya (ignorance) in Hinduism, being 'far from the Way' in Daoism. Sin is simply a state of being that humanity is in, pretty much in its totality. Like Buddha said, suffering is the primary fact of reality. Sad but true! Why do we lose our melancholy acquiescence to this truth the moment the Christians talk of Original Sin? Original Sin is a mild and beautiful reminder, and could be immensely useful to us if we could only stop ourselves from being bewitched by the sound of the words. We are all sinners, are we not? Most live and die and never escape sin. But to be trapped by sin, is to be convinced by sin. It is to believe that there is no way out! There is a way out! Enlightenment is real! All we have to do is accept that there is no problem with us whatsoever. God is merciful and loving! Whether we imagine our sins or not, they are erased. This moment is perfect and we are perfect. Don't spoil it with doubt. Just let this perfect moment be. This is where God is waiting! For all your Bible pedants in this thread...get this truth of sin straight in your own mind, and I promise you, the Bible will never sound the same again. You will fall in love it. It will be like love at first sight, because it will be like a book you have never yet read. And seeing the way the text has suddenly shape-shifted before your eyes, you will never again attempt to argue its 'true meaning'

So a bit of background: I'll shortly be returning to my home country, the UK, and this will allow my to resurrect my working life beyond teaching English and looking after children. I'm entering my late thirties, but it is still possible that i could start a traditional career, with at least 30 years of working life ahead. As my overwhelming passion and drive is towards the religious life, I have always wondered whether some form of ministry might be for me. So I wrote the following email to the Church of England careers advice, and was careful to be honest at the outset about my beliefs. Here is what I wrote: This morning the reply came back most promptly: Interesting hey? Does anyone have any thoughts?

Hi dawei I have been inspired by so many thinkers, writers, traditions, that I can't possibly say. I know the truth that is within me and I feel I can translate it well into any tradition. I have no problem talking in terms of sin and salvation if that is what is required. It is very clear to me that people are at different levels of maturity, and need to hear the truth in different ways. I see and know the different levels in all the religions. Some people, although adult, are like children and need to be given very strict guidance, often with an accompanying fear of some form of retribution, For these people, religion can be nothing more than a means to keep them from creating harm in the world. But just like children, these people must be loved, respected and accepted exactly as they are. At the other end of the scale, some people are ready to be told the highest truths about reality. Namely that they and the the divine principle are one and the same thing. This is a very radical truth, and will be totally abused by any who are not yet ready to hear it. Those ready must be fully adult, although chronologically they may be teenagers still. Spiritual maturity can seem like a complete mystery, but once understood fully it makes perfect sense. The wise person respects the flower of the apple tree and respects the fruit. The fruit is not more or less than the flower; both are different forms, of equal necessity. Ultimately, we don't take different manifestations of maturity very seriously. They simply arise in awareness and then pass. We do not love the mature more than the immature. This enables us to act appropriately towards them, and in the case of the immature we can simultaneously judge them and never cease to love them. Yes, I'm sure you're right. It has been my fate to never meet such people in the flesh, but I have read and understood their books.

Sorry Michael - been having a weekend break! But I've got lots to say on your tarot reading.. First;. thanks a lot! Second: the image of the Hermit which was based on my birthday resonates a lot. In fact I can not think of an arcehtypal figure that describes me better than the hermit. Outwardly, I'm not a hermit at all. And even though I've craved solitude my whole life it just hasn't been my fate to have it. I've spent my adult life living with friends (until 28) and then after that with my own family. Now, with three kids, honestly weeks can pass and I don't even get one hour on my own. Very occasionally, I get to go food shopping without one of the kids but that is as far as my hermitry goes. But the most essential part of me, the most important, is my search for spiritual truth. I am nothing other than this search: everything else is just grist for the mill, data for the search. And in this sense I am alone, very, very, very much alone - and I always have been. I grew up a family totally dominated by simple aims to be met by simple means. Money is everything to my parents. if they have a problem, money is the solution. Their problems are always simple deficit states, and all their deficits can be met financially. They are unreflective atheists, but with none of the passion for truth and reality that many atheists have. Up until age 16 I pretty much absorbed the values of my family, although doubts started to creep in, also the reality of death. But I knew without a shadow of a doubt that my parents would be unable to resonate with any questions of any depth and would find the attempt unpleasurable. I had friends who slightly understood the uncertainty of this life, but not with the acuteness that I did. I learned around this time to split myself into a daytime Nikolai, who went along with things, and a nightime Nikolai who was searching passionately for answers. I have never reconciled these two sides. I have never met in real circumstances a person with whom I can share even a small quantity of what I have discovered. Even my wife, is neither interested nor understands. Perhaps I am so much the hermit that i don't need any to share with. I don't know. But the point is, I am a true hermit. Four years ago, I had just decided to quit my career as a psychologist (this was my ill-fated attempt to harmonise the two Nikolais professionally) and my wife was at the end of her own contract (also a psychologist). So we decided to move the family to her home country Finland. I knew from the outset that moving to Finland would be my hermitage. This would be the place where I could kill off the daytime Nikolai, the everyday guy with everyday values. Five hours north of Helsinki, we live in a small town surrounded by a monochrome land of boundless forests. Eastwards they spread unbroken for many thousands of kilometres right across Russia. It is a land of bears, wolves lynx, and a culture where for millenia the people have worked round the clock in the short summer months, then sat in silence through the winter. The language is baffling, almost unique in the world, the culture is baffling, the people are alien and despite what others might think are not Europeans but more like a northern Siberian or Asian race. Even their physiology is different. Yes, Finland was my hermitage. I learned enough of the language to go shopping, and then stopped learning. The language barrier was the lake around my island. It was time to die to self. Four years later, I feel the task is completed. I no longer have questions. I am no longer a seeker but one who has found. Like Nietzsche's Zarathustra 'I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.' Next month we return to the UK, and I need to entirely rebuild my life. I have no idea how it will happen, all I know is that I cannot return to the old Nikolai - the one I used as a device to survive in this world. He's gone, but I have no idea what the new will look like. In the last year, my only experience of speaking my truth has been here on this website. I have no idea how I am received, maybe some understand me and others don't. But the good thing is that I now know that there are many people in this world who are fundamentally addressing the same concerns and that I don't need to be a hermit anymore. Michael, you mentioned another card, the lust card. it didn't resonate and I found it hard to understand. So I tried to add the numbers myself and came out with 20 which I guess would reduce to 2, not the 11 you got. I'll sit with the Lust card some more and see if anything comes. Many thanks again. I always knew I was a hermit, but it is fascinating that my birthday tells me the same.

Old man!

Yes please do 23 August 1976 Thanks!

For me it represents a kind of middle phase in spiritual development, and is universally seen in all peoples, and is also numerically the most common attitude to the transcendent. The transcendent is recognised, but only in externals. whether it be people, places, things. It is the idolatrous phase. Going beyond this means recognising the divinity in self, as a constant inner presence. Or, to put it another way, it is seeing the stamp of divinity in all of creation and your whole life is lived in worship, or 'ceaseless prayer' St Paul puts it. The habit of conceptualising is for me the habit that is hard to shake. We may awake to the reality of the trasncendent, but still wish to designate it into 'this' and not 'that'. Don't get me started on this! Science in general gets far too much attention in the spiritual life.

Or, Peter's out in Jesus' case Yes, I agree with all this. Organised religion is a substitute for direct understanding. Those who don't know, believe.

So Jesus is a simple case of planned and assisted suicide! Man, this whole website will burn in hell!

When the question is asked, 64% of Brits call themselves Christian, projected to fall to 45% by 2050. Perhaps people answer out of habit, but are atheistic in their heart and live their lives this way.