The easiest, most exciting adventure in consciousness follows lamplit guidance of still, small voice in each of us. In quiet of meditation, we listen to our souls and hear what is most needed in our lives and how best to obtain it. This wise, kindly voice never fails us and never falters.There is no substitute for inner listening. But in our travels, these four pathways emerge to enhance our joy and draw us into Oneness.
See which of these harmonic pathways resonates best with you: thought and word, self-knowledge, inner peace, or chanting and toning. All work together, as individual notes or as a chord, to transport us into beauty and music of higher consciousness--the light and sound of Universal Mind, or God.
1. The power of thought and word. When our ideal is peace, healing or prosperity, and we say or do something out of alignment with this, we sense, feel or know it. The discord itself keeps us on track and guides us back into oneness with ourselves, others and Spirit. The great psychic-healer Edgar Cayce, who said that "Thoughts are crimes or miracles," lovingly advised everyone to create an ideal by which to live. This is best done in meditation, so that soul voice may show us what is needed most. For you, is it peace, joy, self-discipline, will, oneness or something else altogether?
If a single word floats up when you ask this question, create with this word an affirmative phrase or sentence, then go back into silence to see if it is good and right for you. When it is, post your ideal somewhere and, during meditation, use it as a mantra to draw your busy mind back into silence. This will build your ideal into your life. When words of your ideal no longer have a "shine," or "go dead" for you, you have incorporated this quality and it's time to return to meditation for a fresh ideal.
Every time you think or speak your ideal, you are physically attuning your body-mind to it, so be sure it's a spiritual intention that will uplift you! Ideals are blueprints with which we build our lives, whether we know it or not! If you aren't convinced that your thoughts, words and emotions influence physical world around you, you might find these stories very interesting.
Last November I attended an historic conference in Virginia Beach that featured physicists and U.S. military personnel at center of America's research on remote viewing, termed "anomalous perception" or "anomalous perturbation" (psychic receiving or influencing) by these methodical thinkers. One of presenters was famous remote viewer and artist Ingo Swann, who reminded us that thoughts, as vibrations, are heard and felt by all sentient beings, including house plants!
At a party in New York City, Swann met Cleve Baxter, who later authored classic book, The Secret Life of Plants, and visited Baxter's home to participate in experiments. Baxter had hooked up lie detector electrodes to leaves of ordinary house plants, and every time Swann struck a match, readout jumped sharply in reaction. After awhile, reactions stopped and Swann asked why. "The plant knows you're bluffing!" Baxter told him. And so it did, as illustrated time and again in Baxter's landmark book.
In other experiments, Baxter and Swann took skin scrapings and drops of blood from a man and put them in a vial hooked up to same electrodes. The readouts consistently jumped when man was poked with a pin, even when he was five blocks away! (See second edition of my e-zine, OneWorld, for a series of eye-opening articles and interviews from this amazing conference.)
That we are all one body, one mind is indisputable. Yet we so easily forget and doubt how our thoughts and words affect everyone-and everything-else, including our own bodies and minds.
2. The power of self-knowledge. My still, small voice has said for past 16 years that releasing darkness enables us to attract and hold more light, and recently, DNA experiments carried out by a Russian scientist proved definitively that this is true. It's intuitively verifiable as well, and a phenomenon that we can physically feel as it takes place.
Here's how to bypass your ego, which I call a "hero in its own mind," and awaken to what you need to know about yourself. Every time you find yourself angry, frustrated or in conflict with someone else, "Stand back and watch yourself go by," as Cayce so vividly advised. "Know Thyself," emblazoned on temples of Greek mystery schools, is key to conscious evolution. If we do not undertake this journey, we are not really conscious at all.
I was taught this by my meditative writings, and as I traced my discordant words and actions back to their source-fear of inadequacy and a crippling lack of self-love-I was able to see and correct destructive patterns of behavior that drove me to addictive decisions and ways of life. I could actually feel my burdens growing lighter, as my pain, sorrow and yearning gave way to increased amounts of light in my body-mind.
What fascinated me most was correlation of this "en-lightenment" to sound: with each stride forward, I could hear my singing voice becoming ever more resonant and beautiful! I can still hear difference in my voice, in shifting from one state of consciousness to another, and especially in singing with other spiritual seekers, wherein everyone's voice grows more harmonious, resonant and beautiful. I concluded that high frequencies of love bring us into our blossoming literally and in response to our deepest desires.
3. The power of inner peace. Silent meditation, by building up divine currents of energy within us, is single most effective way to heal and transform body-mind. These currents, containing light and sound of God, tune up our bodies through chakra system, or "wheels of energy," as Cayce called them. He said, and virtually all medical intuitives have seen, that these seven energy centers connect spiritual dimensions with our endocrine glands, located at major nerve centers. The chakras, powered-up like frequency transformers with multi-level circuits, step our energy up or down.
You can feel this happen during meditation, and longer you meditate, more sensitive you become to these subtle energies, which carry us into Oneness. I experience this oneness not only as a sense of love for and connection with others, but also as oneness with my highest mental clarity, creativity and intuition. After 16 years of regular practice, I emerge from every meditation, brief or lengthy, feeling more centered, grounded and in attunement with my true self. Going within kindles divine spark in us so that we may know and speak truth of who we are-and, in this, reach out to others in love, compassion and service.