Drugs and the path

       Adepts who use drugs, and are on a personal path that is like to mine, must at some point confront that usage and what it does to block us from advancement on the path.  Often, as adepts, we are simply told that they are “bad” but little explanation comes with that information and it is one of those blanket statements that I have come to mistrust.  However, for me there were things to be discovered about the use of drugs that changed my opinion of their effect.  I had to learn on my own and I am a slow learner.  But I think that each person will have their own unique experience.  I have come to realize that they are, for me, an impediment and a short circuit in my being as I try to make every part of me like God.

        Here is my experience of marijuana.  I give you this as a more in-depth explanation of the type, (if you are like me), of negative aspects of this drug than you are likely to get from most spiritual sources.  For me the negative attributes of the marijuana high strip it of any positive ones because for an adept those attributes others think of as positives prove not to be so.

        The one thing that everyone will experience when getting high is the coming down.  It is generally considered to be the user’s big obstacle.  Even more important, all of the enjoyment, all of the lessons or information or whatever that we get by being high doesn’t translate into a change in our real self.  That is why coming down is a ‘let down’.  We haven't incorporated the experience into our true selves.

        Put it this way: if all that I experience when I’m on drugs doesn’t make a permanent change in me when I’m not high then who is it that is really experiencing the high?  I am not including opinions, emotional changes in alignment, the ability to recall or some such in my definition of changes.  I mean a real change in my higher self.  If I’m not reaping the benefit of all that experience does that mean that I’m not experiencing it at all?  Isn’t it the drug having that experience and doing it through me?  When I was high I was a spectator - like watching TV instead of living life.  And, that being true, how is it that the drug would be helping me on my path when my inner being, my soul, my inner self is not gaining experience on the path while I am high?  To understand how that works I needed to understand about my own higher self and the qualifying and mis-qualifying of God’s energy. (There are 3 earlier blog entries – “Like God – Not Like God” - on energy and the chakras that give you a bit more explanation on your use of energy.)  Because if I am giving away the energy I have received from God to marijuana then I am mis-qualifying energy physically through one of the chakras and that energy will need to eventually come up for transmutation into energy that is more real for my inner Godself.  This is true any time that I give my energy away.  That is how I see it.  It is the difference between watching a movie or living real life.

        I want to get on with life.  For me, marijuana, while fun, was a waste of time.  I decided some years ago that I’m going home.

God's Matrix: The Immaculate Conception

        I am aware that God sees all of me.  He can see everything I have ever done and the intent with which I did each act.  God is fully aware of how much negativity I have gotten into and perpetrated in all of the many lives I have lived.  The first thing that comes to my mind is to wonder just how God can still love me, can still love humanity with all of our ‘not like Godness’.  We have done much and have much to answer for karmically, regardless of how much we may be striving to follow the path in this life.  The answer to this is in how much vision God actually has.  If we put all of our iniquity on one side of the scales of justice and put on the other side God’s vision for what we can potentially become, (the Immaculate Concept that God holds for each of us which is what we will become when we reach that pivotal point in the long journey), then the evil shrinks into insignificance compared to the majesty of the presence of God that we will discover within and are eventually meant to manifest.  And, outside of the limit of time, God sees this in the ever present now.

        This is God’s Matrix for us: this Immaculate Concept, and God holds this Immaculate Concept for each of us.  This is the culmination of the journey.  It is also the reason that I know that we live many lives.  I simply have a far higher regard for God and His mercy than to think that we would be cast for all eternity into Hell for one life of illusion within a negative matrix.  We don’t do that to a child that fails a grade in school.  That child is simply made to repeat the grade until she gets it right at which point she moves on to the next grade.  This process continues in the life of our spiritual path until we graduate with doctoral honors into the fully Self-Realized beings we are meant to become.

        It is our fate, should we decide to fulfill it, to become Sons and Daughters of God in the fullness of time – to realize for ourselves the oneness with God that is His perfect intent.  We may rest assured of God’s love and work to manifest that love and oneness in each of our lives trusting in the love that God has for each of us.  That love is one that far outshines the greatest love that any earthly father has for his children.  And which of us would consign our children to hell for eternity for a single life of infractions when the potential is so great?
        The purpose of this blog is not to convince you of the reality of reincarnation.  The purpose of this blog is, through the consideration of reincarnation, to realize the reality of God's love for each of us, the absolute forgiveness that is there in God's Being and the incredible potential that lies within even the greatest of sinners.

"The trip to the top is worth the inconvenience!" - El Morya Khan

Our Personal Matrix: A Landscape of Illusion

        I hope and pray to God that I can do justice to these next two topics.  They are vital to understand because they can be the origin of so much illusion and distraction on the path.  So, let me here and now ask God to be the origin of these communications so that I am not so much in the way as the subjects are covered.

        I am first going to discuss our own personal matrices.  We need to understand that our judgments are based on our ego’s interpretation of the world around us and how that keeps us from letting go and letting God.  Then I want to talk about God’s matrix concerning each of us – what I call the real ‘Immaculate Concept’.

        I have been told in many ways by many teachers not to judge others for we cannot know their experience.  Jesus, we are told, forgave even those who were nailing him to the cross, saying “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”.  We hear that and we think to ourselves that they didn’t know that it was God that they were nailing to the cross.  But that isn’t all there is to it.  The nature of that forgiveness and the understanding behind it was far deeper and much more profound.

        Those of us who have seen the movie “The Matrix” often use it to express what many believe to be true in one fashion or another.  We think of ourselves as being subjected to a matrix environment that we can neither directly perceive and certainly not prove yet we use the mythos to express that ‘intuitive thing’ we cannot directly grasp.  On one hand I do believe that the physical realm is, in a very real sense, a matrix.  I believe that the etheric realm, (heaven to Christians), is the ‘real’ world and that the physical is an illusion.  It isn’t, after all, the matter in an atom that keeps us from passing through it.  Essentially there isn’t any - matter, that is.  Most of us can’t walk through walls, not because atoms are solid material but because of the force that holds them together both individually and as clusters of molecules.  Those forces are quite real but are not solid in the way that we think of the physical world as being solid when we are moving about in it.  But that isn’t the conceptual matrix that is my subject today.

        We each have a personal matrix as well as the one we as humans in the physical plane share.  It is a personal paradigm that filters everything that we perceive – how we perceive, what we perceive, what conclusions we allow ourselves to come to.  This personal matrix rules our lives, often completely.  My wife and I have seen through experience how much this colors our conclusions about others when we discuss people and events in our lives.  And, when we see how trapped others are by their matrices, how they are trapped in Maya, we realize that we cannot judge them for actions which have causes that they are unable to see or understand clearly.  Then, when we are done with our moments of realization and we go on with our lives we fall back into our own matrices and go right on judging others with impunity.

        Here is the crux of the situation.  We cannot judge others.  This is so true on so many levels.  We can’t judge them because they often aren’t guilty of the level of intentional behavior, or mis-behavior, that we attribute to them.  We assume, by their behavior, that, within their personal environment, they must be able to reach the same conclusions about given situations as we do.  This assumption is incorrect.  If they are guilty it is because they are at a level at which they lack the clarity of spiritual understanding, such that they are incapable of escaping from or reforming their own matrix.  Usually, it is because there is a lack of understanding, of awareness of the true reality of God’s Personality and Presence.  People find themselves trapped within cages of perception and we find ourselves judging them for not acting outside of those cages.  Further, most people are incapable of even knowing that they are in those cages.  Once we are aware of that, can see it even if only vaguely, we cannot help but completely redefine our relationships, both with God and with those around us.  The lack of that awareness leads to the construction and retention of our own personal flawed matrices and each of these matrices takes on a life of its’ own so that each of us struggles within our own warped reality and we attempt to judge others by the confines of the environment in which we live, the cage we, ourselves, inhabit.  But they don’t live there. 

        If we see someone doing something that we judge as being out of alignment or ‘not like God’ we cannot know that we are right in placing blame on them as though their actions were purposefully evil.  We can only say, with Jesus, ‘Father, forgive them for THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO.’.  We might as well say, "Father, forgive me for I know not what I do.".

        No others experience our reality and we experience no other’s reality so how can we judge with any clarity at all?  At its’ most basic the lesson here is to begin the work of letting go of your own matrix and accepting God’s matrix into your life.  This is a process more than it is a decision.

The Nitty Gritty of the Path - the Mask

        This is something I have said before in other ways but, since I consider it to be so important, I am going to cover it again.  I consider it to be one of the most important steps or tools on the path.  This is the reconstruction of your paradigm such that you no longer allow your mask to dictate your actions.  I am sure that most of you have heard the saying It isn’t about you.  Well, it is never about you in the person of your mask.

        What is your mask?  It is your ego, your dweller on the threshold, often the habitation of your ‘fallen consciousness’.  It is all of the parts of your outer being that you describe with the word ‘personality’.  We often hear people say things like, “That’s just who I am”, when they are defending their perceived inability, (read ‘unwillingness’), to change.  In one sense they are right about trying to change their mask.  You may change the mask from one exterior trait to another but you won’t have ended up perfecting it and you may come to feel inadequate or burdened by the attempt.  This is because you can’t perfect the mask.  The mask has its’ own agenda and, bottom line, the mask will always have its’ own self-preservation in mind.  That goal will always be at odds with your spiritual path.

        The first thing to address is recognizing when your mask is engaged.  It is the case in most people that their mask is engaged constantly.  This is true because we so closely identify with our mask as who we are.  It follows that we would make no attempt to disengage it when that would, to our way of thinking, be a negation of self.  It is, after all, the personality that we have identified with ever since we were born and it has had many years of undisputed dominance over us in which to become firmly entrenched and to deeply root itself into our consciousness such that it has effectively silenced the competition.  But there are times when it comes out of hiding and reveals itself in stark contrast to its’ surroundings.  These are the times when it feels the need to defend itself and its’ territory.  Whenever you react to a situation by becoming personally involved emotionally you are seeing the mask.  If you have a reaction to something, some event, someone, some bit of ‘misfortune’, some 'injustice' that you have been on the receiving end of, that manifests through an emotion, be it anger, disappointment, jealousy, frustration, etc. you are seeing the mask rear its’ head.  Whenever you want to blame your emotional state on something outside of yourself you are seeing it.  Your emotional state is never caused by what happens outside of you.  Let me repeat that.  Your emotional state is NEVER caused by what happens outside of you.  Except as that event triggers something inside of you that is the real cause.  You might think of it this way.  That event that you think is the cause of your reaction is only the key that unlocks the cage your reaction always inhabits.  A good test is this:  If you can even imagine a person that would react differently to a given situation than you are reacting then the cause is certainly within you or they would need to react in the same manner as you do.

        When someone does something foolish, inconsiderate, vindictive or whatever that is their issue.  However, your reaction to their behavior is your issue.  More specifically it is your mask’s issue.  Your inner being, the God within you is not adversely affected by the behavior of others.  Neither is it affected by the ups and downs of returning karma.  It is only the mask, when its’ agendas are thwarted, when its’ desires are unmet, that reacts to the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’.  Buddha addressed this issue when he spoke of non-attachment.  If you move through your life without attachment to the results of your actions then you cannot be frustrated or disappointed by those results or the lack thereof.  It is, as I have said in a previous blog, like the difference between a football game and a ballet.  In the one the goal matters.  In fact, it is all the game is about – the final outcome.  In the other there is no tangible final goal.  Or rather, the final goal is comprised of the quality of the actions of the dancer from moment to moment and that is where the focus is.  In ballet, the focus is on the relationship between the dancer and the audience.  As the audience you are the recipient of the dancer’s efforts.  In a sense you are the loved one with the dancer as the lover.  In your life dance God is the loved one and you are the dancer.

        A great many of the books you read, many of the teachings of great masters, that relate to the spiritual path will be focused on the need to accomplish this goal, some tools for accomplishing it, describing how to approach it, why you should consider it, what you discover once you manage it, etc.  Why is so much attention paid to this?  It is because it is absolutely essential to the path.  You cannot serve two masters.  You can’t serve God and your mask.  You can’t focus on your climb to the top of the mountain when you are given to the distraction of your tumultuous emotions.

        So, what is the key, the solution, to this situation?  As with so many things the answer is simple but not at all easy.  My father used to talk about something he called “The Misery Gap”.  He said that this was the time between when something happened and when you could find it funny.  What he was actually talking about was the time it took to let it go.  Think about the things that have happened to you in your life.  Some of them very recent.  Some long ago.  Some personally insulting, fear inducing or some such.  Some absolutely devastating.  Others only inconvenient.  None of them retain the emotional impact now that they did when they were so vital to your life at the time.  You have come to incorporate those things into your life and the powerful emotional reactions that they elicited at the time have lost the edge of immediacy.  This is the misery gap working its’ way along to an inevitable conclusion.  It may not reach the end for many years, often not in this lifetime.  Yet all this shall pass.  All of it.  When it does you are left with only what you have made of the inner God being that you are. 

        In order to resolve this internal environmental situation you MUST have a force that will balance the power of the mask to assert its’ dominance over you.  You can do this by making multiple alliances within yourself.  The first ally is the most important.  It is your love of God.  Love of God must come from closeness to God.  This will rely on your constant communion with God and your understanding of how God works in creation.  Without that you can’t have a pure love of God for you will always have questions, doubts about God’s perfection and pure love for you.  You will look around you and often find it impossible to understand how God can be pure love, mercy and wisdom when you still see what man has made of this world.  That is one of the major purposes of this entire blog site and as I realize it I will come to focus more upon that issue.  This is a subject that can be made clear but only if you are willing to sacrifice your personal paradigm, your own construct.

        The second ally is your understanding of yourself.  You cannot come to grips with the mask if you cannot perceive it when it is working.  You need to peel back the layers of camouflage that the mask erects in order to preserve itself.  Remember that many of the internal assumptions that you rely on to make your decisions were accumulated by an infant and toddler.  You have carried a paradigm with you for all of your life predicated upon the internal structures built by you when you were very young in order to defend yourself, your soul, from the negativity that surrounded you.  You can forgive yourself for all of that when you realize you were just trying to survive.  But it is time to delve into that, to see what you have built and to discard the protections that are no longer necessary and only serve to cut you off from God.

        The third ally is your ability to control your attunement, (read: at-one-ment or atonement).  You are like a radio.  There are all sorts of broadcasting stations out there and without any mental discipline you will be unable to choose which station(s) to tune to.  Have you ever been ashamed by a particular thought that occurred to you?  Have you ever had a thought you even just regretted momentarily or thought to yourself that it wasn’t even like you to have that thought?  Most thoughts that come into your head aren’t even yours.  They are broadcast by the greater mass mind of the planet and you are a radio that is open to all sorts of frequencies on the mental dial.  How do you overcome this?  You do it through meditation and by enlisting the help of your first ally: Love of God.

        The process of personal growth is simple but it isn’t easy.  We have walked too far from God for the journey back to be short and easy.  But as El Morya has said: “The goal is worth the inconvenience”.

        Until next time:  Victory!

Paradigm Shift 2: Mask vs Buddhahood

I have always felt a need to meditate but didn’t for many years because I couldn’t get myself to adhere to the practice with any consistency.  I felt that it was necessary but didn’t really know why.  I knew what others have said about calming the mind and all the rest but it was all belief and no knowing.

Then one day my wife and I discussed something or other and whatever it was brought up to me again the whole question of the mask and the realization, (again), that we can’t make the mask a part of our perfected being.  Even if our mask, our outer personality, comes to a correct conclusion about something that will forward us on our path it won’t be really pure if we are still functioning from that place.

Imagine for a moment that you are heading from Chicago to Denver and you are a plane.  Now imagine that you have your wheels removed and replaced with train wheels and you are set on railroad tracks.  You are on the right tracks to get from Chicago to Denver but you are taking the wrong transportation.  You are going to get the clickety clack of the tracks.  It is far noisier than it needs to be and there is no station at the end of your journey that is constructed in a fashion that will allow your plane in.  The problem is that you belong in the air.  You are going to have to take off from the tracks eventually or you can’t get there because you need to land at the air field. Those tracks, that environment, is your personality, your mask.  When you are making your journey, you can’t take counsel of your mask.  Your mask will always have its’ own survival as a major part of its’ agenda.  You must leave it behind.

How can you do that?

One issue I have faced on my path has been that when I try to see clearly it is usually still me, the mask, that is trying to see. Of course, it does that from within the mask and that means I am, by necessity, seeing through the clutter of that mask.  We need to let go of the demands of the desire body.  How often have I heard that in one way or another from one teacher or another in one organization or another.  But how do I do it? How do I stop desiring, being attached to things, results, relationships, etc.?

It will help to understand what is happening in order to see our way out of that mental channel.

We tend to be goal oriented in our lives.  We do things with the end in mind as though it is through our efforts that things come to us in a cause/effect relationship.  We treat life like a football game. Every action is taken in order to create some future result and we are always striving for that result to bring us some manifest objective which will bring us some reward.  It might be a real, monetary reward or a simple positive feeling.  Regardless, that is how we view the way things work when we are always focusing on the past and the future and we are always in a state of desire and non-fulfillment. We are thinking about what our present activity will bring and regretting our past actions that have not brought us to where we want to be.

One thing we can do about this is to strive to take each action as though we were dancing a ballet rather than playing football.  It takes concentration, of course.  In ballet, it is not the  ‘goal’ that matters.  What matters is the quality of the dance at that given moment.  When the moment is gone there is no focus on what was.  Before the moment comes there is no focus on the coming moment.  Ballet is focused on doing the dance in the now with as much grace, as much perfection as possible.  When you are doing anything, strive to focus on the action of the moment.  Of course, it is most likely an action that is meant to bring about some result but it will bring about that result whether you are concentrating on the result or the action of the moment.

The way to solve this is meditation. Meditation can help us to step back from the mask and talk to our own real selves. That is where the best counsel comes from.

No one's experience can be perfectly transferred to another

        This blog entry is meant to give you one reason to be careful about the doctrine that you receive.  I think it will help to clarify why I still accept doctrine but also why I take from multiple groups and teachers and am careful about what I accept and don't accept.

        Eckhart, Prophet, Suzuki, Blighton, Rama Krishna..., all that any of them can give you is THEIR experience.  Even if they are 100% right on (I’m careful and dubious about just who is 100% right,) they still have to bring any experience in to themselves through the distorted perception of both their own personality and the limits of the physical plane.  That will certainly wash out some of the colors of the experience, giving it new shapes that it didn't have when it was happening in the etheric, (heaven), and losing some of the clarity and definition of the original experience because it loses definition.  When someone has an experience on the etheric it is in an environment that is far more 'real' in a very true sense, than here on the physical.  In addition, it is not limited to the five senses which is why, when it is related, it is often in the imagery of archtypes.  Even when it isn't we still get only the person's own unconscious interpretation of the experience.  The experience itself is for that adept's soul, often on an unconscious level but we get only what the conscious recollection can give us and that recollection may, in a sense, be without as many pixels as the original experience.

        Then they have to relate it.  Each person is different and so and that means taking the distorted experience of a spiritual event and bringing it back out again through the same personality and paradigm which experienced it in the first place to be expressed through words which only adds to the distortion.  If you have ever read directions that were first written in Japanese and then translated into English by someone whose first language was Japanese rather than English you will get the idea.).

        Elizabeth Clare Prophet said that when she dictated she could only receive and thus communicate what the ascended masters were giving her if she had some understanding of it herself. That is a refreshing level of honesty from someone who was in a position of profound spiritual authority.  That automatically means that unless her understanding was spot on perfect (almost never the case for anyone here in the physical) the translation was not spot on perfect - i.e. it was, to one degree or another, incorrect.  Therefore, even the "Dictations" of the ascended masters contain some distortions of the original clarity.  (That isn’t to say that you can’t take them as the words of the Ascended Masters.  Just consider that you have a translator from one language to another.)

        So we have a minor distortion within the experiencer at the time of the experience, a distortion of the experience when put into words by the experiencer.  Another distortion by the listener when they hear only what they can accept.  These are the basic distortions.  There are other factors that can be included but are not important enough to mention.

        So be careful and parse what you are given by anyone.  This is always good advice.

Preoccupation with the past

               Tonight my wife was feeling irritated about how someone else had responded to a situation she was involved in.  I pointed out that nothing outside of ourselves can really disturb our inner harmony.  In fact, if you look at that statement it will be obvious that it is true.  If it is outside of ourselves, outside of our emotional body, then it cannot have an emotional impact.  It is when something invades our emotional body triggering something that is already there that the emotional body gets out of alignment.  I asked her what it was inside of her that was the cause of her lack of harmony and after some reflection she began to point out how the behavior of this other person reflected her behavior during the same day.  She followed with some examples.

               I didn’t think that she was getting to the core of the issue since what she was giving me as the catalyst for her irritation was only isolated events in her life that seemed separated from the situation we were discussing and further they could be explained away by someone just having a particularly ditzy day.  I suggested that the cause of her irritation may be deeper.  Upon reflection she saw that what was really irritating her was that this other person’s response to events in her life illustrated to my wife that her own children hadn’t learned the lessons as they grew up that she felt that she had learned on her own but not passed on.  The fact that she’d had to learn those lessons on her own but her children hadn’t learned them from her was a source of irritation.  The question still remained: “Why did that irritate her?”.

               Finally, she realized that she felt that she had failed all those years ago as a parent to teach those lessons and was unhappy to see that her children had fallen into traps that she might have prevented.  She was feeling responsible.  It was at this point that I said what I felt was really the issue.  I felt that she was dwelling on the drama, the events of her past life.

               What is it with us humans that we place so much emphasis on the quality of our children?  I suspect that what we want is to vindicate the imperfection of our own past failures, those events that we can no longer change in our own lives, by having our children do so much better.  We may feel that somehow their success means that we finally got it right ourselves.  What we forget is that our children come into this life with their own set of issues, their own karma, their own momentums to overcome.  They may, in fact, have chosen us to be their parents in order to deal with the very environment that is presented to them by that choice.  That isn’t to say we aren’t responsible for what we offer.  They aren’t subject to fatalism in their responses and we are still responsible for our own actions.  But if our children were going to be perfect they would most likely already have made their ascensions.

               Never-the-less, our preoccupation with our past, once we have examined it enough to learn the lessons that we need to learn, is generally ego supported.  That doesn’t mean that the experience will always be enjoyable for the ego.  In this case personal enjoyment wasn’t the incentive for the ego at all.  The ego wanted something to play with, to knead like Playdough, because the act of that kneading gave her ego a sense of self-substance, no matter how uncomfortable, and that is the reward that the ego received, the gratification.  The ego gained a sense of tangible existence from the experience.

               There will be no getting past an ego that we insist on feeding and, if we dwell on the past once that process has served its’ purpose, we’re feeding that ego.

               But I also suspect that our desire to live vicariously through our children is often fueled by our sense of failure in our own lives.  That isn’t to say that a personal sense of failure will automatically lead to a desire to live through them nor would the desire to do so always mean that we had been a failure.  But that there may be a relationship is to me pretty obvious.

        So, once again, the lesson here is to let go of the past.  You learn what you can from it in order to grow but you let your emotional attachment to your past go.

Paradigm Shift 1

        One of the big lies that the fallen ones have foisted off on lightbearers is the concept of guilt.  There are a lot of reasons why they have done this but, in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons is to convince us that in order to make our ascensions we need to purify and perfect the outer man.  There is a symbiotic relationship between these two concepts.  If we approach our path with the assumption that the outer man must meet the requirement of absolute perfection before we can be worthy of admittance to adeptship then it follows that we are constantly faced with our unworthiness which is all our fault.  Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.  We see all of our imperfections as levels of failure and we feel unworthy of the goal and responsible for our own unworthiness.

        That doesn't mean that I reject remorse and contrition for our errors.  We can't make much progress on the path if we don't recognize those places within ourselves where we fall short and, in response, strive to overcome our foilables.  In one very real sense we are responsible for our situation and the recognition of that fact can be freeing rather than burdensome.  When we realize that we made the choices that led to our extended sojourn here in the physical and cut us off from constant communion with God we can see as well that, in that same vein, we are able to make that return journey.  This is evident in the simple fact that we are still here.  If there was no possible way to return then there would be no reason for continued existence.

        With  all of that it is reasonable to ask the question, "If the goal is not dependent on our perfecting the outer man then how do we proceed and what are we to do about this outer man, this mask?" since it seems counter to all goodness to expect that imperfection not only can attain salvation but also that imperfection could stand to be in a perfect environment once achieved.  To put it another way: How much do you think your ego could stand of the presence of God?  To realize the answer of how to proceed we must change our whole concept of who we are.  When we ask that question - Who am I? - we usually come up with an answer that includes our thoughts, opinions, emotions, etc., all of the things that make up what we think of as our 'personality' - how we perceive ourselves 'to be' in our essential character.  But this is not the case.

        Who we are is behind all that.  Who we really are is a soul that finds expression on the physical both inhibited and facilitated by the outer personality.  So it is easy to mistake our outer self for the 'real' person.  This is especially true given that the outer personality would like nothing more than to be mistaken for the real being - and usually is.

Astrology - the Cosmic Clock

        Astrology.  What a subject.  There are few subjects that are as misunderstood even by the practitioners and certainly by those who reject it as ridiculous.  It isn’t hard to understand how someone can think it is nonsense given the approach taken by so many who claim to have a secure grip on it.  How, for instance, can your astrology be given to you in a newspaper column that makes such generalizations about “Signs” as those columns do?  I have read some of them and they make little or no sense whatsoever.  Besides which to use the chart of the heavens for purposes as mundane as those to which they are often applied is to trivialize them completely.  It is, however, the inclination of many to misuse any gift that is given to us, to turn any tool on the path into a goal all of its’ own and this is done all too often with Astrology.

        Let’s talk about what astrology is and what it isn’t keeping in mind that this is only my opinion.  Here is the most basic question.  Do I believe that the planets - those bodies out in space that circle our sun – do I believe that they affect my life, that by their movements they have the effects that are so often attributed to them via the art and science of astrology?

        No.  I don’t.  Not any more than the hands of a clock make the earth rotate and change the time of day.  The planets do not have the effect that is credited to them.  Rather, they are the hands of a clock.  They simply tell you what the condition of the universe is at a given time like a clock will tell you what the time of day it is rather than being the cause of change.

        Well, in fact, they don’t work quite the same as a clock.  A clock will tell you what time it is now but has no ability to tell you what the results of that time will be.  A clock can’t tell you that, given the way things look right now for anything that has its’ beginning at this moment, this or that is what can be expected in the future.  There is no level of clarity to what the clock can say beyond the simple statement about the “now”.

        The planets, however, in spite of their not being the source of anything, do give us far more information than the clock ever will and, given that I don’t believe that God created anything that He wasn’t very adept at using fully.  I have no problem with the idea that the positions of the planets can be used, once we know how to read that cosmic clock, to tell us a lot about the nature of the universe at the time and to tell us a great deal about our karmic situations as well.  And a birth chart does just that.

        When you are born, at the moment you are born, the planets positions can be used to indicate what the karmic environment will be for that lifetime - because of the condition of the universe at the time of your birth.  You might think of it as a kind of  'time stamp'.  These are the issues we need to deal with this lifetime in order to progress on our individual paths.  Where people get the incorrect impression is when they assume that the astrological chart compels us.  It doesn’t.  It impels us.  That is to say it pushes us in a direction but we are free to accept or reject the environments it urges us into, the tendencies we are given are just that - tendencies.  Another way of saying it is that karma will return to us but nothing dictates immutably our response to that karma when it arrives.

        Saint Germain tells us that through the judicious use of the Violet Flame we can overcome any and all karma that we have incurred so that it will not only cease to affect us but will be balanced, that negative karma will be burned up in the Violet Flame itself.

        Kryia yoga is another tool for burning away negative karma.  Paramhansa Yogananda was known to keep track of his astrological chart to determine what the chart said would be his “worst” days for doing anything and then he would make a point of getting more done than otherwise.  He did that to point out that we are not the slaves of our charts but rather that the chart is a tool to use to know when we need to put extra energy into this or that area of our lives, to watch out for certain proclivities.

        Bottom line is that astrology is a great tool to use but a lousy master to be enslaved to.  However, despite it being a useful tool on the path it is not an essential one.  You can get there without it.

A Passenger for the Trip

        I want to discuss a difficult topic to completely comprehend.  I am not sure that I can make this clear but it is important for any reader of this blog to understand because it speaks to a good reason for not doing a blog like this.

        With any subject that I cover in this blog, even if I go in depth, (which I seldom do since it is up to the reader to continue to meditate upon and discover truths about each of the things that I talk about), my aim is not to fill you in on the real truths of the path.  Those are for you to discover.  I am not equipped to take you where I haven’t gone myself yet.  For that you must seek the God within.

        In a sense this is simply a primer for the path, a place to dismiss the simpler concerns that come up as you grow in understanding.  It isn’t even a sign post on the road.  It is more like a pit stop to take care of things that need to be periodically dealt with and dismissed so that you can get back to travelling.  That is why there is an email address for you.  So you can ask questions.  The questions don't need to be major.  They can be simply stuff you have been told that you got no real explanation for.  That is the kind of thing I have found to be overlooked by many different paths and that is what I am willing to address, (if and when I am able).

        There is always a far deeper level of revelation, of understanding, of unity with God available to you in your personal relationship with that being that I, myself, am still discovering.  You might think of what I say in these blogs as an ‘introduction’, a 100-level class, if you will, that is only meant to dismiss concerns, to clarify only the most basic information, and does not bring you the true reality of awareness of God in a personal relationship that is vital to your growth and purity.

        Even when I do discuss a topic, do not think at any time that my information complete.  There is always a level of spiritual understanding and revelation about any subject that is yet to be revealed.  Think of it this way.  The ascent up the steps of any topic is on a spiral staircase.  As you climb you keep coming back to the same place but at a higher level.  This is true of the issues we face, the things we are taught, the experiences life throws at us and it is certainly true of any thing I talk about.  I am at a lower level of understanding on the stairs of knowledge.  Some of you who read these blogs and learn from them have a greater momentum in particular areas than I do myself.  But the very thought of one being ‘higher’ or ‘closer to God’ than another is itself a fallacy.

        So, read these blogs, take what you can use, and move upward.  Eventually you will discover that you don’t walk the path to God with your mind.  Eventually you will find that, in order to achieve the highest goal, you leave everything behind – your ideas, your ‘learning’, your opinions, your ego itself.  In a very real sense that is what this blog is about.  I want to address particular subjects that are important only if they become stumbling blocks on your path and dismiss them so that you can get on with the real work.  When you do this, you become free of all personal knowledge that comes from an egoic structure.  So, it is a paradox that we experience.  We gain all this information in order to get to the place where we are able to let all of this go.

        "I didn’t come here of my own accord.  Whoever brought me here will have to come and get me."  I can’t be the driver but I can strive to be a most co-operative passenger for the trip.

Types of Useful Information on the Path

This is a subject that I have discussed a bit in the forward but I mention it again here not because I am hard set against it but because the distinction is important for the adept to be aware of.  Too often we just accept these kinds of information without thought or consideration.  So if you roll your eyes when I bring it up - well, that is ok.  But it may make you treat the subject consciously rather than without consideration.

        To my mind there are three different types of valuable information I have gotten from spiritual organizations as I have traveled on my path. The first is the set of beliefs of any given organization, those things I am to accept as given because I am told that they are true. It is the kind that you think of when someone mentions doctrine. That kind that comes with a religion, creed, sect, cult or whatever. You might call this their picture of the way things are in the universe, i.e. who is in charge, who does what, who I am to pray to, etc. These beliefs often form the basis of this or that group’s theology. They are beliefs. No matter how firmly you believe these things, no matter if they are true, they are not typically things that you know. They are things that you believe, things that you are told. There is a difference between doctrine and knowledge. The difference isn’t that important when it comes to your chosen affiliation but it is vital when it comes to your personal path. You might say that doctrine is the map that is drawn for you of the scenery up the mountain, the characters you are likely to meet or are available for you to call on as you go, all those things which are outside of you, that make up the spiritual environment of your particular religion, sect or creed.

        It is possible that you do know rather than believe some of what is handed down in a church’s doctrine. But if you do it is because you have experienced it for yourself. You have had a spiritual experience yourself that confirms what you have been told. That is different. Then it is no longer doctrine. It is knowledge that comes to you from experience, from the events of your own journey. These are invaluable for they give you great power and momentum on your path.

        The second is the instruction manual for how to progress on the spiritual path. This second assumes that the doctrine calls for that kind of effort on the part of the member. Faiths that teach that you only need to make a level of commitment to achieve the goal often don’t recognize a process for spiritual growth. For those sets of beliefs, the spiritual process is a leap rather than a journey.  In that case much of what I am talking about, rather than being part of the journey, will be part of the process of adjusting to the environment at the top of the mountain.

        The third are the laws that you must keep.  That kind of information straddles the line between the other two. 

        In the west we tend to get the first type of information, a set of beliefs, especially at the lower levels of spiritual commitment. One example is the Apostle’s Creed that is spoken at every Sunday mass. It lists out the most basic tenets of Catholic belief. In the East the word they use is Dharma. The three pillars of Buddhism are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. At their simplest they are the guru, the teachings and the followers. The teachings in both Hinduism and Buddhism are more of a mix of both beliefs as to how things are and instructions as to how to get where you want to go. Even so, in both the East and the West the instructions for walking the path are left either for the initiate to find or left to be given by a teacher if the initiate has the gumption to seek one out.

        In any event, when I use the word doctrine in this book I mean the first type of information, that information disseminated by a church to tell you what you need to believe in order to be a member of that church. You may have noticed that I am careful not to use the word dogma. For the purposes of this book I have a different definition for the word ‘dogma’.  For an explanation of the difference between my use of the word ‘dogma’ and ‘doctrine’ please see the forward. While I am not a fan of doctrine neither do I dismiss its’ importance. The acceptance of a doctrine at the beginning of your ascent up the path can give you an important grounding, a framework in which to orient yourself and to begin to experience the environment of the spiritual path. The big issue is what you do with it.

Sacrifice, Surrender and Love

As my wife pointed out to me recently a vital element of one’s path is complete surrender. Complete surrender comes with complete trust in God and complete love of God as well. But there is a kind of a Catch 22 to a complete surrender.

Complete surrender when viewed beforehand appears to involve sacrificing everything. We think of it as giving everything up. In a sense losing everything. But it is in fact the lowering of our barriers in complete surrender that allows us rather to receive everything. It is the Father’s good will to give us the kingdom of heaven.

I had a teacher once who told me that the idea that most adepts have about sacrifice is all wrong. What we give up is crap. We give up having walls. We give up the dross or the negative effluvia that stands in the way of a greater contact with God. We give up sorrow, loneliness, fear, anger, separation from God, all of the things that make our lives miserable.  The word sacrifice comes from the word sacred. To sacrifice something is to make it sacred even as the word implies. Whether this means an object, time, emotion, whatever. The catch is this. If we strive to surrender knowing that it means that we will receive everything, and our intent in surrender is to receive everything, then we most likely aren’t surrendering.  We're bargaining.  We are still holding out for gain.  My wife calls this a “merchant’ consciousness, trying to bargain our way to attainment.  It is when we believe that our surrender will take from us something we desire and yet we do it regardless of that or surrender without thought of gain because we love God enough, it is then that we are able to surrender completely.

Behind the statement that “all that is necessary for your path is to surrender” is the underlying understanding that “all that is necessary for your path is to Love God” with all your heart, all your mind, all of your soul and all of your strength. When you first fall in love and you would do anything for the object of your love, that can bring a total, (if temporary),  surrender.  Because surrender is a natural outgrowth of that total love. Within the experience of that love surrender is natural. Without it there is no true desire to surrender.

Paradigm Shift 1: The Real vs the Unreal: It is all One

It is very difficult to communicate the reality of the spiritual path to a new initiate. The first block to overcome is one of expanding an individual’s horizons. As a teacher once said to me, “The problem is to get your listener to realize that you are telling them something they haven’t heard before”.  It is very difficult to change someone’s paradigm, their basic assumptions about reality, especially the ones they’ve held since they were children. But that is what is necessary, even inevitable if you are a serious adept.

The root of the problem is that we will most often take what we hear and fit it into our present belief structure, whatever that may be, often so smoothly that we aren’t aware that there are much greater depths to what we are being told.  We miss a great deal because of that. This situation is often exacerbated by the fact that our lower selves don’t want us to become aware of a deeper understanding because the mask is threatened by spiritual growth. It is a conundrum only overcome when we, ourselves, are no longer satisfied with our present paradigm – when we come to a point where our inner self discovers that the paradigm that we have no longer rings true. At that point it becomes possible to see beyond it and to open ourselves to a deeper understanding of the path.  That doesn’t mean it will happen automatically but that is a point in our lives where it becomes possible.

               When we start out on the path of devotion we tend to take all the new teaching we hear and fit them into the structure of beliefs we already hold. In some ways these beliefs form the boundaries of our imagination even if that means losing important contours of the teaching, the subtler concepts and ideas, i. e. which makes those teachings worth hearing. We can lose what makes the new teaching life changing. However, it is the life changing elements of the teachings that are the important parts because it is that information that stretches us into new paradigms, that breaks up our internal dogma. And we need the new approaches which will breakup, that can stretch, can bring to life when we finally embark upon our spiritual path consciously to progress upwards on the journey. Prior to that our momentum is mostly unconscious and, therefore, not really committed. Once our commitment becomes conscious, becomes the focus of our lives, the paradigm shift looms in our future whether we know it or not. With some it happens almost immediately. It has taken a good deal of time with me and the process isn't done.

I recall sitting doing my prayers one day and I suddenly became aware that the being that I was praying to was real. I don’t mean that I had not believed in God previously. I had. But in that moment, He became very real to me personally. I finally experienced the reality that was Him and I knew that He was listening..., to me..., personally. This experience extended to other etheric beings, what Christians would call the saints, easterners would call other Gods and I call Ascended Masters. In addition, I became aware of the presence of angels as well.  I was aware as I was speaking that there were those who were actively listening. It was as though I was suddenly made aware that I was blind and there were those in the room with me that I couldn’t see but who were as real to me as anyone with whom I shared the physical plane.

               My paradigm shift involved the perception of our physical plane as a holodeck, where the real world is hidden from those who are on the deck by our five senses. But that is only one level of what I mean and a simplistic one at that.  It makes this sound like science fiction and that is not at all what I mean.  There is also a point where one realizes that everything is connected. Everything is one. That makes sense, of course, if you consider that all the universe is God. It all is of one source, one cohesive personality, one consciousness. If you can see it that way then it becomes self-evident that it would all be one, connected, unified. This perception, while it can be understood intellectually, isn’t real to you until it becomes part of your experience. It becomes more than a part of the way you view the world. It becomes a part of how you experience the world.

With real commitment we begin to realize just how extensive, how all encompassing, how all pervasive the spiritual universe actually is. We discover that the physical universe is only a small part of what exists and isn’t even the most real. And that is a discovery that takes, (and causes), a real change of perspective.

               One thing that I am NOT talking about is an emotional conversion. Often, I hear of someone converted to this or that religion, sect or whatever. Sometimes this is a positive life experience. But sometimes what has happened is that they have simply gotten a new set of emotions and they misinterpret that as having walked the whole of the path up the mountain in one experience. That can, indeed, happen but it isn’t an experience based in the emotions and it is, indeed, a rare occurrence.

               Because of the necessity of changing our paradigm we often spend a good amount of time on the path before we really incorporate the path into our lives.  But here is the bottom line, what I would like you to take away from this particular blog: the physical plane is not home.   You tend to perceive it that way because this is where you are and all that you remember but the etheric realm exists all around you all the time and is more real that the physical plane.  So it would be wise to stop making all of your assumptions based on the primacy of the physical plane.  A whole new, larger understanding awaits.

The Big Bang

                       Fecundity

All of shapeless Infinity's bound without bounds

within visions horizonless, lacking a place.

The ambiguous light bounded solely by thought

is as form that's unmoving or moves without form.

In a pause that seems endless a fulfilling sigh

of awareness awakening emerges. And when,

in the midst of this vast vibrant void, there appears

an existence, it's only by contrast to void

that its’ presence is noted, that it is perceived.

What then is the perceiver or who's there to see

in the instant of birthing, the ripening of time

before time e'en exists to be ripened?  What sen-

tience lives before birthing to witness this birth?

An awareness in stasis, in stillness, await-

ing a thought form with patience, awaiting, while time,

in its infancy, pulls it and runs on before

it and measures its’ boundaries, receives in that mo-

ment of birthing response from itself as it gives

and receives - like a breath that both inhales and ex-

hales and each without ending 'till separate, each

contemplating, desiring the other, feels joy

at the bonding, the union, the twined separa-

tion that gives definition and thought to the two

who are one.  All the universe is the overt

choreography of their delight in their shared

co-existence and mutual desire to express

the perfection of love which they find in themselves

and each other. A moment is captured. The Yin

and the Yang, both the male and the female re-

sonate. Thus is the dance itself

borne.

Show is better than tell

        As we progress on the spiritual path and have experiences that tell us things about the nature of the universe, the divine, etc. we of course want to tell others what we have seen or heard.  But it is far better to help others who are striving on their path to discover for themselves how to get further on the path than it is to tell them what picture we saw when we were there.  After all, as they travel the path and when they get to the goal they’ll discover what they are supposed to know.  Until they get there it will often just be more of someone else's experience.

        Generally, I do not recommend that you discuss your spiritual experiences with anyone who does not have a fair amount of spiritual momentum because others will tend to doubt your experience, intentional or not, consciously or otherwise.  That doubt will enter into you unaware and you will often begin to doubt your own experience.  Often those that you confide in are not prepared to approach your experience with open minds.  This is not something that they would do if they were aware and could avoid it.  If, in fact, you confide in a spiritual counselor who is more in tune with the law than with the spirit they will often respond to your revelation with their particular doctrinal point of view.

        Sometimes, when you have a new revelation, realization or idea or whatever, you get a build up of energy inside of you and it fills you with excitement.  Often when you get that surge of positive energy you just want to share the event, to tell someone else about it or in some other way relieve that energy.  You blow off some of the energy when you do.  You will often find, however, that in doing so you have just wasted or mis-qualified that energy.  It is somewhat akin to all of those other ways that we have of mis-qualifying energy some of which we have talked about.  Things like anger, gossip, resentment – all of those things that we do to blow off energy.   You blow this energy off when you could instead take it in and make it a reservoir for the fulfilling of the thought form that spawned it.

        Finally, there is a saying that I have heard from multiple sources on my journey that is as follows: "Those who tell don't know. Those who know don't tell." Now why would that be?

Thoughts on meditation

        A good deal has been written about meditation.  There are many books that you can get that will help you and give you techniques.  Some of them are very good.  Some not so.  Regardless, you can get your technique elsewhere.  I just have a few general things to say about how to approach meditation whichever technique you choose.

        I tend to shy away from any that say in one way or another that meditation doesn't need to be about your spiritual life.  Meditation can have very positive benefits for you in many aspects of your life but those positive effects are peripheral.  It is, first and foremost, a spiritual tool of profound benefit.

        When you meditate put your mind on God.  When someone is speaking we are often thinking about what we want to say rather than listening to the speaker.  But we should, in fact, be giving them our attention.  It is this way in meditation.  Be thinking about God and address your attention to God.  You're not thinking about God's traits.  You aren't thinking about what God might be saying.  You aren't thinking about anything besides the technique you have been given.  You are simply paying attention to God as you would someone who was speaking.

        There are two things that are important aspects of meditate.  First, do it from the heart rather than from the mind.  We in the West think of meditation as primarily a mental thing - a thing that we do with the mind.  We focus the mind.  This is not the essence of meditation.  This is a pathway to meditation.  Meditation springs from the heart while taming the mind.  So you want the source and focus of your meditation to be the heart rather than the mind.  Second,  do not expect anything.  If you are expecting you aren't in the moment.  You are thinking about what will happen, what will come of your meditation.  Do not expect reciprocal response.  Just be in the moment and put your mind on God.

        When you are distracted do not attempt to fight the distracting thoughts.  This only gives them energy and importance.  As Bagwan Dass put it when he spoke to Ram Dass of distracting emotions: "Emotions are like waves.  Watch them disappear on the surface of the vast, calm ocean.".  I would say the same about thoughts.  Watch them disappear on the surface of the vast, calm ocean.

        Do not be mindful of the invasion of thoughts.  That will only disturb your harmony.  Let them go by.  Mostly the thoughts you think do not originate with you anyway so don't carry a burden of guilt, (no matter how small), for having them.  They are out there in the mass mind and you. like a radio that is opened up to multiple bands, are often not discreet in what you receive.  Meditation is meant to help that.  That is a perk of meditation.  It will give you much stronger control over your own personal radio.

        OK.  All of that being said what is my technique?  I focus on two things that are somewhat similar.  First I keep my mind on God.  Not God's attributes or God's gifts or anything about God's personality.  Just on God.  Second, I strive to keep my focus on the third eye.  This is the point at the root of the nose between the eyebrows.  This is the totality of my technique.  There are techniques that involve breathing exercises.  These can be very beneficial both for concentration and for depth of meditation.  Kryia yoga is a very high meditation technique that serves both as a tool for centering and becoming close to the Divine  and as a means for burning away negative karma.  There are other types of meditation that can be very beneficial.  The one that I have described works for me.  Find the one that works for you and do it with diligence.  The rewards will be great.

        One last word.  If you want to learn how to meditate you can't do any better than a group called Ananda.  You can contact them at "www.ananda.org/meditation/".  I am not a member of Ananda and do not mean to push you in that direction but I will at times be recommending different organizations to you for the purpose of gaining information or training in different spiritual practices.  If one or another of them strikes you then more power to you.  In this instance I think that Ananda is a great place to learn a particularly penetrating, easy and useful meditation technique.

Responsibility and Attachment - Part 2

        I am not known as a lazy person.  In fact, once I get working on a given day I often don’t even think to stop for a meal.   But what I think is that I have been lazy in my approach to life and, by seldom doing anything that I don’t inspect very closely, I think I have learned some things about that kind of laziness.  Actually, that last statement needs amending. I think that I have learned some things about what I experience as laziness.  It may not be what another person experiences as laziness.  Theirs may be a pure, more essential form, (as in more of the essence of), of laziness in which case I bow to their greater experience and the clarity of their opinion.  Still, here are some things that I have learned.

        Not all laziness conforms to the classic concept.   Certainly not in the cause.   That is because if we aren’t lazy we don’t spend any time thinking about it and if we are, then assuming we are on a spiritual path, we are usually disinclined to explore the reality of it.   Never-the-less the fact that someone doesn’t want to work is a simplistic explanation that begs the question: WHY does someone not want to work?  In my experience there are multiple causes for laziness.  I will get to mine in a moment but the root cause of mine was exacerbated by a sense of resentment against God because I wanted to do my spiritual path without effort and I resented everything that I considered I was required to do.  I wanted a magic pill.   Another reason for my recalcitrance was that everything I tried to do in the physical world was untypically hard.  There are reasons that all combined to make that so.

        The first reason was my autism.  Every autistic person is different.   I suspect that is why it is called a spectrum disorder.   One problem I have always has was in transferring information from visual to actual.   I could read blueprints but I couldn’t translate them into the activity of building so I was severely handicapped in ‘the trades’.

        The second reason was astrological.  I have 15 squares in my natal chart.  For those of you who accept the reality of astrology a square is a point of opposition and that often translated into strange ways of derailing whatever I was involved in.   Having 15 of them has made for quite a ride.

        The third reason was that I was born into an intellectual environment rather than a trade-oriented family.   I was nurtured in an environment that encouraged an interest in English, History, Science, etc. but with no ability to encourage an interest in woodworking, auto mechanics and what is often referred to as “the trades”.   I certainly never took shop in high school.

        Finally, my grandfather, who was a doctor, told my mother not to get too attached to me because I was probably not going to ‘make it’.   I wasn’t miserably sick but no one could hold me for any period of time without me throwing up on them for the first three years of my life.  That means I did not receive very much 'tactile stimulation' that has been shown to be so important to a person's ability to emotionally connect with others later in life.   In addition, I was the fifth child in five years at a time when there were no pampers and my mother had 3 children in cloth diapers.   There were no dryers so my mother had to hang the laundry out in high humidity every day.  She was quite busy.

        However, in my case all of that begs the question.   What is the root cause of my laziness?  I was, (and am when I am not paying attention), jealous of my time.  In my egos' paradigm I view doing things – working – as somehow robbing me of my time.  This is not out front in my consciousness.  I have had to struggle to see where the root of this issue has been hiding but with some rigorous introspection I have come to that.  What I haven't come to is the answer to why I should feel that way.  At times that question is vital.  At other times it is not so important.  In this case it may, for all I know, be a momentum I have carried over from a past lifetime.  It may not.  But I can address it without knowing the root so long as I own the being the source.

        Now you might think that this is me whining about all of this but that would be incorrect.  You also might wonder what is the point to all of this given that this blog is supposed to be a spiritual primer.  The point is that you MUST inspect your life moment to moment, day by day, with a cast iron honesty.   Know as clearly as possible what is the truth about yourself and what are the causes.   Know that you can't know everything about what causes your response to events in your life because, as I said, much of what comes at you is karmic.  But you can know a good deal about the whys and wherefores of how you respond to the events of your life and the first thing to know is that all of your reactions, your responses, your emotional trauma are always, ALWAYS, your issues.  You may think and even say that this or that person did this or that thing that was the cause of your being angry or depressed or whatever but it isn't true.  Ever.  Not once.

        Think of it this way.  If there is anyone you know, or you can even imagine, who wouldn't react like you do to a given situation then the reaction's source is within you rather than inherent within the situation.  If your reaction is an emotional reaction then it is based upon your personal emotional makeup rather than being an inevitable result of the situation.  I have learned that every time I have an emotional reaction to anything or anyone - when someone says or does something that elicits an emotional response - it is not directly because of the situation nor because of the other person.  It is because of something within me that is triggered by the event that I want to blame.

Even if you can point to what the other person does and make a case for it being in some way negative that doesn't mean that it is the cause for your reaction.  They are responsible for their action.  You are responsible for your reaction each and every time you have one and it will almost universally come from your attachment.