Categories
Diana's Spirit Care Blog Articles

Curiosity and Non-Conformity: the Twin Pillars of Spiritual Freedom

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” —Albert Einstein

There is an old saying that sublimates a wrong idea: “Curiosity Killed the Cat.” Curiosity never hurt anyone, let alone killed them. One of the most important characteristics a cat…or a person and a seeker-of-truth…can have is curiosity!

Unfortunately, this very obvious truth won’t stop many people from remembering that nasty little slogan about how we can get killed just for asking. It’s time to change the saying to reflect reality instead of supporting a mind-control myth, so let’s say instead “Curiosity Saved the Cat” because we need curiosity to be alive inside. Without curiosity, we can become robotic, unthinking, “dumbed-down” and highly conformist. Without curiosity, we are very boring people, interested in only our microscopic world, our own immediate gratifications and interests and oblivious to what a mindless drone we have become. Without curiosity, we can have as many doctoral degrees as we can afford and still be blatantly ignorant because without curiosity, we will be closed off to finding timeless truth while we memorize textbooks that teach institutional dogma.

People are not encouraged to be curious and the aforementioned slogan has served to support the notion that being curious is foolish and bad for your health. —Which is what those with all the power want us to believe. When we don’t ask questions, we cannot threaten their authority. When we don’t challenge the status-quo, we are told by implication that we are being “good people” who don’t engage in risky, anti-social behavior.

Imagine that. Those who don’t want you to be curious want you to believe that being stupid is what makes a person safe and decent.

We all need to recognize how easily human beings can be enslaved by their mental programs. Pop-up slogans that come quickly to mind are small tidbits of the programming received over a lifetime, and these programs control the reality construct we believe to be real. In other words, our beliefs either limit or expand our potential and those that limit natural curiosity and the seeking it inspires will stand in the way of finding one’s true purpose in life.

It’ time to get very curious. It’s time to make the institutionally ignorant uncomfortable by asking lots of questions, rather than allow them to make you feel uncomfortable for asking!

Have you noticed in your life that the social systems that have dictated to you, have not wanted you to be curious? Just think about the times you have asked questions and have received either indignant or evasive answers. It’s likely that at one time or another, you were made to feel embarrassed for being curious, for asking questions, for challenging a situation, an “authority,” or a so-called fact.

I am often sad to see that many have replaced curiosity and its result, learning, with blind following, dogmatic assumptions, and the pursuit of empty fixes.  We are all on a great Cosmic adventure and many of us snooze and sleepwalk right through it. Tragic!

Life is about learning and discovery…even without the intention to learn something, every day offers something wondrous to discover. Unfortunately, many of us don’t care much about that unless we have a problem we don’t know how to fix. Instead of looking for easy (and empty) answers, when you find yourself stuck in a problem, that’s the time to let your God-given curiosity take over.

—Why am I experiencing this?  —What is to be learned from this? How do I handle things differently, what can I change or not change? What do I have to accept? Is this a pattern in my life and what is it telling me about myself?

In our fast-paced world, the majority of people don’t feel they have the time to engage in spiritual exploration or personal seeking. It’s much easier to get our beliefs about life and ourselves “out of the box.” Prepackaged answers are so very convenient, until we learn the answers that we assumed to be true are not, until the false assumptions we hold like insurance policies for tough times do not come through with the help that they promised.

Every person is destined to discover that the formula ideas and prepackaged answers are fancy gift boxes with nothing inside, hollow and void. After childhood—once our God-given curiosity had been wiped out—most of us accept what we are told about life and what we are told about ourselves. Only when adults face situations of crisis where the standard answers come up empty, are people driven to seek new truth to get them through. But we need not wait for the Universe to get our attention in that way.

We can begin now to search for the greater purpose in our lives, to understand the truth that we are all interconnected, and to know that to conform is to be utterly deadened and made empty inside, like an animated puppet without true free will or a Living Mind.

How do we cultivate curiosity and individuality when it is so strongly discouraged? Follow the guidelines below and you will be well on your way to being who and what you were born to be.

  • Recognize that first and foremost, you are a unique spiritual being having a particular physical experience. You are not your body, your occupation, your education, your bank account, your family tree or any other label you can think of.
  • Recognize that all institutions are man-made and those who serve them are acting in an imperfect human capacity, nothing more.
  • Recognize that privilege is no indicator of being special: you are not your stuff or the station you were born into. You are what you make of yourself.
  • You do not need permission from anyone to be yourself, whatever that may be in any period of your life. Being yourself is your birthright!
  • Fear of what others will think of you is a plague of mind and spirit. It was implanted in you at a young age to make you conform and let false authority go unchallenged. Ditch that fear before it ruins your life.
  • You have the right to know the truth. Others do not have the right to keep the truth from you.
  • If you will know the truth, be the truth. Be honest in thought, word, and deed.
  • Come to know that Truth is its own reward, and although it’s not easily found, it’s worth more than anything else in this world because without truth, nothing in this world is real, not even love.

It’s time to care for your Spirit by honoring who you truly are. Here’s to asking lots of questions, being insatiably curious, and at long last…changing the world into a beautiful place to be…just by being your True Self! Freedom to be authentic and make your own way through life is your birthright. We wish you a most rewarding journey!

When you need guidance and support on your journey in life, MySpiritCare is here for you. Let us provide your spiritual coaching and clairvoyant psychic readings, to help you be who you were born to be!

 

 

 

Categories
Diana's Spirit Care Blog Articles

The Change in The World We Seek, We Must Be

PART ONE: “Yes, Virginia, There is a Shadow.”

There is something widely overlooked and highly underrated among spiritual seekers in today’s world: the absolute necessity of  having humility if we are to deeply change ourselves and achieve enlightenment. As we take on the New Year of 2011 and the much-heralded 2012 ahead, it might be a good time to take a thoughtful look at where our beliefs and attitudes have mistakenly taken us…and how we may want to correct our course.

If we don’t do this, then the potential of human destiny will be nothing more than a repeat of human history, with our excited expectations unrealized just the same as the ages gone before us. As the saying goes, “The definition of insanity is to do the same thing expecting different results.” If we don’t change on the inside and thus, our actions on the outside, neither will the outcome of our future change. The precedent needed to establish change is an attitude of genuine humility: we have to admit to ourselves that we don’t know it all, because if we did we wouldn’t needlessly suffer.

We all need to be asking ourselves, “Why don’t things in this world ever substantially change for the better?” Despite the teachings of endless spiritual gurus and appointed mortals claiming to speak for an infinite God; despite the so-called evolution of consciousness; despite thousands of spiritual books, conventional religious texts and their assertive interpreters along with a heaping smorgasbord of spiritual modalities; despite more restrictive laws, political promises, and lofty proclamations; despite countless charitable organizations and movements for positive change…we still have a world overflowing with injustice, violence, hatred, ignorance, inequality, corruption, deceit, and so on.

What we believe we are doing to change the world isn’t working. We need to examine why.

This is a world on the edge of precipitous change, as our treasured sense of what is real and what is true is unraveling slowly and quite naturally…because all deception and extreme corruption is destined to disintegrate eventually. Often in our history it is people and their societies that self-destruct, but even so, the very state of Existence itself perpetually seeks a state of balance and so the pendulum that swings to extremes inside of vast cosmic cycles will eventually return to rest, momentarily, at the center. A place of peace and balance.

Just how far to an extreme we have to go with our human suffering, before regaining balance in the world, is up to us. This very day is the moment of decision that will determine the world of tomorrow. Why? Because as the social systems begin to fail, (and they are) chaos will replace faux stability. The structures upon which people have so heavily relied, and which have provided an artificial perception of life and reality, will not be in place to hold them up. Even religion, philosophy, and many a person’s spiritual certainties are destined to fail the test of time and truth. The only thing that will not fail us, is the deepest truth about who we really are and what we are really capable of. Before we can know that, we have to meet and know our inner shadow self, from which the darkest experiences of being human emerge. The disintegration on the outside is not the byproduct of external forces but the result of internal forces at war with themselves.

Next Post: Part Two


Categories
Diana's Spirit Care Blog Articles

Part Two: The Change We Seek, We Are What We Wait For!

WE Are the Ones We Keep Waiting For!

Continued from Part One

The hard conditions in the world, set in motion by our deeply internal thrashing about, will force needed changes within some of us–but it is much better to change before we are compelled to do so. It will be very difficult for the majority of people to discover themselves in the chaos to come: many will not. What we need right now is a solid understanding of ourselves (both the  light of the soul and the shadow of the ego) and a strong connection to our inner Light so that when chaos comes we will know how to rebuild a New Earth. Only when we have already rebuilt ourselves, will we be ready and up to that glorious task.

While we can easily define countless things in the world that need changing, deep inner work is hard work and most of us prefer to look outside of ourselves for seemingly easier answers. That’s not hard to understand, because any call to examine the shadows inside ourselves feels too much like self-punishment. Few on a spiritual path are ready to do that, because the first step to attaining spiritual freedom is to climb over the decades of inculcated feelings of unworthiness heaped upon us by both a demanding artificial society and judgmental religious philosophies.  Because (superficially) the two objectives appear to be contradictory, we can easily ignore the deeper inner work of knowing our shadow, thinking we can preempt it all with positive affirmations and declarations of being Divine. Talk of painful things or negative aspects can  seem like old Heresy to a new spiritual paradigm, which by its very nature offers many teachings on the necessary rejection of “negativity.”

Hoping for a Spiritual Bailout from the Universe

Embracing the whole truth about ourselves is not heresy, though many react as if it were. Bare truth is the only gospel that counts. So while many people wait to be bailed out of misery by Rapture, a Millennial Christ, 2012, benevolent aliens, etc., those who are spiritual promise keepers with a soul path to change this planet will be doing the inner work to pave the way for positive change.

Yes, “We are the ones we”ve been waiting for.”

A glance over human history proves that we cannot just be passive and count on any exceptional cycle of time to force enlightenment upon the world. In all ages people have looked to the sky, to prophets and to social reversals to save them from their suffering.

Prophecies have come and gone in the history of the world, but the going of them…the failure to happen…escapes the fervent believers of today. We humans have not yet evolved enough to learn that we cannot depend on any so-called Age to save us from ourselves because it is our own beliefs and actions that determines the Age that is upon us.

Sacrifice Beliefs on the Altar of Truth

What we deeply believe directs our actions and paves the way for what comes next. And even a positive belief, if not grounded in understanding and truth, will not bring truly positive results. There is a lot of positive thinking going on within the new spiritual paradigm and while this is all very hopeful, it is coming up profoundly short when it comes to making the world a just and enlightened place to be.

To find out what’s gone wrong with our spiritual professions and why there is so much suffering in this world, there are missing pieces of truth we need to find– not out in the open, not understood or even talked about–but hidden from many. Spiritual truth is so simple, so basic, and yes, unglamorous…but not all that glitters is gold. There is a simple starting point we all must return to and once we understand how to do it and why we need to, we really can begin to change the world for the better!

Next Post: Part Three, the Conclusion

Categories
Diana's Spirit Care Blog Articles

Cycles of Change

Nature’s seasonal transitions are seamless. In our yard this year, the seasonal change began with a few leaves turning yellow at the inside core of the still-green tree, slowly expanding its color outward until its full blown brilliance signaled that Autumn is deepening into Winter’s arrival. While many of us don’t like to see Winter come, we are meant to gain much inner peace by observing the rhythm and flow of the natural environment.

Wild animals don’t dread winter: they naturally accept it and make preparations for the natural change of season. As humans, we are too “civilized” for our own good, always wanting perpetual summer and for the things in our lives to which we are so attached to never change. We frequently fear change and do everything in our power to resist it. Yet change is a law of life and all change has a higher natural purpose.

Consider for a brief moment how your own life has changed over the years. Are you the exact same person–in viewpoint, appearance, and interests–that you were two decades ago? Ten years ago? Five?

In spite of the dreams that have come and gone, the ideals that were necessarily forfeited or the goals that were not achieved, you are–on this day and in this season–a unique demonstration of life’s cycles of change. Creation has wrought you.

Natural change is a sculptor and creator of breath-taking wonder. The nearby mountain might have become a valley instead, had the forces that shaped it taken a different turn. The desert might be an ocean. But who is to say which would have been better? The unique value of what is, not what might have been, is the reality brought into being by change…the incredible beauty of life right here, and right now.

Many say “If only I had done this,” or “If only I were still young” or “If only this had happened” without knowing the futility and harsh detriment of such thoughts. Who is to say that each one of us is not who we need to be right now, where we need to be right now…considering the forces that have shaped our lives and brought us to this very point in time? The outside forces of our lives are, as with the natural world, in a constant state of change and just as we accept the seasons of nature, we need to adjust to the cycles of our own lives.

Much unhappiness comes from not accepting life’s cycles of change. There is indeed a time for every season under the sun: a time to act and a time to retreat; a time to work and a time to play; a time to grow and a time to rest; a time to laugh and a time to weep; a time to be young and a time to be merely young at heart.

Too many needlessly suffer because they do not understand or accept life’s cycles of change. We are so focused on our artificial living environments instead of the natural world of which we are an inseparable part. To attune to the changes in your personal life and come to peace (even rejoicing) with the new opportunities that change brings to you, spend more time in nature. Step off the consuming treadmill of materialistic existence and spend reflective time in the presence of what is real, not man-made.

There are immense changes coming in our global and social environment. Holding on to material things and manufactured beliefs will not stop the natural, necessary cycles of change. This is the season to prepare yourself by becoming aware of the greater cycles of life and of your own spiritual purpose in this world…a part of divine nature, not apart from it.

Even during the cold and barren seasons of our lives–as with nature’s Winter–we must remember there will be seasons ahead of warmth, light, hope, and love. Springtime of the endless Soul always comes again. Always.

Change, even when we don’t want it, is its own kind of spiritual gift. Learn to not fear change and make friends with the opportunities it will bring you. Such is life…and it is very, very good.

Categories
Diana's Spirit Care Blog Articles

The Zen of Eating

Imagine this: a meal in which a single bowl of buttered barley is set before you and you are grateful to have it. You quietly render thanks to the Universal Provider for your sustenance, and you eat slowly, savoring each mouthful while you feel the nourishment that enters your body, from tongue to cell to quanta.

This is love in action.

You are eating a peach picked fresh from the tree. You feel the fuzz of its skin on your lips, the tender yield of its exterior as your teeth break into its taut, rosy skin. A warm syrup slides to the corners of your mouth and a heady scent curls upward, a fragrant steam of life force and raw sunshine, embracing your face.

This is love in action.

Eating with awareness and gratitude is a spiritual act in which we are conscious of the life forces that sustain us. We can take that moment to recognize and give thanks for the interdependent relationships of all life on this planet. In so doing, our bodies become vessels of heightened spiritual awareness and joyful recipients of unlimited love.

Many seek happiness by having material stuff. They look for spiritual connection through the glitter of big buildings and pompous ceremony. They seek satisfaction in a mound of frosting on the cake or a whole cow sandwiched between the buns.  Many today are consuming machines going faster, and faster, thinking less and less, losing soul parts as they go–like worn out cars flinging hubcaps along the highway.

Spiritual transcendence is attained through mindful thought and simplicity. Food today is hardly simple, as more is considered better and extravagance, best. As long as we have freedom to choose what we eat, what and and how we eat will reveal much of where we are in the frequency spectrum– or in other words, whether or not we are becoming conscious beings.

Why We Eat When We Need to Feel Loved

It’s not surprising that people often eat when they are feeling a need for love. Our unconscious minds make a connection between nourishment of the body and food for the soul.

When viewed with clairvoyance, eating for love is seen as a being a bit off the beam in our vibratory state. This imbalance will manifest as the response of reaching for food because the core part of us…deep inside…is aware that the act of taking in food is a loving exchange between multiple life forms and energies. When we eat to find love without knowing what we are doing, the result is calories, but no spiritual energy; weight, with a lean and hungry spirit.

Being Filled, Both Body and Soul

Often soul hunger can be greatly helped by slowing down, by noticing the simple things in life and bringing a reverent attitude into our lives.

My mother was mysterious, truly. I didn’t think so when I was young but in retrospect I think she was a guru. She used to tell us: “Let us dine, not feed.” I see now that this was more than a lesson in manners, but a message about simple, loving attention…and gratitude.

No doubt, she would fail to appreciate today’s fast food commercials with their busting ballistic buttons over the-one-too-many-mouthfuls, or wild-eyed eaters making gluttonous inhalations of ingredients slapped together without a shred of loving intention, a chemical mix made to part you from your money.

Television portrays our relationship to food as irreverent, self-absorbed and uncivilized. I would say “animalistic” but…have you ever watched a cat eat? They are so very dainty! In fact–other than hogs–I can’t name an animal that lacks more grace with eating than a human being in a television commercial. And when you get right down to it hogs are being the best they can be, while hoggish humans, aren’t.

So here’s food for thought: eating is an act of sustaining creation and of becoming one with that which sustains us. Next time we are tempted to “grab” something to eat let’s remember to receive rather than seize. Let’s strive to keep it simple and healthy. If we will let ourselves feel the love in the purest of food, we will soon reflect the loving consciousness that we have swallowed.

—And we will no longer be famished.