Enlighten Me

Neither Here Nor There but Somewhere in Between

2008-07-25T21:46:00.002-04:00

My blog is now here: http://visionsoftheworld.blogspot.com/

Directions, Please

2006-07-24T22:11:00.000-04:00

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where—" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"—so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

11:11

2006-07-11T11:16:00.000-04:00

It seems that lately when I've glanced at the clock, it says 11:11 exactly. And also, when I'm on the phone talking to someone and then hang-up, the timer on the phone's display will say 11:11 (eleven minutes and eleven seconds). It varies a little, for instance, sometimes it's 1:11. Or even 2:22, 3:33, 4:44 and 5:55. But mostly it's 11:11.

Getting Rid of Negative Energy

2006-04-05T20:57:00.001-04:00

You'd be surprised to find out what the source of negative energy is. You can place the blame on external factors but you would only be shirking taking responsibility for what is truly the source of the negative energy, which is YOU. You cannot control external events, but you can control your reaction to them.

What you focus on is what you give power. What you allow to affect you you give power.

The best psychic self-protection you can engage in is to use Will power, and to choose what type of energetic entity you wish to feed and which you wish to starve. Do you wish to live in a state of grief, or would you rather free yourself from it?

A quote which I think serves the subject nicely is, "You can't control the wind but you can adjust your sails."

I have said some things along similar lines on my current blog. The specific post of which I speak can be found here: http://visionsoftheworld.blogspot.com/2009/07/you-ask-about-negative-energy-heres.html

It's Nice

2006-04-05T14:30:00.000-04:00

Here's something insightful for you. Why don't you email someone you haven't talked to in a long time? It will make their day. Just a "hello" would suffice. Think in your mind a friend you have that you haven't talked to in a while. Call them or write to them.

Indecision

2006-04-05T13:32:00.000-04:00

I just felt like posting some quotes on indecision today. There has been a lot of that going on lately.

Then indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Indecision is debilitating; it feeds upon itself; it is, one might almost say, habit-forming. Not only that, but it is contagious; it transmits itself to others.
Author: H. A. Hopf

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Author: William James

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Author: Aneurin Bevan

Neither have they hearts to stay, Nor wit enough to run away.
Author: Samuel Butler

Dream Journal April 5, 2006

2006-04-05T12:36:00.000-04:00

I had this dream last weekend but I forgot to post it, so here it is. Late, but better late than never.
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Someone takes a needle filled with salt water and sticks it in my arm, squirting the salt water inside. It stings badly.

Reliance

2006-03-31T13:57:00.000-05:00

I have a question for you. Tell me something. What is it you rely on?

Synchronicity Journal March 30, 2006

2006-03-30T10:14:00.000-05:00

I was just responding to Mark's comment on one of my posts. He had mentioned that perhaps I could describe the teachings I am getting right now in spirituality. I told him that right now I am reading the Jewish texts. As I typed out the word "Jewish", Sinead O'Connor sang into my headphones, "There's life outside your mother's garden." Mother = Eve, Garden = Garden of Eden.

Dream Journal 2 March 29, 2006

2006-03-29T22:17:00.000-05:00

Tonight I believe I had an out-of-body experience. Some of you might not believe me, might even label me as "crazy", but I'm telling you, it was real and it was magical. I'll tell you about that before I get to the dreams.

To begin with, I was falling. It's like I was falling down a deep tunnel of grey. I heard choirs singing. It was like the music of angels.

Another experience - I kept going around and around, as if there was a bar by my toes, and my toes were somehow magnetically attached to the bar so that I could keep flipping over and under over and over again like a gymnast. There wasn't really a bar there, I'm just trying to explain what the sensation was like.

OK, that is all for the out-of-body experiences. Now on to the dreams:

Dream 1:

I am not really a ghost, but look like one as I am having an out-of-body experience and my astral self is flying around the real world. People can see me and they go "ooooo and awwww" and point at me as I fly around.

Dream 2:

I get the impression I am in a farm house. I am naked. There is a grimy dirty man chasing me and grabbing onto me. He is trying to rape me. I can feel his body parts on my skin. I am trying to get away and I am crying. I am fighting him and trying to push him away and off of me.

Dream 3:

I am with a dream-husband in a house. A guy who lives next door who has long blonde hair is over visiting. When my dream-husband is in another room, the next door neighbor confesses to me, "I've always been in love with you." My husband comes back so we stop the conversation. Then, my husband says he is going to go get us all a pizza. When my husband leaves the house, the next door neighbor and I start to have sex on the couch, but we hear the door open. My husband didn't really leave to get pizza. It is dark in the house, and I tell myself that if I hurry fast enough, I can get my clothes pulled back up before my husband turns on the light and sees what we've been up to. My husband says, "I knew you two had something going on." But when the light comes on, he sees my clothes are on. I tell him he's wrong, that there wasn't really anything going on. But then he notices a part of my pants are stuck in my shoelaces and he catches me in the lie.

Dream 4:

Note: I don't know why I keep having dreams about marijuana, but here is another one.

There are people over my house. One of the guys brings some marijuana joints with him. He gives me two of them to do with as I like. Later I see him outside. The cops are there. He is talking to the cops. When the cops are busy, he tells me, "They already got me. You better hide your joints and keep them to use later on." I panic. I start running around the house trying to find a place to hide them. First I put them in the egg carton in the refrigerator. Later, as the cops start coming up to the door, I change my mind thinking they'll look there so I grab them and put them in a cassette-tape player that is sitting up on a high shelf, thinking they'll never look in there.

The cops come in. They can't find any joints, so we're safe until they tell me and my dream-husband that we have to take a mental test to be sure we're not stoned. I take the test as the cop draws it out on paper. I tell him, "This is like a brain-teaser. It's fun." I pass the test but my dream-husband gets the answer wrong. Luckily the cop decides my dream-husband isn't stoned anyway so he lets us go.

A Man Made Me Cry

2006-03-29T14:28:00.000-05:00

Michael made me cry today. Read this post to find out why, and see if it makes you cry, too:

http://awakenenlighten.blogspot.com/2006/02/in-previous-life.html

News Article on Higher Consciousness

2006-03-29T13:45:00.000-05:00

In my never-ended search for higher states of consciousness, I found this little article on the Scotsman news webpage. It's an older article, from around January of 2005, but it's still interesting, none the less. Maybe if I bang my head hard enough on a wall I'll get what I've been looking for. :)
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Higher states of consciousness
MEDICINE
MARGARET COOK

PICTURE THIS: A 43-year-old lady is being treated for temporal lobe epilepsy in a Swiss clinic. In order to pinpoint the aberrant electrical focus in her brain, electrodes have been implanted under the dura - the membrane covering the brain. When she is wakened, the doctors stimulate different areas and watch the results.

When they activate an area called the angular gyrus on the right side, she reports a feeling of "sinking into the bed". This progresses to "falling from a height". With stronger currents she reports she is "floating two metres above the bed" and actually able to see her own body parts lying below her.

She is having an "Out of Body Experience" (OBE), and hers is a classical description.
Some 10 per cent of the population endure these sensations at some time. These can be terrifying, though mostly brief. Associated with epilepsy and migraine, they also occur in normal people, often in states of altered consciousness. They seem to be closely linked to "Near Death Experiences" (NDEs), which take place in extremis, due to an interruption in the supply of oxygen to the brain: or occur when under the influence of drugs - opiates, ketamine, LSD and other hallucinogens - or of sensory deprivation, or brain stimulation of the right angular gyrus as described above.

One of the most celebrated cases was that of the psychologist, Carl Jung. After a heart attack, heavily doped and unconscious, he saw a huge dark stone in space, a meteorite with an entrance into a chamber, where he met a Hindu. Thinking he was about to be inducted into life’s mysteries, his hopes were dashed by his doctor appearing in the guise of a Greek healer, telling him he was not destined to die yet. Jung survived, much impressed with himself, and his visionary life flowered. His major works were then written and he was hailed and worshipped as a guru, much revered by New Agers in the 1960s and by mainstream thinkers.

Jung was neither the first nor the most fascinating case of OBE or NDE. He followed a long line of forceful personalities who used trance-states to mesmerise ordinary folk into thinking they were spiritually special.

Hallucinations and illusions have fascinated humankind from the dawn of our being: that is to say, from the time when our neurological networks had sufficiently evolved to experience and describe them - about 50,000 years ago, give or take. We know this from the evidence of cave art from prehistoric and more modern sites from several continents.

The famous cave paintings of South Africa, for instance, were inspired by memories of images from a state of altered consciousness - induced by plant chemicals, by sleep and sensory deprivation, by isolation, by rhythmic music and dance - by shamans in connection with rituals and religion.

Those paintings have astonishing parallels with rock art from the American continent and from the pre-historic rock art of caves in France and Spain. Many are extraordinarily inaccessible, reached by crawling along narrow, dark, wet passages, through lakes and pot-holes. It was believed that caves were anterooms to a world of spirits - and the cave wall whereon the paintings were made was a thin membrane between the two worlds.

Shamans used their inner revelations to act as intermediaries between the spirits and the people, much as priests do today. They thereby achieved power and status.

The depictions on the cave walls and the content of modern human trance-like states are strikingly similar and reproducible. Vision-questers, by whatever route, feel they leave their bodies, pass through a hole or aperture and along a tunnel or vortex. Early on, they see geometric shapes, lines and zig-zags. Later they encounter scary animals which must be overcome before meeting a spiritual supreme being. Other features common to multiple cultures are emerging from water; flight; a bright and blinding light; and, curiously, bleeding from the nose or mouth. In some cultures, aspiring shamans were obliged to go through painful and dangerous ordeals which really did bring them to the brink of death.

How many parables and allegories have these components? Pilgrim’s Progress, Lord of the Rings, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and many biblical tales all do.

Scientists believe that only humans have "higher consciousness" - which is difficult to define, but consists of a greater understanding of our place in time and space; our temporal nature; communication of abstract concepts through language and so on.

This cerebral conscious level conflicts with primary consciousness - which we share with animals - which has evolved multiple survival techniques, many of which are nothing whatever to do with sophisticated, scientific truth. However, our higher consciousness can go awry - very awry if we help it along by trying to escape its stern logic through vision-questing.

So now we know how, in theory, to tickle our brains into priestly status. It’s a bit of a cultural and sacred climb-down. It could be good for migraine and epilepsy sufferers, though. And it casts a little more light on that mysterious entity, consciousness. But the fundamental question remains: What - and where - is it?

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=4442005
Last updated: 03-Jan-05 02:54 BST

Dream Journal March 29, 2005

2006-03-29T11:25:00.000-05:00

Note: In college I worked for four years as a computer consultant in the computer lab at the university. I had a boss named R.B.
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In this dream, I get the feeling that I haven't been to work in a long time. I show up, and a fellow computer consultant informs me that we have a new boss. (I forget his name.) I go to a podium and pick up a white long telephone to call him to introduce myself. I am extremely nervous. I say, "Hi, this is Stacey. Um... I just wanted to say I'm here at work...well... I got here on time a few hours ago... but I'm calling now and I want to say I'm here for anything that you might need."

Later on I look at our shift schedule and see that the new boss didn't schedule me to work very many hours and I am upset about this. I say, "I can't work here with so few hours on the schedule."
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Note 2: When I worked in the real lab, I always worried about getting the right number of shift hours each semester. I had to practically beg the boss to keep me loaded on hours. I haven't worked in the computer lab since December of 2001.

The Four Learning Styles

2006-03-28T08:46:00.000-05:00

I'm a Visual/Verbal learner. What are you?

http://www.metamath.com/lsweb/fourls.htm

Spiral Dynamics Color Codes

2006-03-28T08:39:00.000-05:00

Does anyone understand the spiral dynamics color code? How does one know what color type they are? Do I just pick whatever color most matches my personality type? I'm thinking I'm blue (which just also happens to be my favorite color), but is there a test I have to take to determine this?

http://www.spiraldynamics.org/Graves/colors.htm

Jung Typology Test

2006-03-28T08:26:00.000-05:00

I was filling out my profile for the forums on the Integrative Spirituality webpage, and one of the questions it asked was what type of personality I have, so I took the Jung Typology test. It turns out I'm an ISFP.

Your Type is ISFP

Strength of the preferences %
Introverted 89
Sensing 50
Feeling 62
Perceiving 33

ISFP type description by D.Keirsey
ISFP type description by J. Butt

Try the test out for yourself if you haven't already:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

Party Time

2006-03-24T00:55:00.000-05:00

The world is a great big giant shiny disco ball. Let's just all dance and have a good time.

Time for a Fortune

2006-03-23T14:20:00.000-05:00

I went to an Asian buffet for dinner last night. I got two fortune cookies. I just now opened and ate them. Here are the fortunes with their respective lucky numbers. If you play these lucky numbers in a lottery and win, remember who gave them to you! :)

"A modest man never talks to himself."
6, 12, 23, 35, 42, 51

"There is a prospect of a thrilling time ahead of you."
3, 5, 10, 31, 38, 50

My thoughts on these fortunes:

I must be a modest person, because I never talk to myself. Not that I frown upon those who do.

I hope there really is a thrilling time ahead of me. I'm looking forward to it.

Dream Journal March 23, 2006

2006-03-23T10:48:00.000-05:00

Note: I've been feeling a little angry lately. I'm thinking my anger has rubbed off into my dreams. You'll see for yourself once you read this one -

I'm at a dinner party in a large banquet hall. I'm sitting at a table eating my dinner. I'm talking to a man. There is a woman with him and she is standing beside him. I can tell she is getting impatient because he is talking to me. Eventually, she walks a few feet away and stands, so that the man will notice and leave me to go stand beside her. I take my plate of food - spaghetti I think - and pour it all over her. I say to her, "Well you're not the talkative type, are you!"

Mundane Life

2006-03-23T08:23:00.000-05:00

I was reading Rob's blog earlier, and he had a post that simply relayed a thought. This was his thought: "Usually I am fooled into thinking that everyday life is mundane."

I thought about this for a moment, and I remembered that I often complain about everyday life being mundane. In fact, as I commented on Rob's blog, I usually call it, "Everyday mundane life". Now that this is being brought to the surface, I realize that I used to not think of life as mundane. It happened when I started to become spiritual. Everyday life just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. I could never go back. Also, I feel sorry for the people who are stuck there - the people who have no sense of spirituality at all. They wake-up in the mornings, go to work, come home, eat, watch t.v. and go to bed, only to wake-up again the next morning. I do this, too, except for the watching t.v. part. But, I feel that in my life there is an extra component, and that is purpose. I feel that my purpose is to become more than I already am, to reach higher levels of consciousness and to gain more knowledge and enlightenment. This brings more challenge into life. I'm not saying life is a game that is only meant to be played in a competitive way with the sole purpose of winning. I'm not here to beat anyone or be better than anyone. I'm only here to improve myself and gain the things I seek.

At the same time, I also think Rob's thought serves as a lesson to me, to start to try to learn to see things in everyday life that aren't mundane. This can bring added benefits to my experience.

[Update 2-7-07: It is funny to read go back and read this, because I no longer feel this way. I enjoy every day life, now. I am rarely bored, because I can find things to entertain myself with. Even "every day life" has its surprises.]

Dream Journal March 22, 2006

2006-03-22T09:39:00.000-05:00

My real boss, in the dream, had an identical twin brother. I was sitting in a class and he and his twin brother were up at the head of the room at a pulpit and were reading from the Bible. I started feeling vibrations throughout my body, and then I passed out and had an out-of-body experience. When I woke up, I was in a medical room, and people were looking over me explaining that I had passed out.
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Note: My boss is a devout Christian. He'd probably be thrilled to hear about this dream, and would no doubt tell me, even if somewhat jokingly, that maybe it's a sign I should convert to Christianity. But I don't think that's the case. I'm left pondering its meaning and value....

Dream Journal March 21, 2006

2006-03-21T20:57:00.000-05:00

Dream 1:

I enter my hotel room and go into the bathroom. There are strangers in there who have broken into my room. They grab me, and while holding onto me they lift my shirt up and start beating my back with a belt.

Later in the dream they're passing out marijuana around the room. My sister is there. Everybody is smoking it, and I'm about to smoke it when the FBI and hotel manager break the door down and start arresting everyone for smoking marijuana. When they barge into the room, I'm laying on the floor with a sheet pulled over my body up to my head. They don't arrest me because I haven't smoked it yet.

Next scene - I'm in a truck with one of the guys who broke into the hotel room. It's night-time and he's driving down a road. He offers me a huge marijuana cigarette. I take it and smoke it. I get high.

Dream 2:

I'm laying face down on a bed. My dream military boyfriend walks into the room and slaps my backside once really hard, and says he did it because I'm "not patriotic".

Dream 3:

A group of people surrounding me are pledging allegiance to the American flag. In the dream, it doesn't look like the real flag, but instead is a red silk rectangle with black stars covering it. I refuse to raise my hand to my heart and also refuse to say the pledge. I get in trouble.

Dream 4:

I'm in class. The teacher says it is time to turn in the homework. I haven't even started the homework. I quickly try to jot some answers down. When we're all in line at the desk turning in our homework, the teacher says she'll give us some of the answers and to write them down.

Dream Journal March 20, 2006

2006-03-21T20:55:00.000-05:00

I was at my dream-grandmother's house. (Not my real grandmother.) Someone had died in the bathtub and had been there a while. I had a latex glove on and stuck my hand down in the water. When I pulled my hand out, it was covered in blood and gross human-rot slime. I immediately wanted to wash my hands, even though I had the glove on. My dream-grandmother yelled at me for wanting to wash my hands, but I told her, "But grandmother, I've got OCD, I HAVE to wash my hands right away!"

Dream Journal March 18, 2006

2006-03-18T21:32:00.000-05:00

[Note: This dream contains the word "vagina". If you find that word offensive, you may not wish to read this dream. However, this dream is not a sexually-oriented dream.]

I am in a large building made of glass. It is made of many hallways and rooms. The building is close to the ocean. A giant robot comes upon the building. Everyone begins running around in chaos, trying to escape the giant robot because it is firing deadly ray beams at its victims. I'm running around through the halls and rooms, trying to find the safest place to escape death. I am very frightened.

I escape the building and begin running down toward the beach. Along the beach is a high chain-link fence. At the top of the fence is razor wire. Everyone is making a run for the waters of the ocean, including me. I thinking about climbing the fence, but I see some people trying to dig under it. I run to a place where the fence is unstable, and a couple of people are holding the fence up for some of us to run under. I look behind me and see a man slowly coming towards this part of the fence, but he is on crutches. I decide to stay and hold the fence for him so that he too can escape.

We all make it into the water. Suddenly, there is this giant green plant-like monster that is attacking some of the people in the water. I try to swim away from it. I end-up in this glass globe of air under the water. There are various rooms in it. There are all kinds of items, toys, etc. in this glass globe. The items are in different colors. Somehow I know I need to collect as many green items as possible, for I will be able to use the green items against the plant monster. I collect as many green items as I can. They will help protect me, at least for a little while.

Next, I am laying flat on my back somewhere under the ocean. I am looking between my legs, which are naked and spread wide open. Large slugs and other similar creatures begin to come out of my vagina. I can actually feel this in my dream.
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This is probably the strangest dream I've ever had. I had a bowl of homemade chili before taking the nap, so maybe that is why it was so strange, but the chili was not spicy. I feel very strange even now, hours after the nap. This is one of those dreams that is lingering with me emotionally. I am terrified of the green plant monster and also of the fact that slugs and other slimy things came out of me. What's even more strange is that I remember the physical sensation I felt as they were coming out.

I really wish to know what this dream means. I haven't a clue. But the desire is there to know and understand it.

Dream from March 17, 2006

2006-03-18T11:47:00.000-05:00

Dream 1:

I found a box of items that belonged to my father from the 1980s. One of the items in the box is a big remote-controlled car. I take it over to a house where my sister is. She too has a remote-controlled car, but hers is smaller. We play around with the cars, and I cause mine to drive over her car.

Dream 2:

I'm inside a big mansion. The owners are showing me around. One of the rooms we walk through is a tomb room. The floor is marble and inside the floor are tombs of dead people.

On a higher level of the mansion is a window that overlooks a large circular courtyard. The courtyard is made up of a cemetary, but all the tombstones are giant white marble slabs, it looks almost Italian.

We move into another room of the mansion. Suddenly I feel overwhelmed, as if I might break something if I'm not careful. I'm afraid to move. I feel that if I sit down on the floor I won't break anything so that's what I do - I sit right down on the floor. The owner says to me, "You're like a dog."

Later in the dream we're continuing our tour. I have to go to the bathroom really bad. I pass by several bathrooms. Most of the toilets are overflowing and water is all over the floor, so I can't use them. I see a toilet in another room that I can use but when I lift the seat up there is a big black spider, so I can't use it. I pass by a bedroom. There is a maid in there cleaning the room. The room has a waterbed and it too, like the toilets, is overflowing water all over the floor. Then I pass by more bathrooms with the hopes of using one, but each time I pass by one there is someone already seated on the toilet, so I can't use them.