10/18/10 -

There's an excellent movie out called "Race To Nowhere" having to do with the dysfunctional education system run by dysfunctional adults. Looking back on my own early education with the awareness that I have today, I can see how crippling the whole system was then and even more so now. We are taught that intellect is the greatest thing with technology being right up there along side of it. But in truth, intellect by itself with no spiritual connection is destructive, imprisoning, and dysfunctional. The spiritual mind and intellectual mind were meant to be in balance. In our early years, we had that balance and then the spiritual mind was conditioned out of our awareness. One cannot be sane without this spiritual connection.

I want to make it very clear that by spiritual mind, I do not mean the sort of intellectual mind that religions teach. One does not have a spiritual mind by the virtue of sitting in a pew listening to someone elevated above you about their intellectualized understanding of spirit. Being in touch with spirit necessitates learning how to listen within through meditation, dreams, intuition, visions, and having a connection to Nature by being in it rather than watching a show about it. We are a society of individuals who think to the nth degree, thinking that reading a book or lots more of them will make one an expert and wise. Wisdom does not come from books, it comes from experience period. One cannot know sorrow, pain, suffering, loss, depression, inadequacy, frustration, creative impotence unless they have been through it from beginning to end. There are no shortcuts, no substitutes for this way of knowing. Unfortunately, the many who are in pain and suffering are buried in it to such a degree that they have shut off awareness of it in order to function within the dysfunction of the world.

This is why so many get lost in reading books or intellectualizing various aspects of life in order to avoid going into the underworld of their pain and suffering. Fortunately, all is not lost as the truth that will set you free is on the other side of the pain and suffering. The pain and suffering are there to tell you that you are out of balance and going in the wrong direction. One need only look around consciously to see how much damage has been wrought with this sort of intellectual masturbation. One can also get lost in watching TV, listening to the radio or music, keeping busy, relationships, hobbies, religion, sports, politics, and a host of other things used to occupy one's intellectual mind to avoid going within and listening deeply to the divine sustenance of spirit.

Listening is key to connecting with the divine as it allows one to let go and allow the sustenance and guidance to wash over you like a warm rain or gentle wind. Unfortunately, this is why we cannot let go or allow as a general rule, because to do so would lead to the intellect having to relinquish control and allow the spiritual mind to emerge. There is a madness to the intellectual method because it cannot know experientially as the spiritual mind is capable of. The intellectual mind is like a database, that can only give answers based on information that has been uploaded to it. One might "think" there isn't much difference in the two. Let me put it in a way you can have some perspective on. The intellect is like a drop of water in all the water of the oceans combined on Earth. Even more so, if you could take one atom amongst all the atoms of the entire universe, that would be a metaphor for the difference between intellectual mind and spiritual mind.

A wonderful metaphor for the spiritual mind is a spring flowing up from the earth flowing effortlessly and clearly. Intellect blocks this flow of awareness/information that comes directly from divine source. Another example would be a sail boat out on the ocean, where one learns to use the wind to navigate. The wind is the spiritual mind. When one loses the wind in the sail, the boat falters and loses speed and direction. The winds blow differently for each individual, guiding them effortlessly, abundantly, lovingly, creatively. Those who are caught up in the delusion of the intellectual mind lose the ability to sail effortlessly and "learn" to seek shortcuts that only lead to pain and suffering for themselves and others, as shortcuts mean having to manipulate, coerce, intimidate, lie, cheat, steal, kill, frighten, and judge others. One might "think" they are free from any pain and suffering in doing this to others, but the truth is that in order to do this to others, one has already done it to themselves, through going against their own divine nature.

Judgment is the condemnation of truth in order to support a lie that has arisen in the distorted intellectual mind of reasoning. Love, joy, bliss, and truth require no reason to exist; they just are what they are. Being conscious allows one to bear witness to the judgments that present themselves in the intellectual mind. Judgments are seductive because they seek to draw you into the delusions/illusions being presented as greater than being authentic. This is the domain of shadow and trickster elements rooted in the darkness. Your light of divine presence can be discerned within by using the following touchstones:

True Guidance vs. False Guidance

Ego Versus Spirit Voices

10/29/10 -

I found this recent quote by Krishnamurti, which touches on my own experiences of this effect:

"When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind." - J. Krishnamurti

The first time this observer effect occurred, I was working with my new Frontpage 2000 program in the Summer of 2002. I was following the software directions, but they would create something completely different. At some point I became so furious, that I wanted to literally pound my computer. At the peak of the rage that consumed me, an inner shift occurred, where I found myself instantly shifted backwards and separated from what was raging. Where I had been the raging, I was now the observer watching this other something rage. I was so startled by this event, that the rage completely disappeared.

It would take several years until I ran across a reference to this observer phenomenon and several more years to understand the experience fully in order to integrate the learning. I've written about the phenomenon like watching a movie or TV program and being totally consumed by it, oblivious to anything outside of the movie or program being watched. Just as we get caught up on the movie or program, so does our attention get caught up in the drama of the outside world as if it is real.

Part of this phenomenon has to do with being hooked into this