hmm.. 

Deepak Chopra, The Soul in Love, Part 5
Mirabai is the besotted slave of love, longing in the night for her Dark Lord. (She uses oblique names for him, such as "lifter of mountains," drawing from the legends about Krishna, who is called dark because he is envisioned by his devotees as having deep blue or even black skin.) Kabir is harder to typify in my mind, perhaps because I grew up hearing him the way a churchgoer in this country hears hymns. He can be intimate, devoted, humble or haughty, detached, and even abrasive.

The God-mad are inevitably elusive; they don't know their place in society because they don't have one anymore. Therefore they feel free to speak in any way they choose. Mirabai is ironically aware of how much distress she is causing to conventional people by her divine love affair:

The whole town thought I had gone mad.
She'll ruin the family, my mother-in-law cried,
And the prince sent me a cup of poison.
I laughed as I drank it--don't they understand?
Can you lose your body and mind
If the Dark One has already taken them?

Naturally, the answer to her question is both yes and no. So-called sane people don't go dancing through the street, swinging on poles, or stripping naked before God, yet we still understand at a deeper level why such behavior defies sanity. We are all tuned in beyond the event horizon. Rumi puts it very simply in two lines that strike to the core of the ever-fleeting mystery:

When you feel most alive, find out why.
This is one guest you won't greet twice.

In one couplet he states the spiritual purpose of life, which is to find the essence, the seed of joy that permeates our most awake moments without ever being able to be caught and put in a bottle. This joy is the guest we can't greet twice, because it lives in the moment and is new every time. The miracle is that we greet it at all, yet we do. As simple as Rumi's words sound, he can turn on an instant and plumb the profound depths of mystical experience:

He is the tree, the fruit, and the shade
He is the sun, the light, and the dream
The word and its meaning
A point in the All
Form in the formless
Infinity in a void.


http://www.spiritsite.com/writing/deecho/part27.shtml

Deepak Chopra, The Soul in Love, Part 4
The womb of creation is over the event horizon, and it is very real. The Big Bang erupted from virtual space. In other words, so did space-time itself. The amazing implication is that creation didn't happen at a particular moment. You can run a clock backward to try to get to the exact second that the Big Bang occurred, but just when you are about to arrive at the birth of things, your clock will falter and cease. All events will become compacted into a density too heavy and concentrated to allow for either time or space. Properties like weight and size, duration and movement disappear. At this point of seeming nothingness, everything is possible. Every single second of the life of the cosmos--past, present, and future--coheres into a unity. This point has been called a singularity by physics, but mystics call it God. God is the One and Only, the All that is only itself yet contains diverse creation. The mystic's God is not a person or a place but a state that is everywhere at once. This abstract portrayal remains true even when God is being named as father or mother, lover or friend--these are just words used in an attempt to humanize the ineffable.

To cross the event horizon seems physically impossible, yet it is spiritually our birthright. The poets in this book exercised that right, approaching God with awe and trembling but with disarming intimacy, as if meeting the One was the most natural thing in the world. Who is to say that they are wrong? Perhaps messages are drifting across the event horizon all the time. Rabindranath Tagore, the great Bengali poet and Nobel laureate, took the ecstatic tradition of Kabir and Mirabai into our time, going so far as to translate Kabir as an act of homage. Tagore had a famous meeting with Einstein in which the two compared their sense of what God's reality might be, but it is in his poetry that Tagore speaks most wistfully of how easy it is to miss the divine fragrance that is all around us. He uses the image of a flower that has been passed by on the road:

When the lotus opened, I didn't notice and went away empty-handed.

Only now and again do I suddenly sit up from my dreams to smell a strange fragrance. It comes on the south wind, a vague hint that makes me ache with longing, like the eager breath of summer wanting to be completed. I didn't know what was so near, or that it was mine.

This perfect sweetness blossoming in the depths of my heart.

Tagore is the tenderest and most emotionally delicate of the poets in this book--at least that is how he strikes me. They all speak to our souls with the same uncanniness that I mentioned earlier, but after a while one detects a definite flavor from each: Rumi is sharp and challenging, the ever-alert mind who gets impatient with the sleepy. Hafiz, another great lyricist in Islamic poetry, often adopts the metaphor of being drunk on wine, carelessly letting loose his rapture in the "sin" of drinking and carousing.


http://www.spiritsite.com/writing/deecho/part26.shtml

Deepak Chopra, The Soul in Love, Part 3
This is Mirabai, but the amorous theme she touches on is widely shared. Mystics either remain speechless, or they drift toward the language of lovers. There seems to be no middle ground. If they speak as lovers, we still hear all the complaints of earthly love, that it is fickle, that it brings sleepless nights and empty days, that food has no savor when the lover is gone and the heart becomes anxious and restless. In a way it seems strange to keep using such language about God, because the key quality of immortal love is freedom. It isn't bound by time and space; it doesn't really need expression or outward show because nothing is happening outwardly. The soul's love occurs when a person goes to an unchanging place beyond all dimensions. As Kabir says:

A man lives inside boundaries
His spirit lives outside.
Something else knows neither one.

Like Mirabai and Rumi, Kabir lived in the so-called medieval period (his dates are roughly 1440-1518), a term that is too Western to really make sense in India, where unbroken traditions span many centuries. He was low-born, trained in the family craft of weaving. Because cultural boundaries are inescapable, mystical poets still acquire religious labels. Rumi is therefore considered Muslim and Mirabai Hindu, but Kabir refused to be labeled, and was claimed by both religions. (If you read deep enough, these poets easily embrace all faiths. For example, there are mentions of Christ throughout Rumi.) The charming tale of what happened to Kabir's body after he died is known by every Indian child: After he passed on, Kabir's remains were claimed by both the Hindus and Muslims of the town. One side wanted to cremate him and scatter his ashes over a holy place, while the other wanted a burial. The disagreement between the two factions grew heated to the brink of violence. There seemed to be no peaceful solution until Kabir came in a dream and told his followers to open his casket. When they did, Kabir's body was gone, miraculously changed into a bundle of flowers. One faction took half the flowers and burned them; the other took their half and buried them. Thus both faiths got what they wanted, and Kabir became storied as a saint who could not be trapped by orthodoxy on either side.

Delightful as it is to spend time with these divine lovers, I have also come to believe that the God-mad (to use a wonderful phrase from India) have hit upon a truth that has objective validity: There really is a place beyond time and space that we can access even though we are here inside time and space. Modern physics speaks of the "event horizon," which lies beyond the travel of light, a place that must exist but can never be seen because the oldest photons in the universe are unable to bring us any data about it. When you ask a question like, "What happened before time began?" or "Where did things exist before the universe was created?" you are not making sense on this side of the event horizon. There is no time before time began and no place outside space. Yet to a quantum physicist, all such questions do make sense if you cast your mind over the event horizon. Thus we hear about additional dimensions that once existed, about mega-universes that might have served as incubators for our own, and so on. The space beyond space is called "virtual" in the terms of physics; it is an empty place, completely black and cold (words that aren't really meaningful outside our universe), yet filled with the potential to create all time, space, matter, and energy.


http://www.spiritsite.com/writing/deecho/part25.shtml

Deepak Chopra, The Soul in Love, Part 2
Rumi was dancing the dance of life. He knew it, and so did his listeners, which is why the line between poet, saint, and lover became quite blurry in his case. No poet is more intimate than Rumi, no lover more crazed, no saint more innocent. An air of the supernatural gathered around him because he never lost this wild, extreme state of ecstasy. Somehow the deepest lovers don't have to fear time. Their intoxication is permanent, even though the divine beloved is invisible, remote, and never touched physically.

Centuries ago an Indian princess named Mirabai walked away from wealth and privilege to live among the poor just so she could remain intoxicated. Like Rumi, Mirabai expresses amazement that the rest of us don't follow her lead. But to do that requires great strength, for the life of God-intoxication leaves no room for compromise, as Mira points out time and again:

I am going mad with pain--but no one gets it.
Only the wounded feel their wounds,
embracing the fire in their hearts.
Only the jeweler knows the worth of the jewel,
not the one who tosses it aside.
Mira wanders the forest, sick with love.
Her pain will only cease when the Dark One comes to heal it.

These lines are as intimidating as they are alluring. What is such a love, and why do certain people fall so deeply under its spell?

I have been fascinated by such questions for a long time, and I found answers only by going into the soul-places where mortal love and immortal love meet. Romeo and Juliet were mortal and even died for love, yet they attained a kind of immortality by being allowed to live on in verse. Immortal love doesn't need poetry. However, it is our good fortune that some of the God-intoxicated have written words that permit access into their ecstatic world. Particularly in the East, in that exotically woven belt of lands that stretches from Arabia to the Indian subcontinent, poets and saints are never far apart. Mirabai and Rumi are only two such figures; there are many, many more. In this collection I have gathered a few of the most revered, beginning in the medieval period and extending to this century. The name of Rumi has gathered much luster recently, but the others -- Kabir, Hafiz, Tagore, and Mirabai -- deserve just as much recognition. In their own cultures they stand as beacons of inspiration, largely because the common people have taken them into their hearts and continue to sing their words every day.

From my childhood I remember women gathering in my grandmother's house in Delhi, often accompanied by a wheezing little harmonium, and the voices of family and friends raised to praise God in the words of Kabir or Mirabai. In that setting there was no question about whether this was "great" poetry; it was great in its heartfelt yearning, for much of this writing is the purest yearning imaginable:

Take me to that place where no one can go
Where death is afraid
And swans alight to play
On the overflowing lake of love.
There the faithful gather
Ever true to their Lord.


http://www.spiritsite.com/writing/deecho/part24.shtml

Deepak Chopra,
The Soul in Love, Part 1
There is a rare experience that can bring more delight than falling in love -- falling in love with God. Both are mysteries of the soul. We are used to living our lives without touching such mysteries. Falling in love may remain in the back of our minds as a supremely desirable event, but the world doesn't revolve around it, except for lovers. We give them a privileged position, briefly exempt from care and worry. Life's business gets suspended while lovers sigh and long for each other, feeding off the mere touch of the beloved, intoxicated by a glance or a word. Glances and words aren't really magical, yet love makes them feel that way.

The excitement of falling in love always comes to an end, and when it does, the mystery fades. Day by day, the intoxication is less, and soon the lovers get welcomed back into the reality of business as usual. Yet a privileged few are spared this return to everyday life and remain in love seemingly without end. For this to happen, the beloved must be God. All other loves pale beside a sacred one. Saints and sages alike tell us one story over and over of being irresistibly drawn to God's embrace:

Oh God
I have discovered love!
How marvelous, how good, how beautiful it is! ...
I offer my salutation
To the spirit of passion that aroused
and excited this whole universe
And all it contains.

These words are from Rumi, the sublime Persian poet so enraptured with God that he clung to a pole outside his house, swinging back and forth in ecstasy. From his lips poured joyous, drunken words about his Beloved, but these words weren't the ordinary effusions of a lover seeing through rose-colored glasses--Rumi was a lover who had seen something at the depths of life. To him, God was everywhere, and every atom of the universe pulsated with the same divine rapture. The power that created the cosmos poured through Rumi's veins, and the experience was not all pleasure. It was earthshaking:

You go to bed crying and wake up the same,
You plead for what doesn't come
Until it darkens your days.
You give away everything, even your mind,
You sit down in the fire, wanting to become ashes,
And when you meet with a sword,
You throw yourself on it.

Ordinary people (the villagers and devotees who surrounded Rumi) were reluctant to throw themselves into such a frenzied state, but they were fascinated by Rumi. In mesmerized groups they stood around while he swung on his pole rhapsodizing, or whirled in the dance of the dervishes and sang, because his songs and verses were inspired. It is that quality which puts God-intoxication above falling in love. Some aspect of wisdom is present, not a mere emotion or inflamed passion. Reading Rumi, a chill runs up your spine because you have the uncanny feeling that you have been where he is. Perhaps he is even yourself:

Motes of dust dancing in the light
That's our dance, too.
We don't listen inside to hear the music--
No matter.
The dance goes on, and in the joy of the sun
Is hiding a God

http://www.spiritsite.com/writing/deecho/part23.shtml

My favorite Deepak quote, Love him!

Posted it on my blog:
http://girlsinmylife.blogspot.com/

Fun! have a look!
and maybe some reading inspiration..

From a interview:
Deepak Chopra: Right, and when I speak of passion in love, I also mean passion in life. When you lose passion in love, then you lose passion for everything else, because life is an expression of that passion that you have in love. One of my favorite poets has been Rumi, whom I quote very frequently.
He said,

the most important thing you can do in your life
is to become a passionate lover,
and if you are a passionate lover,
then you'll be a lover in life,
you'll be a lover in death,
you'll be a lover in the tomb,
you'll be a lover on the day of Resurrection,
you'll be a lover in Paradise,
and you'll be a lover forever.

And if you've not been a passionate lover,
then don't count your life as having been lived.

Posted by: marek dariusz podsiadlo at July 11, 2005 03:29 PM


http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2005/06/deepaks_first_b.html

Passion! 

Beschrijving:

Neal Donald Walsch was experiencing a low period in his life when he decided to write a letter to God, venting his frustrations. What he did not expect was a response. As he finished his letter, he was moved to continue writing - and out came extraordinary answers to his questions. This work presents the answers that Walsch received, helping him to change himself, his life and the way he viewed other beings.


http://www.nl.bol.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/nl/-/EUR/BOL_DisplayProductInformation-Secondary;sid=b3Z_o_TdHEl_rrYxszlBlBQKG1rRTFYHY4I=?BOL_OWNER_ID=1001004000968204&Section=BOOK_EN&sec_Page=Synopsis

nice 

The Wedding Vows from Conversations with God
Nancy Fleming-Walsch

In het kort:

Based on the wedding vows from Conversations with God, this book features the ceremony that joined Neale Donald Walsch and his wife, Nancy. Transcending denomination, these vows help us make a commitment to love, and to ensuring that love is reborn every day.

This text contains an inspiring marriage ceremony created by the by the author of "Conversations with God". The ceremony can be used as presented, or as a source of inspiration for creating original wedding vows.


http://www.nl.bol.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/nl/-/EUR/BOL_DisplayProductInformation-Start;sid=b3Z_o_TdHEl_rrYxszlBlBQKG1rRTFYHY4I=?BOL_OWNER_ID=1001004001197385&Section=BOOK_EN&lgl=1&plid=&lgl_BOL_OWNER_ID=1&lgl_Section=1

"In Making Peace with Your Past Dr. Harold Bloomfield provides an elegant and practical map of the road to greater well being. There are few doctors in the world today with the experience, insight and vision of Harold, which he shares freely with the reader in this beautiful book." --Deepak Chopra, author of How to Know God: The Soul's Journey into the Mystery of Mysteries

http://www.audiobooksonline.com/shopsite/1574533576.html

http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com/askneale_laura.cfm

Letter submitted by: Laura
Letter:
first let me thank you for writing the cwg books. i have been searching my entire life for answers. not finding any, of course, until cwg one. when i read your book it just rang true in my heart...thank you...on to the question...

i do have thing that i do not understand. i understand when you speak of no right or wrong...that the universe answers in kind..you plant good seeds you will get good back..there is my problem...i have lived my entire life adhering to the golden rule...i have treated without exception everyone i have come into contact like i would want to be treated however it seems the people that i have had in my life has never heard of the golden rule.

i have suffered alot of abuse in my life...physcial, mental, verbal..just let me say this.. it has not been good..by the people that i have loved most in my life...now that i am in my early fifties...with not to many years ahead...i am beginning to think that that no matter how good of a person you are and how you try to help others it doesn't matter...what you get back from them is what you get good or bad..in my case mostly bad...i have tried to change and not be giving and caring but it was to difficult for me i love being kind to people helping whenever i can and giving what i can...

believe me it is not that i want paid back that is the furtherst thing from my mind...what i would like is love.. kindness..appreciation...some peace. i know in the cwg books it says when you want something to happen..that i can make it happen...god knows i have tried...i hope this makes some sense it is hard to put my feelings into words...i love god with all that is in me and i know that he watches over me...i hope he sees just how tried i am....also i wanted to say i love your web site..i log on to it every day to listen to you and the excerpts from cwg..thanks again for all you have done...


Neale's Response:
My dear Laura….I hear your words of sadness and my heart goes out to you in fullness and in deep gratitude for all you have done for others in your life.

When I was a young man all I received on my report card were A’s in English and in Composition, etc. Then the counselor in my high school decided that I belonged in an advanced class, because I was so far ahead of the students in my own group. So I was placed, during my sophomore year, in College English Lit. All the other kids were seniors, except for two juniors. I was the only sophomore.

When my grades came, I got a C—the first grade under an A I ever got in Language Arts. I went to my mom complaining about how I never would be getting such a bad grade if I had been kept in a lower class, a class for kids my age. My mom said something to me then that I never forgot, Laura—and I find myself wanting to repeat it to you now…

“To the best students…go the most difficult lessons.”

Laura, difficult as it may be to accomplish this—we are all humans, after all—try not to focus on all the difficult challenges you have faced and the bad things that have happened to you, and look instead that your own choice to continue to be loving to others in the face of it all. This says more about you and Who You Are than one hundred thousand good days that could come your way.

I know that all you want in your life now is a little love and a little peace. But you have that already. It could not come through you to others if it was not within you. If you will look at the love that you give others, you will see yourself as having that. Once you change your perspective about this, you will see others sending their love to you in very unexpected ways.

Finally, say this little affirmation, Laura, 21 times each morning and 21 times each evening. Say it silently in the quiet of your mind: “All the love I could ever want is coming to me now. Thank you, God.”

I am so glad that you have written to me, my friend. God bless you as you continue your remarkable journey of dispensing love and caring to those whose lives you touch.

You inspire me!

Neale.

The Holy Experience
by Neale Donald Walsch

Chapter Four


I had the Holy Experience today. I had it this morning. I am still having it as I write this.


The experience feels interestingly like a new beginning. So many things are changing in our world, and so many things are presenting themselves for change in my life. I experienced this morning that I want to change how I am, becoming more loving, more patient, more compassion-ate, more giving.


Yes, much, much more giving.


This is wonderful, this feeling of willingness to change and to be-come a larger version of myself that I am having today. It is part of the continuing adventure, of the never-ending process, that is the expansion of my humanity and the evolution of my human soul.


Just when I think "the game is over," it never is! This is what is so extraordinary about Life. Even after what we imagine to be our death, life is not over. It never is and it never will be.


I don't know why I am feeling all this right now, why I am know-ing this as part of my experience today more than usual, but I am. It just feels like a new energy is coursing through me. And that feels good. I thank God for it. I thank God for letting me get up today with such revi-talized energy, even at my age. I am not a young man any more, but my heart feels young as ever.


I think that part of what is behind all of this may have to do with the fact that I spent the entire weekend going over the "script" of my life. No, I mean really, not figuratively. I had the screenwriter and the pro-ducer/director, and the director of photography of Conversations with God: The Movie at my house for the past three days going over the first draft of the script for the film, and that kind of experience can throw one into deep introspection, as you might imagine.


I haven't lived my life the way I would have liked to. I mean, I have made some choices that have been hurtful to others, and I so regret that. Yet I see now, as I review the entirety of my life, that certain things had to happen exactly as they have happened in order for me to be here now, just as I am. And I am clear that the God of my understanding forgives me completely and utterly for my offenses, holding me in the cradle of Her love, embracing me in the warmth of His compassion and deep under-standing, encouraging me now and giving me the strength to move for-ward with my mission in this life.


My mission is plain and it is simple: to give people back to them-selves. This is the mission of all of us, and each of us is playing it out in the way that is natural and perfect for us.


We have been sent here to experience and to express ourselves in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are, that we might know ourelves as God would have us know us--as part of the Everlasting Divine. We have been given the gift of God's joy and God's peace in our heart, and offered an invitation to share it with everyone whose life we touch--regardless of exterior appearances that sometimes seem to make it impossible to do so.


I have come to see that all of life's circumstances, conditions, events, and experiences have been sent to me as gifts, creating a Contex-tual Field within which I might choose how I wish to experience myself, and decide what part of that interior experience I shall now express in physical form. And so I thank God for each and every manifestation of life now producing that Contextual Field. I shall judge not, and neither con-demn.


This living without judgment is the hardest part for me, but it is the beginning of the Holy Experience, and as I have looked at the depth of my life these past three days it has been made clear to me that so many people would have to live without judgment of ME in order for me to feel the love that is all around me. And so, the least I can do in exchange for this unspeakable blessing is to offer the same in return, and to live without judgment of others. For who among us shall cast the first stone?


I was invigorated this morning by this freedom-giving thought: I am forgiven, by God and by all those who love me. I choose now to for-give myself as well, thus to dwell in the joyful place of enlivened creation. For nothing good is created from guilt, and all things wonderful emerge from joy.


What a joy this life is, with all its sadness and pain, its strife and travail, its tests and its obstacles. What a joy to be alive and experiencing all of it, and to be able to choose which part of it to internalize and call my own. Having this choice, and exercising it, is the Holy Experience.



The end is the beginning


I said in the last chapter that each moment in life is truly holy be-cause each moment ends. This is not something that everyone knows. Everyone knows that each moment ends, but everyone does not know that for this reason each moment is holy.


And even while everyone knows that each moment ends, many people hope that no really wonderful experience ends. This is a contradic-tion in terms, yet people still engage in this wishing. They hope that their perfect relationship will never end, or that their perfect job will never end, or that their particular and present happiness, however it is showing up, will never end - but it always does. This does not mean that it will not or cannot be replaced by a new happiness, but the present happiness will always end.


That is something that is very important to remember. It is also im-portant to know that the end of our present happiness is the beginning of our new happiness. Now if one's happiness is tied to present and particu-lar circumstances, one's happiness is always and forever in jeopardy. Yet if one's happiness rides the tide of all events, and, indeed, creates them, then one has discovered and embraced the Holy Experience


It is the very fact that each moment is like a snowflake, breath-takingly beautiful, awesomely perfect in its design, absolutely individual and unlike any other, that makes it so remarkable, and renders it holy.


Do we not fall in love with people for this exact reason? Why not, then, fall in love with moments in precisely the same way? Deciding to do that is the beginning of the Holy Experience. It is the Choice Point of Sacred Creation.



The power and the inspiration


There is nothing more profoundly inspiring and absolutely em-powering than this fact that each moment is new. It is born, it lives, and dies, in NOW.


Right here, right Now, is each moment born. Right here, right Now, is each moment lived. Right here, right Now, is each moment ended. It is all happening at one Time, in this moment, right Now.


The wonder of all this is that This Moment can be recreated from moment to moment, or created in a new way, with whatever modifica-tions, enhancements, alterations, or adjustments that we choose.


We are not who we were yesterday. We are not even who we were a moment ago. Nothing is. And yet it can be, if we choose for it to be. All we need do is recreate it.


In life we can recreate ourselves as we just were, or we can recreate ourselves anew, in the next moment. We are always remaking ourselves. It is never a question of whether, but of how. Are we recreating ourselves as we were before, or in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are?


The Holy Experience is the experience of recreation. It is the experi-ence of Total Knowing that the Totality of You is Never Known. It cannot be, because it has not yet been created.



Understanding infinity


Everything that ever was, is now, and ever will be, is now. And so, in the language of the Realm of the Absolute, there is nothing that has not been created. Only in the language of the Realm of the Relative could the statement be made that the Totality of You cannot be known because it has not yet been created.


In truth, all of You has been created. Yet all of You has not yet been experienced by the individuated part of You that is the localized expression of the Universal Self.


The only way for the individuated part of You that is the localized expression of the Universal Self to experience all of You is to recreate parts of You until all of You has been Known. Yet the All of You is infinite and eternal. Therefore, it cannot be known or experienced in any relative sense, but only in an Absolute Way. Since the Local You does not know that it is the Universal You, it imagines that it is creating, rather than recre-ating, itself in each moment. This is its conceit.


The Holy Experience is the dropping of this conceit. It is the shed-ding of this illusion. It is the lowering of this veil. This happens when we come to know that we are not who we thought we were. It occurs when we understand that we are nothing at all, except exactly what we are right here, right now. And that we can change that at our absolute discretion.


Who are you right now? What are you? Are you confused? Are you frustrated, finding all this difficult to follow? Are you annoyed that you are not ”getting it,” or overjoyed that you are?


You are none of these things unless you say that you are. And you cease to be these things the moment that you say you are not. That moment is the holy moment. That experience is the Holy Experience.


When you understand the truth of Who You Are, you understand infinity. You can actually experience this understanding. That is, you can embrace it not only intellectually, but experientially.


There are at least five areas in which you can do so. Many more, I am sure, but five that I can immediately think of. You can experience in-finity in:


Love
Wisdom
Abundance
Energy
Divinity
These five areas of life expression have, in my mind as I think of them, several sub-areas. And so the complete listing looks to me like this:



Love/Relationship/Sexuality
Wisdom/Awareness/Consciousness

Abundance/Wealth/Health

Energy/Creativity/Aliveness

Divinity/Joy/Peace
These are the areas of life expression in which it is possible to en-counter or create the Holy Experience. But before we get into that, let me see if I can more closely describe the Holy Experience by more broadly de-fining it.



The whole is greater than the sum of its parts


I have already given several indications in this manuscript of what I believe the Holy Experience is. Now let me say, please, that it is all of this—and more.


The Holy Experience is as varied and as infinite as Life. It is a par-ticular aspect of Life that explains life TO life through the process of life itself.


The Holy Experience is the experience of knowing, and of knowing that you know. It is the experience of being, and of being what you are be-ing. It is the experience of having, and of having what you have.


I know that all of this may sound like just so much gobbledegook—circular talk getting nowhere—but if you will have a little patience, I think you will be well rewarded.


When I speak of the experience not only of "knowing," but of "knowing that you know," I am speaking of two distinctly different en-counters with life.


CwG tells us that there are those who...

...do not know, and do not know that they do not know.


...do not know, and know that they do not know.


...do not know, but think that they know.


...know, but do not know that they know.


...know, but pretend that they do not know.


...know, and know that they know.


All of us fall into one of these six categories. So it is one thing to know, and another thing to know that you know.


Now the truth is that all of us know all that there is to know. Yet not all of us remember this, and so we have the experience of not knowing, or of knowing, but of not knowing that we know. In the moment that we know, and know that we know, we have had the Holy Experience.


Because this experience is so vast, it is almost more difficult not to have it than to have it. Yet most people still manage to not have it—even though half the world is yearning for it. That is because half the world does not understand that it is yearning for that which it already has.


For instance, peace.


The world's people yearn for peace, yet they do not experience it, nor do they demonstrate it. That is because they do not understand that they are peace. And in denying that which they intrinsically are, they deny themselves the experience of it.


This is what I meant when I said, just a bit ago, that the Holy Ex-perience is being, and of being what you are being. To give you an exam-ple of what this means, or of how this could "show up" in real life, I can remember my father raising his voice at me in frustration when I was in high school because of the poor grades I kept bringing home.


"You're smarter than this," he would say, waving my report card at me. He was right. It was one thing for me to "be" smart (I was), but quite another for me to be being smart in my daily life - that is, to be acting like that. I was not demonstrating what I was, I was not demonstrating what my father knew me to be. I was IT, but I was not being IT.


To be or not to be, that is the question.


Similarly, it is one thing to have everything in life, but if you are "having none of it" (that is, if you do not believe that you have it, or cannot acknowledge that you have it), then you may as well not have it at all. You will not experience having it because you are not willing to "have" what you have. You are not willing to hold what you have been given.


That is why the marriage vow says "to have and to hold." You can have something, but if you do not hold it, it is just the same as not having it at all. It is as if someone had given you a great gift, but you dropped it the moment you got your hands on it. You let go of it. You still have it. It is still in your possession. The person who gave it to you has long since disappeared. But you will not pick it up and hold it. And so it lies there at your feet, as useless as if you did not have it at all.


I cannot tell you how many people I have seen ignoring their tal-ents in exactly this way. They have been given great gifts, but they will not pick them up, they will not use them.


And so the Holy Experience is knowing that you know, being what you are, and having what you have. It is a large experience. It is a huge experience. It is the experience of who you are, writ large.



Is the Holy Experience something you create?


Okay, now I said earlier that there are five areas in which it is pos-sible to encounter or create the Holy Experience. You may have read that sentence and glossed over the word "create." You may not have given it a second thought. But let's think about it now.


Is the Holy Experience something that we create? Whoa. For many, many people that would be a new thought. A whole new thought. Because many people think of the Holy Experience as something that comes over us, or something that we encounter along the way. It is something we stumble on, or open ourselves to through prayer or meditation or fasting or the like. But it is not something that we consciously create.


Yet it can be. It is true, we can encounter the Holy Experience or we can create it. If we wait to encounter it, it might be years, perhaps a life-time, before we do so - IF we do so. Yet if we choose to create it, we do not have to wait one moment longer. We can have it right here, right now.


I know of five steps to creating the Holy Experience:


Believing that it is possible for you to have it

Understanding that you are worthy of having it

Knowing that you are having it

Declaring that you are having it

Sharing it with others, so that they may have it

We will explore each of these steps in the next five chapters, and in the five chapters following that we will look at the areas of life expression in which you can create the Holy Experience if you now choose to.

Send this chapter to a friend - Marek Dariusz Podsiadlo: I already did.., haha

Hi ya all, everybody!

Listen up,
This is the plan with this lil´blog,

The Fresh Prince Favorite Spiritual words of wisdom!

Beacause,

Sometimes it´s nice to hear some positivity..

instead of...

We gonna start with a new entry,

Neale Donald Walsh, author of some great books,

http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com/index.cfm

I myself come in contact with his work,

through a introduction of mine all time favorite

Dr. Deepak Chopra,

www.chopra.com/

www.randomhouse.com/features/chopra/


Check em out!

For whenever you all are in need for some..inspiration or contrast!

Have fun reading!

With Passion!

The Fresh Prince