April 28, 2021August 7, 2021 spiritualgrowthadventure

Why are things the way they are?

We live in times of unprecedented change, upheaval and uncertainty. Often people wonder why, and why if there is a God does He allow this to happen? Particularly this is the case if there is suffering, death or hardship involved. Why bother to be spiritual if God is like that? For instance, there are enough people who practice some form of spirituality in places like California, Australia and Florida who could try to use the idea that their thoughts create their reality. Yet they still experience fires or floods and lose their homes. So what is going on?

Some spiritual knowledge and understanding helps.

There is some knowledge that either isn’t known or isn’t understood in the West, or even in the East for that matter.

Generalising, a lot of New Age ideas came about in America and then spread around the globe. But modern America didn’t have all the knowledge. The initial immigrants to America came from Britain and Europe. Their spiritual or religious background was Christianity, and modern America was based predominantly on Christianity (though the Founding Fathers as they were called also had spiritual knowledge from their Freemason tradition, but as this was secret, it wasn’t expressed openly). The Native American traditions and knowledge were not taken up by the Europeans.

In Christianity there is no concept of reincarnation. There is no concept of karma. There was nothing about meditation. There was the notion, based on the Bible, about using thoughts through prayer, focus, and affirmation. Out of this spiritual foundation came ideas for the New Age, with some ideas thrown in from people in the hippy culture who had travelled to India and surrounding countries.

The New Age culture had the idea of thoughts determining reality, and a lot of new ideas blossomed about healing, therapies, psychology and relationships that many people have found useful. But important concepts were missing.

There is the concept of a soul, derived initially from the Christian background. But there is more to the soul than what is stated in Christian teachings.

Briefly put, the soul is literally a piece of God. The soul initially experienced itself to be totally connected to God, existing in a place that is Divine Love and Light, that can be called The Beyond or Reality.

A simple description of what happens then is that the soul drops down, and falls asleep as it drops (usually). And it drops into Creation (or the Illusion). It drops to the very bottom of Creation, then starts to have its first lifetime in mineral form, with zero consciousness. In its next lifetime as a different kind of mineral it has an ever-so-small increase in its consciousness. With every next lifetime there is a tiny increase in consciousness, and also later on, awareness. The soul builds up a great experience of Life. It also gets to learn what it is not, as it leaves behind the old form. But it doesn’t know what it is.

When you really look into reincarnation and past lives, you discover that we all have had a huge number of past lives as humans. Going further back there are the many lifetimes in mineral form, plant form and animal form before the human lives.

When the soul reaches the human lives, in some of those lives, the personality the soul has incarnated as, asks questions such as, “Who am I?”, and, “What is the purpose of life?”. There is still some waking up to do, and when it does, the soul and the personality perhaps, get to wake up properly and know themselves, really know themselves as God, as a living experience. (Easy words to write, but to really know it is something else.)

What makes each lifetime different to the one before?

Karma.

Just by being, even doing nothing, all souls build up karma as they experience each lifetime.

There is positive karma which is built up by being positive, and which we experience in a happy way. Negative karma which can feel uncomfortable or extremely painful is built up by negative thoughts, feelings and actions.

In the lives we have, as well as creating karma, we balance it, use it up, neutralise it. Before each incarnation, on the inner planes we have a discussion with our Higher Selves and perhaps guides and arrange what karma to go through for that life to balance things up. Often as we arrange to incarnate at the same time as other people it literally is that “all the world’s a stage”, and we play roles. In one life someone can be an enemy, in the next a friend, in another they can be brother or sister or mother and so on. In one life we can be very rich and to balance karma in others we can be poor. Its all a balancing act.

The karma, positive or negative, that we experience can come from many lifetimes ago.

To make the picture more complicated or richer depending on your point of view, there is also karma linked to any family and group you are in. There is also karma to do with your village, town or city, and area. Each country has its own karma that affects everyone living in it. Each larger region has its own karma. There is planetary karma, which the whole planet experiences, and also solar system wide karma. There is galactic karma, too (ever seen pictures of two galaxies colliding?), and Universe level karma.

Life is a process where karma gets balanced. In these times, there is a huge amount of Love and Light pouring into the planet Earth and creation. This is to move things on to a more loving and light filled time. But before this can happen, the old karma is being stirred up, and brought to the surface for rapid balancing.

Hence the upheaval and uncertainty. But if you sharpen your intuition and focus on being in your heart, you can navigate these times.

If you are interested in karma, here are some links to other articles on the blog:

How experiences are influenced by karma and the Law of Opposites.

About karma, gender and sexuality

About karma and mental illness

About karma and spiritual path

About karma and relationships

If you would like more on reincarnation, here are some links:

If reincarnation was true, how would you live your life

Notes for a soul coming into creation

In-depth, detailed information about reincarnation and the soul and so much more can be found in the book God Speaks by Meher Baba.

May 1, 2020January 14, 2021 spiritualgrowthadventure

Kinds of Karma

Souls incarnate on this Earth, in Creation, and as they go through Life through many lifetimes, they create karma, experience karma and balance karma. There are different kinds of karma. The karma molds the experiences they have and what the soul in physical form does.

Souls in physical bodies create karma all the time. Even just by being, such as when people are breathing, and standing still, as well as by thinking and doing things.

Consider humans, not only can they create, and balance and go through karma individually, they can do this as a family, for instance eating a meal, or going someplace.

People can create and go through karma as a group, for instance a group of fans watching sports match or a music concert, a group of people demonstrating, working for an organisation, and investing in a certain stock.

Then there is regional karma where something is experienced or done by an entire population of a region. One example would be New York and the recent pandemic.

There is national level karma that is created by a nation and experienced by a nation. For instance, one nation goes to war against another nation, a nation experiences having a political leader, or having sanctions applied against them, or they all (or most) have a day off work in a nationwide holiday.

There is global karma where the entire planet creates karma, such as by creating pollution, and experiences karma as a planet, such as experiencing a global pandemic, or rising sea levels.

So there is individual, family, group, regional, national and global karma. There is even solar system karma. For instance, the solar system may experience cosmic rays from a quasar, or there is an increase in solar activity. There is even galactic karma that applies to a whole galaxy. There are some galaxies that are crashing into each other, for example.

For each of the above there is positive karma, which is experienced as something happy and pleasant. There is negative karma which tends to be experienced as something unpleasant or horrible, but when it is gone into in detail, it always turns out to be something that is balancing out another experience, or balancing out negative energy from a previous life or lives.

Then there is opportunistic karma that can go either positively or negatively, depending on choices perceived, positive or negative attitude, and decisions made.

We are not only physical beings, but we have an astral body which relates to emotions, and we have a mental body, which relates to thoughts. So through what we do, feel and think, we have physical level karma, astral level karma and mental level karma. And these are positive, negative and opportunistic.

In our lives, we balance out karma from the past, sometimes from distant past lives, and we usually create karma, which gets carried over to be balanced in some future lifetime. As mentioned in another article, the karma gives us something to experience and learn from at soul level, and so develop in consciousness over many lifetimes.

For more on karma, try these:

About karma and mental health

About karma and gender and sexuality

About karma and relationships

About how karma and the law of Opposites helps you grow

Your past lives, karma and spirituality

For FAQs about meditation, click here.

If you would like to know about online meditation and courses that are available, click here.

February 19, 2020March 19, 2020 spiritualgrowthadventure

God’s plan for peace and harmony

As the twentieth century ended and the twenty first century started as the calendar went into 2000, there was a worldwide sense that everything was going to get better and there would be peace and prosperity for all and there would be more harmony. That is what a lot of people thought, and did it happen?

There is a massive difference between what humanity thinks and what happens spirituality. Another way of saying this is that humanity doesn’t understand life in a spiritual way. There is a lot of religion, but that is old bits of information, which tends to be interpreted in the ways that people want to interpret them.

Most human thinking is driven by desire. Desire to be “safe” and comfortable, have enough food (which can be different to nutrition), have money and in some cases huge amounts of money, and have things go on in predictable ways without too many challenges, and often have things happen around them the way they want things to happen. People like to stay in their comfort zone.

Harmony and peace are part of God’s plan for this planet and the rest of Creation. How humanity has carried on up to this point has very little to do with harmony and peace. To get to a proper state of harmony and peace requires change.

Our planet is polluted. To make life convenient we took to using plastics big time. The result being that all manner of creatures are being damaged and killed by plastics, and we are all contaminated by microplastic from our food, from the water we drink and even from the air we breathe in cities. And we still make millions of tons of plastic every year while the politicians do nothing to stop them being made. Still, we must have convenience. Our way of life is all about consuming, and then getting rid of things. Even the environmental activists will have their iPhones and smartphones, and will happily replace them with the latest version and throw away the old model. Because we consume and throw away, the huge number of people all doing this is a problem for the planet.

Even our use of the internet affects the planet. Servers require electricity, and electricity production can result in CO2 emissions. Servers also produce a lot of heat, which ends up in the air and water. The production of cryptocurrency requires a vast amount of electricity. New ideas like this aren’t always great.

God has a plan to bring about peace and harmony. The bad news for humanity is that current way of doing things and living has to change to something better. So it is change or be changed.

An aspect of spirituality that people don’t get is karma, taking into account the big picture. To get an idea about this it helps to know about root races.

Humanity has been around for a very long time, and this is only a brief description of root races of humanity. There has been 5 root races so far, the Adamic, the Hypoborean, the Lemurian, the Atlantean, and the Aryan root races. Each subsequent root race had a more evolved chakra system. The last three still have an influence on what is happening now. There have also been sub-root races, when certain developments needed to happen in humanity. A few examples of these are the Romans, the ancient Chinese, the Native American Indians. Sub-root races come in with a certain spirit to do things in a particular way and have a particular effect on humanity and life.

People have many, many lifetimes, so they are likely to have had Lemurian, Atlantean and lifetimes in the Aryan age. So people have karma from these root races. (Remember with reincarnation, people get to experience a diversity of different genders, different skin colours, different cultures, different levels of wealth, intelligence, physical welbeing, family set-ups, types of personality, mental health, beauty etc. so what you are like now is different to how you have been.)

There is a new root race that is due to come in, the sixth root race, where humanity has a more advanced chakra system than the current set up, and so will feel and think and handle energy in a more advanced way to the current way. There are also going to be some very advanced souls coming in to move things along.

It is the end times for the Aryan root race. And all the karma from the Lemurian, the Atlantean and the Aryan has to go. This means it has to be gone through and balanced. Karma includes individual karma, group karma, national karma, regional karma and planetary karma. Rough news for anyone wanting a comfortable, predictable life. Good news for anyone willing to get into their heart centre, tune into their intuition, and do what seems to be right.

Rather like when you go inside a very old building, and can feel the atmosphere, the residue of the old energy of their activities, the people in the old root races left behind some energy which is like a residue of energy on the land, which needs to be cleaned up. So the energy of the land needs cleaning up and uplifting.

I have mentioned before in the blog about weather systems having devas in them that drive the weather to shift old negative energy. This is a big clean up time for the planet, and humanity may want to find ways to adapt to it.

People who have read the books of Meher Baba will have come across the idea that in the early twentieth century, the general mix of energy was 75% dark and 25% light, and people in those days were used to that. He stated that by 2069 the energy needed to be 25% dark and 75% light. That is a lot of change to bring about in about 160 years, affecting all life, including humanity in all ways. People orientated to the light will like it.

There have been times in the past when humanity has faced challenges and adapted. God has a plan to change a lot of things down here to vastly improve the energy, to bring in the next root race with its higher level of vibration, to bring through a higher level of spirituality (there are always more levels!), along with more peace and harmony.

It is going to be an interesting journey to get there.

October 2, 2018January 14, 2021 spiritualgrowthadventure

Your Past Lives, Karma and Spirituality

Most of what we do in this lifetime to express our spiritual nature is built on many past lives.

We have lives where our karma is all about learning and practising a spiritual skill and developing our consciousness. In some past lives we may have had the karma to prepare our chakras, aura and bodies, then learn forms of healing. We may, lifetime after lifetime, have learned how to use specific chakras such as the third eye, or other chakras we would use in later lifetimes.

These past lives can have been way back, further than Altlantean root race times, and in Lemurian root race times. Some of the lives can have been in time periods we know something about.

If you are fairly good or very good at meditation without any props (such as chemicals or music) it is likely you would have had one or more past-lives as a Buddhist, who were experts at meditation, the mind and what could be done with the mind. Similarly, you could have had past lives in India with it’s remarkable ground energy, practising meditation techniques drawing on the rich spiritual heritage there of Avataric incarnations of Ram and Krishna and other teachings in the Hindu body of spiritual knowledge.

Some of the more advanced knowledge would have been very technical and complex, requiring a lot of study and practice.

People who are drawn to Atlantean energy techniques would have had at least one lifetime in that time period in the area of the world that was influenced by that culture.

Throughout human history going way back there have been so many cultures around the world for people to have had past lives in, that were beacons of spirituality. There were Shamanic traditions in Europe, Asia and the Americas. (A long time ago what is now Russia and Alaska were joined so people and animals could travel and migrate.) People who like herbs, for medicinal use, for meditation, astral travel and meditation would have had lifetimes to build up knowledge and abilities. These and other lifetimes would be planned out on the inner planes between physical lives.

There are so many places in the world where it was possible to learn to use the body and chakras and aura for healing. A clue to Lemurian energy handling techniques comes from massage techniques and exercises done before massage in the huna tradition found in Hawaii. This knowledge extended throughout Polynesia (and there is a lot more to it than what is mentioned here). Other places where people could incarnate in past lives to learn how to use energy and heal would include China, in the Taoist tradition, in the Muslim Sufi traditions (think of the poets Rumi and Hafiz), in the Celtic Druid religion in the British Isles (very deep spiritual knowledge and think of Stonehenge and other stone circles). People could have had past lives in early Christian communities before the corruption at the centre of the Roman Catholic church, and in some Orthodox communities (knew a lot about breathing techniques). The Ancient Egyptian culture was a place where people learnt about using energy, after the Atlantean period. People may also have had past lives learning Jewish mysticism and practising spirituality based on Kabbalah. I really don’t know much about spirituality in Africa, other than there must have been some traditions and teachings as there are still witch doctors and there was great skill with herbs.

What it would have been like to have one or more past lives in a culture such as the Native American culture before the destructive arrival of Europeans. The cultures had a deep spirituality which guided life and the relationship with Nature. There are very likely to be people alive today who did have past lives in these cultures.

The interests and skills that spiritual people have who are alive now can sometimes but not always give a clue to past lives of a spiritual nature and the kind of religions and spiritual practices they have been involved in. All that training got them to the point they are now at.

Reincarnation, karma and mental illness

If reincarnation is true, how would you live your life?

The vast majority of people don’t have evidence that they ever had past lives. Only a small fraction of the population have any flashbacks or memory of previous lives. Past lives get mentioned and talked about in the media, but for most people, past lives and reincarnation are not part of their world view. Some people have explored past lives in workshops. A degree of healing can come from this as what happens in past lives (if they are true), can carry over into this lifetime. So if some grisly event occurred in a past life, it can still affect a person’s health in this one, and in future ones (if reincarnation is a fact). Then there are times when workshop goers like to hear that they were king or queen or ruler, or held an important position someplace. Though I’d say the most important lifetime a person is in is this one. In most circumstances, remembering past lives isn’t all that enjoyable. For instance, we have all had lives as animals. Nature programmes occasionally show just how cruel and painful those lives can be in a world with predators.

The concept of reincarnation isn’t strong in the Western world. The story goes that it was removed (in dubious circumstances) from what became the accepted knowledge of Christianity in the Council of Nicea. In this Council, the Roman Emperor Constantine stopped bloodshed by making the Roman Empire, Christian. Here were the beginnings of the Roman Catholic Church. Christianity then went on to shape religious and philosophical thought throughout Europe. The heritage of this was taken to other countries that European countries had dealings in. Reincarnation isn’t something people think about in places influenced by Christianity.

In the end it doesn’t matter what we believe about reincarnation, as Reality will do what Reality does. It is untouched by our beliefs or the limits of our understanding.

If reincarnation is true, then linked to this is death. Also linked is birth. Then there is karma.

In my own view of life, I take for granted the existence of Perfect Masters and the Avatar. These individuals work with creation, with karma and the lifetimes that souls reincarnated through.

There is very detailed information about reincarnation in a book called God Speaks by Meher Baba. There is a description of how a soul or dropsoul comes down from the Divine Journeys into creation. It describes how a soul taking the human path drops down to the bottom of the zeroth plane of consciousness, with literally zero consciousness, and progresses lifetime after lifetime, through gaseous then mineral lifetimes, then plant and then animal lifetimes, then the human lifetimes starting on the zeroth plane before really getting going on the first plane. At each type of life, there are approximately 8,400,000 lifetimes. With each lifetime comes an incremental increase in consciousness. (It is fair to say that a soul on the lower planes will think that they know everything, and say so. By the time they have made it up to the 5th and 6th plane, they realize they don’t actually know or understand much of life, the universe and Everything. That’s souls for you.)

Birth after birth, life after life, death after death, karma is built up (physical karma, astral karma and mental karma). In the 4th, 5th and 6th planes, the karma is worked through. Or it is burnt off by being around a Perfect Master or Avatar. In God Speaks, Sanskaras or impressions linked to lifetimes are mentioned, and that is another story.

Then eventually the soul, the person is made God Realized, and the journey back to the Source is made, and the soul has a great story to tell. After that? Probably a different adventure to go on. Souls are all about learning and becoming more.

Creation is big, so there are plenty of places to reincarnate into. We used to think that this universe was it. But now we know, theoretically at least, about the multiverse, due to string and membrane theory. That means there are many different situations in which life of various types can exist in. Present humanity on this earth doesn’t know all there is to know about life, about what is possible in a multiverse. In God Speaks it is said that there are 18,000 earths that humanity exists on. This earth though, is the only one which is physical home to the Avatar and the Perfect Masters, though their influence and work is felt throughout. We have all had lifetimes on other planets as well as this one, including human lifetimes.

With regards to reincarnating into a life, the soul places its energy into a newly forming lifeform. In humans, the soul’s energy goes into the heart centre to start with. The energy of the mother changes to accommodate the new life, and a continual and ongoing energetic communication occurs, as the baby grows, leading up to birth. This happens lifetime after lifetime. This is an absolutely massive topic to explore.

Death is also a massive topic. We have all died countless times, and there is usually huge fear in people about dying. There is a lot of healing and change to occur so that we even begin to see death as a state to go through onto the next life.

The soul usually withdraws its energy and awareness from the lifeform as it is time to move onto the next part of the journey. Sometimes the physical elemental in the physical body fights this, and holds onto the energy. Usually the heart stops and the centres close down and the soul leaves the physical body.

Before death, the third eye centre can be seen to close down in preparation. The start of this closing down can be days before. The timing is based on karma. With karma, there are three kinds. There is positive, negative and opportunistic karma. With the opportunistic karma, events can go either way; negative or positive. So some deaths are opportunistic rather than the other kinds of karma. The third eye will show the probability of death, and can reopen if the opportunistic event has gone positive. Close shaves can be like this. A death can be positive karma, as the person has fulfilled all of their karma for that lifetime, and the soul withdraws its energy so the spirit of the person can have a deserved rest on the inner planes, an esoteric cup of tea, a review of events in that lifetime, and a meet up with old friends. They then can reincarnate into their next lifetime with a new set of karma to work through.

I’ve written this in a matter of fact way. With most deaths, there is a lot of emotion. Spiritually, we can know what is happening, but the emotions are something different. For the person dying, there is often fear, even though they have done this millions of times before. The people around them often don’t want them to go. When the person does die they are badly missed by those still living, those still physically incarnate. There is grief and loss in the minds of those left behind.

When we have a connection with someone, there are energetic cordings between us and the other person, from our centres to theirs. The stronger the relationship, the stronger the cordings. When the other person leaves, the cordings start to drop away. If the other person dies, there are no centres for the cordings to get attached to. This can be traumatic on a personality level. Grief ensues.

The person dying usually sees the light and as that is so amazing in comparison to what they experience in a physical body, off they go. Sometimes the grief and the emotional attachment of those left behind binds the spirit and soul in the space around the earth making them earthbound. This is not a pleasant or ideal situation for the person who has dropped their body as they are trapped and stopped from doing what they need to. These souls need to be rescued and released, so they can move on (this is rescue work). For many people, if they were generally happy, their spirit and soul gets to reside for a while in an energetic space that matches that positive emotional nature, where it is re-experienced and drains away. This space was known about by the Buddhists who thought of it as a positive bardo state. In Christianity it was called heaven. If someone’s general state was fear, or anger, or other negative state, the soul and spirit would go to a space that matched this and helped to draw the emotions out for a while so the soul can go off to the next lifetime with a clean slate. The Buddhists think of this state as a negative bardo state, and in Christianity it would be called hell.

When it comes to people we have a relationship with of some sort in this lifetime, usually we have had at least a few lifetimes with them in some sort of relationship such as friend, enemy, sibling, parent, son / daughter of, wife / husband, extended family member, and so on. We will have known them before. It’s likely we will see them again in future lifetimes, too, as there are karmic links. So death ends that well known link for now, but you get to see them again.

When out of physical body, being physically alive as opposed to being a soul and spirit on the inner planes, is not the big deal we make of it when we are in a physical body. We know there is more to that existence, we have it more in perspective. Physical life is a way of learning and developing through many lifetimes to become what we can be, which is a soul on the Divine Journeys, but knowing much more, and being more, than a soul who has not made the journey down into creation and back into the Divine.

Reincarnation is part of that process. Some distant day in the future we may understand that when someone dies that soul is going on the next part of their journey.

In the West, there are people who request funerals that are more upbeat and more of a celebration of that person and their life, rather than being a solemn affair. I do wonder how they will be when we really come to terms with reincarnation.

We create karma with all of our thoughts, feelings, words and actions. Even the act of breathing builds karma. We build physical karma, astral karma and physical karma. Any karma we create we have to balance in a later lifetime. If everyone on earth knew that what they did needed to be balanced later, would this influence how we thought about life and what we choose to do?

The illustration is a basic pictorial explanation of reincarnation. A more detailed illustration can be found in the book Godspeaks by Meher Baba, along with a very detailed explanation.

About reincarnation and karma

About reincarnation and gender

About reincarnation and mental illness

Emotions, Death and Reincarnation