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| | From:  Eerie7 (Original Message) | Sent: 10/17/2006 3:58 AM |
THE CELESTINE PROPHECY �?nbsp; INSIGHTS INTO THE MEANING OF LIFE ~James Redfield
The First Insight:
A CRITICAL MASS
A new spiritual awakening is occurring in human culture, an awakening brought about by a critical mass of individuals who experience their lives as a spiritual unfolding, a journey in which we are led forward by mysterious coincidences.
The First Insight is the insight of awakening, and focuses on the mysterious coincidences that occur in each of our lives. Of course, for centuries, we have been discounting such occurrences as pure chance and thus without meaning. But as we ponder the spiritual dimension of our existence, opening our minds, we begin to experience phenomena that cannot be dismissed and pushed away. Why, for instance, do we wake up one morning thinking of an old friend only to get a call from this very person later in the day? Why does a casual meeting with a certain person at a certain time often lead to great advance in our careers, our relationships, our awareness of inner talent?
The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung called this phenomenon synchronicity, the perception of meaningful life coincidences, and we cannot stop and ponder these occurrences without beginning to see direct evidence of a divine force involved in our lives. We are not here in this life merely by accident, playing out a meaningless drama. Our lives have purpose, a sense of destiny. We seem to be guided forward by a mysterious providence.
Such synchronicity is easy to see in retrospect, as we look back to the fateful twists of our pasts: the family experience that shaped us, the people who influenced our early interests and educational choices, the forks in the road that led us to where we are today. Much harder is to keep this awareness fully operative in the present. Whom will we meet today? What information might arrive that will shape our life direction?
We immediately want to understand more about the process and more about where these mysterious coincidences are taking us. We even ask: Are they real? Is our perception of synchronicity really important?
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| | | From: Eerie7 | Sent: 10/20/2006 9:02 PM |
THE CELESTINE PROPHECY �?nbsp; INSIGHTS INTO THE MEANING OF LIFE The Second Insight: THE LONGER NOW
Our new spiritual awakening represents the creation of a more complete worldview, which replaces a five-hundred year-old preoccupation with secular survival and comfort. While this preoccupation with technological advancement was an important step, our awakening to life's coincidences is opening us up to the real purpose of human life on this planet and the real nature of our universe.
The Second Insight occurs when we grasp the historical importance of our awakening. We now see that we have existed in a secular slumber for centuries and that the awareness of "Celestine moments" in our lives represents an awakening from what has been a preoccupation with material security and comfort.
The European Renaissance began when we lost faith in the ability of medieval churchmen to describe our spiritual reality. We created a mandate for science to investigate the world around us and to discover our spiritual nature. Until recently, scientists focused solely on discovering the forces thought to be governing our world.
But the loss of certainty brought on by the fall of the churchmen created a deep existential insecurity. What was the real purpose of human life? We eased our insecurity by preoccupying ourselves with another goal: physical progress. We decided to settle into this Earth of ours, improving our conditions in the physical world-at least until we learned our true spiritual situation.
During the Industrial Revolution, we saw major technological gains, reaffirming the mind-set of "progress." Our need for spiritual knowledge was almost lost. Preoccupying ourselves with secular concerns, we accepted the illusion that we lived in a rational and predictable universe, where chance occurrences had no meaning.
In the last decades of our century, led by science itself, this worldview, devoid of spiritual mystery, began to disintegrate. We grasp the Second Insight when we understand the historical momentum leading us to a new, more mysterious, more spiritual life view.
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| | | From: Eerie7 | Sent: 10/20/2006 9:02 PM |
The Third Insight: A MATTER OF ENERGY
We now experience that we live not in a material universe, but in a universe of dynamic energy. Everything extant is a field of sacred energy that we can sense and intuit. Moreover, we humans can project our energy by focusing our attention in the desired direction (where attention goes, energy flows), influencing other energy systems and increasing the pace of coincidences in our lives.
The work of Albert Einstein in the early twentieth century sounded the death knell for the old, secular worldview. Since the mid-eighteenth century, science had viewed our universe according to Isaac Newton's mechanistic theories. According to Newton, matter and the atoms of which it is composed were solid material, interacting according to immutable natural laws.
Newton held that we lived in a clockwork universe precisely held together. Every action in this universe was thought to be the result of a discernible physical cause, like billiard balls bouncing off each other in a predictable, orderly way. Galaxies, stars, planets, all remained in orderly motion through the force of gravity, a pull that kept heavenly bodies circling other larger bodies.
Newtonian ideas led to the illusion that the universe is devoid of mystery. Then, with a series of startling insights, Einstein turned our world upside down. He showed that matter isn't ultimately solid. It is in fact shaped and compressed energy. Einstein's other discoveries were equally transformative. Time is not constant, but relative to the mass or speed of a particular object. Other research in physics has discovered particles that appear in two places at the same time or disappear and reappear in places totally inaccessible under the laws of the Newtonian worldview.
Slowly, we are opening to the true mystery of this universe. We live in a universe of dynamic fields of energy, a dynamic universe that includes ourselves. We are intricate energy systems, fields transcending our physical bodies and reaching out to touch and influence other energy systems.
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| | | From: Eerie7 | Sent: 10/20/2006 9:03 PM |
THE CELESTINE PROPHECY �?nbsp; INSIGHTS INTO THE MEANING OF LIFE
The Fourth Insight:
THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER
So often humans cut themselves off from the greater source of our energy systems and so feel weak and insecure. To gain energy, we tend to manipulate or force others to give us attention and thus energy. When we successfully dominate others in this way, we feel more powerful, but they are left weakened and often fight back. Competition for scarce human energy is the cause of all conflict between people.
The great contribution of psychologists in our time - Carl Jung, Otto Rank, Norman 0. Brown, and Eric Berne - has been to show that humans tend to be motivated by deep insecurity. We feel alone and search for the security derived ftorn being validated by others. We want to feel that others approve of and even defer to our knowledge and position. We try to subtly force this validation by controlling the thoughts and opinions of those around us.
Looked at experientially, we recognize the feeling. Alone, we often feel anxious, our thoughts cloudy, sensing uncertainty about our worth or status. But when we're with someone who is paying attention, listening to what we have to say with deference, we feel empowered, buoyant. Thoughts seem to flow easily and we reach a sense of clarity about who we are. This is the feeling that entices and motivates us. From early childhood, we learn ways to interact, beguiling and forcing others to defer to our opinions.
All of us have also experienced another person seeking to understand our sense of who we are or what we know, in order to confuse us into deferring to that person. When we try to resist this sense of being invalidated or undermined, disagreements, often difficult to resolve, arise.
This negative interaction is common in human affairs, but we are beginning to understand this interaction in terms of energy dynamics. When we force someone else to defer to us, we actually suck energy from the energy field of the other person in order to produce an energy boost in ourselves. But we now know that we need not resort to stealing additional energy from others. We have at our disposal another source, a divine source of spiritual energy, for our ultimate security
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| | | From: Eerie7 | Sent: 10/20/2006 9:03 PM |
THE CELESTINE PROPHECY �?nbsp; INSIGHTS INTO THE MEANING OF LIFE The Fifth insight: THE MESSAGE OF THE MYSTICS Insecurity and violence end when we experience a connection with divine energy within, a connection described by mystics of all traditions. A sense of lightness buoyancy-and the constant sensation of love are measures of this connection. If these measures are present, the connection is real. If not, it is only pretended.
Every religion has had its share of mystical thinkers who have looked beyond the dogma of the religion to explore its inner experiential truth. These mystics have one common message: each of us has access to a connection with the energy of the Divine.
We must make a conscious choice to be open to this connection, a choice deeply conceived and wholly felt.
Mystics describe the nature of this connecting experience, giving us several precise measures by which to judge our own attempts. First, the mystics describe a sense of buoyancy, the feeling of being suddenly "light on one's feet." Some mystics reportedly even levitated during these ecstatic states.
Another measure is a sense of euphoria, joy, and peace-peace that is independent of one's own particular life situation but that liberates the soul from any attachments to outcomes. Thus freed, one acts and creates according to conscience.
Lastly, the sensation of love is the most often described attribute of a true inner connection with the Divine. This experience is not merely telling oneself that one is or should be "loving." It is an actual experience of a state of love. Perhaps this experience is misunderstood because we have been used to thinking that love needs an object. We love a spouse, a child, a parent, or even an activity. But the mystical sense of love is love without an object. It is love as a constant communion with God.
These measures tell us whether we are opening up to the energy available to us from within. Once this connection is experienced, it is unmistakable. We begin to gain strength and energy, not from the deference and attention coming from others, but from our own growing inner source that leads us in search of our spiritual mission.
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| | | From: Eerie7 | Sent: 10/20/2006 9:04 PM |
THE CELESTINE PROPHECY �?nbsp; INSIGHTS INTO THE MEANING OF LIFE The Sixth insight: CLEARING THE PAST The more we stay connected, the more we are actually aware of those times when we lose connection, usually when we are under stress. In these times, we can see our own particular way of stealing energy from others. Once our manipulations are brought to personal awareness, our connection becomes more constant and we can discover our own growth path in life and our spiritual mission-the personal way we can contribute to the world.
Once we find our own experience of an inner source of divine energy, we become acutely aware of those times when we lose this connection. Usually, we realize that this loss of connection occurs during times of stress when we feel particularly anxious and think we have to seize control of the interactions of our lives.
It is at these times and under these circumstances that we can detect the particular style in which we attempt to control others, one or more of what I have described as "control dramas." These styles of controlling fall along a spectrum from passive to aggressive. For instance, if we seek to control another by making that person feel guilty for not doing enough for us (gaining energy when he or she buys into this "guilt trip" and begins to attend to us), we can be described as a "poor-me."
If, on the other hand, we seek to control others in a slightly less passive way by remaining detached, secretive, and vague - hoping to entice someone into chasing us around in order to probe and figure us out, and thus gaining energy from that person's attention in that manner-then we are acting "aloof."
More aggressive behavior would be the attempt to control others by "finding fault" and making others feel self-conscious and monitored, a style designated as that of the "interrogator." Lastly, we come to the most aggressive control drama of all, "intimidator," who wins energy by frightening others into paying attention.
If we are to avoid falling into these control dramas, each of us must first identify our particular "drama," or in the case of multiple use, dramas, and become fully conscious of these manipulations every time we employ them. Why? Because any unconscious habit brought fully into awareness is released, and we can begin to lengthen those periods when we are in a state of connection, trust, and love-opening us up to our real purpose in life, our spiritual mission.
Once we bring our control drama into awareness and stay connected with our inner source of energy, we are free to look at ourselves and our lives in a more truthful way. First we can see how the dynamics in our early family reinforced our control drama and animated the power struggles with family members. Then we can move beyond these struggles to see the spiritual purpose behind our early family experience.
We must step back and ask: Why was I there? What life issues was I meant to be sensitized to? To explore this question, we must look at both our parents in terms of their lifestyles. What we might ask is: What did my father stand for? What were his strengths and accomplishments? What did he want from life that he never attained?
Similarly, we must look at our mother's life and ask the very same questions about her. What was her life about? What was she trying to establish in the world, regardless of how successfully?
Out of this analysis we can see a momentum into which we were born, two points of view that we wanted to integrate into our early lives. Looked at spiritually, we can see two approaches to life that were to some extent different, perhaps even contrary. Yet we were placed there precisely to resolve and synthesize their truths into a higher form.
This is the spiritual process through which one generation evolves the reality it inherits into another, more truthful form. Our whole lives are about finding the combined truth of our early family and then continually evolving this truth into higher and higher form until the telling of it becomes our mission. Once we understand this truth, we can see that all the experiences, the synchronicity, of our lives were a preparation for this mission. It becomes our way of uplifting the world.
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| | | From: Eerie7 | Sent: 10/20/2006 9:05 PM |
THE CELESTINE PROPHECY �?nbsp; INSIGHTS INTO THE MEANING OF LIFE The Seventh insight: ENGAGING THE FLOW Knowing our personal mission further enhances the flow of mysterious coincidences as we are guided toward our destinies. First we have a question; then dreams, daydreams, and intuitions lead us toward the answers, which usually are synchronistically provided by the wisdom of another human being.
Once we discover the "truth" we tell - our message about what is important in living life-the mysterious coincidence, the synchronicity, really increases in our lives. For some of us, the discovery of our mission will perhaps lead us to change our jobs.
Others will find that we are in exactly the right place to tell our truth. Still others might stay in an incompatible job but pursue their mission as an avocation. But on whatever stage we find ourselves, we will see that the synchronicity in our lives pertains to the pursuit of the mission.
We begin to see more clearly how the mysterious coincidences happen. It begins with an intuition, a hunch, a mental image of saying something to someone, of going somewhere initiating a project. Sometimes we don't quite see the full picture. But when we act on the hunch, when other events begin to take place that feel destined, we begin to see why we were intuitively guided to make the move. Each event brings other intuitions, and we are shown where to go to tell our truth, which groups need our message, and what form of communication to use.
Dreams are especially valuable when determining our path. Dreams always contain the characteristics of stories: plot, characters, action. No matter how strange the dream, we can analyze the plot. What are the characters saying? What emotions are being expressed? What are they seeking? From whom are they fleeing? Take the plot of the dream and superimpose it on the plot of your life. What are the similarities? Is there similar action happening in your life of which you may have been unaware? Is the action in the dream something you may want to try? Or is the dream telling you to avoid this action at all cost?
We must be ever alert for messages
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| | | From: Eerie7 | Sent: 11/6/2006 9:36 PM |
This is how Redfield describes the 11th insight. Then The Eleventh Insight, the one I believe is emerging into human culture in the present moment, is about how to use our highest energy and intention to bring about this world we intuit. For centuries, religious scriptures, poems, and philosophies have pointed to a latent power of mind within all of us that mysteriously helps to create the future. It has been called faith power, positive thinking, and NLP. I believe that for the first time we are taking this power seriously enough to bring a fuller knowledge of it into public awareness, and we are realizing that it is truly a faith/prayer power that can change the direction of our lives. Key Concepts �?Every assumption, unconscious or not, is a prayer that we send out that acts to make that assumption true. �?This includes any unconscious beliefs about our own health, abilities, and success --which means that if we hold an opinion that we have poor abilities or might not succeed or reach our dreams, then it is exactly like we are praying for that specific outcome. �?It also means that any critical thought about others is just like praying for whatever we are criticizing. �?Mastering this faith/prayer power first means becoming aware of all our assumptions and mindful of every single thought. �?To extend our prayer power we must increase our overall level of connection with the divine within and let this energy overflow outward with very specific visualizations. �?We engage the angelic realms when our prayer power is focused on a specific situation. It is my opinion that this change of understanding, this shift to believing in this power at a higher level, will move spiritual evolution at a quicker pace in this millennium. Not only will we increase our own mysterious synchronicity, and the speed with which our own dreams come true, but we will be able to intervene directly as we become aware of troubled situations. Prayer vigils will become much more effective.
The Eleventh Insight is the precise method through which we hold the Celestine vision. For centuries, religious scriptures, poems, and philosophies have pointed to a latent power of mind within all of us that mysteriously helps to affect what occurs in the future. It has been called faith power, positive thinking, the power of prayer. We are now taking this power seriously enough to bring a fuller knowledge of it into public awareness. We are finding that this prayer power is a field of intention and moves out from us and can be extended and strengthened, especially when we connect with others in a common vision. This is the power through which we hold the vision of a spiritual world and build the energy in ourselves and others to make this vision a reality.
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| | | From: Eerie7 | Sent: 1/17/2007 10:55 PM |
The Nine Insights 1 –We are discovering again that we live in a deeply mysterious world, full of sudden coincidences and synchronistic encounters that seem destined.
2 -As more of us awaken to this mystery, we will create a completely new worldview - redefining the universe as energetic and sacred.
3 -We will discover that everything around us, all matter, consists of and stems from a divine energy that we are beginning to see and understand.
4 -From this perspective, we can see that humans have always felt insecure and disconnected from this sacred source, and have tried to take energy by dominating each other. This struggle is responsible for all human conflict.
5 -The only solution is to cultivate a personal reconnection with the divine, a mystical transformation that fills us with unlimited energy and love, extends our perception of beauty, and lifts us into a Higher-Self Awareness.
6 -In this awareness, we can release our own pattern of controlling, and discover a specific truth, a mission, we are here to share that helps evolve humanity toward this new level of reality.
7 -In pursuit of this mission, we can discover an inner intuition that shows us where to go and what to do, and if we make only positive interpretations, brings a flow of coincidences that opens the doors for our mission to unfold. 8 -When enough of us enter this evolutionary flow, always giving energy to the higher-self of everyone we meet, we will build a new culture where our bodies evolve to ever higher levels of energy and perception.
9 -In this way, we participate in the long journey of evolution from the Big Bang to life's ultimate goal: to energize our bodies, generation by generation, until we walk into a heaven we can finally see.. ~Author Unknown~ |
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