Category: Time

The Real Yoga of Sound

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Sound is something that moves us, we hear a loud bang and immediately a picture comes into our mind-space;  if we are from a background of trauma there will be a response in our body, we may shake, freeze or run.  At the other end of the spectrum there is the syncopated rhythmic sound of rain on a tin roof, it always puts me to sleep, the pitter-patter of the drops closes my eyelids and I’m gone…outta here to Alpha Centauri, Shambala or the Deep Silence.
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Humans and the Sound
The relationship between sound and the human being is well known to composers who design audio for movies, they write at specific tempos to create anxiety in the viewers, speed it up for excitement or get the heart pumping, add bangs, whistles and pops, use notes where the harmonies clash or textures to calm, they develop tunes in various musical keys to evoke emotions.  The military also uses sound-weapons in ways to disperse crowds and to disturb people in specific locations.  We know that sound does impact on us, we hear it not only with our ears but also with other parts of our being.
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Rethinking the World of Sound Yoga and Spiritual Music
Personally I think there is a mountain of accidental misinformation and fluffy stuff about the yoga of sound; a lot of partial truths are spread among the community in the West that are assumed to be true. In the East there are great master musicians who are very self discipled and play to a very high standard but also in other cases there is a rigidness that is often not questioned, in some instances some things are considered to be undeniably true, staunch traditions with a mix of truth; cultural habits sometimes are a type of imprisonment.  Because an idea sounds reasonably okay and as a general rule Westerners are extremely gullible and emotional (and I say this as a 7/8th Caucasian person), it is often easy to be naive and fall into the “it’s from the East so it must be Spiritual” trap.  As I have spent a large portion of my life as a musician, been heavily involved in what would be called devotional music and have spent thirty years with the yoga of internal sound, I will add my view to the mix, it may differ to other peoples, that’s okay.
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My opinions on the subject are not flippy-floppy or based in a type of New Age euphoria; music has been a major focus point in my life, time and experience allows us to develop a sharp eye or in this case sharp ear to be able to identify the wagon of buffalo dung as it crawls its way along the dirt road to and from the Spiritual Retreats and Monasteries.
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Selling the Gods of Music
There are a lot of novices with various hypothesis who are lecturing and running workshops on a subject they sometimes have only a minimum of experience with, and I am not questioning their integrity, enthusiasm or intention, nor am I saying that the work that many people are doing is useless, not so.  The BOTTOM LINE is if participants at workshops ‘feel’ they benefit, it is very useful and dollars are well spent; but partial truths can be slightly dangerous things, in the same sense that ‘partial gurus’ who share a bit of the truth and set themselves up as ‘Da Masta’ often mislead the community, many bright eyed gullible naive people get led down the garden path and sometimes into the bedroom. I’ve had enough years to watch the ENDLESS betrayal of trust of student teacher relationships and the complexities that arise from them.  Short periods of starry-eyed-ness that always seems to lead to a mess, the pattern is pretty common not only in Spiritual circles but in the music scene in general.
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The Insignificance of OM 
I have read numerous articles and books about OM and what it supposedly is.  I will start from the beginning and clarify a few things, this will be at odds with a number of people.  OM is the sound of the CREATION. No doubt it does resonate at various other frequencies outside the audio spectrum of the ears of human beings and is present in other ‘world-spaces’. The view I take is contrary to many of the Spiritual teachers but not all.  It is important to note that it is not just the human ear that hears the sound of OM. The human ear and its potential is limited, a perfect example is most people can’t hear a dog whistle, the sound resonates somewhere between 23 and 54 Khz, this is way above the average human beings auditory perception, they say humans hear between 20Hz and 20Khz but really this is a variable and most people won’t hear the higher frequencies;  some can hear as low as 12 Hz and as high as 28 Khz but this would be a rarity and each person would need to be tested individually. George Martin (the 5th Beatle) was definitely a person who had a sense of heightened listening and proved this once when he heard a problem in a Neve mixing console that other people couldn’t hear.
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Listening with Our Being
The bottom line here is to get across the point that ‘sound is not just about our ears’, it resonates throughout the Cosmos and changes shape and frequency in other environments and this depends on how, who or what experiences it.  It can also manifest as light frequency; OM is part of this or should I say under, over and inside this. Contrary to popular belief and pseudo spiritual non-science OM is limited and is NOT what some people think it is.  It is often confused as being the NAAD and also the Word of the Middle Eastern and Western Mystic traditions, it is cross-referenced frequently as being the core sound and equated with God.  It is esoteric, Mystical but IS NOT all it is made out to be. This confusion of what OM is, is something that requires a little clarification.  OM is a little like a Caravanserai, a camel stop on a journey to a destination or could be equated with being a rope that joins those humpy backed beings together, it is the beginning of esoteric sound and I am almost tempted to say it may be bypassed, I will hold back on that one.  I do not consider OM as critical and if someone experienced the NAAD, I am adamant that OM would not be overly important. However it has its place of relevance and reverence in the land of Prakriti (Creation).
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Looking in the Wrong Places
Many of us at times think we have lost our glasses, when in truth we are already wearing them, we lose our keys at times only to find they are in our hands.   These analogies are similar to the sound we are looking for, in the same way the deer seeks the musk, it’s hiding in its navel and it looks everywhere for it, not knowing it’s within itself.  I am not going to head off into ‘what you are seeking is within you’, this is too ambiguous and is an overstated cliche.  But having said that, inside the head there is a ringing sound, it is high pitched, it phases in and out throughout the day, at moments it is loud, the sound of water is a reasonable description of it at certain times, it does change shape.
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The Great Escape
There is a ladder to heaven, the poet Sage Rumi speaks of this continuously, they are not just pretty words.  Rumi is such a master wordsmith it’s easy to miss what he is saying in the same way that we may not see the sun but we see its workings because around us is the play of light and darkness, the shadows pass, the luminosity is there but the sun is hidden.  He speaks of the golden branch, this branch is inside what is known as the silver coil that connects the lower astral body to the physical encasement (the 3D human body), this golden thread winds its way through into foreverness.  So what has that got to do with sound? EVERYTHING.  We forget that there is a unity in things, in the same way that a father may be a son, uncle, friend, grandparent or cousin, the world of subtle vibrations is the same. Sound and light are the same, it is just perceived differently depending on the RECEPTOR.
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The Musical Calling Card
In some Spiritual traditions peopler do chanting, Simram, Kirtan, Bhajan, although they are potent within themselves and are life changing, they are just teasers that call the aspirant into the Spirit, they are a doorway to what Mystics know as the Naam, the Naad, the Divine Melody or the Sound Celestial. This sound in its various manifestations are what would I say (for lack of words) is closest to God, in fact odd as it may sound it IS God.  The Great Silence/ the Ocean of Consciousness is God unmanifest, the Naam is the underlying thread that weaves through the Cosmos under the worlds of forms, it is the life force of all.
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Naam or Word
The Sound Celestial, Akash Bani, Naam or whatever Name it is given to it resonates within the human head, it is soft sound, it may be heard as a gentle ringing noise; when people hear it they often assume it is outside the head or around them.  This sound comes in waves, they peak and fall, when I say that I mean it does seem to have a high and low tide, in various situations or places it will be inclined to be a lot louder.
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When someone follows the sound it can change shape, it may take the shape of the music of harps, flourishes of glorious notes, I refer to it as the Harps of David (Biblical King who supposedly slayed the giant Goliath), it may also take the sound of a flute, this would be described as the flute of Krishna.  As the experiencer of the Divine sounds goes through deep states of consciousness they may at times experience the sound of bells, the conch, thunder and even have an explosion of light within the head.  I can only speak from personal experience, and cross reference that with credible literature, it will not be the same for everyone but there will be similarities in experience as ones world breaks apart into a larger sky-scape.
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I have spent thirty years with the Naam and I know beyond all doubt that it is what is worth pursuing as it is the vehicle we can use to travel to any location, a vine to climb to the stars, deep within and beyond.  This is the Yoga of Sound, the audio frequency that unifies all things, it truly is the ladder to heaven.  Personally I recommend people seek out this sound.
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Tilopa 2.0

First Noble Truth Reconsidered

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The world we move in has always been gifted with great Teachers. They arrive open hearted to lay a foundation for future generations to be able to put in place a set of principles so humanity can protect itself from itself.  Hedonism, decadence, over consumption, excessiveness, imbalanced life, narcism always seems to naturally run rampant, humanity at times is like a car rolling along without breaks and is in danger off self destruction, when we add science to the mix we end up with Weapons of Self Destruction in the hands of madmen.
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After the Main Guy Leaves
It is not uncommon to see the situation where once a great Teacher has left, after a short period of time things get a little bit twisted, okay let’s be clear, it’s really a BIG little.  It’s easy to follow dogmas, they are comfortable – feel good, dangle some beads around the neck, set up an altar and a few statues, grab the prayer book, learn the designer lingo, and then bond with a ‘sense’ of community who are all going the same way … regardless which way, doing it together feels safe.  Spiritual aspirants usually call themselves the ‘black sheep of the family’ but always join another flock all wearing the same fleece.  It is easy to be told or fed someone else’s wisdom, to accept and believe what it may mean when you are told it by a more senior member of the community or someone you feel is ‘in the know.’ Those in the know are powerful, it is not uncommon that they sometimes misuse that power; obviously not always as there are well intentioned people everywhere.
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HOWEVER it is critical to question everything, if not we may unwittingly become a slave to a concept.  It’s easy for the Spiritual bling to creep in, it can take over our lives and we can assume that these things make us closer to God or the goal, when really it’s often just wallpaper, delusion, Maya at its finest. Spiritual adornments are just laying extra layers over the top and block the view. The Universes/ Prakriti is the playground, there is form and the formless.  Out of Emptiness emerges all things, they rise and fall in consciousness. When freedom is what a person is seeking, imprisonment just doesn’t cut it…run…run fast…get out of there ASAP, in a moment we can cut through the delusion and if we linger it does lead to immense suffering. The baby and the bath water doesn’t cut it… run…run…run…back to yourSelf. Each moment we have the opportunity to abandon EVERYTHING, there is no obligation to the past or what we have committed too when it comes to real freedom.
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The Buddha
Great minds don’t think alike, they go where no-one has dreamed.  They bring in the unknown, something extraordinary that creates a new pathway for humanity; these people make others feel a little uncomfortable, people run away. Uncomfortableness is good, it’ll make you a little itchy, restless, give you sleepless nights; these will say what you are NEVER ready to hear.
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Buddha Gautama was one of many throughout the history of the endless Dance of the Cosmos who emerged out of the Infinite Silence to uplift humanity. He arrived and like other great Sages his very presence transformed those he encountered, even if they didn’t know it, the mixing of His field with theirs was enough to totally destroy them, I say destroy because in freedom everything we believe to be true gets annihilated, Buddha planted the seed as He wandered, even those who hated him benefited by encountering Him. Those who follow later, the people who form groups that ultimately morph into structured spiritual or religious organisations, cults and sects, they will interpret the words and experiences to suit their limited perceptions and understanding and create dogmas.
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Is it Noble? Is it True?
Although I am very familiar with Buddhist texts, the other day my eye was caught and I froze when I read a reasonably common translation of the First Noble Truth. ‘All Life is Suffering’, this is one translation, one of many, I won’t address other ones that may be wiser but this is a springboard for removing something that has filtered through those that are both in and outside the Buddhist faith.  I felt a little unsettled when I was reminded of this way of thinking, it knocked on my being so I decided to explore it.  I could see clearly that it had the potential for undermining the wellbeing of the well intentioned Spiritual aspirants. I do know that if we dig in and run with it we will probably find something transformative. If we are not cautious we can easily bind ourselves to a self-imposed dogma, there’s always a type of subtle programming that can undermine our joy.
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Lights Action  – Take Two
Let’s start over.  What I write here is not about being correct and attempting to be wiser than others. These are living teachings not historical.  I am interested in transformation, creating a bridge to cross over; we need to be prepared to abandon what we assume to be true.  Humility is reflected in our ability to be wrong, to throw EVERYTHING out the window.  Without this attitude there is no hope, we can become prisoners of doctrines and our misunderstandings.  Philosophy is about opinions, people looking at an object and telling us about it, that is only mind games, speculation.  I have learnt from experience that much that I considered to be true, even EXPERIENCED based things were totally wrong, the experiences were real but in time I discovered it was my interpretation of them that was upside down.  I recommend being open because if we are not, when it COLLAPSES and we see into what is really going on, it will be a shock to ANYONE, I know this first hand.
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Our Nature and Birth Rite
Happiness is not just a goal for the future, although if we are generally unhappy now it is reasonable to have desire for it to emerge at some point downstream in our lives, this is normal but really, happiness is for NOW. If we are always running to find happiness in future times, living with a hope that one day it will be okay, unknowngly our life will flit away, the wrinkles gradually arrive, the signs of ageing creep in, the sparkle in the eye dissolves like salt in water, the essence of electrical current in our being whittles down to zero; but the doughnut on the string will still be out of reach even when the angel of death passes over and knocks on the door and welcomes us in.  If we are addicted to our past and are hypnotised by all the blissful moments that flowed under the bridge, we may find ourself always trying to recapture them; that first kiss, travel in new country, a breakthrough in art or music where we discovered we could compose a song or said “hey I really am going to be an artist”.  We do need to embrace our worthiness but find ways not cling to things, to see events like petals on a flower in our garden of existence, an ever changing lush landscape with seasons.
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We need to be cautious of what drives us. By this I mean there is something deep down hidden in the subconscious that impacts on the way we feel the world and create our lives.  The first Noble Truth about suffering requires a lot of thought, clarity needs to be there, our insight must deepen.  If we stay on the surface and take on the concept ‘all life is suffering’ we will be in serious strife. We may get caught as if we as humans are in debt to suffering and continue the narrative.
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Beauty 
I grew up by the beach, as a child the rolling waves were inviting but scary, the gritty sand in my toes, kids using sieves to find coins, playful waves on the shore, the gentle swish noise of the water moving backwards and forwards at the edge of the great blue expanse, the rock pool with baby tiger sharks wiggling, fish, starfish, jellyfish, the sunrise, all those wondrous lifeforms reminded me there was more than the television, the milkshakes, girls in bikinis strutting their stuff, the smell of coconut oil. There is no need for me to seek suffering there; only a madman does that.
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On a hot day I can still taste the ice creams and paddle pops I ate as a child, feel the sun against my skin, sense myself diving under the waves, swallowing a little too much salt water, dumped on the sandbank.  I rarely eat ice-cream now, my body finds it too cold as it heads down my insides but I honour its existence, some glorious being breathed it into being.  I am not addicted to my past experiences, if I cling too much to the joys and keep pulling them into the ‘screen in my frontal lobe’ I will find myself lacking, they are gone, have moved back into Emptiness.  And if I am a slave to the joys of my past I will have to embrace its twin, the sadness, despair and tragedies that slayed me at moments.
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I found it
I see the clouds changing shape, they take new forms just like the molecules in the world around me. I know that I have found love, not just in the arms of those wondrous women beings who passed through my life and left a piece of their beauty in me, those wondrous beings who helped shape the man I am for better or for worse, I embrace love in the passing play of life, not clinging but in learning how to accept the diversity of all things, the aridness of the desert, the biting cold, the gentleness of meek people, acceptance of those who are naive, the loud and bold also have their story, and the sound of a child singing strange noises.
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I will leave suffering to those that need it to guide them.  I will walk another way, an uncharted path and be my own Buddha.

Rearranging Time and Healing the Past and Future

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All of humanity suffers.  We can ask the experts like Buddha, phone a friend as people do in a TV quiz show or better still, we don’t need to think too hard to recall our own experiences of doom and gloom. If we need a reminder to really confirm the idea we could go to the slums, visit the homeless to see and feel their world. We can if it is appropriate for us serve the community to help pad the suffering of others a little and at the same time by serving others it will take the focus away from ourselves and this will also warm our hearts.  We know there are many great healers out there, some work within the field of Western medicine, others take different natural or left field approaches. From my experience although the body goes ouch and requires maintenance, bringing our thoughts into a sense of order, taming the ‘bull’ of the mind is critical.  I found something that works for me and I will never go back into the dark night of the soul.  I will attempt to explain it as simply as possible.
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Reconsidering What is Normal
As a general rule, human beings have a view of time which is linear, it comes from a number of sources:

From our natural conditioning
The education we receive from those around us in the environment we are born into.
What we have in our subconsciousness in our DNA inherited from our ancestors.
The agreed upon human consciousness.
The database of experiences from our journey through the corridors of the Cosmos.

The normal view of time that we experience is start at A travel to Z and in-between there is a splattering of events in a sequential order. It would seem fair not to question this sense of order and accept this agreed upon version of time, that is unless you had explored quantum physics, suddenly things go a little skewiff and the world that we know will start to shatter.  There is plenty of material to study on the subject if needed but I would like to keep this simple.
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The A to Z of limited time
As it goes, if we are a healthy person we will be reasonably comfortable with our dreams of the future, we go about our everyday life, maybe work a job and seek some sort of greater position in the hierarchy of the world, we may study for a University degree of some sort or if we are a musician or artist we could strive to eventually be a master of our instrument or art-form. This is an acceptable way to live, we seek success and and make efforts to become more than what we imagine ourselves to be at different points of our lives and go on to greater things.  If life slaps us we may not be able to meet the outcomes of our dreams and could stumble through our days with an overwhelming sense of failure, feeling totally unfulfilled, we end up pushing up daisies and further down the known timeline eventually become food for other creatures.  Whether we meet our life’s goals or not, the time sequence A to Z is the dominating foundation that most of mankind uses to measure events. Contrary to popular opinion as bizarre as it may sound, I am confident from my own experience the A to Z timeline is not the only option and a number of other people I have met are also feeling that the fine old Swiss timepieces are out of sync or at times meaningless.
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Dream Fixing
I will sidetrack for a moment.  Some years ago I had a recurring dream that was very disturbing, no matter what I did it would come back and scare me.  Fortunately I have a friend who is very wise, he has worked as a Psychologist for years so I ran the problem past him.  He advised me to use a simple technique of imagining I was in the nightmare and suggested I take a trusted imaginary friend/Buddha/Jesus/or other option with me into a conscious recalled version of the dream.  I did this a few times and have never had that dream again.  This simple method of dream-changing got me thinking about rewiring my brain or at least the ‘body of thought’, and this has opened up the gateway to deep change in my life.  In summary, all I needed to do was go back into the dream in my imagination, recall the details and observe the situation I was in while in the presence of someone I felt safe with.
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The World of Smoke and Mirrors
Intuitively I realised regardless of the simplicity of the technique how potent it was and began to consider how else I could use it to ‘fix things’. I started to look at the trauma I had experienced in my life and started to dig back through my memories.
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One thing that we are all familiar with is how our memories can differ, when we ask a number of people about ‘what happened’, they will all tell a slightly different story. When I saw my first UFO from the outside, I was with three other people, none of us saw the same thing but we all saw something, the variations were fascinating.  We also know when people give a description to police after a crime event, chances are some will be adamant about what they saw regardless that all others have a differing opinion, the solution they usually take is to go with the general consensus and let the case rest. Often what happens in the case of trauma and abuse is people have a still-frame version of events and in order to put their thoughts at rest, they will fill in the gaps; people know something happened but the detail may be corrupted by the imagination but there will be enough written to the memory to cause enough damage, the emotions get in the way and derail the experiencer of abuse and it becomes difficult to function.
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Rewiring the Past
What emerged from this simple one-off dream healing technique is something that changed me forever, I dont say this lightly.  Like many people I have had a series of traumas in my life, the type of things that people often don’t recover from.  I had a brainwave and thought I’d give an idea a try.  I remembered two critical events in my life as a child and teenager.  These were situations where someone turned up at the events I was concerned about and NOBODY would know what was going on, without going into detail in both cases I was in serious danger, these events scarred me emotionally for many years after.  Being a person who is prepared to go outside the square, I felt I could find a solution to what troubled me.

The Accidental Time Traveller
Each night I started lying quietly in a semi meditative state and going back through my life and taking my older wiser self to visit the events that had disturbed me.  The process was rather simple:

I removed all distractions such as phone, made sure the stove was off and told the world to go away :
Lay on bed, made sure I felt safe and comfortable
Called up an overview of the event to my memory
Called imaginary friend-helper (in my case it was my future wiser self)
Focused on the event
Whenever I felt a little uncomfortable I looked to my friend for support
Consciously walked through what I could recall and watched my younger self in the experience
If I felt too uncomfortable I would close the session
Over a period of days I kept going back until I felt I didn’t need to enter that particular experience any more

I found that I became a lot lighter in my every day waking life and not so troubled by my past.
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Making Sense of the Nonsensical
Some of the following may sound reasonable but other concepts would seem illogical to a number of people. My logic here was:
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Events of the past write information to the subconscious
The world is not as solid as we think it is but is constantly reconstructing itself moment to moment
We are co-creators of the environments we move in and the idea that God is pulling the strings undermines our well-being and dis-empowers us
We can update and rewrite the information stored in our memory by visiting our past
Rewiring our ‘relationships with past events’ opens up new experiences that we would have missed and changes the attitudes we have about the present
The past events work like a filter that allows us to only see a small percentage of what is happening around us
The present state of our subconscious thoughts creates the emerging future
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With the above in mind here’s what I consider happens and although it may not make sense would seem incredulous, a person does not need to believe what I am about to say. Regardless of my explanation it is reasonable to assume ‘something worked’. In two of the traumatic experiences as a child and teenager a man turned up who I now recognise as the present/future ‘me’.  He stepped in and stopped the events which were going on.  In one case I was being severely harassed by some people and NOBODY apart from my girlfriend at the time knew anything about what was going on and there was no possible way she could have organised someone to help me. During this event which impacted for days I was terrified, out of balance,  a man arrived went to visit the people and requested the harassment to stop, it ceased immediately.  In the other case I was in a serious abusive situation as a child and who I refer as the ‘future me’ came into the room, created great havoc and chased the men out.  This may in some way sound like an imaginary misunderstanding of events but without going into detail about the circumstances there is no way anyone else from the normal waking every day 3D world we are in could have been my rescuer.  I am confident beyond a doubt that the future me went back in time and interrupted the flow of events exactly as I envisaged it, even though it may seem absurd.  However, regardless of who it was, here is how it works.
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The Tree of Time
If we see ourselves as a garden it will be easy to articulate the process.  We, like any garden will have numerous trees and plants growing, in this case we can assume it to be a jungle and is survival of the fittest.  Each one of the major experiences in our lives is a seed of a future tree.  If we experience loving events it will impact on us and soften our heart, from this will grow tree with good fruit in the future, if we have a traumatic stressful moment it will generate a plant that is in some way poisonous at a future time. If our ‘garden’ gets too cluttered with poisonous plants, everything that is tasty, nutritious or for our benefit will be strangled and the joy of life will be lost.
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When we consider that the seeds and roots are in the past and grow into the future, by carefully going back to the major events of our lives with some type of imaginary beloved who we feel safe with, we can tell our younger selves that we will be okay in the future and that we are going to make it and live a beautiful life of wondrous experiences.  We can also go back to the more joyous or loving events and feel the sensation that they give off.  This feeling the sensation will strengthen the ‘trunk’ that goes into the future present, by doing this we can restore the balance of harmony within ourselves.
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Rewiring the Future
Although the future is unborn, the seeds and roots of it are in the present.  As we can go into the past to change our ‘relationship’ with it, we can also create still-frames in our consciousness to move into in the future.  It works like a blue print and creates a definite ‘something’ to manifest, even though it is nebulous it will solidify if we don’t try and control the events between where we are and what is in the template; if we feel the joy of it and this doesn’t need to be a real joy, it can be joy like the equivalent of a forced-smile; the part of us that creates uses the emotional sensations as food for what will appear in the future. I learnt some time back that when you get out of bed of a morning it is good to stretch and smile regardless how you may feel.  The brain sends the message through the body that it’s a good day emerging.  Also as soon as waking, we can turn our first couple of thoughts around to positive, it will help structure our day, if we don’t do this, we will be playing catch-ups trying to re-balance from niggling negative thought.
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Keeping it Simple
This is a simple version of what I know works.  If I went into detail about moving along our life’s timeline and/or jumping off it, or more specifically if I discussed how it sits inside our Greater Mind, it would probably not sound credible; or if I discussed the numerous events and shifting or manipulating our timeline or being on multiple timelines it would probably sound absurd.  We are an unfolding consciousness and the process is like a flower opening.
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A wise person once said, “Be careful what you ask for.” I will add to it, “but if you are gentle and loving to yourself, if you FEEL worthy of good fortune, the genies lamp will be found.”

May All Beings Be Happy – NOW!

Tilopa 2.0