Stretching It...

¡Hola! Everybody...
I hope to start my holiday weekend a little early. I am going away (to Boston and New Hampshire), so I’ll be scarce. Please be careful driving if you’re traveling and leave the fireworks to the experts:

alcohol x stupidity + fireworks (firearms) = “accidents”

Don’t be an idiot.

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-=[ Expansions ]=-

Man's mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

You have everything you need, in this very moment, to be happy. If I were to stop right there, that is all I would need to say to you.

I am not referring to bullshit happiness here, I am pointing to a form of happiness beyond your wildest imagination. A happiness that endures through all the vicissitudes of life, an invincible summer in the heart of your winter.

Our problem isn’t that we need to attain something, be something, or improve something. You’re quite fine right now. No, our basic problem is simply that we have forgotten our true selves. Having become entangled in the never-ending dramatic cycle of being an individual, striving for individual recognition, achievement, satisfaction we feel separate, alienated, and at war with our world. We have forgotten of our essential truth. “Expanding your mind” is breaking through this limited self-concept, integrating to a basic unity that has always been, and accessing the spark of the divine light you carry within.

You see the problem is not one of learning enough or achieving enough in order to pull ourselves out of our present state of “inadequacy,” as we have been conditioned to believe. It is instead simply a problem of perceiving the truth as it is, without distortion. As we expand our consciousness, we become more aware of our universe and our place in it.

The solution is one of perception. Our ability to perceive clearly depends on a methodology that stretches our nervous system, expanding its range, and in that way allowing consciousness to expand. Spirituality, a true integral spirituality, is the science of expanding consciousness. Expanding your consciousness is returning to the Source that created you, becoming conscious of the source of your energy, and becoming one with that Source. Spiritual technologies exist that help you access this energy and once you have experienced this expanded state, you will never be the same.

I think the first step is to develop what I call The Witness. It’s the part of your consciousness that is aware that you are aware. In Buddhism, this is called mindfulness, and some consider it the opposable thumb of consciousness. When you the limited concept of yourself, your ego, dedicates itself to an expanded self, then you have entered a completely new path.

Life is always willing to teach you -- the universe is just waiting for you to be available. In fact, it’s constantly putting opportunities in your path to learn and to evolve from your current state. You have probably considered them irritations and problems and done everything to avoid them.

You have gone through your daily life absorbed in the drama -- the pleasures, the pains, your dreams and frustrations. As you evolve spiritually, you identify more with your Higher Self and you begin to lose interest in the little and big games going on around you. In fact, you learn to be in the game and, at the same time, in a higher expanded consciousness, watching from a detached (“witness”) perspective.

From this expanded consciousness you totally experience the sensation, thought, or feeling going on in the present moment and at the same time are able to observe it objectively, fully conscious, without the usual attendant inner commentary. In this way, the thought or feeling loses its hold on you and ceases to be an irritation or obsession. Then the work begins -- the peeling away of layer after layer mental illusions you have come to think of as part of your self.

Love,

Eddie