Spiritual Awakening

I first met my Teacher in the summer of 1986 and had a profound inner experience when she initiated me to the spiritual life.  Meditation teachers guide the student to liberation and the path is one that is freeing but as you shed the old self the ego undergoes an intense struggle at times to let go.  These times bring anguish and despair because we want to still remain with what we have become to know about ourselves that is conditioned and within our comfort zone despite the contrary.

Freedom from all the inner obstacles and social conditioning that we falsely identify with is worth the effort.  My teacher used to say that freedom is like a two-winged bird, one wing is self-effort and the other is the Master's Grace.  The relationship with the Master is one of love and learning about our true nature through spiritual practices and meditation.  Eastern philosophy teaches that we already are one with God but we just have to wake up and realize it.  Because we have been taught that God is some where other than in us we experience a sense abandonment by God.  Most of us at some time in our lives feel that God has not responded to our needs etc.and doesn't care about us. This is because of the dichotomy of thinking of God as other.  Once you are initiated by a living Master you connect with the Master and God and find deeper understanding and meaning in your own Religious teachings and beliefs.  Through a process your heart is opened and you will experience a great joy and love inside. 

My personality is to be a strong person and that is sometimes difficult for people to see in me when I teach about spiritual things.  There is a perception of spiritual people as somehow in la la land or that the feelings of protection etc. don’t exist for spiritual beings.  In my own experience becoming spiritually awakened means that my light bulb is on and when I see danger I recognize it for what it is.  There is a fallacy that is promoted among the new age groups that they think that going into the new age will be a wonderful journey.  I believe in absolute truths and one of them is abortion is wrong.  Evil exists and 911 was one such manifestation of evil.  When for instance I see things that our government does against its people I am concerned.  What is motivating our government to move against us?  I listen to Alex Jones and keep up on the latest technologies etc that are being used against us and would recommend his site http://www.prisonplanet.com/

I will put three instances forth to illustrate my point.  Today I read that the United Nations has warned the United States about our policies and treatment of illegal immigrants.  I have been a supporter of Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona and Sheriff Joe.  They have been investigated and harassed by the DOJ who in turn then turns a blind eye to two New Black Panthers who intimidated voters in Philadelphia.  You cannot be a cherry picker and be in charge of our country's laws.  They can either uphold our laws and protect our citizens or not.  Of course we have our vote, but the damage that has been done is going to have its effect.

Secondly, a lawyer who represented a young teenage girl has been investigated and disciplined by the Bar Association.  This is an example of Sharia law having more authority over the United States Laws.  I hope that there is going to be some oversight and examination into how complicit the bar has been in their dealings with other government and Islamic agencies.  There is more to this disciplining of the lawyer than meets the eye.  I hope the public rally to his cause because he doesn't deserve to be treated with anything but respect and admiration for helping a young Muslim girl who was in fear for her life after she converted to Christianity.

Thirdly, there are ten soldiers at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas who have been charged with crimes as serious as murder for carrying our orders in the face of the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan.  My thoughts are – what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.  So if the foot soldiers go to jail so should the people who gave them orders that they carried out and are now facing criminal charges as a consequence.  It doesn’t worry me how high up the ladder of command we have to go but let's have some equal justice here!

It seems to me that the only justice that the government is interested in is social justice and I believe that we should work for the life style we wish to have.  Having a system that encourages and forces people to step up to the plate and produce makes us resilient and expands our awareness and talents.  I like to write and now blog and will edit material that I have written for a book to sell when I give a talk I have been invited to give in a college town outside Kansas City.  Have always held strong opinions and analyze things well.  Through my dedication to my spiritual path I have a strong faith and trust in my ability to see what direction to take in my life when things are difficult.

Perhaps the one example I gave about our government lacking integrity is the one about the lawyer being disciplined for being unprofessional.  In my own experience I have found the government run boards are not the ones to set an example for what the standard for professional behaviors should be.  After winning a one and a half year battle with the state boards of nursing they then posted my license as revoked on their web.  My documentation of the whole affair will have to be handled by an attorney because now I have no other choice other than to clear my name once more.  I believe that the lawyer who represented the young Christian convert was acting as a responsible and caring professional and the government has become tainted with political correctness.  They need to change the prescription in their glasses. 

In my experience as a spiritually awakened person I feel compassion for my fellow man.  Mahatma Gandhi certainly did and acted according to his convictions.  He was not a wimp!  He emphasized how he felt about others ideas that were wrong: “I will never let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi.  It is important not to let people do or say things that are contrary to your good nature.  You have done the inner work to make yourself pure so don't let other's murky thinking enter your energy field.  I will speak about our field of energy at another time.  It is the feeling you get when someone gets too close for comfort and invades your space.

I believe that it is for this reason that you will see Teachers advise against a negative environment or people.  When you spend time with people who have not unburdened their garbage that has been festering you will become polluted.  Due to my own situation of not working for almost two years now I have spent most of that time with a friend and her husband.  I am gone all day as I work on projects at the library and have made many friends and acquaintances on line. 

There are different stages once the spiritual journey has begun.  In the beginning there is a dedication to meditation and practices that clear away the old junk that has caused us to identify with an ego that is other than the true person that we are.  The second phase is learning to live a transcendent life and you will still have your particular personality that will draw you to concentrate your life on whatever it is that your particular calling is.  For me it is writing and teaching about spiritual life.  I will enjoy expanding my repertoire as an extra or having small parts in movies.  I enjoy public speaking and wish to educate people more about what Colonial Kenya was like and what the families who settled there did for the country.

My own life is centered on meditation, prayer and repeating the Suriname or names of God that correspond with the vibrations of the chakras making them resonate with practice to the same frequency as the sound.  I have a great sense of justice and have worked very hard to become a citizen of the United States and get my education.  I hope that these values will be recognized and respected by others who believe that we are a nation of laws and justice that is centered on our Constitution.

If you would like to contact me please email: lawrencerita511@gmail.com

Core beliefs are our own attitudes about ourselves.

We engage with the world from our own perspective and so we have differences of opinions to outright conflict due to our beliefs.  Core beliefs that are held by youth can differ depending on the cultural context and our conditioning.  In Kansas City where I am living we have a lovely and swanky area called the Plaza.  It used to have a supermarket that was more upscale than price chopper for sure but it went out of business several years ago and not has been replaced.  A core belief that I have is that there are disparities based on race and culture and that the ones who have had the good fortune to earn the most money are ones with the cultural connections and families who inherited wealth.

We saw a rebellion in the Plaza earlier this year when a thousand young African American youths descended on the area to hang out and create conflict due to their mere presence.  A core belief held by people who are mostly white is that they have the right to shop in peace and enjoy spending their wealth on goods that are for the elite minority.  I believe that we have the right to earn money and I am all for it.  I don't like poverty and don't like it when you have to exist in a society where there are barriers to becoming wealthy.  It's called the old boy's club where depending on who you family is or who you know carries more weight than your talents.

Each generation has some distinguishing characteristics that make a statement about their core beliefs.  Generally I believe due to peer pressure individual thinking is not as common among youth as being part of a wave of new thoughts and the resulting expression of those thoughts via their behaviors.  When I was a youth just by following the Rolling Stones and The Beatles meant that you were counter culture to the older generation.  I adapted the same core beliefs as my peers that sexual freedom was a way of opening up and relating to the world of taboo and ending a systemic cultural conditioning that sex was reserved for marriage.  I for one didn't want to get married and when the time came when I felt the pressure to get married I had an opportunity to move to the Midwest, USA.

A core belief of the young people who invaded the sanctity of the Plaza where it can be viewed as sacred ground for the wealth of the area is that they deserve to be respected.  They are looking to enjoy the same freedoms as others but haven't got the doe (money) and pedigree to go along with their ideas of being free to enjoy the fruits of the good life.  They are pushing back in much the same way that I see the everyday French people who are pushing back at those who have taken over streets in Paris to kneel down and pray.  Here again we have conflict resulting from opposing sets of core beliefs and it's territorial in much the same way that the African American youth choose a territory to exhibit how they felt about the rich in Kansas City.

The Indian Spiritual Masters whom I have studied with help transform us individually through their talks which are based on philosophy and science to help us to realign our thinking and become better people.  We have all been conditioned by our families and culture and loose touch with our true identity and our  inner home of the heart which we share with God.  Through meditation and other spiritual practices such as jappa which is the repetition of a mantra, or God's name.  You can use whatever name that God is known to you and that is pure, holy and dear.  My Teacher has given a Sirnam which is a set of different names of God that are repeated silently.  The Master gives the names to the student and it is something which is kept as a sacred and significant bond and tool for the spiritual journey to sound and light meditation.  Meditation is not merely a method of using silence and stillness to feel calm and increase concentration.  It is a vehicle whereby you are enabled to connect with God and experience your own greatness. 

One of the core beliefs that most of us are taught and conditioned by our culture, is that to think of one self as great is not good and anyone who would share that personal core belief may find themselves ostracised by others.  We even have labels for people.  Big head, self centered and so on and so on.  The truth is that we are all great in God's eyes and the Bible even says that we are created in God's image.  My Teacher said during a New Year's talk that we should learn to put ourselves first because we can have all the zero's in the world, but unless there is a one first they don't amount to anything!  My Teacher's Master who came to the United States in the seventies said that we should honor, respect and love ourselves because God dwells within us as us.  A core belief that we are taught in the West is that God exists some where up in the heavens.  Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is within.  Another Saint whom I love so much said that we should go into our hearts and roam because there is no other place that is as sacred.

I believe that youths today are seeking to find happiness in much the same way that most of us start to at least, through external sources.  True joy and happiness happens on the inside and it's not necessary to have luxuries and money to feel blissful.  I personally would rather not be poor and that is the way my personality is.  I am not comfortable going to fancy places because I am more likely to align my attention and concern for those who are working in such places and I never feel comfortable being on beaches where other's can enjoy because they are isolated in some ghetto like part of the town.  I noticed a parallel town in Naples, Florida where I used to visit my sister with my daughter when she was young.  It wasn't until we went to a store in a part of town that her husband was looking for bathroom fixtures or something that I realized that there were duplexes that housed a poor African American community.

My core belief that got me to this country was that I would be free to choose the type of lifestyle that I wanted.  I worked hard and completed my education at The Catholic University of America, Washington DC, graduating with a Master of Science Degree in nursing.  Being an entrepreneur I opened a business and then closed it due to issues with the state board of nursing.  A core belief of mine is that it is both good for your own personal development as well as helps others through volunteering.  I volunteered in prisons where I helped inmates manage their own spiritual programs and support each other as they served out their time.  Since I returned to Kansas City after working in the Bay Area, California I cleared up the issues had come up with the state boards in my absence and have found once again that the board posted something untrue about my standing on their web. 

A core belief that I may have in common with the African American youths is that they have the right to have the support and use of resources.  I think that the event caused enough of a stir that leadership has been putting their heads together to come up with some solutions.  I hope that one of the solutions is to educate everyone about respect.  I don't think that my spiritual Master's would condone behaviors that are disorderly.  However, I do note that they pay an immense amount of time and attention toward the youth and developing programs to support leadership among them.  I think that it is time that people learned to grow and expand their thinking to incorporate the whole community.

At my grandson's Christening I was moved when the Priest asked the congregation to open up to the African American community who lived just blocks away across the boulevard that seperates one section of town from the other.  I hope that their community embraces this idea and welcomes African Americans especially their youth.  It begins with each one of us to take the responsibility to stand up one by one when we experience things in our lives that aren't just and spread kindness wherever it occurs.  Just yesterday someone wrote on my facebook wall in a nasty way about children from a certain minority.  I am thinking of finding a way to keep a statement posted on my wall to the effect that I do not believe in being unkind no matter what the political issues might be.  I personally am quite conservative but I again responded to the chatter that had been going on over a picture of The First Lady taken from behind that they needed to "drop,"the thread. 

I would like you to start with yourself and write a list of what your own core beliefs about yourself are.  Negative ones that typically drive peoples self critical inner dialogue are ones such as (I'm ugly, stupid, not good at...., not likable ect.)
Once you learn to identify what they are you can then challenge your thinking that is driven by these sets of beliefs like an inner engine.

Meditation is the key to the engine so that you can turn off this useless nonsense that goes around inside peoples heads.  Meditate daily and eat a vegetarian diet.  Think good thoughts about yourself.

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