Obi Wan, since you're moderator in these here parts, tell me what you think of these further words from David Gerrold:

quote:

Transformation is not change. Change is a substitution of content. Transformation is a shift in context.

Although he goes on to say "Transformation is a self-generated creation. Transformation is what happens when a human being becomes the source of his or her own life." I suppose we might agree that there *is*a source that accounts for transformation, although we might disagree about what that source is ontologically and relationally. (My source is Star Trek, of course.)


-----
"Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, the true poetry of life." --Sir William Osler

-----
"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming." - Goethe

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"I learned this, at least by my experiment: that if you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, and endeavor to live the life which you have imagined, you will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. You will put some things behind, you will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within you; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in your favor in a more liberal sense, and you will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost, that is what they should be. Now put foundations under them." - Henry David Thoreau

-----
"If asked for a brief explanation, I would say that the existential vacuum derives from the following conditions. Unlike an animal, man is not told by drives and instincts what he must do. And in contrast to man in former times, he is no longer told by traditions and values what he should do. Now, knowing neither what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes does not even know what he basically wishes to do. Instead, he wishes to do what other people do - which is conformism - or he does what other people wish him to do - which is totalitarianism." - Viktor Frankl

-----
"Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. I mean, do not be disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage. How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbor's faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own? He who is fretted by his own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm, peaceful mind." - St. Francis de Sales

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"Even when change is elective, it will disorient you. You may go through anxiety. You will miss aspects of your former life. It doesn't matter. The trick is to know in advance of making any big change that you're going to be thrown off your feet by it. So you prepare for this inevitable disorientation and steady yourself to get through it. Then you take the challenge, make the change, and achieve your dream." - Harvey Mackay [A little Gung Ho for my tastes, but surely this sentiment is right for some others.]

-----
"We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time." - T.S. Eliot

----
"Man�s loneliness is but his fear of life." - Eugene O�Neill [Simplistic but interesting.]

-----
"He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money." - Benjamin Franklin

-----
"Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.... Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation." - Jean Arp

I am an Obi-Wan wannabe. I was listening to a fellow who had been sober for 26 years last night and the Word of God poured forth from his lips.
You are supposed to possess this ability after a long time in recovery, right. Then he went and ruined it by sharing a second time alot of his poetry and ego, and kept everyone late. Something about me I really don't like about him, I guess. If you can spot it, you got it, so I guess I must fancy myself a guru of some kind.

I've been a Christian for thirty-seven years. I am supposed to be a guru by now, especially with all the midlife crisis experiences. Old age is not for sissies!

My mother is sending me frantic e-mails about my stepdad having blood on the brain in critical care for fifteen hours, but I know everything will be alright because I have had a paradigm shift. Visited a freind in the hospital who was given the Last Rites and is not expected to survive her rare blood disease. She is only 32 and had a couple of kids. I know she will be alright since she has a relationship with the King of Kings and so does my stepdad. I know this because I have had a paradigm shift. I have had a chronic illness for 12 years and have to lie down 18 hours a day, but I can bear it because I have had a paradigm shift.

"To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord."

caritas,

mm <*)))))><

Comingling humanistic psychology with the human potential movement and a little new age thinking leads to a very popular movement which lauds human achievement, success and prosperity.

Norman Vincent Peale's magazine, Guideposts, has just turned 60 and his protege, Doctor Robert Schuller's ministry has been a worlwide powerhouse
for 50 years. While yet recommending the theology of self-love. his son has dared to use the word "sin" from time to time and even supported the military action in Iraq. Could the experiment be running it's course? Can humanism be wedded to Christian thought?

http://www.dailyguideposts.com/positivethinking/

http://www.hourofpower.org/

http://www.crystalcathedral.org/

The Enterprise meets Jesus.

Something about me I really don't like about him, I guess. If you can spot it, you got it, so I guess I must fancy myself a guru of some kind.

Aim higher. I think you're already past the stage of guru, MM. If you simply wanted your ego satisfied and to have groupies then you wouldn't be saying the things you say and doing the things you do. A person who is constantly trying to instruct the people around him to be as good or better than he or she is is not looking for a collection of sycophants or the center square on Hollywood Squares. Do what ya gotta do, and so what if you're admired and loved for it.

I hope your stepdad and friend are going to be all right. And I hope you are going to be all right. The good psychic vibes I�m sending your way should already be rattling the window panes.

The Enterprise meets Jesus.

Dammit, Jim. I'm a doctor not a Messiah.

Doctor McCoy was the spiritual soul of the Enterprise crew. He was a doctor, he felt free to express the weakness and doubt which Kirk and Spock
could not. Then we got a Counselor Troy, who is much better looking than McCoy (she used to star in British porno films) but much more sensitive and politically correct.

I wonder if sociologists of the future will analyze
our culture by archived television shows???

"I'm picking up good vibrations." - Beach Boys I'm trying to meditate! Dammit, quit rattling the windows!

Doctor McCoy was the spiritual soul of the Enterprise crew. He was a doctor, he felt free to express the weakness and doubt which Kirk and Spock could not.

I see McCoy as offering the feminine, Kirk the masculine, and Spock the (ironically) purely humanist perspective, although you might better call it an "alienist" perspective.

Then we got a Counselor Troy�

Who was mostly annoying and superfluous to any plot.

�but much more sensitive and politically correct.

I don't think sensitive should be mistaken with being an emotionally-based person. Some of those types of people are the most "insensitive" of all. I would think sensitive is sometimes knowing when to shut up. By this standard Troi was not a very sensitive person.

Didn't know about the porn star stuff. And I'll bet you didn't know (but might have suspected) that ol' Charles Napier got his start in Russ Meyer films.

It's a small world. Errr�not in connection with Russ Meyer films, of course.

I wonder if sociologists of the future will analyze our culture by archived television shows???

I've always said, if aliens came down today and took note of what we watch for ENTERTAINMENT then they might very well feel justified in creating a cookbook titled "To Serve Man".

The local alternative paper has a cartoon this week spoofing that Twilight Zone episode, featuring a large egg-headed George Bush and Dick Cheney as "conservatroids" feeding on the elderly. Once again our psychic likeage is confirmed.

Troi is empathic but highly independent. I wonder if
submissive females will come back in style? Ann Coulter after sensitivity training?

According to wikipedia, some Nostradamus hoaxters
are casting our president as a villiage idiot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostradamus

Once again our psychic likeage is confirmed.

I don�t doubt it at all now. What if I picked the first three lotto numbers and you picked the last three? Or would every other one work better?

Troi is empathic but highly independent. I wonder if
submissive females will come back in style? Ann Coulter after sensitivity training?

I probably agree with Dr. Laura Schlesinger. It�s not really submissiveness per se that men want. They just want a little TLC here and there and for women to leave their feminist anti-men thing at the office � if they must have that attitude anywhere at all.

No, what bothered me about Troi wasn�t her independence or bossiness. It was her character�s inappropriateness at the right hand (or was it the left?) of the commander of a starship. Okay, I will admit that emotion is important, that feelings and caring and loving and touching and making everyone feel like they belong, are competent, important, respected, loved, admired, etc., can be a good thing. But let�s save that for Kindergarten or the psychiatrist�s couch � not the bridge of the friggin� Enterprise.

Troi was simply the worst example of this "progressive" attitude toward feelings being on par with the more masculine traits of adventure, combat, exploration or conflict. Of course, those warm-fuzzy feelings are important too and have their place, but that place is not RIGHT NEXT to the commander on the bridge of a Federation starship. Do I make myself clear?

I remember more than once when Picard�s Enterprise was in the midst of an intense battle with the Klingons, Borg, Romulans, or whomever. They would be basically fighting for their very lives when Troi would pipe up with something inane like "Captain. I sense the crew is tense and nervous right now." Well, duh.

No, my dislike of Troi does not reveal some secret hatred of strong or powerful women (love Maggie Thatcher). It reveals a strong dislike for vacuous PC characterizations and blatant whacky attempts at indoctrination of liberal ideas.

There. That feels better. Thank you, counselor MM. You�re doing a fine job as moderator here. I feel a bit transformed already.

Better get religion or you might wind up Gonzo...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson

http://www.denverpost.com/Stor...6~53~2723492,00.html

http://www.nytimes.com/indexes.../02/21/books/authors

http://www.disinfo.com/archive.../dossier/id361/pg1//

We lost another Hemingway!

"I don't like to recommend alcohol, drugs, insanity and mayhem to anyone, but they always worked for me." -HT

Pat Buchanan lost a good drinkin' buddy.

fearandloathing.com

Bizarre; unconventional.

I didn't know Terry Gilliam made the film, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". It doesn't sound like the type of thing I'd want to see, but I've certainly enjoyed Gilliam's odd originality in the past, particularly with Brazil and Time Bandits.

Was Hunter S. Thompson one of your favorites, MM?

quote:

Thompson's daring study Hells Angels (New York: Random House, 1967) captured their brooding menace and established him as the most subversive voice in the US New Journalism movement, which combined the craft of literature with news gathering techniques to highlight how Objectivity was structured bias in reality.

While it would seem self-evident that a well-written piece of fiction (such as historical fiction) can not only entertain but educate, does making this form of art legitimate really require tearing down the craft of journalism? Surely if one looks at how atrociously this craft is often practiced these days, and how riddled it is with bias, then an equally sloppy and biased mind I suppose could easily enough jump to the conclusion that journalism is "Objectivity was structured bias in reality". But a facile idea like that isn't solving anything. It's simply adding more crap to the crap pile.

He's quite the American icon of a contrarian view.
I believe that men like Hemmingway and Thompson are hung up on machismo and although they percieve that something is terribly wrong, they are not aware enough to know exactly what it is, so they charge
windmills, join the communists in Spain or Dog republican presidents on the campaign trail.

Not one of my personal favorites, I only read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and some of his poetry last summer. May he requiem en pacho.

I believe that men like Hemmingway and Thompson are hung up on machismo and although they percieve that something is terribly wrong, they are not aware enough to know exactly what it is, so they charge
windmills, join the communists in Spain or Dog republican presidents on the campaign trail.

I was wondering about that too�the causes. My working theory is that we get so caught up in the idea of ourselves (particularly when that idea is a very public one) that we become trapped by it. If one, say, has based their whole life on an idea (gonzo journalism) that one just knows at the core is at least half BS then it will eat away at one. Or maybe it was something else or a combination of things. But surely the subject of the untimely death of HST is appropriate for this thread. We should wish to become appropriately transformed so that we don�t, down the line, become malformed. Here�s hoping.

In memory of HST�and others�and in thinking of ourselves:

Fragile
by Sting
Nothing Like the Sun

If blood will flow when fresh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
How fragile we are how fragile we are

Thank you, Brad, that is awsome! Maybe I'll get that CD. I have nothing of his from the last ten years, and he is very good. He is unusual in that he is a good father and husband, stays away from drugs,
etc. Perhaps that is why his career never fizzled.

Marcus Borg, a very popolar author, (resistance is futile) sees Jesus as
a wisdom teacher with a decidedly left-wing view, who frees those subjugated by the religious "purity system," the establishment, those who possess wealth and exploit the masses, and dominate women, the weak and the elderly. He envisions a more compassionate Christianity.

http://www.tcpc.org/resources/...ing_christianity.htm

http://www.members.tripod.com/...sedivy/enlite_2.html

I would be all for some reformation along these lines, but the Jesus I know was not a Marxist revolutionary. Many of his closest freinds were quite wealthy establishment types.

I'm all for transformative experience for the "collective," to
make use of another Borg term, but I still refer to myself as "born again" and believe that transformative experience of the individual will heal the collective sins of the culture, one person at a time.

caritas,

mm <*))))))><

Thank you, Brad, that is awsome! Maybe I'll get that CD.

You're welcome, MM. And I don't think you'll regret getting that CD. I have four or five of his post-Police CD's and Nothing Like the Sun is the only one I ever play. Besides that, it's a very good album in its own right, even if you aren't a Police freak like I am.

Marcus Borg, a very popolar author, (resistance is futile) sees Jesus as
a wisdom teacher with a decidedly left-wing view, who frees those subjugated by the religious "purity system," the establishment, those who possess wealth and exploit the masses, and dominate women, the weak and the elderly. He envisions a more compassionate Christianity.

By the way, here's the correct link for the article, Re-Visioning Christianity: The Christian Life.

I read some of that. I surely hope you're modeling yourself after Jesus and not after this guy, MM. And I surely hope you posted that link just to bait me. I won't take it, I tell ya. I won't.

Truthfully, I'm getting a little tired of hearing about how anyone who has more than two nickels to rub together is "exploiting the masses". If you ask me, there's a lot of exploiting going on and it ain't necessarily being done by the hard-working middle class or rich. And anyone who pines for socialism and/or communism ought to have his head examined. End of story. Sheesh. In this day and age, AND AFTER SO MUCH CONCRETE AND OFTEN HORRIFIC EVIDENCE, you'd think people would have gotten over this rather childish and simplistic fantasy. I do not equate loving-kindness with forcibly taking the hard-earned money from one neighbor and giving it to another. That's following Marx. Following Jesus is willingly given what you have (all or part) to a neighbor in order to help them.

I would be all for some reformation along these lines, but the Jesus I know was not a Marxist revolutionary.

Aha. I KNEW you were just trying to get my goat. I agree.

I'm all for transformative experience for the "collective," to
make use of another Borg term, but I still refer to myself as "born again" and believe that transformative experience of the individual will heal the collective sins of the culture, one person at a time.

I think that's a rather mature and seasoned grasp you have on things, MM.

"The greatest thing in life is love and the second is laughter." - G.Y. Morgan

"Go ahead and do it, it is easier to apologize than to get permission." - Admiral Grace Hopper

"Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolutions." - Kahlil Gibran

"The thing that is incredible is life itself. Why should we be here in this sun-illuminated universe? Why should there be green earth under our feet?" - Edwin Markham

"As a man begins to live more seriously within, he begins to live more simply without." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet." - James Oppenheim

"Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far." � Euripides

"There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness." - Josh Billings

"They are able because they think they are able." � Virgil

"If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner. " - English Proverb

"Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast." - Peter Drucker

"To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own, this is happiness." - J. B. Priestley

"Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being." - Lord Acton

"Anger is never without reason, but seldom with a good one." - Benjamin Franklin

"Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us." - Charlotte Bronte

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself." - Harvey Fierstein

"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, / And all the sweet serenity of books." - Henry W. Longfellow

"Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?" - Arthur Miller

"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." - Naguib Mahfouz

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!" - Sir Walter Scott

"Contentment is a pearl of great price, and whoever procures it at the expense of ten thousand desires makes a wise and a happy purchase." - John Balguy

"The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention." - Richard Moss, M.D.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream." - Mark Twain

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." - Albert Einstein

We both seem to be quite fond of quotes. I spent about eight months putting this collection together.
Enjoy

http://www.christianmystics.co...splay;num=1050544631

I got sidetracked, but I intend to return to William James and Saint Francis soon...

Where I left off here was about half way through William James' Varieties of Religious Experience, the chapters on conversion. I was waiting for a conversion story like Thomas Merton's.

Here is what happened to Billy Graham's father in 1908:

The way my father told it, he had been out late to a dance the night before and did not feel up to churchgoing on Sunday morning. "I was under conviction from the time I hit the door, he remembered. "Well, when the preacher dismissed the congregation, I sat on. A couple of members came back to me and wanted to know if they could help me. I said, 'I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm in bad shape.' They said, 'Come up and let us pray with you.' They did, but I went on for about ten days and nights, unable to sleep. I cared nothing for this world nor anything this world had to offer. I wanted something that the world couldn't give, and I believed that I would know when I got it. That was what I was looking for."

The spiritual struggle went on for days but finally came to an end. As my father told it: "One night, just as I turned off Park Road----the road I lived on----on to Worthingtom Avenue, God saved me, and my eyes were opened and old things passed away, and all things became new. I will never forget that moonlight night."

"Then all at once, out of nowhere, and un-coached by anyone else, he said, looking me straight in the eye with a smile on his face that was joy personified, "I love you, Uncle Brad." I was absolutely stunned. After a brief pause to bask in this unexpected and sudden glow I told him the same, and it was as if the word love had never been spoken by me before."


Brad, that experience is the best one to be had. Your heart appeared to have taken you by surprise.

The words you wrote are beautiful poetry also. Do you see what I mean when I say that the experience is where the beauty comes from?

If you could live in that moment all the time it would in itself be a form of enlightenment.

It appears that you yourself are seeking a transformation experience. Yet when I read what you wrote, I see you already have had one. The experiences I have had are nothing more or less than what you had experienced even if briefly.

Perhaps you already know that you have the potential for an awakening. Yet you have over-looked it. Not being aware that it could be something so simple as an act of love from a small child.

Perhaps you already know that you have the potential for an awakening. Yet you have over-looked it. Not being aware that it could be something so simple as an act of love from a small child.

You might possibly be right, Eric. I will give your words serious consideration.

Here�s an excerpt from the book "He" by Robert A. Johnson:

quote:

I remember a time when beauty was denied me in just this manner. Many ears ago I was particularly lonely and at odds with the world during a trip to visit my parents for Christmas. My journey took me through San Francisco and I stopped at my beloved Grace Cathedral. A performance of Handel�s Messiah was scheduled for that evening so I stayed to hear this inspiring work. Nowhere is it better done than in that great building with its fine organ and master choristers. A few minutes into the performance I was so unhappy that I had to leave. It was then that I knew that the pursuit of beauty or happiness was in vain since I could not partake of the beauty even though it was immediately at hand. No worse or frightening pain is possible for us than to realize that our capacity for love or beauty or happiness is limited. No further outward effort is possible if our inward capacity is wounded. This is the Fisher King wound.

How many times have women said to their men: "Look at all the good things you have; you have the best job you have ever had in your life. Our income is better than ever. We have two cars. We have two and sometimes three day weekends. Why aren�t you happy? The Grail is at hand; why aren�t you happy?"

The man is too inarticulate to reply, "Because I am a Fisher King and am wounded and cannot touch any of this happiness."

A true myth teaches us the cure for the dilemma which it portrays. The Grail myth makes a profound statement of the nature of our present day ailment and then prescribes its cure in very strange terms.

The court fool (and every good court has its resident fool) had prophesied long ago that the Fisher King would be healed when a wholly innocent fool arrived in the court and asked a specific question. It is a shock to us that a fool should have the answer to our most painful wound but this solution is well known to tradition. Many legends put our cure in the hands of a fool or someone most unlikely to carry healing power.

The myth is telling us that it is the na�ve part of a man that will heal him and cure his Fisher King wound. It suggests that if a man is to be cured he must find something in himself about the same age and about the same mentality as he was when he was wounded. It also tells us why the Fisher King cannot heal himself, and why, when he goes fishing, his pain is eased though not cured. For a man to be truly healed he must allow something entirely different from himself to enter into his consciousness and change him. He cannot be healed if he remains in the old Fisher King mentality. That is why the young fool part of himself must enter his life if he is to be cured.

A man must consent to look to a foolish, innocent, adolescent part of himself for his cure. The inner fool is the only one who can touch his Fisher King wound.

Brad, that was a great excerpt. Yes that is pretty much what I was saying. Sometimes the littlest thing can awaken a hidden love inside. Sometimes it is like awakening a sleeping giant. When it does it is like the first time you have ever felt it.

Let me repost something from my journal. When I first read this it felt exactly like what happened to me when I had my very first experience. If you go back and read my first experience you will notice I was watching my wife as she was sleeping when I had my first Kundalini awakening.


Seeing with Your Heart
by Bradford Keeney, from Everyday Soul, pp. 88-89

�When our hearts are deeply touched, whether it�s from seeing a newborn child for the first time or melting into the eyes of our lover, we see with our hearts. Passion washes away any meandering curiosity or critical inquiry and allows us to fully accept and unconditionally merge with the objection of our attention. In this seeing there is less separation between the observer and the observed and the lover and the loved. We step outside of a judging eye and allow the beauty and holiness of the other to radiate a warmer and deeper seeing within our heart�

This is the part of my first experience I was referring to. I think maybe what you had was a glimpse of the same thing. Maybe if it was focused on it could be developed.

The next day I was lying in bed next to my wife. I just had an urge to watch her sleep. I was also having one of my awakenings at that time. As I began to stare at her the most profound experience to date happened. I kept staring at her and kept asking. Who are you? Who are you really? Then I started asking, Who am I? Who am I really? Of course I was asking these question inside of myself not out loud. Then as I began to ask I felt like my body was starting to dissolve. It was not alarming at first. It felt really good to be honest. At that moment I got it? I figured it all out. The veil of ignorance had been completely removed from me. I now not only saw through my eyes but at that moment I saw through her eyes. And I saw through the eyes of my infant son. As if I was the one looking through them. I was so connected to them that I was them. I felt a connection to them that transcended the normal family term of love. I felt as though I was looking at them through the eyes of Christ. It was so beautiful. I had complete and total awareness. Then I transcended that awareness and glimpsed God consciousness. At that moment I marveled at the mystery. Everything was as it should be. Brotherly love was flowing through every atom in my body and yet it went deeper than the atom. I had exposed the observer. Then I took my focus from myself and my family and turned it toward God. It felt like a direct connection at that point. I felt God�s love burning through my being like millions of volts of electricity. Then I would amplify the love and send it back. He would then amplify the love millions more and send it back. This continued for a few moments. When the love was getting sent back and forth through a direct connection it was instantaneous. Then I felt my body dissolving even more. I felt that in order to receive more love I would have to shed the body. The body didn�t even make sense to me any more. As the love was flowing answers to questions I didn�t even know I had started flowing into my consciousness.

Let me repost something from my journal. When I first read this it felt exactly like what happened to me when I had my very first experience. If you go back and read my first experience you will notice I was watching my wife as she was sleeping when I had my first Kundalini awakening.

Many thanks for your comments, Eric...truly. Your optimism is infectious. And I was going to mention earlier how much I liked that quote from Bradford Keeney.

It's marvelous and inspiring to watch the experience of someone like you as the light turns on. And it really does, from your description, seem like a night and day thing as if you've been hit between the eyes by Zeus' thunderbolt. I would honestly love that to happen to me just to get it over with. For you see, I think I�m on slow roast as opposed to the microwave zap that perhaps is analogous to your experience. The same amount of volts can be trickled out over time or one can get them all at once. You can pull the tooth with one quick tug or simply let it loosen and hang until it eventually drops out by itself. Shall I proceed onto the bandage analogy?

Maybe that's what those outie belly buttons represent. When I'm done it will pop out like a Butterball turkey.