Sunday Family Humour 14 - Humour 26th December Personal

Sunday Family Humour 26th December

Personal Advancement

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10 How do we get out of the hole?

The best way to get out of anything is to become aware of what it is that we are in. It could be termed a quandary. How can it be that most people we know are going flat out to make money, when we feel that there must be a more satisfying way of spending a lifetime?

The massive vibration of energy created by the corporate machine has taken over the minds of most people. The majority of thoughts and decisions which take place in the minds of the average human being in the twenty-first century are almost all based on information received from a profit making organisation.

We apply little or no consideration to the long-term effects that these profit-making actions have on the human being and the planet.

Therefore, we now provide an insight into a way out of the hole that could take effect immediately.

If we all stopped spending money except on essentials, the planets natural environment would right itself within a couple of years or so, and we would preserve the species.

There would be severe shocks all the way down the profit line, but there would also be tremendous benefits.

On a personal level, we would be removing stress. Instead of having to decide to buy A or B, we simplify life by deciding to buy nothing. One thing less to worry about and a little more money saved - life is improving already.

We have to get rid of the idea that we can purchase our happiness, and this change of attitude alone will start the acceleration on the Quickstep to Enlightenment route.

Now, we have made the decision to make some space in our lives, and we have the time, energy and finances to proceed along the track. Once we get used to the idea of essentials only, we will amaze ourselves by how little we can get by on, and how much simpler life becomes. We confirm that spiritual development is more important than the development of the bank account.

We can utilise our time to think about things which we have ignored, like learning to breathe properly, and to chew our food properly, bodily and mental hygiene, exercise and relaxation. We begin to learn the important things in our new life, and as we begin to adjust, we gain more energy, and our power of thought increases.

Here are a few Quickstep to Enlightenment clues of what we are aiming for. Do not knock it until you have tried it they say.

- Vegetarianism

- Reincarnation

- No alcohol

- Daily spiritual practice

- Daily exercise

- Daily search for the truth

- Daily reverence.

This sounds like a tall and maybe unnecessary order of things. The problem is that we do not have much time remaining, as the planet is being destroyed daily, and we have proven repeatedly that the above clues are of great assistance in development.

Both the planet and ourselves need all of the benefit we can get, and by spending at least a little time each day doing beneficial activities, we will be progressing. Gradually, systematically, we will adopt a lifestyle which does not revolve around the death of other life forms, and which strengthens ourselves for the journey ahead.

So already, just in a matter of a few minutes, we have discovered something that we are able to do which starts building the ladder that helps both the planet and ourselves out of the hole. Just learn to say no to that little luxury or comfort item which you were about to buy!

How To Feel Radically Alive… Without Risking Life and Limb

By Lissa Rankin MD

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

You feel it when you’re skiing down that mountain at lightning speed while listening to your favorite song on your iPod.

You feel it when you’re walking through the park with the object of your affection and every flower and tree is splashed with Technicolor, imprinting every detail of every moment with millions of pixels of data you’ll replay for weeks.

You feel it when you travel to exotic locales, far outside of your safe comfort zone and far into the realm of the sublime and surreal.

You feel it when you’re brave enough to open your heart, even in the face of serial heartbreak.

You feel it when you risk everything and don’t die.

When You Don’t Feel It

You may not feel it when you’re schlepping off to that cubicle… again.

You may miss it when you’re home on your comfortable sofa with your comfortable people living your comfortable, safe life.

You may crave it when you’re doing it missionary style for your regular Friday night date with the person you’ve been with for twenty years.

You may wish for it when you’re at the pool with the children you love who keep you from skiing down the mountain, strolling in the park with your crush, and traveling to exotic destinations.

What Is IT?

So what is this feeling, this addictive, seductive, thrilling experience?

It’s a sense of being radically present and momentously alive.

It’s that feeling of being so connected to All That Is that you forget, for just a moment, the illusion of separateness that typically plagues you.

There’s nothing like it. Once you’ve felt it, you want to feel that way all the time.

This is why people jump out of airplanes. It’s why they get hooked on extreme sports. It’s why they have affairs. It’s why they travel the world.

So they can feel that way all the time.

You Can Go Overboard

If you’re not careful, you can take it too far. You can be constantly seeking the next rush. You can fail to appreciate the quiet moments. You can fall into depression when you’re not risking everything.

This quest for feeling alive can drive you to ski down a mountain too steep for your skill level, to betray someone you love in search of the next hit, to try Ecstasy.

In trying to feel alive, you could die.

So Where’s The Balance?

If too much radical aliveness can harm you and too little can leave you feeling blah, what’s the solution?

Here’s the kicker.

Radical presence is a choice you can choose any time.

To feel alive in the moment is easy when you’re risking life, limb, the state of your heart, or your comfort zone. If you haven’t practiced being in the everyday moment or radically noticing the mundane, getting out of your groove helps you remember what it feels like to be present.

But here’s a little secret to happiness I’ll clue you into.

When you cultivate the ability to feel radically alive, present, and connected anywhere, anytime, you triple your happiness. And that quadruples your health.

Radical Presence

Right now, for example, I am lying on my perfectly firm but still squishy Tempur-pedic mattress, and my Bichon Frisé pup Grendel is lying next to me. Grendel needs a haircut, so she’s bushy and fuzzy. My fingers get lost in her when I pet her, and she purrs like a kitten when I stroke the downy fuzz on her underbelly. (To read about how I lost my beloved Grendel not long after writing this post, click here.)

The window is open, and outside of it, it’s so unusually quiet today that I can hear the ocean waves. I can feel the breeze wafting in, kissing my ankles, which are a little chilly with no socks on.

I lit sage incense earlier and I can still smell it, mixed with the lavender oil I put on as perfume this morning. My milk oolong tea scent joins the party as I sip.

My heart feels full of the knowing that I am deeply loved and never separate.

It is an ordinary day and doesn’t leave me with that same rush I feel when I’m flying down the mountain on skis or falling in love. But all the same, it is extraordinary because I choose to let it be.

And then I forget… and I get lost in the past or start planning for the future, remembering or fantasizing, missing out on what is right here.

You Can Feel It Now

While it’s easier to tap into that feeling of radically alive presence when you’re out of your comfort zone, the reality is that you have the power to feel the same thing on your meditation pillow, on a hike through the woods, while tucking your children into bed at night, or while making love with the same person you’ve held in your arms for half your life.

You don’t have to seek that feeling of presence and connection anywhere outside yourself because it’s always yours to be had.

But go ahead. Ski. Stroll. Jump. Risk your heart. Fall in love. Leap.

It’ll wake you up and remind you of what you can choose to have every day, in every moment.

The Power Of Now

If you haven’t read Eckhardt Tolle’s masterpiece The Power Of Now, get thee to a bookstore. Or listen to this song my friend Dave Carroll (of United Breaks Guitars fame) wrote after being inspired by Tolle’s book.

Do You Feel Radically Alive?

Tell us what triggers these feelings in you?

Trying to be here now,

4 Easy Ways to Look After Your Mental Health This Festive Season

December 21st, 2021

By Nikki Harper

Staff Writer for Wake Up World

The holiday season is the most anticipated couple of weeks of the year, for many. It’s a time for joy, family togetherness, partying, gifting, fun and merriment. However, this period of the year can also be one of the most tricky if you’re struggling with your mental health.

For a start, this tends to be the most expensive part of the year. There are many beautiful ways to save money at Christmas and other holidays, including making handmade presents or gifting certificates promising a special treat in the future. Nevertheless, if you’re feeling the financial pinch then the relentless commercialism of the season can be a constant and highly stressful reminder of your lack of affluence.

On top of that, you’re probably the one who makes the holidays happen in your household. You’re the one who organizes everything, who decorates the home, wraps the gifts, probably does the cooking too – and you’re the one under pressure to make sure everything is “perfect” – because Christmas comes but once a year, as the saying goes. The stress of trying too hard can very easily become overwhelming.

At the other end of the scale, if you’re alone, have recently suffered a breakup, are recently bereaved, are estranged from your family or isolated for any other reason, the holiday period exacerbates the feeling of loneliness and sadness. It’s difficult to watch everyone else enjoying the picture perfect Christmas (hint: they’re really not) while you are lonely, or lost, or unhappy.

Whether you’re looking forward to the festivities or dreading them, here are four simple tips to help you shore up your mental health as the holiday season looms:

1 – Limit Your Spending

By the time you read this, much of the damage might have already been done – but there’s still time to call a halt to the manic holiday spending. January is the longest month of the year finance-wise, or at least it feels that way; it’s very disheartening if you’re trying to pay off Christmas in the first few months of a new year when you should be looking forwards, not backwards.

Spend only what you can afford to spend, and not a penny more. If you’ve already over-spent, forget last minute shopping. Stay away from the stores, and don’t look online either. If you haven’t already bought it, you don’t need it, and nor does the person you’re buying it for.

2 – Don’t Torture Yourself with Picture-Perfect Ideals

No family has the perfect holiday. Ignore the Christmas adverts and magazine spreads showing total perfection – it’s not real. Real family holidays are messy, imperfect, often punctuated by bad tempers and most definitely minus the top to bottom beautifully decorated house with matching groaning banqueting table.

Nobody cares whether your napkins match your wine glass charms. Nobody’s holiday will be ruined if there’s one less dessert on offer. Nobody will be scarred for life if they get fewer presents or if the gifts they do get are not lavishly wrapped and topped with designer bows. The world won’t end if at midnight on Christmas Eve you still have unchecked items on your to-do list.

Your family’s festivities might suffer, however, if you are totally burned out and unable to relax and enjoy this special time together. So do everyone a favour and let go of the idea of perfection. You just do you.

3 – Delegate

Unless you’re spending Christmas alone, you’re not the only person who will benefit from any festive efforts. So you shouldn’t have to take on all of this work alone. Ensure that your partner – and your kids, if they’re old enough – joins in with the effort. Play to people’s strengths. Get the arty one to do the decorating and wrapping. Get the brilliant cook to, well, cook. Get the family clown to entertain visitors. Get the extended family who don’t often see the kids to spend some quality time with them while you chill out.

4 – Get as Much – Or as Little – Company as You Want or Need

If you’re likely to be alone or nearly alone, and would prefer company, ask someone else who is also lonely to come to yours. Or see if you can volunteer at a shelter, or join a team checking up on isolated seniors during the festivities. There are plenty of organizations which would value your time and your company too.

Conversely, if you want to spend time on your own chilling out, that’s fine too – there is no rule that says having Christmas on your own can’t be fantastic!

If you’re in a house full of people but you crave some alone time, then create some. Make a deal that you will socialize on the day itself but that Boxing Day will be ‘me time’ for everyone, for example.

None of these suggestions are earth-shatteringly original, but they all illustrate a key point about looking after your mental health during the festive season: look at the situation differently to find solutions which work for you – and don’t be afraid to break a few unwritten rules into the bargain.

Your sanity, and probably the rest of your family, will thank you for it.

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Evaluating the Evidence for Reincarnation

December 23rd, 2021

By Steve Taylor, Ph.D.

Guest writer for Wake Up World

The idea of reincarnation never sat particularly well with me. I used to think it was too neat and simplistic, a variation of the Christian reward-or-punishment-based afterlife — the idea that good deeds will lead to a better reincarnation in the next life, whereas bad deeds might result in spending your next life as a frog or worm.

However, in recent years I’ve become aware of well-documented cases of young children who have reported very specific details of a past life, which were later verified by investigators.

Research in this area was pioneered by Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, who spent much of his career collecting and examining such cases. Typically, between the age of 2 and 4 (with a mean age of 35 months) such children start talking about their previous life, often speaking about the events that led up to their death, and sometimes using the present tense as if their previous life was still continuing. In some cases, Stevenson was able to identify the person the child claimed to be and to verify the information by speaking to relatives of the deceased (1).

Since Stevenson’s death, other researchers have followed his lead. Now around 2500 reports of children’s past-life memories have been studied (2). Research has shown that normally the children’s reported previous lives ended prematurely and unnaturally, often involving violence, suicide, or an accident. In almost three-quarters of cases, the “previous personality” (in the term coined by Stevenson) died relatively young. A quarter died before the age of 15. On average, the previous personalities died four-and-a-half years before the birth of the children with whom they were associated (3).

Modern researchers meticulously check the accuracy of children’s accounts, analyzing any possibility that they gained information through more mundane ways or were fantasizing, or that their parents may be embellishing their stories. Often, researchers give the children recognition tests—for example, showing them a set of photos and asking them to pick the one which relates to their previous personality. They might be shown pictures of houses and asked to pick the one their previous personality lived in. They might be shown pictures of women and asked to pick which was their previous personality’s wife (4).

The most well-known contemporary researcher in this field is Jim Tucker, professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral science at the University of Virginia. I’ll describe one of the remarkable cases Tucker has investigated here.

The Case of Ryan Hammons

Around the age of 4, Ryan Hammons told his mother Cyndi, “I think I used to be somebody else.” Whenever they saw the Hollywood sign on TV, Ryan would get excited, saying that was his home and he wanted to return there. He said that he had been an agent in Hollywood and that the agency had changed people’s names. He talked about dancing on Broadway and living in a house with a large swimming pool. Sometimes when songs came on the radio, he would stand up and start tap dancing. He talked about going to fancy parties with a “cowboy man” who had a horse that performed tricks and also did cigarette commercials. At school, when asked to draw pictures of his home, he would always draw four people—himself, his parents, and “the old me” (5).

Cyndi began to write down everything that Ryan told her about his past life. She borrowed books about Hollywood from the local library, hoping they would help Ryan process his memories. In one book, they found a still from an old movie called Night After Night. Ryan became very animated and shouted, “Mummy, that’s George—we did a picture together!” Then he pointed to a man to the side of the photo and said, “And that’s me.” Ryan had always said that he didn’t know the name of his previous personality, and at first Cyndi was unable to identify the man he pointed at. However, she found out that the other man was an actor named George Raft.

When Ryan was 5, his mother made contact with Jim Tucker, who agreed to investigate his claims. A film archivist (employed by a TV production company who made a documentary about Ryan) identified the man Ryan said was “me” as Marty Martyn, a dancer, actor, and agent who died in 1964. When Tucker visited Ryan and his parents, Ryan was asked to pick out photos of people and places that related to Marty Martyn, which he did successfully.

Most of Ryan’s statements about his previous life had been recorded by his mother before Tucker got involved, and before Marty Martyn was identified. Some statements had already been verified by his mother. For example, she had confirmed that the cowboy friend he often spoke about was a man called Wild Bill Elliot. With Tucker’s help, other statements were verified from sources such as public records at national archives, newspapers, obituaries, travel documents, and census reports. (Since Martyn was an obscure figure, there was no information about him on the internet, at least at that time.) Martyn’s daughter was contacted and verified other statements.

In total, 55 of Ryan’s statements about his previous life were verified. For example, it was confirmed that Marty Martyn was once a tap dancer, that he ran a talent agency that changed people’s names, that he had several wives, that his favorite restaurant was in Chinatown, that he spent a lot of time in Paris, that he had a large collection of sunglasses, that he bought his daughter a dog when she was 6, and so on. When Cyndi took him to the beautiful old building where the Marty Martyn Talent Agency had once been, he acted “as if he were truly returning home after a long journey…His whole face lit up with joy” (6).

Now a teenager, Ryan no longer has memories of his previous personality, but still seems to carry some behavioral traits from his last life. For example, he loves to watch old movies and listen to big band music from the ’40s and ’50s. (For further information, see this video about Ryan Hammons.)

Other Explanations?

Are there any alternative ways of explaining this case, and many other similar ones? Young children have vivid imaginations, so perhaps they are simply fantasizing. However, there are hundreds of cases in which the details of the children’s stories have been verified, which wouldn’t be the case if they were just making up random stories of a previous life.

Another skeptical explanation might be that the children have overheard their parents talking about certain people and have constructed stories based on the information. However, in the vast majority of cases, the previous personality was someone completely unknown to the family who lived far away from them.

More mundanely, is it possible that parents simply feed information to their children? Perhaps parents pick a deceased person, find out about their life through the internet, and coach their children to pretend to be the person? However, in many cases (such as Ryan’s) there are documents showing many specific details before the children are linked to their previous personalities. In addition, since children start speaking about their previous personalities at a very young age—in most cases before they are three—it seems highly unlikely that they would be able to process and retain detailed information and be able to relay the information accurately to investigators.

In any case, a large number of cases date from the pre-internet era, when detailed information about deceased people was hard to obtain. And even most post-internet cases relate to obscure ordinary people, whose lives are not recorded in great detail. In many cases, it is difficult to find any information about them online at all, and researchers are obliged to search through specific databases or population records.

All in all, this evidence makes me feel that I have no choice but to accept that reincarnation is real. As a scientist, I feel obliged to revise my views in the face of evidence. In Shakespeare’s famous play, Hamlet describes death as “the Undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns.” But perhaps it is possible to return from death, and to even remember the previous journey we took there.

Keeping The Seven Chakras Healthy

By Wes Annac

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Chakras are literally the body’s etheric energy centers that bring through and interpret the creative energy of the higher realms, and we unknowingly use the energy that comes through them to create/sustain our reality and keep our bodies physically healthy.

Keeping our chakras healthy is as important as keeping our physical bodies healthy, and as our collective vibration continues to rise, more people will become aware of the chakras, and the necessity to treat them respectfully and maintain a strong, clear connection to the energy they bring through.

We can’t treat something correctly, however, if we don’t know it exists, and most of humanity still has a lot to learn about the spiritual nature of our existence, including our chakras. So here I’ll discuss each chakra and give a few accompanying paragraphs about what we can do to keep it healthy and flowing.

I’m sure most of you know about the seven chakras. We’re believed to have even more chakras beyond the basic seven that will activate as we continue to raise our vibration. We’ll start with the root chakra.

#1: The Root Chakra

For those of you who don’t know, the root chakra’s responsible for our basic creative and survival-based instincts. We rely more on our sacral chakra and our third eye/crown chakras for creativity, but the root plays a role in doing anything creative and especially anything that’s meant to help us survive.

Our instincts are stored in the root chakra, and we can call on it for assistance with any aspect of our lives that has to do with survival.

To keep the root chakra healthy, I think we should listen to our intuition. Even though we receive intuitive impressions primarily from the third eye and crown chakras, if we listen to our intuition, we’ll be led to make choices that help us survive and keep ourselves sustained in the best and healthiest ways possible.

The more we listen to our intuition, the stronger and healthier the root chakra will be, and after so long of following our inner intuitive guidance, we’ll find that our root is as strong and healthy as it’s meant to be.

We have to be willing to hear out our intuition instead of endlessly following the wants and desires of the ego, which usually run against the wisdom and guidance our intuition gives. With practice, patience and determination, our root will be strong, healthy and brimming with energy that’ll enhance our sustainability.

#2: The Sacral Chakra

The sacral chakra is our main center for creativity, sexuality and emotion, and there are plenty of things we can do to keep it healthy. There are also plenty of things we can do to keep it out of balance, and if we aren’t careful, we can damage it by way of our actions and our refusal to, again, listen to our intuition.

We’ll find that listening to the intuition is very important when it comes to keeping every chakra healthy, and this can especially be said for the sacral chakra. Something tells me it’s one of the more considerably sensitive chakras, so to keep it healthy and brimming, we’ll want to make choices that don’t bring it out of balance.

We don’t want to overstimulate ourselves in any area – creatively, emotionally, mentally, sexually, etc. We want to keep an even amount of energy flowing through this chakra at all times, and we don’t want to deplete or overflow it and cause it to fall out of balance.

I think balance is the most important thing to practice when it comes to keeping the sacral chakra healthy, and we’ll be very glad we made an effort to keep it healthy when we see how much it enhanced our creativity and the enthusiasm with which we embrace life and every situation we face.

Above all, keeping our thoughts, actions and emotions in alignment will keep our sacral chakra in alignment, and we’ll also want to routinely do something creative that gets the sacral chakra’s juices flowing if we want to keep it strong and healthy.

#3: The Navel (or Solar Plexus) Chakra

As its name suggests, this chakra’s located behind our bellybutton, and to keep it healthy, we’ll want to make sure we don’t overstimulate it by eating unhealthy foods. We’ll want to scrupulously monitor our eating habits and what we choose to put into our bodies.

Overeating will overstimulate the navel chakra and deplete its ability to bring through any real or pure energy, but eating the right amount of healthy and supportive foods will empower it to bring through a healthy and flowing amount of energy for us to use for a wealth of different purposes.

Even though it has specific uses, I think the navel chakra lends its energies to assisting the rest of our chakras with their primary functions.

It could send energy to the sacral chakra, for example, in an attempt to assist this chakra with any given creative pursuit we take up. It could also send its energy to the throat or third eye chakras to help them with any specific tasks they’re involved in, and generally, I think it acts as a balancer for the rest of the chakras.

It can’t balance anything if it’s out of alignment itself, however, so we’ll want to cautiously take care of it and remember to think about it the next time we sit down for a big and tasty yet unhealthy meal.

#4: The Heart Chakra

I think it’s pretty obvious what this chakra does for us. Like a lot of seekers have learned, it holds some of the purest love we can store within our physical and etheric bodies, and we can call on it for assistance when we’re having trouble finding the loving energy that helps us creatively, spiritually, emotionally and physically thrive.

It goes without saying that love is everything. It literally makes up everything in existence, and this is why we’ll want to have a healthy dose of it swimming through the heart chakra.

Personally, I notice that the love that comes through my heart chakra enhances my creativity exponentially, and I could have a lot of trouble writing or channeling, only to find that increasing the flow of love that comes through the heart practically fixes the problem.

To take care of this chakra, we’ll want to willingly and routinely express the inner love that’s helping us evolve, which, of course, comes directly through it. The rest of the chakras obviously bring this energy through as well (they wouldn’t be chakras if they didn’t), but I think this chakra brings the love through in a much purer and more potent way than the rest of them.

We’ll want to keep it in use as much and as often as we can if we want to continuously feel its energies, and if we ever feel depleted of the love we’ve come to share with the rest of humanity, we can call on our heart and the rest of our chakras to express it through us more purely.

Chakras need to be used to stay healthy, and this can especially be said for the heart. Of course, we bring energy through it whether or not we realize it, but the energy flows much more strongly and purely when we make a conscious, concerted effort to bring it through.

#5: The Throat Chakra

The throat chakra (along with the sacral) is partially responsible for our creativity, and it feeds our self-expression. We physically express ourselves by speaking through our throats, but there’s a deeper spiritual component to our expression that most people don’t realize.

The throat chakra’s primarily responsible for our ability and willingness to express ourselves, and it can be used to achieve truly amazing things. In order to keep it healthy, we’ll want to keep our physical throat as healthy as we can.

We don’t want to damage or mistreat our physical throat, because it could damage our throat chakra or, at the very least, make it difficult for this chakra to help us express ourselves.

We’ll obviously want to take care of our bodies in general if we want any of our chakras to be healthy, but for the throat especially, keeping our physical throat healthy is essential to making sure the creative and expressive energies flow through as healthily as they can.

#6: The Third Eye Chakra

This is arguably the most popular chakra with the consciousness community, and for some seekers, it’s the only chakra they really know anything about.

Along with the crown, the third eye helps us perceive spirit and the vibrations we can share with everyone around us in a realer and more direct way, and with meditation and other attunement methods, we can perceive a wealth of greater creative/spiritual energies and even find enlightenment.

It’d take a lot to find enlightenment, of course, and there are various stages of it that we have to traverse before we find it in a real and pure sense, but we can use the third eye to find it nevertheless.

In order to keep the third eye healthy, we’ll want to focus our energy on it whenever we meditate or do anything that’s intended to align us with spirit. We’ll want to routinely practice bringing our creative/spiritual energy through it, because it’ll go stale if it isn’t routinely used.

If we’re willing and motivated enough, we can bring through a wealth of greater spiritual energy daily that we direct through the third eye and use to help ourselves and the people around us find a higher vibration, and the more we practice bringing this universally pure energy through the third eye, the stronger it’ll become.

It also helps to use our meditations to attempt perceive the third eye, and if we mediate long enough, we can actually physically/ethereally perceive it and travel through it to what I call the ‘portal to the other side’.

We’re dipping further into occult territory here, and certain power structures have known about the third eye and the rest of the chakras for centuries.

They’ve attempted to suppress knowledge of it in order to keep humanity unaware of the sacred truths of our existence, but a growing number of seekers are becoming aware of it and using our awareness to strengthen our perceptions of it, keeping it strong and healthy as a result.

We’ll have to continuously practice bringing our sacred energy through it if we want to keep it healthy, and after so long of meditating on it, we’ll find that we’re easily able to travel through it and perceive the amazing wonders that await us on the other side of the veil.

This brings us to our final chakra.

#7: The Crown Chakra

The crown chakra is the center for our purest and most direct spiritual development – even purer than the third eye. The third eye plays a very important role in keeping our minds, bodies and spirits healthy, but the crown chakra helps us bring through a wealth of energy that’s even purer than what we bring through the rest of our chakras.

I think the crown and heart chakras have a lot in common, because they both bring through a wealth of energy that’s purer than the rest of the chakras can attain. This is mostly speculation on my part, of course, but something tells me that the energy that comes through both of these chakras is stronger and purer than the energy we receive through the rest of them.

To keep our crown chakra healthy, I think we should practice daily attunement to a higher state of consciousness in whatever way works best for us.

We can practice spirit communication, which’ll help us sharpen our perception of our crown and every other chakra; we can practice meditation, dancing and every form of spiritual attunement under the sun; or we can simply enjoy an enlightening spiritual conversation with a fellow seeker.

If we do this, we’ll bring a wealth of creative and expressional energy through the crown, which’ll travel down and express itself through the throat and heart.

We use all of our chakras to bring through energy or express ourselves, but certain activities and practices will strengthen certain chakras. Such is the case with the crown chakra, which thrives when we practice the spiritual attunement methods that help us find a higher vibration with a greater degree of ease.

Last Thoughts

Hopefully, the things I’ve offered here will help those of you who’ve wondered what you can do to keep your chakras as strong, healthy and flowing as possible.

We’ll want our chakras to be pure and healthy if we want to do anything significant or helpful here on earth, and if we’re willing to do things that balance them out and enable them to receive the energy that’s helping us evolve more purely, we’ll have little difficulty doing anything that requires this energy.

As long as we can keep every chakra aligned, everything will flow with grace and ease and our willingness to contribute to our ongoing conscious revolution will strengthen exponentially as a result.

About the author:

Wes Annac: I’m a twenty-something writer & blogger with an interest in spirituality, revolution, music and the transformative creative force known as love. I run Openhearted Rebel, a daily news blog dedicated to igniting a revolution of love by raising social and spiritual awareness.

I also have a personal blog, Wes Annac’s Personal Blog, in which I share writings related to spiritual philosophy, creativity, heart consciousness and revolution (among other topics).

I write from the heart and try to share informative and enlightening reading material with the rest of the conscious community. When I’m not writing or exploring nature, I’m usually making music.

The Power Of Silence

By Steve Taylor Ph.D

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Modern humans have lost touch with their inner ‘true self’. Silence and stillness are a means to recovering happiness and contentment. In the modern world silence has practically ceased to exist.

The human race has stamped its authority over the planet Earth not just by covering its surface with concrete and destroying its plant and animal life, but also by burying the natural sounds of the Earth beneath a cacophony of man-made noise. We live our lives against the background of this cacophony, with the jagged mechanical sounds of urban-industrial society continually assaulting our ears: the roar of trucks, aeroplanes and trains, the clanging and thudding of machinery, the noise of building and renovating, the chatter of radios and TVs in other people’s cars and houses, and pop music blaring from every conceivable place.

But nothing, of course, has done more to obliterate silence than the car. In the modern world it’s very difficult to go anywhere where there’s no possibility of being disturbed by the sound of passing cars, and the only chance that city or town dwellers get to experience something of the quietness which existed everywhere in the pre-car world is sometimes on Sundays, when the mad rushing to and fro of modern life slows down. This quietness seems so foreign now that it seems difficult to believe that a hundred years ago and before it was everywhere all the time. Back then this quietness would even have filled the busiest city centres, which would have probably had a noise level equivalent to that of a modern small village.

There’s also more noise than ever before inside our houses. It’s unusual to go into a house nowadays where there isn’t at least one television set chattering away somewhere, even if the residents aren’t actually watching it, and other forms of home entertainment compete against TV to produce the most noise: radios, CD players, computer and video games etc. In fact the only sound which is largely absent from people’s houses nowadays is the voices of their occupants actually talking to one another.

Living in the midst of all this noise is bound to have a bad effect on us. All man-made noise is fundamentally disturbing. We find the sound of birds singing or of wind rushing through trees pleasing, but mechanical noise always jars and grates. And since we live our lives against a background of mechanical noise it follows that there’s always an undercurrent of agitation inside us, produced by the noise. This noise is certainly one of the reasons why modern life is so stressful as well. In modern life our senses are bombarded with massive amounts of external stimuli. Our fields of vision are always crowded with different (and constantly shifting) things, and our ears are bombarded with a bewildering variety of sounds — all of which clamour for our attention. Our senses have to absorb and process all this material, which takes up a lot of energy, and means that we’re liable to become drained of energy or ‘run down’ easily.

We can get out of this state by removing ourselves from all external stimuli and letting our energy-batteries naturally recharge themselves i.e., by relaxing. But there’s so much external stimuli around in the modern world and people are so unaccustomed to the absence of it that we may never be able relax properly, which could mean living in a permanently ‘run down’ state.

This lack of quietness has also meant is that people are no longer used to silence, and have even, as a result, become afraid of it. Along with inactivity, silence has become something which most people are determined to avoid at all costs, and which, when they are confronted with it, unnerves them. People have become so used to the frantic pace and the ceaseless activity of modern life that they feel uneasy when they’re left at a loose end with nothing to occupy their attention even for a few moments, and they feel equally uneasy when the noise they live their lives against the background of subsides. Why else is it that they need to have their radios and televisions chattering away in the background even when they’re not paying attention to them?

In other words, in the modern world silence has become an enemy. And this is a terrible shame, because in reality silence is one of our greatest friends, and can if it’s allowed to reveal itself to us have a powerfully beneficial effect on us.

Inner Noise

It’s not just the noise outside us which causes us problems, though, but also the noise inside us.

In the same way that the natural quietness and stillness of the world around us is always covered over with man-made noise, the natural quietness of our minds is constantly disturbed by the chattering of our ego-selves. This chattering fills our minds from the moment we wake up in the morning till the moment we go to sleep at night an endless stream of daydreams, memories, deliberations, worries, plans etc. which we have no control over and which even continues (in the form of dreams) when we fall asleep. This ‘inner noise’ has as many bad effects as the mechanical noise outside us. It actually creates problems in our lives, when we mull over tiny inconveniences or uncertainties which seem to become important just because we’re giving so much attention to them, and when we imagine all kinds of possible scenarios about future events instead of just taking them as they come. It means that we don’t live in the present, because we’re always either planning for and anticipating the future or remembering the past, “wandering about in times that do not belong to us and never thinking of the one that does” as Blaise Pascal wrote. And this constant inner chattering also means that we can never give our full attention to our surroundings and to the activities of our lives. Our attention is always partly taken up by the thoughts in our minds, so that wherever we are and whatever we’re doing we’re never completely there.

It’s probably possible to say that there’s also more of this ‘inner noise’ inside human beings than there’s ever been before. The hectic pace and the constant activity of our lives, the massive amount of external stimuli we’re bombarded with, and the barrage of information which the mass media sends our way, have made our minds more restless and active. We’ve got to juggle dozens of different problems and concerns in our minds just to get by from day to day, and every new thing we see or every new piece of information which is sent our way is potentially the beginning of a whole new train of thought to occupy our minds.

The True Self

Ultimately, the most serious consequence of both this inner chattering and the noise and activity of the modern world is that they separate us from our true selves.

Our ‘true self’ might be called the ground, or the essence, of our beings. It’s the pure consciousness inside us, the consciousness-in-itself which remains when we’re not actually conscious of anything. It’s what remains when our the activity of our senses and the activity of our minds cease. The sense-impressions we absorb from the world and the thoughts which run through our minds are like the images on a cinema screen, but our ‘true self’ is the cinema screen itself, which is still there even when there aren’t any images being projected on to it.

Experiencing this ‘consciousness-in-itself’ can have a massively therapeutic effect. It brings a sense of being firmly rooted in ourselves, of being truly who we are. We also have a sense of being truly where we are, realising that before we were only half-present, and everything we see around us seems intensely real and alive, as if our perceptions have become much more acute. But above all, we experience a profound sense of inner peace and natural happiness. As the Hindu and Buddhist traditions have always held, the nature of consciousness-in-itself (which means the consciousness inside us and the consciousness which pervades the whole universe) is bliss. Getting into contact with the pure consciousness inside us enables us, therefore, to experience this bliss. Indeed, it could be said that it’s only when we do this that we can experience true happiness. Usually what we think of as happiness is hedonistic or ego-based that is, based around pressing instinctive ‘pleasure buttons’ or around receiving attention and praise from others and increasing our self-esteem. But the kind of deep and rich happiness we experience when we’re in touch with the ground or essence of our beings is a natural, spiritual happiness, which doesn’t depend on anything external, and doesn’t vanish as soon as the thing which produced it is taken away. It’s a happiness which comes from experiencing the divine inside us and also the divine inside everything else, since the pure consciousness inside us is the same pure consciousness inside everything else, and the pure consciousness of the universe itself.

Making Contact with the True Self

Whether we’re in touch with this ‘true self’ or not depends on how much external stimuli our senses are taking in from the world around us, and on how much activity there is going on in our minds.

If there is a lot of noise, movement and activity taking place around us then we can’t help but give our attention to it; and in the same way, when there is a lot of ‘inner noise’ taking place we have to give our attention to that too. And when our attention is completely absorbed in this way either by external stimuli on their own, such as when we watch TV; by ‘inner noise’ on its own, such as when we daydream; or by both of them at the same time it’s impossible for us to be in contact with our ‘true self’ to any degree, in the same way that it’s impossible to see a cinema screen in itself when it’s full of dancing images. Being in contact with our ‘true self’ is a state of attentionless-ness, when our minds are completely empty.

What we have to do if we want to get into contact with this part of ourselves is, therefore, to withdraw our attention from these things. And this is, of course, what we do when we meditate: first of all, we remove ourselves from external stimuli, by sitting in a quiet room and closing our eyes. And then there’s only ‘inner noise’ standing between us and consciousness-in-itself, which we try to quieten by concentrating on a mantra or on our breathing. If we manage to stop the inner noise (and therefore stop our attention being absorbed in it) pure consciousness immerses us and we become our true selves.

And this brings us back to the most serious problem caused by the massive amount of external stimuli (including noise) which our senses are bombarded with in the modern world, and by the intensified ‘inner noise’ which modern life generates. It’s not just a question of completely closing yourself off to external stimuli and shutting down ‘inner noise’, so that you can experience a state of total immersion in pure consciousness. It’s possible to have a foot in both camps, so to speak; to live a normal life in the world, being exposed to external stimuli and experiencing inner noise, and at the same time still be rooted in your real self. That is, it’s possible to be partially immersed in consciousness-in-itself, and for your attention to be partially absorbed by external stimuli and inner talk. But this can only happen when there is just a moderate degree of both of the latter.

It would probably have been quite easy for our ancestors to live in this way, because they weren’t exposed to a great deal of external stimuli and because their lives were relatively slow-paced and stress-free, which would have meant that their attention needn’t have been completely absorbed by external stimuli and inner talk. Perhaps this even partly explains why native peoples seem to possess a natural contentment which modern city dwellers have lost because their more sedate lives mean that they’re able to be in touch with the ground of their being as they go about their lives, and that they can therefore continually experience something of the bliss of which is the nature of consciousness-in-itself.

For us, however, this has become very difficult. There’s always so much noise and activity both inside and outside us that our attention is always completely absorbed, so that we can’t be in contact with our real selves. We spend all our time living outside ourselves, lost in the external world of activity and stimuli or in the inner world of our own thoughts. We’re like a person who plans to go away for a few days but finds so much to occupy them in the place they go to that they never go home again, and never again experience the peace and contentment which lie there. This is certainly one of the reasons why so many people nowadays seem to live in a state of dissatisfaction — because they’ve lost touch with the natural happiness inside them. That natural happiness has been buried underneath a storm of external stimuli and what Meister Eckhart called ‘the storm of inward thought’.

As a result of this it’s essential for us, in the modern world, to go out of our way to cultivate silence ourselves. Circumstances may oblige us to live in cities, and our jobs may be stressful and demanding, but we’re still free to remove ourselves from external stimuli and to try to quieten our minds by meditating, going out into the countryside, or just by sitting quietly in our rooms. We don’t have to fill our free time with attention-absorbing distractions like TV and computer games, which take us even further away from ourselves. We should do the opposite: stop our attention being absorbed like this so that we can find ourselves again.

We need silence and stillness to become our true selves and to be truly happy. ‘Be still,’ said Jesus, ‘and know that I am God.’ But he might have added, ‘and know that you are God.’