Ancestral Healing Q&A

Where does the human soul go when it leaves the body at the point of death? What happens to us when we die?

Lao Tzu's four cardinal virtues on how to live a more meaningful life

Lao Tzu's four cardinal virtues on how to live a more meaningful life

Many centuries ago, Lao Tzu, spoke of the four cardinal virtues, teaching that when we practice them as a way of life, we come to know the truth of the universe. The ancient Chinese master said that living and practicing these teachings can open you to higher wisdom and greater happiness, as they realign you to the source and enable you to access all the powers that source energy has to offer.

"When you succeed in connecting your energy with the divine realm through high awareness and the practice of undiscriminating virtue, the transmission of the ultimate subtle truths will follow." Lao Tzu

Was Ludwig Wittgenstein a Mystic?

Was Ludwig Wittgenstein a Mystic?

The philosopher's greatest work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, only makes sense in the light of mysticism

If you bring together two enigmas, do you get a bigger enigma, or do they cancel each other out, like multiplied negative numbers, to produce clarity? The latter, I hope, as I take on Wittgenstein and mysticism.

I've been puzzling over these topics since my philosophy salon met to discuss "The Mysticism of the Tractatus," written in 1966 by B.F. McGuinness. The salon consists of eight or so people, most with graduate degrees in philosophy, who gather in the salon-runner's living room to jaw over a paper. Ludwig Wittgenstein, whom Bertrand Russell described as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived," published only one book during his lifetime, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. First issued in German in 1921, Tractatus is a cryptic meditation on what is knowable and unknowable.

"Mysticism" is often used as a derogatory term to describe obscure, fuzzy thinking, or woo. But in "The Mysticism of the Tractatus," McGuiness uses the term to refer to an extraordinary form of perception described by sages east and west. In Varieties of Religious Experience, still the best scholarly treatment of mysticism, William James notes that during a mystical experience you feel as though you are encountering absolute truth, the ground of being, God. These revelations are laden with spiritual significance and accompanied by intense emotions. You often feel a sense of blissful timelessness and oneness with everything (although the experience can also be hellish).

The knowledge imparted by the vision seems to transcend philosophy, science and reason itself. James calls mystical experiences ineffable, which means that they cannot be expressed in ordinary language. The author of the mystical ancient Chinese text Tao Te Ching expressed this idea when he wrote, "Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know." The author violates the rule in stating it.

The Tao Te Ching and other mystical tracts seethe with these sorts of Godelian, "this-sentence-is-false" paradoxes, and so does Tractatus. Wittgenstein writes, "Not how the world is the mystical, but that it is." He elaborates: "We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer. The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem." Even when the world has been thoroughly explained by science, Wittgenstein seems to be saying, it hasn't really been explained at all. The answer to the riddle of life is that there is no answer.

In his 1966 paper, McGuiness notes that in a "Lecture on Ethics" published after his death in 1951, Wittgenstein described personal experiences with mystical overtones. In one he felt "absolutely safe" and "in the hands of God." In another he was filled with astonishment at existence and saw "the world as a miracle."

Was Ludwig Wittgenstein a Mystic? 

Be a God, and laugh at yourself

One of Krishnaji's theories is that people must surely be able to evolve through joy alone, arriving at Godhead as naturally as a flower opens to the sun. At one time it seemed almost to worry him, that everyone he met had evolved so far by the long devious ways of sorrow, and so few had taken the simple way of joy. I think I have heard him even say that he has never met anyone who evolved through joy alone, nevertheless it is a possibility, which would become very common if only our present civilisation were not so complex. "Be natural, be happy."

J. Krishnamurti, A Biography by Pupul Jayakar

Until I meet everything with unconditional love, my work is not done.

A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.

Byron Katie

20 Quotes To End All Suffering By Byron Katie

We don't attach to people or to things; we attach to uninvestigated concepts that we believe to be true in the moment.
― Byron Katie, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

Michael Tsarion : Atlantis and the Druids

Altered States of Entrapment: The Plant Medicine Manipulation - The Dark Side of Aya

Medicine plants are not a magic pill that miraculously heal all wounding and trauma, even though they can be of assistance in revealing what needs to be healed and processed (and can also be beneficial when dealing with intense addiction issues).

The deception – or rather, the misperception – my friend and I (and many others) have realized in respect to ‘plant therapy’ is similar to that which arises when one “intellectually” knows (or even “feels”) their issues, but has failed to work through them on an embodied level.

My friend had an interesting insight about this point: looking back, she felt that, during her ayahuasca ceremonies, the wounds opened up and “projected” all of her “stuff” and shadow aspects into her awareness. That experience – combined with the euphoria/bliss/ecstasy of getting “high” (based on the medicine/drug induced DMT rush) – can transmit the idea that a deep healing has occurred…a perception that can last for weeks or even months. Hence, many people keep going back to work with medicine plants when they feel “stuff” resurfacing, in order to have that “peak” experience again and again.

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The pineal gland doesn't produce enough DMT for psychedelic experiences, says researcher

The pineal gland doesn't produce enough DMT for psychedelic experiences, says researcher -- Science of the Spirit -- Sott.net:

Psychedelic researcher David E. Nichols is pushing back against the belief that the pineal gland in the brain produces mystical experiences because it creates a powerful psychoactive substance called N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT).

The pineal gland is a small structure inside the brain that influences the sleep cycle by secreting the hormone melatonin. But claims have spread that the pineal gland also can produce DMT, a claim that has been used as a biological explanation for dreams, UFO abductions, and other out of body experiences.

Trace amounts of DMT have been detected in the pineal gland and other parts of the human body. But Nichols, an adjunct professor of chemical biology and medicinal chemistry at the University of North Carolina, said in an article published the scientific journal Psychopharmacology that there is no good evidence to support the link between the pineal gland, DMT, and mystical experiences.

To those who have an insight into life, everything has meaning.

I am leading you ever more deeply into love. I am doing it my way, the perfect way, as I do with each soul.

To hear the angels sing - Dorothy Maclean

Philosopher Rudolf Steiner talked of supernatural beings that feed on negative emotions

Philosopher Rudolf Steiner talked of supernatural beings that feed on negative emotions

Anxiety, depression, and fear ravage so many today, but few pause to consider that in addition to the material influences in our lives, we may be also under the influence of beings which exist in dimensions outside of our ordinary perception.

But there is much more to reality than what we can see, feel, hear, taste and touch. In fact, an accounting of the matter that makes up the universe reveals that some 73% of it is made up of dark energy, and another 23% is made up of dark matter, neither of which can we see, nor understand. Furthermore, the human eye is only capable of seeing around .0035% of the entire spectrum of electromagnetic (EM) radiation. When we look into the heavens, 96% of it is invisible to us. Include in this the spiritual realms and there is an entire universe of possibilities which exists beyond our five senses.

Very few scientists today are willing to explore metaphysics to examine life beyond ordinary perception in order to make a connection between the seen and the unseen.

Rudolf Steiner, though, one of the most prolific and gifted scientists, philosophers, and esotericists of his time, devoted much of his work to the task of peering behind the veil, sharing his insight into the deeper nature of life and of the world beyond.

Regarding anxiety and depression, Steiner spoke of hostile beings in the spiritual world which influence and feed off of human emotion; a concept flatly rejected by most today. Yet this analysis also holds true for shamans and others who access the spiritual dimensions in order to alleviate mental suffering for their patients.

It is what is perceived by the senses that dies

The Tao flows everywhere

To the left and to the right 

All things depend upon it to exist 

And it does not abandon them

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude

― Aldous Huxley

Documentary on Amma, Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

Could it be that human evolution is not just the meaningless process that Darwin identified, but something more purposive and intelligent that we have barely begun to understand?

RE SECRET SPACE PROGRAM

Contemporary society is experiencing a ‘soul crisis’

We understand life through the stories we tell. Contemporary society is experiencing a ‘soul crisis’, because we have fallen under the spell of a particularly bleak story. The great religious myths that gave life meaning in the past have crumbled under skeptical scrutiny, so we’ve put our faith in science, which proclaims that we are living meaningless lives, in a universe that has evolved by chance, waiting for the finality of death.
In this presentation, based on his groundbreaking book Soul Story, philosopher Tim Freke offers an alternative to this pessimistic worldview. He will explore a new philosophy he calls 'Emergent Spirituality’, which reconciles modern scientific knowledge and perennial spiritual wisdom, by suggesting that everything is emerging into existence through the evolutionary process, including those qualities of life considered ‘spiritual’.

What is appropriate and what is not?

Growth is not measured by what one accomplishes (in life) but rather by (our realization of) inner truths. These inner truths are always available from within. There is no greater help than what you carry within yourself. Hear your own song so that you may learn to sing…

Hale Makua

Spiritual Bypassing: Ten completely B.S. practices of supposedly spiritual people

In Robert August Masters' groundbreaking book, Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us From What Really Matters, he writes:

"Aspects of spiritual bypassing include exaggerated detachment, emotional numbing and repression, overemphasis on the positive, anger-phobia, blind or overly tolerant compassion, weak or too porous boundaries, lopsided development (cognitive intelligence often being far ahead of emotional and moral intelligence), debilitating judgment about one's negativity or shadow side, devaluation of the personal relative to the spiritual, and delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being."

Spiritual Bypassing: Ten completely B.S. practices of supposedly spiritual people -- Science of the Spirit 

Have you not noticed that love is silence?

"The greater the outward show, the greater the inward poverty."
 -J. Krishnamurti