Knowledge and Religion

Start your meditation practice at the begining

Sometimes it is important to start your practice at the beginning. This may seem like common sense but as this question illustrates: sometimes common sense is deep wisdom. That's because the begining is very close to the end. Here is a question from Bill:

Hi Michael,
 My name is Bill. I really enjoy reading your blogs they have always really spoken to me. I find myself at a strange point in my meditational development without anyone to really talk to about it. I had a bunch of traumatic events in my life which led me to contemplate God about 2 years ago. I had never really practiced any meditation but went back and forth in my mind finally deciding that the assertion that it seemed "to good to be true" was a crappy outlook to have on anything. At that moment I had an out of body experience or a time warp and an exposure to the most wonderful white light! That's when I found your blog and started practicing meditation. It opened my mind to focus more on emotions and the impact I have on other people and less on possessions and things of that nature. I found the bible and some Buddhist teachings to be very useful.

Then stuff got pretty strange! I found there were many people who could hear my thoughts, which wasn't that bad because I was full of love. I had become much more in tune with my core values. This led me to re-examine how I had led my life and the negative thinking patterns that I sensed had hurt others throughout it. It seems foolish now but at the time I thought that I wasn't good enough or that I had made terrible mistakes in the past. That was this past Christmas Eve. And at that time I had an experience of my mind being turned within. Almost like my chakras were being soldered in place. From above my head a lot of red feeling energy came and then the white feeling energy. I sensed I was supposed to stop breathing but was unable to. I was pretty spooked by the whole thing. Now I have very point, counterpoint circular thinking. I have regular conversations with people’s brake lights.

But my meditation is lacking as I become more stuck in a negative emotional minded thinking pattern. I still sense I should be immersed in the white light but am paranoid at times and unable to reach an end to the debate. I haven't really spoken too much to anyone about any of this so it feels good just to vent it. I guess it all seems pretty crazy but it’s not really crazy at all because what is anything anyways? Probably just my mind trying to grasp to anything it can. Just figured I’d see if you had any feedback on all this, thank you very much for your time,
                               Bill

 Hi Bill,

Thank you for taking the time to write about your meditation practice and ask questions. Now here’s a distinction that’s important to understand. If I take a wonderful trip to Hawaii in the end I will come back to my home in California. Of course I will hope to visit Hawaii again.  However if It was a bad trip, I will hope not to have to repeat it again. This is exactly the way subtle and energy experiences, like your chakras being soldered in place, work too. For instance, you had a white light experience and you enjoyed that experience; now you want to repeat it. You wonder, “What can I do to repeat this experience,” and that becomes the focus of your meditation practice. That’s why there are many meditation techniques that involve focusing on the chakras.
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Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory.

See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:
Amazon.com

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But on the other hand my web site www.light-up-your-life.com, my blog, and my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive, are about self knowledge and that is different. As our experiences come and go there is something that remains constant. Although we can’t see this thing, we have a sense that it is there.  Moreover the sense of joy that we experience on our vacation does not actually come from the vacation or the white light experience, it comes from us. We project the happiness that is innately ours onto our experiences. Then, when we feel misery, we long to repeat those experiences.

The sense of reality and bliss come from us, not from the experience
Even as we go through the roller coaster ride that we call life, our happiness still comes from us and not the things that we experience, physical or subtle. Meditation on your own self-nature is returning the sense of happiness and reality to the place where it comes from anyway. They come from the place where you actually experience them. So while you are not trying to repeat a certain experience, you are trying to find the source of the happiness associated with that experience. This source is so deep that it doesn’t disappear even when you have a bad experience. In fact this state of happiness or peace is the foundation of all our experiences. Self-Knowledge is shifting your identity out of the thoughts in your mind and abiding as your innate Awareness and Bliss.

The reason I bring up this distinction is that you have to determine what you want to accomplish in your meditation practice; do you want to repeat the wonderful subtle experiences that you enjoyed, or do you want to get to the source of wisdom and bliss? Your answer to this question will determine the meditation techniques that you should use. If you are not clear on the aim of your meditation practice, then you will use a hodgepodge of techniques that go nowhere. You will neither reclaim your subtle experiences nor will you discover your own self-nature.

Determine your aim and the path will become clear
Once you are clear on your aim you will find that your path will also become clear. If you choose self knowledge I can help you face and overcome the obstacle that you might encounter. This is not because I am a great teacher. It is simply that I know one little secret: that you are already on the right side of your obstacles. So I wish you the best in the first step of your practice, as you decide where you want to end up.

Your Insights into your Mind

Easter, A Celebratation of what's Inside

I thought I would start this blog in celebration of Easter with Jesus introducing himself as he really is. He is not pointing to something that you can comprehend with your mind. You know the truth of these words in a more direct way. You understand these words because this is a description of what you are. Notice that Jesus is describing himself in the third person. Now from the Nag Hammadi Library:

Matthew said to him, “Lord no one can find the truth except through you. Therefore teach us the truth.” The Savior said, “The one who is ... is ineffable. No sovereignty knew him, no authority, no subjection, nor did any creature, from the foundation of the world, except himself.

For he is immortal. He is eternal having no birth; for everyone who has birth will perish. He is unbegotten, having no beginning; for everyone who has a beginning has an end. No one rules over him, since he has no name; for whoever has a name is a creation of another. He is unnamable. He has no human form; for whoever has a human form is the creation of another. He has his own semblance-- not like the semblance that we have received or seen, but a strange semblance that surpasses all things and is better than the totalities.

It looks to every side and sees itself from itself. He is without end; he is incomprehensible. He is ever imperishable, and has no likeness. He is unchanging good. He is faultless. He is everlasting. He is blessed. He is unknowable, while he nonetheless knows himself. He is immeasurable. He is untraceable. He is perfect, having no defect. He is imperishably blessed. He is the “Father of the Universe.

From: Eugnostos the Blessed
Translated by Douglas M. Parrott
The Nag Hammadi Library In English
Copyright © 1977 by E. J. Brill Leiden The Netherlands

The Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in Nag Hammadi Egypt in 1945. The texts were rescued just before they were about to get burned up for firewood. They were obviously edited out of the New Testament but contain the highest wisdom.

Death and Birth into your own Nature
Now, in celebration of Easter it is time to talk about dying and being reborn. Not in the physical sense because if Easter was about what happened to a man who lived 2,000 years ago it wouldn’t have much relevance for us today.

But if dying and being reborn is a description of the potential for each and every human being then it is relevant to us even today. So what is the nature of the death that Jesus was talking about? This death was dying to limitation. That’s when he discovered the truth that was before the universe, behind the universe, and the remainder when the universe perishes. As Jesus said: “He is without end; he is incomprehensible. He is ever imperishable, and has no likeness. He is unchanging good.”

Dying to limitation
By the end of this article you will see how it is possible to die to limitation. And when you die to limitation, you are automatically born to eternal life. Now you will understand why Easter is a celebration. That’s because even now you are unlimited. It is only an assumption that you are limited by the things that you see. Death is destroying this assumption and returning to what you really are so beautifully described by Jesus above.

The reason we seem to be limited is that we overlook our essential nature and take our identity to be limited to the objects that we see. That’s because all of our senses are directed outward towards the world; there is no sense that can look back and see our real nature.

You are the light that shines on limitation
So we have to know our self in a different way. This is by direct experiential knowledge. You know yourself because you are your self. In fact it is because you are Consciousness that you even know about limitation.

If I told you to go outside with a flashlight and look for the sun you would think that I was crazy. That’s because the sun is light. You do not need a separate light to see the sun. In the same way you are Consciousness; you do not need a separate consciousness or mind to know yourself. You can know yourself directly.

But you see your body and you see your mind, you see your roles in the world, and you take these objects to be yourself. But by their nature bodies are limited by birth and death, and health and sickness. Your mind is also limited by its condition and its ability to know. But fortunately these objects are just that, objects in your Awareness. They are not you and they do not define you.

Are you just a thought?
The most subtle object that you see is the thought “I”. Just because you think a thought with “I” in the subject, doesn’t mean that the “I” is you. Here “I” is just another object that you see. This “I” is sometimes called the ego. The ego is also the little connection that attaches to limitation and make it seem as if it is really you. When your ego dies there is no place left for limitation to rest. As for you, you can rest in your true home. Is this the inner meaning of the crucifixion?

Returning to your home
When by your deepest and most direct experience, you die to the limitation that you thought was you, you wake to your real identity which is the space like Consciousness that was never born and will never pass away. Here you get to abide as the source of wisdom and joy.

Now you see why we celebrate Good Friday with joy and not with the sadness of a funeral dirge. It is a celebration dying to our assumed limitations and then Easter celebrates waking up to our innate freedom where we can rest in peace eternally.

Other resources available to you
If you need a more basic understanding of this Self-Knowledge or if you just want support for your practice, go to www.light-up-your-life.com and read down the main column. Also check out the different links that we provide as resources that can help sharpen the focus of your meditation practice.

Another resource that we have is the book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive , a step by step guide taking you from your everyday experience to the highest wisdom and truth. To find out more, click on the link below: http://www.light-up-your-life.com/wisdom.html. 

Asking Question
Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants to can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman
www.light-up-your-life.com

Where does our value come from?

We know that the value of a human being is immense. In the deepest reassesses of out heart we know where our value comes from too, but we can’t quite put our finger on it. Does our value come from our physical strength or from what we do? Can our value be measured by our wealth or by our IQ? Or perhaps it comes from the right combination of all these things?

Today in words and pictures we will take a journey into the thing that makes us so valuable by turning the tables and exploring where our value doesn’t lie. I am hoping that with these pictures you will see that the value of a human being lies beyond what measurements and words can define.

Does our value come from our strength? Our physical strength waxes and wanes. And when we get older as our hair turns grey and the belt turns grey, our strength and agility start to diminish. But what about our value; does that diminish?

 Besides if our value was merely based on physical strength, then this animal would be two tons more valuable that a human being.

And this would be the most valuable animal to ever have lived.

Albert Einstein and A theory of Everything

Einstein was looking for the general theory of relativity, a theory that includes everything in the universe both large and small. His general theory said that the laws of physics should be the same for any observer no matter what velocity and direction he or she is going in. In order to accomplish this he devised a theory where space and time would bend. So even if it seemed that an observer was not going in a straight line, relative to the space time continuum the observer was going straight.

Although he got his theory to work for large objects, it never quite worked for the smallest objects in the universe, including electrons, quarks, and neutrons. To Einstein these objects seemed to move in a random way that he could not accept.  And thus his famous statement, God does not play dice with the universe. Einstein died before he could devise a theory of everything that worked for both large and small objects.

So what is the nature of the observer?
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Give the gift of enlightenment to yourself and to others when you get Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory.

For more information go to: Amazon.com

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But the one thing that Einstein forgot to investigate was the nature of the observer herself. If he would have looked in this direction, he would have discovered some amazing things that would be right in line with his beliefs. When you look carefully, you can see that the thing that Einstein took to be the observer was just another moving object and not the observer at all.

But in order to clearly see what I am referring to you have to separate the observer from all the objects that he or she sees. This type of experimenting is called inner experimenting, and that means discovering what you really are. Since at first this may not be obvious, it is easy to mistake the observer for an object that is in motion, and that's how Einstein saw it.

The Temple is not the God Inside

This week I have an interview with Bernie Siegel on “Healthy Life Radio” . I am looking forward to this interview as Bernie is a doctor who has a strong practice in alternative medicine. I recommend that people take care of their bodies and treat them like a temple. That’s because life is very precious, especially when you learn that the purpose of life is to know yourself, which means to explore the thing that you actually experience, “The Kingdom of Heaven” within you.

But here is the one warning that I have for you: don’t mistake the temple for the God inside. That would be like attempting to cross a river on the back of a crocodile, thinking that it was a log. How far would you get? Although the physical body is a miracle, it does have its limitations and you have to recognize them and respect them. 

Can you be free of old age disease and death? _____________________________________________________________________________________

Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory.

See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:
Amazon.com

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Remember the Buddha started his meditation practice after he witnessed old age, disease and death. With all of its advances, modern medicine still can’t cure every disease. Even in our advanced age people die when they are young. There is no guarantee as to how long your life will last. Now you may wonder how meditation can cure old age disease and death. On the path of self knowledge meditation is the exploration of your identity; who am I anyway.

Of course the body will continue to go through its stuff. It will get older; at times it will get sick; and in the end it will die. Although we see that the body changes, somewhere inside we feel that we don’t change. You might sense this as presence that does not change with the body. Or you may notice that your sense of reality remains the same, even as the world around you changes. To find the great mystery that life holds for you, find the thing that doesn’t change. Yes did you know that the very fact that you are aware of change means that you stand beyond its reach? As you meditate on the nature of your identity, you will find that you are the one aware of the changes that the body goes through, not the one caught in them.

Can there really be a thing that is free from change?
But here’s the problem: you can’t see the thing that doesn’t change; you can’t touch it or hold it with a thought in your mind. So am I talking about a myth? How can you find anything that you can’t see, hear, taste, touch or even hold with a thought? The answer is that this is the one thing that almost everyone looks right past. It is their own self. As a consequence they take the one thing that was never born and will never die and mix it up with the limitations that they see. Meditation is the process of returning your identity to the place where it really stands anyway. Then, finding the depths of the ocean, you can rest in peace no matter how the waves crash above.

It is impossible to describe the feeling of freedom that you find in your own self nature. That’s because this is the one experience that goes beyond words and thoughts. But these words point to what we really are. So anyone who takes the time to look at life afresh, will discover this. Just remember that we cannot stand apart from our nature and look at it as if it were an object. This is knowing by being; you know yourself because you are yourself. Then, although the body continues to change, we remain in our steady center; a center that is free from the condition of the body, a center that was never born and will never die. Here we abide in the indescribable freedom that all of the ups and downs in life point to.

Feel free to ask questions
The revised edition of Making Your Wisdom Come Alive, a book that provides a step by step approach so that you can find your natural freedom, is hot off the press. It also gives you plenty of inspiration for your practice. Because we are doing a publicity campaign, there is a good possibility that I will have some radio and TV interviews. So look for them, and if you are allowed to, call in and ask questions. Remember, inner development is for the curious and this may be your opportunity to practice curiosity. 

Now I want you to experience your true identity in its full glory. So please feel free to continue asking questions. I’m always glad to hear your reactions and clarify my answers. Unlike the path of faith, on the path of Self-Knowledge it is curiosity that destroys limitation and allows you to abide in your natural freedom.If the comment section of this blog doesn't work, please send your questions and comments to michael@ananya.com. To find out where this all leads, go to, www.light-up-your-life.com. And finally, if you enjoy these blogs, please tell your friend

                        Best Wishes for Your Practice,

                        Michael Gluckman