911 and 77 (21)
The process of personal development, self-improvement or self-help is actually the whole point of being here on this earth as an individual and you can look at this from a purely down to earth, areligious, aspiritual sense or you can look at it, as I do, from the broader perspective of the Greater, spiritual, reality. It is useful either way.
A parallel obsevation is that of meditation. You can meditate, as I try to, with just the intention of quieting the mind and maybe a little more. But there again, you can meditate to tune-in to your greater, spiritual, self.
Either way is fine on it's own and either way need not encroach on the other way. You can fully adopt the non-spiritual, because you don't believe in it for example, with personal development and likewise with meditation.
But understanding the basics of life helps and the basics have a spiritual reality. If you don't like this idea and want to work from a non-spiritual approach then that works and is fine and all it really means is that your understanding is not as complete as it could be.
That sounds like boasting on my part but is not intended that way but simply to state the essentially basic.
My goal with this category is to share with you some of the things that I have learnt over the years and decades and I have learnt a lot. The good part is that I intend to present it in a simple way and leave you to make up your own mind about it all. But it may help you to understand 'where I am coming from' in all of this and so let me explain right now that as far as I am concerned the question of the Greater Reality is such that there is no question about it, it is very real, but, on the other hand, it is not something 'out there' but something 'in here', here and now, with each one of us. This is not something related in any way to what is called religion and I am tempted to even add that it may not be anything closely related to what is called spiritual.
Let me give you an example of what I am trying to convey here. A man died of a brain tumour and went into rigor mortis. While dead he had an NDE, except that he was dead and not just 'near', NDE means Near Death Experience if you didn't know. In that experience he discovered why he had the brain tumour - a result of his own thinking and more especially his own chosen thinking, his own choice of thinking, which, viewed humanity as a cancer upon the earth. In the NDE he learnt, he learned that he was wrong, and he learned the truth, and he changed his thinking and he came back to his body and recovered (very slowly, years) and the brain tumour disappeared.
Now, how do I explain that to those of you who don't want to accept the spiritual reality in a way that would be acceptable to you? Only in a very truncated form, which would be so reduced that it would not be accurate, so it is, that for a lot of what I want to share with you or teach you here may be of a similar nature in that you may prefer to reduce it to a physical totality, devoid of any extra dimension, so as to avoid dipping into a realm that you do not want to acknowledge, understandably in my view. Now I understand how you feel and think as far as not wanting to know about the spiritual reality goes, and, let me guess, it derives from your experience of what those who also claim to know about such things has had upon you, and generally speaking they are what are called 'the religious'.
So isn't that religion? Isn't it religion that does that to us, turns us off the idea of the spiritual reality? I couldn't agree with you more, I think they are mostly malignant systems that should be watched like an eagle watches and pounced upon like the police should pounce because much of what they do is downright evil. But they get away with it because people are a lot like sheep and dogs. This is the real problem. This is partly why thinking for yourself is so important. This is what I encourage, thinking for yourself, so I will try to explain in a down to earth way some things that, actually, will present a serious challenge to me to be able to do so, but I will try.
Having explained that so you understand where I am coming from, sometimes anyway, I should also add that, in fact, it is not necessary to believe in the spiritual reality in order to make excellent progress in this area of personal development because, and let's take the man with the brain tumour again, if he had simply taken up some kind of self improvement idea that would have taught him that negative thinking is destructive towards oneself and simply argued the case from a psychological and empirical point of view then it can work just as well! The man would rectify his negative thinking, (people are a cancer on the earth viewpoint) and the brain tumour would have disappeared.
Fortunately brain tumours are uncommon but the idea that I explained using that example IS ubiquitously commonplace. In fact nearly all of us are subject to exactly this same kind of cause-effect process. It used to be called sin and punishment but I don't think anyone benefits from being subjected to such a false teaching. But neither does it happen 'for no reason' which is another false teaching put out by another group of people. By reading my views you get to understand why both are totally wrong and why it is such a powerful understanding when you grasp the reality. In a way then, you could think of me as standing mid way between the priests who would torment you with guilt and fear with the sin and punishment teaching and in the opposite corner are many orthodox medical practitioners, doctors basically, who would answer you question "Why me?" with a "no reason - it's just random". Both are very wrong and both offer you nothing. I will offer you real knowledge instead. I am not and never have been a priest and the same goes for being a doctor but I can teach you something about each of what should really be their specialities (but isn't) and enlighten you so that you can take greater control of your own life, your own future, and thus empower yourself to greater things.
So the NDE and the spiritual reality are not essential but it helps to have a grasp and understanding of that broader picture of how things are in life. This way, for example, you will not make the common mistake of pursuing materialistic objectives for the sake of the comfort they bring in possessing them but instead grasp that discomfort is not necessarily a bad thing to experience - not as self punishment but as a motive to learn and change from one's own volition and intention.
So now you know the angle I am coming from in all of this. Stick with me and be amazed as I have been by some of the things I have learned.
By Paul E. Coughlin
SaneThinking.com
10 May 2007
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