Samson, thanks for your welcoming words - they are much appreciated.

Phil, thanks as well for your support and welcome.

My futurself: I really like your post - its very wise and I agree with everything you say.

Christine: It is difficult, actually impossible, to have a constructive dialogue with someone who sees themselves in the possession of the absolute truth (which I think you indirectly express by calling me 'dead wrong'). So there is not much I can say to your post. But I do hope we can come back to a more open-minded position and resume our dialogue. I would like that.

Tara KundaliniTherapist

quote:

I said before that your consciousness only really interacts with the mental impressions you have of other people, and that is very true. It's through these projections that we give away a piece of our own soul to others, which is what gives them power over our minds and spirits

I'm still not sure I accept this, Paul.

How does it account for intimacy with another, or intuitive understanding of another's needs? In fact, I feel it contradicts your statement about love because love is surely an appreciation of the individual for what they are, not what my impression of them might be. True love steps outside subjective impressions into wonder at the other.

And I'm still left with the experience of having tasted, felt, drawn in another's energy.

quote:

I said before that your consciousness only really interacts with the mental impressions you have of other people, and that is very true.

I'm not sure I agree, either, Paul. That would need more explanation if it's not to be taken as a closed subjectivism. If you're saying that these mental impressions are more than just preconceptions -- that we're constantly modifying them through experience -- that's fine, for it takes into account outer influences.

quote:

Christine: It is difficult, actually impossible, to have a constructive dialogue with someone who sees themselves in the possession of the absolute truth (which I think you indirectly express by calling me 'dead wrong'). So there is not much I can say to your post. But I do hope we can come back to a more open-minded position and resume our dialogue. I would like that.

I do not believe i am in possession of the truth.. it simply IS the truth. Ask any Christian who is truly walking in Christ. Ask anyone who has been seriously ill from demonic oppression or attacked by demonic influences. Ask the Visible Church on earth... years of recorded history and beyond..

Whether you want to believe this fact or not is your choice. I do not see this as an obstacle in our communicating with one another. I see human egos as the problem... which i am not entirely blameless.

I understand you see this in an entirely different way. Saying you are 'dead wrong' on this one issue, doe not in anyway in my eyes or heart, invalidate the work you do in helping others having kundalini difficulties.

However, i will stand by my statement because this is not some opinion i have.. and i know with 100% certainty you are wrong on this issue. To say or even elude to in ANY WAY you are correct on this issue .. would be a lie.

I do know for a fact that these beings exist and affect people. i know where you come from in your understanding to some extent .. as i once owned a new age book store and spent hours/ years in the back room doing much of what you do today... that obviously has changed.

Your experience of it is different from mine..so be it. So , we agree to disagree. how is that not fruitful in constructive dialogue?

we disagree... that is all.

i am sorry if in anyway i have offended you .. it most certainly was and is not my intent. Possibly saying you were 'dead wrong' was a poor delivery in beginning a discussion with you. i apologize for the abruptness of those words.. but not the truth in those words.

there is simply no way to water down this truth.. i feel as passionately about this as you do about your work.. as i know how deeply wounded many have been by opening themselves up to demonic influence by dabbling in new age endeavors and placing their trust in new age and eastern guru's . i weep over how many today are opening themselves up in the same way. i make no bones about it anymore.. it is a great deception. a lie of satan. i cannot water this down because i do know.. and saying nothing about it is agreeing with it!


concerning bettering communication between us...

I could also say it is difficult to have a dialogue with one who experiences life in a more relative way....as they also think they are in possession of truth as well, it simply is more.. hidden. I think you indirectly expressed this when you said there can be no fruitful dialogue with someone who considers themselves in possession of the truth... in short.. unless you respond to me within my more relative framework , there is no use going on. it is simply a matter of egos butting heads.. period.

Open minded positions is where i have lived a great deal of my adult life . i could write a book on it. Astrologer, owner of a new age book store .. Metaphysical queen of Northwest Washington....i meant well. Then.. i was blessed with seeing Jesus of the Divine Mercy and SAW Truth and all that shattered. please feel free to read the story about this in the transformation section of the forums.. under' Jesus of the Divine Mercy and the child'. it had great impact on my life to say the least if you would like a clearer picture of where i am coming from today.

i stand on His truth..not my own. i stand on the Word of God.. not my own word. I am thankful for His mercy.. like Paul i was knocked on my butt when i beheld His glory..i cannot go back to the 'all is relative' and be open minded to the point of watering down truth.

Demons? you bet there are.. i did business with them for years. I see many who in this age are seeking to find the answers to themselves in new age thinking who are buying into all sorts of garbage opening themselves up to such lies..

To be clear.. i am not suggesting in anyway you are promoting anything evil or bad.. i am saying that possibly you be open to such a reality.. aware that such entities DO indeed exist and they affect people.. period.

typed words in a forum where we do not know each other is always difficult.. so if there is anything i have written here that still feels like an attack let me know OK? I am glad you are here and helping others.. even if we do not altogether agree... love christine

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:

quote:

I said before that your consciousness only really interacts with the mental impressions you have of other people, and that is very true.

I'm not sure I agree, either, Paul. That would need more explanation if it's not to be taken as a closed subjectivism. If you're saying that these mental impressions are more than just preconceptions -- that we're constantly modifying them through experience -- that's fine, for it takes into account outer influences.

Calling it "mental impressions" is just the easiest way to describe a basic idea of what I'm talking about. But what I'm ultimately saying is that everything we experience is Mind (with a capital M), and while we postulate a physical world behind our sense impressions, it is and must always be hypothetical. This in no way makes "the real world" less real or less objective, but it does necessitate an understanding that if there is a physical world, we cannot experience it directly without using Mind as a medium.

Outer influences are most definitely real, of course. People and events "out there" in the world affect us - and by "affect us" I mean they have the capability to change our consciousness and our qualitative experience of life. But when we sit down to think about how this actually happens, it becomes apparent that the "mental world" in which we actually live is responsible for HOW those experiences affect us and to what degree. This is demonstrated on a basic and clear level by how two people can experience the same thing and come away with different perceptions and consciousness-modifications based on their "outlook on life." If I need to give examples of this I can, but I think it's obvious.

We can speculate on how spirits and other people might affect us without conscious or "physical" interaction with us, but I believe it operates through a kind of harmonic resonance. That is, a spirit with a negative or hateful presence can "vibrate" that to us, in a similar way to how we vibrate the air physically to carry sound and communicate "invisibly" through speech.

Thanks,

Paul

quote:

I do not believe i am in possession of the truth.. it simply IS the truth. Ask any Christian who is truly walking in Christ. Ask anyone who has been seriously ill from demonic oppression or attacked by demonic influences. Ask the Visible Church on earth... years of recorded history and beyond..

Christine, as I mentioned above, the Catholic Church is very slow to designate something as demonic.

I'm forgetting how this part of the discussion got going. Why are we even talking about demons? No one here has had an official diagnosis of demon possession. And no one needs to accept a Christian understanding of the devil to participate in this discussion. Let's drop all that and move on.

- - -

quote:

Outer influences are most definitely real, of course. People and events "out there" in the world affect us - and by "affect us" I mean they have the capability to change our consciousness and our qualitative experience of life. But when we sit down to think about how this actually happens, it becomes apparent that the "mental world" in which we actually live is responsible for HOW those experiences affect us and to what degree. . .

We encounter external reality through the senses first; mental life comes after, acting on sense impressions (yes, very Aristotelian ). We also encounter reality lovingly through the will, or fail to encounter it through a hardened will. But I take your point that the mental judgments we make are pivotal in our manner of relating and encountering reality. Cognitive therapy has seized on this insight and has helped people live better lives by changing unhealthy beliefs.

quote:

I'm forgetting how this part of the discussion got going. Why are we even talking about demons? No one here has had an official diagnosis of demon possession. And no one needs to accept a Christian understanding of the devil to participate in this discussion. Let's drop all that and move on.

i got on a roll about the because i was talking about the whole new age thing as being deceptive and this deception being of the demonic. i was NOT addressing anyone here .. yes, i admit i got on a roll.. i agree lets move on! i have felt badly about the level of intensity i brought to the forum today so i ask forgiveness for anything i may have said that was not heard in a spirit of love.

Originally posted by samson:

quote:

..
The way I see it, it's not easy to pinpoint why God heals or delivers some and not others....

Stephen, I totally agree with you. There's great mystery in this. Your comment here and what you said earlier about redemptive suffering really resonate with me. In fact, I want to share with you a piece that I wrote concerning the mystery of suffering. They are two different times when the Father deposited insight into my soul. Because they are 'private' mystical revelations, I realize that their value to others, is nil or limited at best. But I thought that you, Stephen, might appreciate them because you seem to resonate with the more deeply personal and mystical insights of our loving God.

The sharing I'm referring to starts on Sept 18, 2010 here:

https://shalomplace.org/eve/for...=703301454#703301454

At the same time, let me add that I also agree with Paul (aka my futureself) in his recent observation that some suffering is a subtle neurotic (specifically masochistic) dynamic that is erroneously believed by the person to be a God-given gift. I see this quite a bit, and it's the 'meat and potatoes' of what I deal with as a Christian therapist. So it's an important discernment issue of what part of one's suffering is subconsciously gratifying them, what is a natural consequence of sin/fallenness, and what part is God holding in place for their sanctification, beyond our understanding.

Anyway, peace to you, dear people!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Shasha,

I see it like this: there are other beings who exist in their own right(visible and invisible, benevolent ones and evil ones) but we do not see them as they really are but through a lens of our own interpretations. That is why two people rarely have exactly the same opinion about a third person.

The main point about this is that as we mature we learn to take responsibility for these misinterpretations and become aware of how we distort our view of others due to our own bias and preconceived ideas. In that way real love will become possible.

When kundalini is present (to bring the thread back to topic - lol)our various misinterpretations (depending on our own level of confusion)are enlarged just like everything seems to be enlarged under the the influence of kundalini.

For that reason all our relationship issues become more pronounced, which makes them harder to bear but more easy to work through.

Tara KundaliniTherapist

That's OK, Christine. I'm not sure where you saw us drifting off into "new age thinking," but I'm not much interested in that approach to spirituality, either.

In dialoguing with people from other religious traditions, we need not require them to adopt our doctrinal perspectives as a precondition for participating in dialogue; indeed, Vatican II in its teaching on the "hierarchy of truth" emphasized that we are to first seek those values and beliefs that we hold in common. E.g., Catholics ought not emphasize their beliefs about Mary's assumption in our dialogue with Protestants. With regard to people from other religious traditions, we strive to find common ground first, and only later do we point out areas of disagreement, and why we disagree.

Kundalini is a human phenomenon that can be understood and worked with from a variety of approaches. To my thinking the pragmatics of integrating K process are as universal as the pragmatics of integrating adolescence. Some behaviors make things worse; some approaches make things better. Religious perspectives are indeed important, here, and some kind of orientation unto transcendence seems necessary for integrating kundalini. I think Christianity with its emphases on incarnation and wealth of spiritual disciplines has much to offer, here, but we are also very much indebted to Eastern traditions and their wisdom in dealing with kundalini. We can learn from them without compromising our own core perspectives and principles, and hopefully that's one of the witnesses of this forum.

quote:

he main point about this is that as we mature we learn to take responsibility for these misinterpretations and become aware of how we distort our view of others due to our own bias and preconceived ideas. In that way real love will become possible.

Tara right on.. i still hold to my convictions.. but i have to see the irony in this with you being a kundalini therapist and all this coming up..

i have had a LOT of energy in my head the past few weeks.. and it has made me more hyper vigilant and obsessive the past few weeks.. even my husband has noticed this.. what normally would be a interest to me in exploring different ways of seeing things seems very exaggerated, almost pressured in my mind..

honestly i think that is the basis of my over reaction to the forums yesterday. sorry to have gotten off on the wrong foot ...upon waking this morning this was very clear to me.. my over reaction.

Phil.. the wisdom of the eastern traditions was very very helpful for me to understand the kundalini phenomena .. thank God i was led to them to understand what was going on with me back then.. also i am very thankful to have found your book on Kundalini. it was very helpful in those early days to know other Christian were going thru this process too

Yes, nice, Shasha. Nice thread, in fact.

There are so many songs and scriptures that use images which help us accept and understand a little of the mystery of suffering. Being "honed", or "pruned", or "refined" in a crucible. I see the cross as Christ entering wholly into every level of human affliction.

Interestingly, I was planning on starting The Hiding Place tonight, and have Victor Frankl's book nearby. Reading Ettie Hillesum and how her inner growth helped her deal with Nazi atrocities was very powerful for me.

Some writing by Catholic saints, I find, dips into that neurotic dynamic occasionally, however. It's perhaps a good idea to speak quietly about suffering. Histrionics and drama don't help.


Tara & Paul,

I've found that an emotional and intellectual detachment with a certain amount of compassion is a necessary way to deal with psychic attack. This closes down any preconceptions or impressions about another. It seems to be only when the fight or flight response is suspended by prolonged inner work and certain neurotic triggers are disabled that the possibility of attack diminishes and one can reclaim one's power fully. This takes us close to what I'd regard as consciousness fully awake to itself and to the loving, divine source from which it emerges. I don't however think it's possible if you've suffered attack to somehow deny what has actually happened or acknowledge a level of power has been exerted over you from an outside agent, taking advantage of your weakness. The moral responsibility for an attack doesn't lie with the individual who suffers, but with the attacker. The responsibility to grow into wholeness in order to rebuff the attack does, and there seems to be a lot of grace needed for that.

Hi Tara
Are there forms of Buddism that hold the belief
that the collective unconscious is not only outside an individual but also within one's
body. Well, actually that everything,for example the universe, the earth & all creatures are within one's body. Is this something you address within your practice?

Thanks so much

quote:

It seems to be only when the fight or flight response is suspended by prolonged inner work and certain neurotic triggers are disabled that the possibility of attack diminishes and one can reclaim one's power fully.

Hi Samson
I don't think (at least it is not in my experience) that we have the power to avoid attacks altogether. I do get attacked occasionally and it does hurt and upset me.

However, I then switch (as soon as I regain my spiritual outlook) to sending love and by doing that I usually feel intuitively how much suffering my attacker feels. When I feel their suffering my anger towards them changes into compassion and pity.

On an unconscious level the other person feels this love and somehow that disables their own lust to attack me again.

I think it is this process that is our power.

Hope this makes sense to you

Tara KundaliniTherapist

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Sue:
everything,for example the universe, the earth & all creatures are within one's body.

Haven't heard of that, but there is a school of Buddhism known as the Mind-Only school a.k.a. Yogacara a.k.a. Cittamatra. The key figures are Asanga and Vasubandhu. That school believes that everything exists within one's MIND.