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logos-of-experience-and-truth · 1 year

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Podcast Transcript - S2EP18 - Spiritual Contraction and Growth

Click link for Podcast Page As an American, just reading the word contraction in the title of this episode makes me twitch a bit. We don’t like contraction, we like expansion and growth and reaching new heights. But as I expressed in a previous episode through the comparison found in the study of expertise, without contraction, there is no growth, no matter how much one pushes and pushes. There’s both a push-up and a push down. There’s both the crunch forward and the crunch backward and if you’re only focusing on one side of the equation, then you’re only halfway there. The same applies with the general idea of the expansion of the mind as found in spiritual texts. So much emphasis on the expansion of the mind and the broadening of horizons when it comes to mental-spiritual ideas, yet hardly ever the emphasis placed on the contraction of those ideas to solidify into a focus, so that expertise can occur. Not that I had any concept of such things, I just happened to have read and studied a bit on the science behind expertise after my experiences in 2018 and saw the similarity to what I had done regarding spiritual and religious texts and ideas after my Dissolution Experience. I’m fairly certain I went through a little bit of book burning and it’s at this point when several of the books I used to have on my shelf suddenly vanished. And this is incredibly not like me to do. Someone gifted me an illustrated hardcover copy of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in the second or third grade and I still have it in perfect condition. Getting rid of books is not something I do, but I’m certain the reason I don’t remember the names of the works I had read at this time is because they were all tossed into the trash heap. I didn’t even want to sell them, didn’t want to donate them to a used bookstore or anything since I didn’t want to pass onto others those books and ideas that had led me to my stupidity in the idea of self-divinity and self-godhood. Having so thoroughly been thrashed by the love of God to experience what existence without Him was like, any and everything that I felt had led me down that road was quickly discarded. Thus, the expansion of the mind phase was over and the spiritual contraction, or Desert of the Soul, began. Now, I was obviously leaning towards the Catholic Church at this point already, whether I know it or not, but obviously since I was still dabbling in these various spiritual phenomena type things, much like as I said I experimented on the idea of self-divinity versus devotion to God and chose self-divinity for the briefest of moments, so too was I one foot in and one foot out of the Catholic Church at this point. But that was soon to change. A few months after this experience, I was now engaged and since we wanted to get married in the Catholic church, we started going to the rite of Christian initiation classes that prepares adults for receiving whatever sacrament they may lack, confirmation on her part, first communion and confirmation on my part. Even though I’d taken communion in the Episcopal Church, it’s not recognized by the Church, so I had to go to the Church as somewhat of a newbie. I’d at least been baptized Catholic as a child by my parents, so I didn’t have to do all of that. You need to have all the sacraments to get married, or scratch that, I think one person has to have all the sacraments and the other has to at least have been baptized if I remember correctly since the Church does recognize baptism from some if not all of the many fractured sects of Christianity. I’m not sure off the top of my head how they determine that, but I didn’t need to go through the entire course of becoming Catholic since I was essentially seen as a fallen away Catholic having been baptized Catholic as a child. Anyway, the Catholic church has this little thing called an engaged retreat they send soon to be married couples to get a crash course on marriage that shatters all illusions of happily ever after of the Disney sort and gives it to the couple real and straight up. That may sound harsh, and it’s meant to be, since marriage is a serious thing, and one should know to the depths of their understanding at the time what marriage is really all about along with why one is getting married in the first place. I may have spoken about some of this already so if I’m repeating myself, I do apologize. As long and as in depth as my memory goes, I sometimes can’t remember what I ate the previous day, so forgive me if I repeat myself. The marriage retreat happened to have been at a monastery run by the Carmelite order of monks, and if you’ve heard me say my patron saint is St. John of the Cross, now you know why and when it began. If you don’t know what a patron saint is, it’s a saint you choose at confirmation, that you either identify with or have received spiritual inspiration from or something to that degree. My reasoning was because of the spiritual butt-whipping I was receiving once I started reading St. John of the Cross’s works and how eerie his words were since it was like he’d peered into my future and had just been writing down every lesson I was going to need to know when I finally came across his works. The opening talk on the first night of this marriage retreat just welcoming everybody was probably the harshest opening and let’s get serious right away talk I’ve ever listened to in a conference-like setting. By the end of the night, three couples, each with crying members, had gotten up and left the retreat since the opening talk centered entirely around the reasons why not to get married and in particular, why not to get married in the Catholic Church. The one I distinctly remember that immediately caused a couple to get up and leave had to do with getting married in the Catholic Church because it’s the only way mom and dad would pay for the wedding. Not a good reason to get married in the Catholic Church. I think another of the reasons one couple left was because they wanted to get married in a beautiful church and were basically trying to fake being Catholic so they could get married in the building they wanted. Not a good reason to get married in the Catholic Church as well, and obviously both reasons are reasons that the Church has seen walk through her doors. Super-serious stuff though. Regardless of your religion or if non-religious, I highly recommend such a retreat, especially if you go to a serious one that deals with serious realities and questions and problems that will arise in marriage. It’s an easy and much cheaper way of determining if you’re ready to marry person X or person Y, rather than blowing a ton of money on a wedding only to divorce within the average three to five years later, with that average getting smaller year after year every time I come across such a news article. I think it’s mandatory now in the Catholic Church, but since some churches and dioceses don’t be following all protocols given out by the Vatican, if you are Catholic and preparing to get married and your church isn’t pushing for the marriage retreat, find and attend one yourself. Sadly, not every couple that stayed had every partner as interested in the retreat. I remember there was a breakout session where the ladies were kept in their chairs in the meeting hall while the men were chucked outside to work separately on questions within the little workbook they give you, and I remember I was already like two paragraphs in on answering the second page of questions and the guy next to me had his workbook under his chair and was just sitting there playing video games on his old Nokia cell phone, which was probably a silly little game on a terrible phone screen back in 2005. I wonder if that marriage lasted more than the aforementioned three to five years, even though married in the Catholic Church with its no-no on divorce? Anyways, the new spiritual experience that I experienced at this retreat was that of confession, or the sacrament of reconciliation. I remember I didn’t even know if I could do it since I hadn’t been fully confirmed yet, but they said it was required regardless of where I was at with all the RCIA stuff to complete the retreat. When I sat down with the priest-monk I remember I began with, “Hey I have no idea how to do this so you’re going to have to walk me through it,” since even though try as I might over those two days of remembering how to start the prayer from watching movies and such, I couldn’t remember the words when the time came. The only reasoning I have as to why I was sort of brain dead when it came to Catholic particulars was because of the infancy of knowledge regarding the differences of the Catholic Church to the entire umbrella Corp that is Protestantism, having blasted through the Bible and Dante so quickly that I didn’t extract the Catholic details at the time, and because even though I’d purchased and read and had re-read often these sayings of the Saints I’ve mentioned, I was more focused on how the book had been broken up thematically versus the voices that were being quoted without really a care as to who was saying it, or that all the quotes were from Catholic Saints and that it was a Catholic book hadn’t really registered in my mind. In fact, the only reason I bought it was because it had sections devoted to hell and the Devil, and like I said, after the near-death experience and Dante, I was very interested in knowing more about the Devil and hell and how to understand that part of the Christian religious experience because of the hellish imagery I had experienced. But I honestly didn’t care who was saying what since again, my modus operandi was to read any and everything I could find about the various subject matter I was exploring, not who was saying it. So, I had read various quotes on various topics from St. John of the Cross, but hadn’t actually read any of the works of St. John of the Cross. And my comments made to the monk/priest during this confession were quite hilarious, especially to him, and showed me just how off the mark I’d gone and just how much God once again needed to do and show me to get me back on the path that He was willing for me to follow kicking and screaming. Movies also always make confession to be an ultra-serious experience of penitence and chastisement, and though repentance is of course the goal, hearing the priest monk laugh at some of the stuff I was saying made the experience far more enjoyable and human than what I’d thought prior. I don’t remember the exact words of everything that I said but I sort of summarized all my drug use, porn and masturbation time, and told him of the near-death experience I’d had and what I’d seen, but even after the Dissolution Experience and after tossing out the New Age books I had, I was still sort of holding onto the idea of at least visiting these types of works at a later time and that they had so much more to offer me mystically and in teaching meditation than what the Catholic Church seemed to offer when it came to meditation in particular. Somewhere along the way of blasting through the Open Mind Open Heart book about Centering prayer, since I think I read it in like five minutes since it’s a short work, I completely missed and honestly don’t remember how much it got into discussing anything of St. John of the Cross and neither did the prayer group I went to for however many months I went, discuss too much of anything other than the methods of prayer found in that Centering prayer book. The priest sort of chuckled and his eyeballs did that rolling around to look at his surroundings before asking me, “Do you know where you’re at?” “A monastery,” I responded. “Do you know what order of monastery this is?” “Carmelite.” “Do you know anything about St. John of the Cross?” The name rang a bell from the book of sayings of the Saints I’ve mentioned, and I tried to save face. “I read some of his quotes, but I didn’t know he was Catholic or a Carmelite.” He chuckled again. “You’ve had some serious spiritual experiences, I can tell. When we’re done in here, I want you to go to the bookstore we have and buy the works of St. John of the Cross. You will find and learn all that you are seeking regarding the depths of Catholic meditation and contemplative prayer.” Feeling like a dumbshit, but at least now a guided dumbshit with something new to read, I did as he suggested and went to the bookstore. I found the collected works of St. John of the Cross, looked around, was intrigued by the rosary and what praying the rosary was all about since it seemed to be a Catholic way of entering into meditation even though the little paper that came with it had a megaton load of words and prayers printed on it, bought a rosary, a small book about the rosary, the collected works of St. John of the Cross, a ten-pound bag of oranges since the monastery had orange groves and was on my merry little way. As was my usual case with reading, I began blasting through the text as I was also practicing and trying to remember all the prayers of the Rosary so I could pray it without reading off the little paper. I remember flying through the poetry in the first part of the book, zipping through the first sections of the Ascent of Mt. Carmel and then was suddenly stopped in my tracks when he spoke about needing to relinquish any spiritual visions that one might’ve had or received for the danger of the vision having come from the devil, especially if one’s gift of discernment hadn’t been developed yet. I don’t think he directly said the word vision, it’s some other term in the work that I can’t quite recall, but the point was that while in spiritual infancy, and especially if one didn’t have a spiritual mentor or director which I clearly did not and have not had, one that was unable to discern the good visions from the bad ones, or the ones sent by God or the ones sent by the Devil, had to simply do away with all of them for if there was any merit or benefit from a vision from God, then the merit or benefit would occur with or without the awareness of the individual since as a vision or impression or, geez, what was the term he used? Man, I can’t remember. But that the benefit would come regardless if it came from God, but if from the Devil, one would have to actively focus on it for any temporal benefit to arise, and actively focusing on it would require a loss of focus on the devotion to God and thus would take away from actual devotion and thus would become a stumbling block. So better to do away with any and all such mental impressions that seemed to come from the supernatural until discernment had been developed. As stated earlier, when it comes to these types of ideas, as soon as they strike a chord within me, I tend to instantly work on taking that to the ultimate level of understanding and comprehension that I am capable of attaining to. All he was talking about was like the benefits of prayer or the spiritual enthusiasm that comes while walking the path, but I took it to mean any and all spiritual gifts, including everything other than the hope, faith and love that St. Paul speaks of, such as speaking in tongues, discernment of speaking in tongues, healing of hands, prophecy, etc, and basically everything I’d been dipping my toes in for four years. And most importantly, though I didn’t see my near-death mystical experience as having been something given by the Devil, in time I would come to see this experience as the basis for my faith and that I would eventually have to let go of even this in my mind as that foundation for my belief in God to truly find belief and faith in God. Sounds strange I’m sure because how can one forget something so monumental having occurred in their lives? It wasn’t that I forgot about it, it’s more like I stopped looking at that experience as the reason why I believed in God, or that I stopped seeing that experience as the basis for seeing myself as a spiritual individual or as a mystic. That I began to detach myself from that experience and began to attach myself to the Catholic faith as a whole and to the prayer of the Rosary in particular. It may seem like praying the rosary would’ve been easy-peasy for one that had meditated for hours on end or had religiously fasted for three days on no food, but praying that prayer was the complete opposite of what I’d come to understand as meditation, or the emptying of the mind, or in yogic terms, leashing or yoking the mind so it stops jumping around like the monkey-mind they like using to describe the thoughts of one untrained. It was annoying like nobody’s business to have to repeat the same pattern of prayers over and over again with the only difference being in the day and the mysteries of Christ that were highlighted during each decade interval. Super boring and it became a super-boring chore to have to remember the pattern and every time I lost track of where I was on the Hail Mary count if I was praying it without the rosary in hand—like while driving—I’d have to start again from the beginning since I didn’t want to do less that what was required, but more, especially if I had lost concentration as a type of self-punishment or mortification. As a way of breaking the monotony, I bought the prayer book used for the prayer of the hours. I thought at least having different things to read each day would help with the monotony of how prayer and meditation was going so far in this Catholic excursion, but that thing was even more boring and monotonous than the rosary. At least with the rosary I could hold the thing and there was something tactile to the habit of rolling one bead after the other as opposed to this hours prayer book and its antiphons and canticles that seemed to be the exact same thing day after day. That form of prayer only lasted on a daily basis for like a year or so before my mind couldn’t take it anymore since by that time, I’d tried mashing the two together and found myself sitting there saying both prayers as fast as humanly possible so that I could be done and over with it and the entire process was still taking thirty to forty minutes to do every morning and night. As a side note, I would find out later the prayer of the hours is primarily meant for those in the religious life, like priests, monks and nuns and that was why it was so boring to me since I was trying to do that and the rosary in the morning and at night while getting to work or exhausted from work. Read the full article

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logos-of-experience-and-truth · 1 year

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Episode 18 - Spiritual Contraction and Growth

Spiritual Contraction While Being Tested in the Desert of the Soul This episode speaks of the aftermath of the previous Dissolution Experience which was spiritual contraction. Every journey has a return. There is growth and decay. When one climbs a mountain, they have to climb back down. The same applies to the propaganda around expanding the mind (which is what I was doing endlessly prior to the Dissolution Experience.) One cannot expand the mind indefinitely and in all directions. There has to be a contraction or a focus for the expansion to take root. Expansion could be seen as the horizontal X axis and contraction could be seen as the vertical Y axis. Both are needed to truly understand and master something—anything—that one is pursuing. This applies to spiritual teachings, lessons, exercises as well. To constantly expand the mind and to never contract into a focus is to become an expert in nothing. But one has to choose to contract and focus on something and in this day and age, has become a challenge with so many different paths to take upon the journey of the ascending soul. Click Link for Transcript Timestamps: - Book burning after the Dissolution Experience (01:55) - This spiritual contraction is the phase I’ve called the Desert of the Soul (03:04) - Marriage in the Catholic Church (03:39) - Marriage retreat at a monastery (05:16) - Reasons why not to get married in a Catholic Church (06:17) - Sacrament of Reconciliation experienced during this retreat (08:21) - Realizing my exposure to the works of St. John of the Cross without realizing that he was a Catholic saint (09:41) - Purchasing the works of St. John of the Cross and a Rosary at a Carmelite monastery during my engaged marriage retreat which would be my study and practice over the next four years (11:53) - The reason to turn away from spiritual visions as taught by St. John of the Cross (12:33) - Finding true faith by ceasing to see the Near-Death Experience spoken of in episode one and two as the basis for my faith in God (14:29) - My initial reaction to praying the Rosary (15:47) - Difficulty in the Apostle’s Creed especially during Mass (17:25) - The only Hail Mary I knew at the time was Tupac’s (19:07) - Strange new reading habits forced into my mind while reading St. John of the Cross (20:00) - Reading was like taking Benadryl and would instantly put me to sleep (22:07) - Experiences of spiritual warfare (24:02) - It was during the reading and contemplation of St. John of the Cross that my book Lucifer Revealed was born (24:37) - Reading these works created the idea that I was being punished (26:16) - Finding that spiritual growth requires a testing phase when God hides His face which I’ve called the Desert of the Soul means one has actually gained progress along the path (26:54) - My timeline has me in the year 2008-2009 and something about these changes of reading and thought led to a sort of spiritual revival that didn’t last (29:32) - The spiritual revival didn’t last due to having entered into the Desert of the Soul where temptations occur (30:05) - I was too blind then to see the signs or didn’t want to see them back then (32:28) - When the pull towards writing began to wane (33:29) - After years of feeling like I hadn’t heard spiritual direction from within, I hear a small voice telling me to do the opposite of what I wanted to do (34:25) - What my book Lucifer Revealed lacked back in 2013 is the reason the inner guidance was telling me to shelve it versus what it is now: namely not knowing the form and image of the Vision itself (36:18) Leave a Tip and Support this Podcast!

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logos-of-experience-and-truth · 1 year

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Podcast Transcript - S2EP15 - Experiencing the Mystery

I will apologize ahead of time and state that I don’t know where to begin this episode. So many things occurred and continued to occur that though I have all my notes of each of these experiences none of them have dates, so my mind is searching for a timeline to follow. But since there isn’t one, I feel sort of scatterbrained and am mentally trying to group them into categories so that it’s easier for you to follow along while listening to this or reading it via the ebook. After reviewing some of the Eastern religions, I opened up to reading more contemporary writings about God and spiritual ideas and concepts, or New Age stuff, and this is when I began to learn more about synchronicity after reading some Carl Jung, probably while I was in my Philosophy of Religion class. To further drive home the infancy of knowledge between the history of Catholic and Protestant Christianity I had at this time, though I had bought a Catholic Bible, since I was living in West LA, not that far from where I had lived in Santa Monica ten years prior as a child, I wanted to go somewhere familiar for church services and I wound up going to the Episcopal church I used to go to down by the third street promenade. It was an excellent choice, and again, to further this blurring of what makes it difficult to discern the differences between the two, then for me, as I’m sure it does for others now, literally right when I started going to this church, a few of the members had started a Centering/Contemplative prayer group that’s based on the works of St. John of the Cross, a Catholic Saint, that some other modern day priest had formed into what is called the Centering prayer movement within these circles. Father Keating I think was his name, and the book I think was called Open Mind Open Heart. In one of those weird synchronous things, after I read why the Church disapproved of the interpretation of St. John of the Cross’s works found in Centering prayer and the works of this priest, the book sort of vanished from my library of books and I actually have no idea what happened to it. Anyways, it was here where after telling my tale of the near-death experience during the new member orientation when a lady I was talking to told me that God had been trying to get my attention and needed to drop a boulder on my head to do so. Having read the Bible now, I was also starting to form that internal knowledge that God puts those He loves to the test to refine them like gold in a fire, over and over again. Since then, I’ve sometimes seen this idea in the positive, sometimes I’ve seen this idea in the negative, and I’ve loved when I’ve read stories like St. Teresa of Avila recounting a time she was walking along a road talking to God and I think it was a cart that rode by and splashed her with mud, and she told God it’s because of stuff like this that you have so few friends. Or the Muslim way of expressing this conundrum: if God lays hands on you, how can you complain or fight it if God’s the one doing it? So, this is where I started learning to meditate, going to this Centering/Contemplative prayer group weekly that focused on the work of a Catholic priest, two Catholic priests in fact, though I think the priest author of that book Open Mind Open Heart was eventually excommunicated, and meeting this group at an Episcopal Church. Kind of funny when you think about the Catholic Protestant thing. My next strange and horrifying experience happened on one of these nights after leaving the prayer meeting group though, and it’s the primary reason I never ventured towards anything other than the more ancient forms of the Church. Not that I have anything really against Evangelical Christianity other their hostility towards anything not Evangelical Christianity, meaning their hostility towards me since I’m Catholic and that they somehow have convinced their members that the Catholic Church is some type of a cult, which would make it a pretty ancient and massive cult and the fount from which their Christianity emerged since the Catholic Church gathered, compiled, preserved and edited the very Bible they use. Not in King Jame’s time which is what unfortunately many Protestants seem to think, but in St. Jerome’s time around the year 400 AD. But anyways it was because of what happened on this night that I never bothered with anything other than Episcopal, which is essentially American Church of England alongside Anglican, or King Henry’s church, or the first real split from Catholic other than Eastern Orthodox, or. . .the Catholic Church. Just for context's sake, I’m now many moons removed from any and all drug use, so probably starting at this point, anything that I say that I saw no longer has any potentiality as having been the result of recent drug use. I’m not sure how long that stuff stays in your system. There’s that myth of the spinal tap of acid re-surging in a user up to a decade later since it stays in the spinal system fluid or something like that, but I never found myself frying balls within the decade after having taken acid so I’m pretty sure that’s just a myth. I was walking up the street from the church towards where I’d had to park my car. Anybody that lives in the West LA area knows what I’m talking about, but if you’ve never been, finding parking is hell on Earth in West LA. For instance, on my first day of school at Santa Monica College, even though I was stupid enough to buy the parking pass, since there was no parking anywhere to be found even with a stupid pass, I had to drive up and down the side streets trying to find parking. I got three parking tickets on that single day, running to my car to move it after each class and failing miserably at moving it before the meter maid had nabbed me. Over the next two weeks I was more successful and only got another two parking tickets. Hell on earth, just like driving the freeways there. . . Read the full article

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logos-of-experience-and-truth · 1 year

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Episode 15 - Experiencing the Mystery

Experiencing the Mystery of Mind, Body and Soul In this episode I provide five different experiences of the mystery of the ensouled spirit, each entirely removed from any possible drug use from the past that may have still been circulating within my mind and body. None of these experiences of the mystery are as grandiose as the near-death experience spoken of in the first and second episodes of this season, but each of them conveys the deepening or widening of the mental faculties in understanding that which is called spiritual or mystical and being observant of all that is occurring within and without. Topics range from the Christian and Protestant confusion, Native American sweat lodge, Masonic meditation lodge and trust walking in West LA. Join me in this episode as we dive deeper into the mystery. Timestamps: - Deeper intonations of the infancy of knowledge and confusion regarding Catholicism and Protestantism since Episcopal Church I went to had a Contemplative Prayer group that focused on the work of St. John of the Cross (01:39) - Learning that God puts believers to the test (03:00) - Story of two Christian demons descending upon me as I walk through the darkened streets of Santa Monica (03:54) - Things seen from this point are entirely from a drug free mind (04:56) - Understanding the near-death experience as some type of mystical experience begins to form in my mind around this time (06:18) - The next spiritual experience story about attending a Native American sweat lodge up in the Santa Monica mountains begins (07:52) - Description of the sweat lodge experience itself begins (09:51) - Out-of-body experience during the Native American sweat lodge (12:26) - The highest high upon exiting the Native American sweat lodge (13:50) - Third experience of the mystery begins, this one having to do with self-healing from acne (14:42) - Meditation helped to narrow down the root of the acne issue in my mind and allowed me to develop a new self-image (16:04) - The number of days it took for the acne to clear up in the self-healing (18:38) - Fourth spiritual experience story begins, and it has to do with secret societies and conspiracies (19:40) - Stumbling upon the local Masonic lodge on Venice Beach Blvd and returning to it for a guided meditation night (21:11) - Expansion of the mind and entering into the occult and New Age materials (22:19) - The Presence of the Lord as I’ve spoken of it and as it’s spoken of in the Bible as the way the mind symbolizes the crossing of threshold into the spiritual realm (23:13) - What turned me off and away from the Masonic Lodge (25:50) - Fifth experience and warning for the spiritually curious wanting to experience or test out synchronicity after something I tested out (27:37) Read the full article

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logos-of-experience-and-truth · 1 year

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Podcast Transcript - S2EP14 - The Conscious Spiritual Journey

If you’re catching the rhythm of this season of the podcast, it’s very sequential. I spent a great deal of time plotting out my database of spiritual journal writing and note taking in a sequential manner with these eventual podcast episodes in mind. I personally find great value in seeing the various steps along the path, the experiences that stimulated or blocked growth, along with the decisions made that furthered me along my spiritual journey. I hope that you find value in this as well, especially as we move along, and you start to see more of the cyclical nature of time alongside the linear method of seeing time that I’m plotting out for you. Many of the things I’m speaking about right now return in the future and were already mentioned in summary in Season 1. Many of the things I began to learn and assimilate into my mind at this early juncture, mature and return in full knowledge in the future. Many of the things I read but did not understand at this point, are revealed in full in the future. So just as I stated in Season 1, that I had a mini-revival ten years ago where the mysteries returned and were attempting to penetrate my mind further, though I was not ready for it at the time, they all returned again cyclically, in almost the same exact patterns and symbols seven to eight years later. The same applies to many of the things I saw and experienced from this early time period that I’ve called the Awakening Experience and the Expansion of the Mind. I obviously can’t run through absolutely every single experience I would now come across, but I will do my best to at least speak about the primary ones. And what I mean by primary ones, are the ones that cyclically returned in the future with greater force of understanding and revelation regarding the depth of the mysteries as they existed in the ancient world when I’ve spoken regarding classical mythology, but also the Christian world after classical mythology. I’ve already given a snippet of it in describing my near-death death experience and that for some reason I slept for three days afterwards and how strange and what does it mean and how does it match the time frame found in the mysteries of Jesus the Christ, but I will work through more of these other mysteries to delve into these philosophical and theological concepts further. But I will still speak about these things in a linear fashion. I’ve already plotted it out in a general timeline since I can’t remember the exact dates for some of them, so the way my mind has typically worked throughout my life is based on my geography. Though I wasn’t a military kid, I was moved around like a military kid, and the way my mind has framed experience A or experience B is based around the years I was living in apartment or house X, or apartment or house Y. So, each of the next several experiences that we’ll dive into all occurred after the near-death death experience end of March, beginning of April 2001, until I left West LA in the summer of 2002. If the near-death experience was the snowball that hit me over the head, what transpired over the next year to year and a half was the avalanche that followed. I was never a competitive kid or person. Or rather, I lost interest in competitive type activities that kids get into because it didn’t seem like my parents cared at all, and so I stopped caring about such things as well. But in the third grade I won a contest for the most books read. I mentioned somewhere that in the third grade I read the Odyssey front to back even though I didn’t understand everything I was reading, but the words entered through my eyes and into my sub and unconscious where they were stored, nonetheless. Once Mary Jane entered into my life in the eighth grade, I would say I lost this part of myself, along with love of learning music, which is weird since most musicians that do drugs gain the music through the drug use, where I stopped caring about and playing the piano when smoking weed entered into my life. But I also said that I’ve never considered myself an addict since I would periodically stop everything I may have been doing at will, instantly, to finish a paper or study for a test so I’d still from time to time go through spurts of reading. Summertime was when this would happen to the greatest magnitude since not having access to buying the drugs or hanging out with friends throughout the day that wanted to steal liquor or smoke weed, my mind would return to itself and this always led to heavy bouts of reading over the summertime for me, when hordes of other kids wanted nothing to do with sticking their noses into a book. If you haven’t noticed yet, even after thirteen episodes, I was and am weird like that. It’s also why I hated school so much. I never felt like myself while in school. It was only during the summertime when I was out of school that I felt like myself once more. Freed now from the influence of hard drugs, freed now from the influence of marijuana, freed now from the influence of alcohol even, my mind needed to find an outlet. And find an outlet it did in reading like a madman, once more. While we’re on the subject still, before moving forward, I said in a previous podcast that playing video games was the lesser of two evils, but that I’ve wondered if maybe it wasn’t considering how long it took to break that habit compared to breaking the bud smoking habit. This is when it took place. If you don’t understand transmutation, or don’t understand in a scientific sense, chaos versus order, or the principle of entropy, at least as it pertains to your own self, to your own being, and not just in an external universal sense, let me touch briefly on that here as it pertains to obsessions or addictions. . . Read the full article

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logos-of-experience-and-truth · 1 year

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Episode 14 - The Conscious Spiritual Journey

The Spiritual Journey Begins with an Open and Conscious Mind The royal art as it was called in the ancient world included many different areas of expertise ranging from astrology to memorization of prayers or incantations to the alchemical art of transforming one substance into another. The true transmutation occurs in the conscious mind versus the traditional lead into gold external idea and this episode focuses on this underlying and explicit concept and the actions taken that helped to formulate the new internal spiritual gold as I transitioned from the state of mind and being that I lived and existed in and through prior to the near-death mystical experience, and then by the process of mental transmutation transitioned into the mental state after having the experience that was one of being one in and through a spiritually minded lens and life. Timestamps: - Displaying the strange intermingling of linear and cyclical time through these podcasts and the similar themes that reoccur through the span of my spiritual experiences and lessons (01:24) - The reader in me from youth returns in full force with the mind now freed from the addictions of drugs and alcohol (04:07) - Esoteric principle of transmutation as it pertains to shifting out of an addiction of an unwanted habit, like smoking weed, into a desired one (05:56) - Using modern science and neurological ideas alongside transmutation of thought states (07:25) - The aftermath of the near-death experience and the need to study what the experience meant, in particular the study of God (11:27) - The purchase of the Bible and the incompetence of being Christian and yet not knowing the differences between Catholic and Protestant Christianity and the purchase itself signaling the path that would follow (12:22) - When and where the Gnosticism interest came into play while purchasing my Bible (17:04) - Synchronous event that helped push me towards the study of many religions and spiritual ideas versus a solely Christian one while not having the slightest idea of what Synchronicity actually was (19:24) - Laying the foundation in the mind by reading the Bible even if understanding it wasn’t fully there yet (24:26) - My earliest attempt at reading the Gnostic works and getting lost in the concept of Aeons (25:37) - How reading Dante opened up my mind to the memories of its own existence before being blinded by smoking weed (27:07) - My first conscious meditation triggered in one of Dante’s circles of Hell that brought about an examination of conscience that is compared to the hypothesis of what is potentially seen during a mystical experience (28:40) - An attempt at a theory of what is shown during a mystical experience (31:15) - College course that told me I had to dig deeper to understand the near-death experience since I couldn’t answer how it could point to God without the use of the drug that had been the catalyst for the experience (33:20) Read the full article

#CatholicChurchandtheMysteriesofChrist #ConsciousnessandtheLayersofMind #GnosticEsotericandHermetic #Neurology #ObsessionsandAddictions #ProtestantChristianity #ScienceversusReligion #Season2Podcast #SpiritualSigns #Synchronicity

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logos-of-experience-and-truth · 2 years

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Logos of Experience and Truth Podcast Transcript: Season 1) Episode 8

Transcript: Truth or Fiction

Welcome back to discussing the mysteries of the Logos of Experience in Truth. We’ve spent quite a bit of time dancing around the idea of truth itself over the past two episodes and though I don't want to get political on this episode, it’s certainly on my mind as it is with everybody else with today being the 6th of November 2020. I ended the last discussion hinting at further experiences regarding the spiritual rebirth, the baptism of the Holy Spirit in fire and the physical experiences that occur from this; that they are not just in the mind but are actually felt and experienced physically and how the experience of this leads one, and more specifically, has led me, to see an absolutely incredible beyond just faith and into actual reality truth regarding essentially everything in the Gospels about the life of our Lord Jesus, the Christ. Keep that in mind: physical experiences, not just mental visionary imagery, but physical. Now, yes, there's that obvious question. “Well, aren't you a Christian? Shouldn't you believe in this already?” Well, yes, Mr. or Miss non-Christian. But when does belief begin from non-belief? And when does belief become true faith; and when does true faith become factual reality? These are movements within. The change, again, the stages of moving towards believing in something so powerfully that it enters or becomes fact and reality. As a mystic, as one that has experienced the visionary sights I've spoken of, along with mentioning the spiritual rebirth that occurs physically within the body, exactly as Christ said: from within, I am astonished at the truth of the stigmata experience, since from my eyes, my viewpoint, the depth of belief that St. Francis of Assisi and Padre Pio to name a few had in seeing themselves as disciples of Christ, in the physical sense, is utterly beyond astonishing: the merging of belief into reality. As a contrast for instance, I'm not a feeder of the poor. I'm not a clothier of the naked. I'm not a physical, hands-on type of Catholic Christian. I don't act out my faith physically. I'm an entirely mental inquisitive examiner of words and ideas and concepts. The closest Gospel saying that resonates with me and what I seem to do and the works of faith I seem to follow, are found in Matthew 13:51-52. “Do you understand all these things?” They answered, yes. And he replied, “Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven, is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the Old and the New.” (Catholic World Press, 1997). Yet even here, like I said, I'm not an apologist or theologian. I'm not even a philosopher I would say, since I'm not pushing anything new forward into any of these realms, just seeing them deeply for what they are through the lens of one that has had mental, internal, spiritual, intellectual, mystical experience which is why I didn't have anything occur to me physically beyond the spiritual rebirth from within, which is no slouch by any stretch of the imagination since I can literally tell you how, literally, how a virgin, the Virgin Mary could have, did, become pregnant by the Holy Spirit. And yes, I will describe it in detail when I describe those peculiar physical sensations that course through the body that literally, not just a faith statement anymore, literally could impregnate a virgin, obviously if it's deemed by God, as was with the Virgin Mary if she had this same experience, which the Virgin Mary most certainly did. Or at least, that's the conclusion I've reached for there's no other explanation I can give after contemplating the physical experiences that occur, and this, from the point of view of a man experiencing this. And though yes, Jesus does mention the internal spiritual rebirth in the Gospel of John to Nicodemus, and even though yes, renewal of the self, the mind, the soul, was incredibly important to Jesus, he also spent a massive amount of time physically healing, physically being a physician to those around him, which is what St. Francis and all those saints that have received the stigmata emulated at an exponential rate. Now I'm an intensely mental person, so though I had the mystical unfoldment and the testing by God in all of which I've paraphrased and will further explain the details over time, this was all internal and not physical, other than the spiritual rebirth by the fires of the Holy Spirit. The physical, hands-on Christianity is as I've mentioned, my vocation in marriage, which I'll speak more about in a bit. This is what I want to get across right now and we'll dive further into this: the Saints belief in the emulation and identification with and alongside Jesus, specifically of those saints that have received the stigmata, their emulation physically was so powerful that it brought their faith in Jesus mystically into reality—the physical reality through their works and it was so in depth, so overpowering over and across their mind that it brought the gift of the Holy Spirit into the physical realm with the signs of the stigmata. Up until this point from what I've been able to gather, all mystical experience was of the internal kind, the philosophical kind. But this, this was something new. This is the body also being raised to that divine status we discussed in the last episode which is rooted in the physical ascension of the master, of Christ. For comparison's sake, this is essentially what Catholics believe is occurring a billion times a day with the Holy Eucharist and the power of the priest’s prayer when they say the blessing that essentially calls down the Holy Spirit to transubstantiate the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. So, this concept shouldn't be a foreign idea to the practicing Catholic. But as I stated before, these types of connections to the Holy Spirit can't just be for the religious persons and their vocation but also have to be present for married persons and their vocation which is what my journey of understanding seems to have been all about. I feel terrible that I can't actually remember if it was the priest during my marriage prep classes that said it, or the priest that married my wife and I . . . or even if I just heard it on Catholic Answers or something during this time, but I am about 95% sure it was the Father that married my wife and I that posed the challenge, question, reality and truth about marriage being a vocation and spiritually ordained by God. If you don't understand what this vocation business is, it just means that one’s faith is acted out or realized within their station in life. And obviously in the Church, you're either a religious person: so, think priests, clergy, nun, Cardinal, Pope, or you are not, and are a husband or a wife, a father or a mother. But that marriage itself is a ministry of faith. It's just between two people, the husband and the wife, and any that observe or are part of it that are challenged and are changed by the manner in which the husband and the wife are married. But that's in the external. As I said, I'm a mental person. So, while all of that was occurring, inner depth and contemplation about marriage was always occurring. And it began at this nexus point. This is what the priest said, and it's never left my contemplating mind since. He said, “that the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven are found in your vocation and that marriage should be treated thusly.” And I've simply spent the last fourteen years of my spiritual journey trying to understand how this is so and when we get to the spiritual rebirth, to the blessing of the Holy Spirit and why Holy Spirit was feminine to me, I'll definitely provide many a theory on why this occurred and why this is also rooted in what we began to touch upon in the last episode: the mystery of the male and the female, the right and left, or the duality of physical nature and physical reality at its core, and that this male and female, or gender, the apparent reality of binary opposites that are endlessly attracted to one another, is at the basis and foundation of reality, which I already mentioned: the trinity of creation in the atom. Of proton the positive, electron the negative, and neutron the base, or that which contains both charges and no charge at one and the same time—or the Father, and the Son is the proton, the Holy Spirit is the electron. Or in the old way of seeing this binary duality: Apollo is the sun, or positive daytime energy, and Artemis is the moon, or negative nighttime energy. Or the male, the sun, and the female, the moon. This exists inside of us as well and I will continue to unpack this though I've already given many hints regarding this depth inside of ourselves. So keep this in mind, along with looking up the scriptures we've already mentioned from both Jesus and St. Paul that have to do with gender, and that in the Kingdom of Heaven, there no longer is gender, while there still is gender, for all are one in Christ and that this refers to and means much more than anything having to do with the external physical sexual gender just as I said that when mystical texts speak of nakedness, that this has nothing to do with external clothing. All of this talk about belief becoming real brings up what many, many books speak about nowadays. Some with genuine wisdom, others not so much so: the power of thought itself to shape our reality. Since in essence, that's what the saints mentioned achieved within themselves, that which brought about the stigmata: belief in Christ, in sharing in the cross, in the wounds of Christ by carrying one's own cross so powerfully that it manifested into physical reality. Read the full article

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logos-of-experience-and-truth · 2 years

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logos-of-experience-and-truth · 2 years

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Transcript: Season 1) Episode 7

Transcript: The Self and Not Self

Welcome back to these discussions of the Logos of Experience and Truth. If you're listening to this after having completed the episode of the Image of God, I'm sure you either have questions or have seen, felt, or contemplated for yourself the various apparent truths or realities or even possibly contradictory statements you can make regarding seeing yourself in this eternally unique manner. Before we speak about them, I'm obviously aware of that which you've probably seen and understood. But I simply wanted you to bathe in the concepts and ideas within the meditation itself before we discussed further and more in depth the statements that were made, in order to penetrate deeply not only the knowledge of the self or what Know Thyself today is capable of revealing, but also seeing how it was seen by our ancestors. The most obvious statement that can be made and that which is most interesting about experiencing this knowledge of the self is that, though you are entirely unique in the manner in which I spoke, it also means that every single other human being experiences their existence in exactly the same manner. So, though we are entirely unique in this life as we are, so too is everybody else, and thus we're both eternally different from one another but also eternally the same and are bonded together through this experience called being human. I know many philosophers across the ages have spoken of the conclusion that this leads to just as all have felt it at least at some point in their lives during a moment of self-reflection: that feeling of disconnectedness, of apartness, of separateness, of aloneness when considering this reality of our entirely unique and simultaneously entirely individual experience of existence that occurs in the confines of our own singular mind. That's why it's quite an interesting statement when you're scolded during the teenage years as not being the center of the universe when well, in your own mind, in each of our own individual mind: you actually are the center of the universe, your own universe in your own individual mind. Again, through this understanding of the self you can hopefully start to see why some of the ideas that existed throughout history, existed throughout history. The Earth being at the center of the universe comes to mind since well, from the vantage point inside of our own consciousness at the seat of the self, this world, the world in our mind, is the center of the universe and all else circumnavigates around us in the external world from this point of view. So, it's very interesting that this simple exercise of knowledge of the self, shows how and why our ancestors thought of themselves, their world, and the placement of both, as the focal point of existence between Earth and Heaven itself. This is most likely one of the reasons why, when emerging from the point of view of one's own self-created mentally constructed world within the seed of the individual self, we are the focal point of Heaven and Earth regardless of what any astronomical science may say regarding the external world or universe. From within each of our own individual minds we are each at the center of our own mental universe. But of course, this is also why togetherness with others is so important. The family unit, friends and whatever other social groups that we choose to become part of since it creates that atmosphere where though alone in the mind, we are together in the body, even as we are together in the body, yet we remain alone in our mind. Even though we may share our bodies with another in the vocation of marriage and the deliciousness of sex, there still remains the individual within that temporary experience of combining togetherness. Just as though another's point of view may enter into our individual mind and influence it even, yet this sharing of thoughts and ideas still occurs within each individual mind. Again, that strange mystery of mind and soul, merging with, fusing with, existing with and or alongside the body, the physical Temple of the Soul, the Spirit of God. That strange mystery highlighted, exemplified, immortalized for our understanding through the life of Jesus the Christ, this, the greatest of mysteries of the Spirit of God dwelling among humans as human and God simultaneously, and again, if we are made in the image of God as we have seen one of the ways in which we are, then we are like Jesus in this manner of our existence as well. For Jesus frequently says in the Gospels that we are like him, or that we will be like him: sons of the Father, through him and in him with the Father. What's interesting is that even though this occurs in our mind, heart and soul, yet this occurs in our mind, heart and soul while we dwell within these physical bodies and the mystery and question of why only deepens with this understanding. Was physicality needed in order to experience or learn this about ourselves and of God? Could we not experience God, or the divine, or understand this knowledge of the self without physical bodies? These are interesting metaphysical and cosmological questions that arise when we reach these understandings regarding Know Thyself, while treading upon the Narrow Path. As stated prior, considering the mystery of the Logos, the Word entering into physical form, there's a very interesting correlation to that and the raising of the body to the status that it now enjoys in Christ Himself, through His Ascension. I imagine this is another of the reasons why Gnosticism was frowned upon by the church in the third to fifth centuries. Many, if not all of the Gnostic texts repeatedly frown upon the body, call it a prison within a false and denigrated world and that one must abandon this tomb of the body in order to escape the realm of the false god and return to the realm of the true God. It's also why many of the Gnostics were very fond of St. Paul's writings since he has some of the same type of speech in his writings as well, where he's literally wishing for death to enter into the kingdom but that while still here, alive, he must work, etc. Very similar sentiments, and again, another of the ways we can understand an ancient group of people and the thoughts and ideas they left behind like the Gnostics, as well as the decisions of the Church Fathers in antiquity. Because even though the Gnostic texts were deemed heresy back then, if we look at why the Gnostics revered St. Paul in comparison to their own texts having been found at Nag Hammadi, we can see that the same language and ideas in the Gnostic texts are still in fact found in St. Paul, and that perhaps, mystically speaking, especially since St. Paul had one of the documented mystical experiences in the New Testament post Jesus Christ, it makes sense that he would speak about dying and death and being in the Kingdom of Heaven since he most certainly understood what it meant having had his powerful vision and conversion experience that literally, not just figuratively, literally caused him to be spiritually reborn in the light of Christ. Read the full article

#AstrologicalandAstronomicalSigns #CatholicChurchandtheMysteriesofChrist #ConsciousnessandtheLayersofMind #Gnostic #EsotericandHermetic #JesusSaysandDoes #ScienceversusReligion #Season1)EpisodeTranscripts #TrueSelfandFalseSelf

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logos-of-experience-and-truth · 2 years

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Transcript: Season 1) Episode 6

Transcript: The Image of God

Welcome back to these the discussions of the Logos of experience in truth. When I ended last time, I'd gotten into the mystery of the male and the female, or of gender as is also stated in the esoteric work I spoke of called the Kybalion, and in particular, how this applies to the mind itself. That the mind itself has both a male and female quality to it: one part that receives, one part that gives or implants. You can say the conscious mind is the male mind that gives, and the subconscious mind is the female mind that receives as well. We will get deeper into this once we get further into the mysteries themselves for it is important to understand mythologically, as well as spiritually or mystically, what is the male and the female in the external, so that it is more easily understood in the internal. Especially during these times of the questioning of the sexual aspects of gender itself. I'll toss this out as well as I have in several episodes: neurology has actually uncorked this ancient wisdom of the male and the female in the mind. As I stated, they simply think it's some type of new scientific finding, when this in particular is extremely ancient knowledge of the interior workings of the mind. The historian in me had also spoken a bit. It's a well-known fact in Catholicism from converts to Catholicism, that opening the study of history is a pathway towards conversion, since it trumps any false histories or narratives that Pro-testants of the Church speak, at least as it is in regard to history. I don't think this is what led to my journeying back, and or into the Catholic Church, since I can't really say I was part of it as a child, even though I was baptized Catholic around age five. In case you're wondering, since I couldn't get past the idea of Protestantism’s, Sola Scriptura, since that idea doesn't exist in the Bible to begin with and because it would mean each of the disciples are damned to hell since they had no New Testament Bible to read, if they could read, since peasants of the countryside, which the disciples most certainly were, typically couldn't read back then and it's probably the reason why the majority of the New Testament is St. Paul's writing since he obviously could read and write. That Protestant tenant makes no sense to me if I look back further than 15th century Europe (Graham, 1997). It makes sense in a world revolutionized by Gutenberg’s printing press, that invention that gave rise to Protestantism’s Sola Scriptura stance along with the distaste of the corrupt bureaucracy of the Church at the time of course. It does make sense to say that all should have access to and be able to read the Bible for themselves and that the Bible should be followed exclusively. But when the attempt is to place the current worldview into the worldview of the past, well that's when the things that have happened to Christendom have happened to Christendom, just as this attempt seems to happen every generation when the new generation tries to do away with the old generation by covering it up or altering it, instead of embracing the past as it was and learning from it if need be. As the historian’s maxim states: those that do not learn or study history are doomed to repeat it. Now, if you want any further discussions regarding why or why not Catholic or Protestant from my point of view, off the top of my head, I honestly can't give more than what surrounds Sola Scriptura or the compilation of the Bible and its history. Since Sola Scriptura fell apart for me once I put it to the test, I never bothered to learn to any deeper degree other than a lecture here and there, the differentiation of theological things between the two. Yes, of course I'm lying about that, I did learn more, but I can't really think of what else putting myself on the spot right now. But there are plenty of apologists out there that can help answer these types of things. I used to listen to lots of Catholic Answers back during the mini-revival I had in 2009, and they always had good stuff on there for those seeking knowledge of such things. I will mention such topics as I come across them. But I am not an apologist. Just as I've said in the context of things I've spoken of, I'm also not a theologian. So, if I get things wrong from either point of view it’s because neither is my focus, the same with historian or mythological classical student of the ancient world and its myths. The mystic unfortunately and or fortunately, however it is you want to look at it, has to be skilled at each and every one of these. But from what I've experienced, doesn't ever really become master of any one for the mastery that occurs, the mastery that the mystic truly seeks, the mastery that God pushes the mystic towards: is the mastery of the self. Where the gift of the Holy Spirit may endow an apologist with discernment, a theologian with knowledge or wisdom, it gives the mystic mastery over the self. I won't be so bold to say I’ve achieved this fully yet since the gifts of the Spirit unfold, like the symbol of the lotus in the East alongside the symbol of the rose in the West. So, the gift is given, but it takes time to manifest. It's actually one of the theories I've got regarding the visions that are seen themselves. They are visions of the mystic’s future, at least in my case is what I saw. But one must still walk the path in order to reach the fulfillment of that vision even though God has already shown it, the possibility of that future, at least in the gift of the vision itself. Read the full article

#CatholicChurchandtheMysteriesofChrist #ConsciousnessandtheLayersofMind #Gnostic #EsotericandHermetic #Neurology #ProtestantChristianity #Season1)EpisodeTranscripts

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