Finding Time for Reading

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We truly understand what it feels like not to have had a break since the second grade!:) Btdt-- been there, did that!:) But please never forget that one can just "burn up" or "kill" time, or one can invest it. Reading a good spiritual book (and they are far fewer than most people assume) is this kind of beautiful selfinvestment; so, sometimes, we might have to "make" the time, as it does not simply fall "out of the sky into our laps," although we might often wish that it could, or would!:) If
you can devote only a couple of minutes to reading a paragraph or two a day, this would add up in time.:):)
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What is Spirituality?, by a franciscan taoist

Spirituality can assault us with an onslaught that seems like being washed away in Niagara Falls! There is simply so much of it! "Spiritual" writing seems to know no end, and it can be overwhelming! It can swamp and lose the mind.

So, let us try to be as simple as possible, following the "K.I.S.S." principle-- "keep it super-simple." Spirituality is not, in its core-definition, thousands of gurus, ministers, Scriptures, books, ideas, concepts, and explanations contained in thousands of libraries and bookstores. As you might suspect, it is simpler. (Many great mastersages emphasize simplicity.)

Spirituality is Love--the complex choreography of balancing Love for yourself with Love for others. The Christ mentioned this as the principle, "Love your neighbor as yourself." So, if we love our neighbor less than ourselves, we have introduced imbalance into the equation. But if we love our neighbors more than ourselves, we have also made a significant error.

The ancient mystics wrote," God is Love." So, they also solved the great mystery of "God," and made even this most complex universal Mystery simple. For if we exercise compassion, kindness, goodness, and other forms of Love-- if indeed, we worship Love as God-- we will make no significant karmic errors, and will be able to avoid all negative karmic repercussions.

For the Buddha taught that all karma arises from intention. Do we have to be "perfect" in order to create a future life completely free from all negative karma? No, we do not. The good news is that, if we act with good and pure intention, we can be karmafree. For we cannot control what will become of our words once they have gone forth into the world; but we can control our intentions. And, in a just and fair universe, we should be held responsible for only that which we can control.

So, begin right now: Do an act of Love for yourself or for another living creature. Work to make this a life-pattern, a positive habit, and you will never regret your wise decision.

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Psychomodification and Homeworld Education

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I must agree that the sweet and kind Susan [pseudonym] does not "deserve" her life as it appears to be right now. But we should never forget that a life-pattern for any life is designed by the immense intelligence/wisdom called the "unconscious Soulmind," so her tests and exams are not happening "at random."

A few souls incarnate on earth, from time to time, to accelerate vastly their spiritual growth. Many wise mysticsaints suffered, in their human manifestations (and dream) from incurable, often complex, challenges. These challenges were never easy or fun for them, or for the souls to whom they were so solidly bound in Love.

Trials of this nature can be quite trying. But, in the end, they can drive one to the very limits of human spirituality, and even beyond those apparent limitations, pushing one into the interior realms of the superhuman.

These things barely ever occur to "evil" people. So, they also drive all of us to seek their deeper, practical, and more realistic meanings and origins. Far, far too many childish minds simply dismiss the entire cosmos as "unjust," blind, or even evil. These shallow thinkers cut themselves off from God (Love), "eat of the tree of good and evil," and get whacked out of "paradise" (Eden means "pleasure.") All joy is sucked rom their heartminds, leaving them to die of spiritual thirst on a superheated desert. This dreamed "separation from Love" can never be real; but it is the very definition of the psychogenic state of "hell."

On the other hand, it can take some fancy footwork, as well as profound cognition (combined with acognitive therapy) for us to develop the hypersensual awareness of the meaning of Love in all this. The "easy way out," the lazy "cop out" is simply to deny that the cosmos has any meaning, and to die a horible, selfchosen, agonizing death in that spiritual desert.

Love is not "joking" with these earthlives. Before incarnation, at special classes in the Homeworld, we are prepped for the horrors and nightmares that earthlife might well bring us. In that preincarnational life, we are quite thoroughly grounded in the single fact that Love is in control of our life-designs, and never, never to forget this one fact, no matter how "terrible" our lives seem to become. This deep spiritual
education is also designed, precisely, by experts thousands of years old, to keep us from falling into hopeless panic. And blessed is she who can remember, and know.

You, like us, are being forced down the ghastly road to soulical memory, to recall your own powerful education, to call upon, and draw upon, every single interior resource to which your Soul has access.

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