July 2016

SPIRITUAL CLIMATE NEWSLETTER – Editors Intro – July 2016

Institute of Spiritual Climate LLC

Is Proud to Present Its Social & Spiritual Commentaries:

SPIRITUAL CLIMATE NEWSLETTER

from the Desk of Spiritual Climate’s Editor: July 2016

New! Updated on August 9, 2016 — Our Endorsement

Institute of Spiritual Climate LLC endorses Hillary Clinton

Dear Ms. Clinton, We the People, standing here of Spiritual Climate Newsletter, wish to congratulate you on being the first woman candidate (its about damn time) of a major party in the USA — We the People Standing here of Spiritual Climate Newsletter, having done due diligence with both Republican, Democratic and Independent candidates with online information and the recent conventions, AND being continued supporters for Bernie’s ongoing Political Revolution against Neoliberalism, Oligarchs and the Beltway Media who protects the Oligarchs; Together We stand proudly to announce our unanimous support Hillary Clinton for President of the United States of America especially after having heard the extensive lifetime of Ms. Clinton’s public service, her ceaseless fight for children, people with disabilities (our experience with Rev. Strickler being a disabled adult) and her vivid, strong voice in the war against Human Trafficking-slavery as presented in her bio AND her clarity on issues.

Spiritual Climate Newsletter Editorial
last updated, July 29, 2016

Welcome to the Summer Edition of The Spiritual Climate Newsletter, brought to you from the convection oven commonly referred to as Phoenix AZ. Reflecting what is happening globally in the political arena in Europe, the resulting financial instability, the insanity of Trump vs Clinton, the unprecedented sit in staged by the Democratic party, and the violence of increased mass shootings, the weather in Phoenix at the time of the Summer Solstice is hot, hot, hot! High temperature records have been broken, ¹ and continue to be threatened, as residents run between air conditioned homes to air conditioned cars to air conditioned stores and places of employment panting from being outside for the brief moments of transition.

As Phoenicians know only too well, the radiation and emanation of the extreme rays can be felt even while inside, creating a constant pressure, sense of heaviness and physical lethargy, similar to the climate of the happenings outside of Phoenix. One can only try to imagine how our ancestors possibly endured the oppressive heat without our modern conveniences. In so many ways, this too is a reflection of how we have become a weakened, angry, technologically dependent society.

Folks world wide in general are feeling the pressure of the heat of the chaos of confusion driven by not only global events, but also the fallout of local and personal events. As pointed out in Dr. Strickler’s previous article, the electromagnetic emanations from Maximum ² ³ period of the Sun are affecting as well, since the last 500 years can be seen weakening Earth’s magnetic field and an increase in cosmic rays. So there is something indicating an influence on mankind’s endocrine system with electromagnetic Solar force strongly ‘pinging’ earth’s electromagnetic shell producing challenging changes in mankind’s pituitary glands likely contributing to behavioral extremes we are experiencing on our beautiful planet earth and an as of yet unexplained effect, here in our earth’s climate. Combine the above elements, and it is no wonder that we find the dichotomy of extremes manifesting from the gestalt consensus given expression in our political presidential nominees here in the already great United States.

Our choices have been narrowed down to Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party in contention with Donald Trump of the Republican Party. A warning Dr. Strickler has vocalized is the poignant Neo-Fascism expressed and represented by Donald Trump and the Enablers of American Authoritarianism, resulting from to the overuse of Neoliberal policies locally and globally, from the right and left for over 30 years. Speaking as editor, I, for one, am genuinely looking forward to the debates! Remarkable person fighting for real issues, established, experienced political philosophy embodied in a woman vs an abrasive business man in a self centered universe with no political experience shouting words that the angry people want to hear with no real plan as to how to execute them. This should be a show.

The United States is facing the very real choice of more of the past or the possibility of total chaos; a representation of the two extremes of political views. Where is the middle ground, the middle path? As appears the case in all of the events happening, there is no middle ground found apparent at this point in time. We are living in an era of contrived extremes and engineered imbalance, and this is manifesting throughout the entire world.

Extreme choices are being made globally. Fed up with the status quo, the UK has voted to withdraw from the European Union and their adherence to Austrian Economic Mythology — economic phantasmagoria. The repercussions of this choice have already been reflected by economic instability world wide and second thoughts being echoed by the people of the countries who voted to withdraw. Uncertainty, instability and discontent is rampant. The European Union was created to protect those small, close, interconnected, both economically and socially, countries from turning against each other following the World Wars. The dissolution of that pact is yet another indication of the well deserved crumbling of Neoliberalism ⁴, moving into the uncertainty of a new way; whether or not that new way will be a positive step or a step backwards remains to be seen, but is so indicative of the seeking of change that permeates our current civilization.

Most disturbing is the increase in mass shootings, which the Congress refuses to begin to act upon by making any changes in gun regulation or the ease of purchase and availability of ammunition and high power weapons. One of the most moving, inspiring acts to be witnessed as of late was the Democrats’ staging of a sit in within the House to protest the lack of any movement being made towards some reasonable reformation of our laws regulating weapons. As they sang “We Shall Overcome”, memories of past protests flooded in, along with recollections of that which the United States of America stands for and represents. Chants of “No Bill, No Break filled the air, and later, the well known, fondly remembered song was sung outside of the Chambers with the multitude of supporters who had come to show their solidarity. The Break came and went without resolution or action, but for a brief moment, the Spirit of our already great nation stood up and shouted “Look at me! Hear me! I am still here!”

— the Editors, Spiritual Climate Newsletter —

Notes:

Holland, Catherine. “110-Degree Days in Phoenix – Azfamily.com 3TV | Phoenix Breaking News, Weather, Sport.” News. Azfamily.com, August 18, 2016. http://www.azfamily.com/story/32503545/110-degree-days-in-phoenix.

↩
The idea of a Modern Maximum has now been thrown into question with the release of a paper at the International Astronomical Union General Assembly. Clette, Frédéric, Leif Svalgaard, Ed Cliver, and Lars Lindberg Christensen. “Corrected Sunspot History Suggests Climate Change since the Industrial Revolution Not due to Natural Solar Trends | Press Releases | IAU.” Astronomical. International Astronomical Union, August 7, 2015. http://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1508/. ↩
We are entering a Solar Minimum. “SUNSPOTS VANISHING, AGAIN.” Science. Spaceweather.com Time Machine. Accessed July 27, 2016. http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=23&month=06&year=2016. ↩
NEOLIBERALISM: The philosophy that public ownership and regulation is inherently less efficient than management by financial operators. The policy conclusion is that the public domain and government enterprises should be privatized and the sales proceeds used to roll back taxes on the highest wealth and income brackets. Unlike the liberalism of Adam Smith and subsequent free-trade economists, neoliberalism endorses an intrusive role of government to protect property and financial fortunes without regard to long-term tendency for the exponential growth of debt to exceed and indeed undercut the economy’s ability to pay. (See Internal Contradiction, Junk Science, Neoconservatives and Social Market.) ~Michael Hudson; the Economic Insiders Dictionary http://michael-hudson.com/2014/01/n-is-for-neo-serfdom-o-is-for-offshore-banking/ ↩

you know you want to do it:

Prayer is Not Asking for Something

by Rev. David Strickler

last updated July 28, 2016

Early one afternoon during my ‘give the eyes a computer break,’ I listened to a conversation in which two people were discussing prayer, somewhere a week or more back. Their discussion centered around one or both stating that prayer was asking for something. My reaction surprised me, although it was not out of place in a world, empty and devoid of genuine understanding in a world where, words are constructed and defined from the building blocks of meaningless language as English, especially prayer.

Anyway, I was struck at the myopic understanding of the concept and how a truer meaning of the concept was being destroyed by the dance of personality-egos attempting to communicate with each other on such a profound topic.

Prayer is not asking for something, far from it; although prayer can be used to ask for ‘something’. If the standard definition of prayer is not ‘asking for something’ then what is prayer and more importantly, what is the meaning of prayer and/or what is prayer used towards? Is prayer a tool?

Almost without fail, when I talk or speak about prayer, a memory of movie from 1971 almost portrays a resemblance of prayer: Fiddler on the Roof. Almost certainly, if you watch the movie, you will likely get an idea of what one side of prayer might look and sound like.

To Whom or with what am I having a Dialogue?

Many people believe that they are talking/praying to no-one or that they are just having a conversation with themselves. If a person’s illusion of separateness is allowed to go on unchallenged, an illusion of isolation is created as a subconscious response to the [erroneous] premise, observation and/or hypothesis. A subjective experience a person is praying to no-one, or at the very least, just talking to themselves. Here is where our mental constructs may make us or break us. At the very least, we may come to know limitations we are experiencing due to mental constructs or coping with whatever limitations we as a soul may be experiencing of our body’s unawakened nervous system to the invisible.

With the devolution of mankind ¹ ² came loss of greater interior capabilities, a stunting or retreat of greater abilities within the physical human perceptual organism. Prior to this shift, an ability to access to higher abilities temporarily free humanity from the delusion of duality, provided the method of access was taught.

Some oral traditions appear to point a finger in a direction that access to higher functions (i.e., in oral traditions, the higher interior hearing function, Wernicke’s area) corresponding areas of the neuropathways in human brain that were ‘stripped down’ (gone dormant) to a basic model. This latter is part of a greater model that I teach. Some of the loss of ability to communicate directly to Spirit designated above, came, I hypothesis, as a result of mankind’s development and advancement of necessary tools to assist physical civilization; our technology has become of sorts, a Tower of Babel. This contributes to the illusion of separateness and the fear in individuals established by a conflated illusion of personal autonomy rejecting interdependence of human beings — inability to hear the speaking of Higher Spirit.

With the increasing of awareness of our personal self, provided by the sentence and acceptance of the illusion of separateness provided by generic humanities subconsciousness response to the ‘fall’, our awareness and attention to our greater self as soul emerging from purpose in the primal-will-to-good within the realm of Higher Spirit, generic humanity ³ lost ‘sight’ and the ability to speak in a valid communication inside of a Reality that became diminished after what some refer to as the ‘primeval deviation’. Or what the simple level of interpretation of Christianity refers to as ‘Adam and Eve lost the ability speak directly with God’.

So, if you are a person who has untied part of the illusion that you are just your body, then perhaps the power of prayer is releasing you as Soul from its flesh confusion. Perhaps for some it may be to just invoke the hidden, latent and unused possibilities of your personality that prayer may release within your organism and mind. This could provide a beginning platform to enable awareness of you as a Soul using a biological electro-chemical body for experience in this material world.

Then again, perhaps you should start with the statement I give to everyone that we did not give birth to ‘ourselves’ whether that be body or soul. How can we remember anything prior to our birth when the elementary aspects of memory are not incorporated into the initial burst of energy the promotes the development of the fetus? It is interesting to note that memory does not develop in the human fetus until about approximately 30 weeks: this is thirty weeks AFTER the Soul orders a human body at the production line and then 9 months later takes possession of the human body at the infant’s first breath.

What is Prayer?

Pure and simply speaking, Prayer is a Dialogue, a dialogue about your favorite topic – You – the current state of your consciousness viewed through the filters of the Flesh. Prayer is another chance to exercise self-honesty, to square off with our shortcomings and accept the negativity of our lies and rationalizations. This is the most important Dialogue that you can establish in this lifetime other than learning how to listen to conscience and ‘other’. This is a dialogue that if repeated, creates a flow like an opening the closed windows of a house in order to provide air circulation to relieve the stale air of confinement. Sometimes, what is mistakenly taken to mean a dialogue, are thought conversations taking place between different areas of your brain as for example, “I am hot;” in reality you are not hot, your body is and the area of the brain that monitors temperature is relaying information via your “I-dentification.” Remember, you are a Soul that uses a biological body as a spacesuit—it has built in feedback sensors.

Prayer is also a means to bring one’s desire nature into proper management. Attention is brought to some perceived lacking in one’s ability whether or not that ability is physical, emotional or some other type of lacking comprehension recognized needed in order to move forward instead of feeling stuck within the temporary limitations represented by our body, emotions, intellect or mind.

Prayer can also be a means to enhance awareness of our personality when we come face to face with our own shortcomings and how the inequality those shortcomings produce an imposition on others if we are in a state of unbalance. We may then pray that others forgive us as we overcome the shortcomings in our personalities comprehension or projected, inadequate and equivocated opinions prevent good-ness for other human beings to acquire around us or produce the response of alienation in our environment. It is in those moments that we pray to undo something misunderstood, or to ask forgiveness for being so short sighted or selfish-centered.

Intercession and Prayer.

There can be times within anyone’s life where there are appearances of conditions that can overwhelm anyone. This can range from a cumulative fatigue of a longstanding experience of negative conditions. There are humorous jokes that convey this idea. My favorite and actually asked of me one day, “When did you piss in God’s Wheaties?” Difficulties can get more than steamed up inside the growing personality when in fact that personality is being ‘pressure tested’ by what some call their higher/greater self, or by some angel representing God. Some people seek an intercessor to intercede for them to assist resolution with whatever the problem is so that relief can be had before some type of breaking point occurs, whether that breaking point be in the fragile physical, fragile psychological, fragile emotional, fragile intellectual or some mixture of all of the above said.

Prayer is where we pause and begin an intercession process in our personal events that appear to be emerging on our event horizon. Take for example, some3one throws a ball toward a wall without second thought until the ball appears to boomerang into a direction out of our current position of control. Intercession can be at times, running to get the ball whose trajectory is outside of what we anticipated. On a larger scale, sometimes a person’s view is too limited to the boundaries of their literacy in ANYTHING. A person can easily lose a ‘sense of direction or accomplishment’ from standing within their own limited literacy of comprehension and understanding, Here, the pause can be used to alert our organism we are operating through for greater assistance and unused latencies that reside within us so we can come to know otherwise.

Will, Choice and Prayer

This is often overlooked, the use of free will in order to choose. As Soul our physical space suite may have certain limitations due to its function in the material plane. As soul there are less limitations to the scientific fallacy of communication at a distance. There is no distance to overcome, the only difficulty is in making an open willingness to choose communication with what some term our ‘Higher Self’ or what I teach as our greater self. Soul is the connection to and part of this greater self, similarly, just as ‘you’ represent the constituents in the universe of your body. The use of free will is the first step in transcending the whole mess of limitations inherent within the mundane world.

Our motif about Will should come under scrutiny by first realizing that we do not create free will, it is given freely for us for use, with some wisdom one might hope. This would be the first step in aligning with the true Primal-Will-to-Good that creates and sustains any universes. If we are undamaged, we understand the enjoyment of Good-ness, the experience of Good-ness. If our personality is not operating in this vein or characteristic then our forms of petition in prayer might be nothing more than a festering of narcissism, fueled drunken gluttony, which can be a fair appraisal of an easily acquired symptom when running amok in a society whose god becomes consumerism, technology and Daddy-Mommy corporations.

Will and Choice is also a ‘call to action.’ Many times, we may be facing a choice, especially when there may not be an apparent answer to the prayer. There may be additional ‘leg work’ involved as a part of the answer to a prayer. Often this involves activating a possibility from any personal resources, that would include a public plea for assistance when to a person’s panicked view it appears there are one. Maybe we haven’t exhausted all personal resources yet as is the case with personal disability that has genuine medical merit, maybe an attorney is needed to assist and then a phone call need be made in order to activate that possibility. The infamous network network network ad-nauseum can come into play here. If you didn’t get that job as a Nanny, maybe you need to ask the laqst person you interviewed with for a Nanny to see if they could possibly recommend you to another if they hear of the need.

Our lives are INEXTRICABLY linked together as an individual cell with the body of sleeping Adam (who was never awoken from the sleep). Whether you accept this or not is immaterial, after you die you will discover the truth. Sometimes we must act on some type of choice that we have considered the consequences of the chosen action to the best of our contemplation and consideration. We are responsible for part of what is generated by our use of freely given use of Free-Will.

Prayer and Desire.

You will have a dialogue with whomever you believe you are having a dialogue with based on; how your personality uses the desire energy available to it. When we find some aspects of our experience to be underwhelming, our pool of desire can be interrogated to discover if we actually wanted such an underwhelming outcome. Maybe our limits of literacy co-created, incorporated too low of an expectation in an experience we sought for ourselves. We can then pray to have insight, solvability and right action to adjust the pattern were put into motion.

Sometimes it is not the case and there appears to be an opposite of what we desired, continually negative. To seek intercession for something that appears to be out of the orbit of our experience to that we may correct what might be called a negative anomaly amplified within some circuit or aspect of our personality. Perhaps a person is unable to communicate effectively with others which if understood can use free will to choose a corrected of actions with choices toward self-esteem, courses in listening, or by simply paying attention to something outside our internal universe. In this fashion the energy of desire can be brought into further use and balance by active management of the desire energy.

Misconceptions about Prayer.

So prayer isn’t a tool of just asking for something. Prayer is not God’s cosmic vending machine to pop out pain killers or super-happy-day uppers like Pez candies to prevent you from drowning the shallow depths of your puddle perception. On the contrary, prayer is a tool of cultivation which may not bear any short term gratification. It’s a cultivation to expand our ability to communicate, discuss and dialogue with greater and less dense realms of human consciousness; the living presence of Spirit. Some people call this ‘talking with God” I call this having a conversation with The Self, the Source Self; Source Being; Source Consciousness. While asking for something is might be a fine example of a description coming from within the ravages of the religion of consumerism, I do not consider that a description of prayer. Such a description, if it were to be accepted, would be a debasement, a blasphemy of the integrity representing the Spirit of what true prayer WAS, IS and SHALL BE tool used for the path of return, a tool used for the Daath of Soul to reconnect into the evolution of consciousness in order to transcend the material world of time and space.

Another misconception about prayer presented is the practice of praying. I really disregard much that is spoken about ‘how to pray’ in broadcasting circles of commercialized Christianity. My model is simple; speak simply about your concerns or misgivings especially about yourself and your situations. That is one tough cookie to bite into. Why? Many personalities refuse to square off with the facts in some feigned act of positive thinking and acting like it’s a ‘super-sparkly day.‘ Or where people speak of the agonizing frustrations in their life with themselves, or others, as if it be a true pain. Whereas if they were truthful, they wouldn’t be trying to pull the wool over the eyes of their greater consciousness which can see through such childish complaints. Second, speak your facts out loud if possible, by yourself, so that you can hear the sound and tone of your unspoken thoughts which usually do not get aired from you head: hear what those thoughts sound like. Third and finally, have respect, not for the imaginary spaghetti monster in the sky, but to the principle of the Eternal which lent you some Life power, a gift of IT’S portion of power to explore, to have respect for the true source of that which constituted the gift of your nonphysical life.

A greater misconception held by people about prayer is it’s a one-way street. This may be true if you are only a one way person, a person who has to have things Their Way. If your personality temperament is such, you’ll likely get the feeling of talking to a wall (representing You), getting no response, the you that gives no response to others unless it is your way. Prayer doesn’t support these types of delusions within a conflated personality, the portion of your ego-personality that is unbending to any existence of life outside the non-material universe called time and space. The irony is, that a relationship with our greater self as being a soul speaking with Spirit is a cultivated relationship. Cultivated because the inborn boundaries established by our flesh, derived from the material earth plane. bring about a false conclusion that praying is a waste of time.

What Prayer Is NOT.

Prayer is also NOT a state of consciousness that can be invoked through some digital technology. As wonderful and useful as digital technology can be, you cannot digital-ize or text your way to this state of consciousness, on the contrary, it is developed outside the use of the digital domain and requires a part of the brain that is not attached to such digital devices. And as I said earlier, it is not something that can be purchased off the electronic vending shelf of immediate gratification-consumerism. Some things take repeated immersion to bring adjustment in bent areas of the human personality, whether you want to accept it or not.

Prayer is also not an ordinary activity in your consciousness even though your life is maintained by the Eternal, endlessly meditating upon and sustaining all existence of which you are a meditated part of. Prayer is also not an escape from activity that a person might find redundant or distasteful.

We should also not pray for any specific characteristic that we think we need more of such as patience or strength. You may find your life in situations that demand more strength than your immediate ability to produce or cope with because that is what you asked for, more strength. Just like patience, pray for more patience and you will find yourself in situations trying your patience, the more patience you want the more turmoil you require in order to test your level of patience.

This particular state of awareness developed by dialogue of prayer can be developed, just as handwriting can assist in coming to realize a flow because of the fine motor control that is needed which establishes a form of concentration. It can be developed, just as working with a Sacred language whose letter you are inscribing has a noun and number entwined to reflect a characteristic of consciousness and cosmic energy and means so much more than just a meaningless vowel or consonant sound attached to a letter sterile of anything called English.

The awareness I am pointing toward is more nuanced and less easily distinguished (for some) and recognized thought-banter spoken of above; it is a cultivation of a repeated and intentional (volitional act) of dipping into a flow that already exists that requires use of neural pathways that may be unused and latent in the flesh.

This Dialogue can be visualized as a conversation between you and ‘God’, but is more likely to establish a dialogue between your erroneous material construct and your Soul. This Dialogue initiates an equilibrated flow of your consciousness between you as Soul and your incarnate illusion/ego of a separate self. The small self is differentiated, only appearing to itself to be separate.

Prayer is at often the heart of an event in the human condition, especially when the prayer is prompted by the appearance of an event that stirs questioning, true questions. It indeed appears some people only resort to praying in dire circumstances, almost as if an invocation emerges out of the deep dark levels of humanities instinctual nature, an instinctive response to events of joy, gratitude, or pains and sorrows.

If you have found your way with the noticeably sublime help from something greater than your perception of yourself, then perhaps you have worked your way from the P’shat, פְּשָׁט , explored the Remez, רֶמֶז , pursued the inquiry of Derash, דְּרַשׁ , and have experienced a profound touch by a glimpse of the Ruach Ha Qodesh, רוּחַ הַקֹּדֶשׁ , the secret mystery embodied in Sod, סוֹד .

Notes:

“If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking? | DiscoverMagazine.com.” Discover Magazine, September 2010. http://discovermagazine.com/2010/sep/25-modern-humans-smart-why-brain-shrinking. ↩
Devolution, as taught by my oral tradition, occurred approximately over 6,000 years ago, 434,000 years after mankind’s Soul on earth was able to have communication with Higher levels of Spirit; able to communicate, have discussion, dialogue (pictorial and then speech). ↩
Mowczko, Marg. “Human (Ha’adam), Man (Ish) and Woman (Ishshah) in Genesis 2.” New Life, December 5, 2013. http://newlife.id.au/equality-and-gender-issues/human-man-woman-genesis-2/. ↩

you know you want to do it:

Get Up! Get Up!

By Adam Crosthwaite

A single moment, just like a flash, is all it takes to change a world. Even a world as small as one corner of a person’s life that is in the process of challenging itself to get up, or a universe teaming with life sprawled out over light years, this process may appear to follow a universal formula for sudden awareness. One might even say it was so obvious that some ancient culture from centuries before had been writing about such events in a pictorial script on walls and tablets.

There are different ways to bring about changes within any space. In the ongoing explorations of the mysteries of Qabalah, as I continue to be taught by Rev. David Strickler, the primary focus is on the personal space thus far. In working with mental and emotional energies using the principles of spiritual alchemy changes within one’s own personal sphere of influence become possible and spiritual growth may occur. This is mostly a process of cleaning up and clearing out energies and habits. In this clearing of the way not only is there a change in perceptions and attitudes but the receptivity to higher consciousness is opened up and honed. Years of practice, study and application helped guide initiates as they continually seek out the lessons and advice of the Masters, such as Rev. Strickler, who have walked the path and aid those along the way.

Finding the Will to Get Up!

Along the path there are many challenges, some which appear to throw one to the ground, brought on by an number of factors many from outside our own personal circle but most, and the more devious, are those from within our own circle; each of us with our own personal, emotional and mental baggage or rather “spiritual disorders”. Part of the challenge can be to get up, having been thrown to the ground. These challenges can stay with a person until resolved for whatever the reason. Along the path I have encountered many of these challenges, some without knowing what they were, but each one just as capable of throwing me off my path, or down to the ground on my path, as the next.

Recently my world has been changed by a clearing of my own perception. I had been struggling with some personal problems that managed to manifest into physical health issues, mostly weight gain. Strangely, I had no idea that this was happening. Actually I knew something was wrong, I just had no idea that it was at affect with something from deep within my past. This whole time I was looking at my present mindset and thinking that I was just being lazy or momentarily careless about my own well-being. You see, a long time ago I learned that I was good enough at certain things in school and some other areas where work was hard, I could slack off without getting noticed. What started out as a kid thinking he was gaming the system turned into a man who didn’t expect to be challenged as much as he was later on in life. I found myself in a struggle to get up off the mat of Life.

The alchemical mixture of sloppy behavior and unethical mindset has been in place and hiding, waiting for the perfect setting to spill over and try to infect other areas of my mental and emotional laboratory that I have been working on cleaning and building for twelve years as student of Rev. Strickler’s. After a few years of slippery situations and seemingly chaotic events it takes a slap in the face in the form of a doctor’s diagnosis and a few months later a sucker punch from an employer with a pink slip drive home the message, “YOU HAVE A PROBLEM!”

There is much more to my challenge than I am letting be known, but I am sure the details would just drone on and not serve the writing very well; not all disclosure is for public consumption. Those who have been a part of my journey know as they have been there, for those who don’t just imagine temporally losing a loved one and a few years later losing one that you spent a good portion of your adult life trying to find.

I was brought down to the level of self-pity and doubt, feeling pinned down to the ground. I was just trying not to panic while in panic mode for days. I couldn’t make sense of things for a day or two until I crashed out and didn’t do anything for a day. It wasn’t until I started to move that things started to clear up and make since. Suddenly I knew what to do, I needed to get up off the ground. I woke up one day and I started with just cleaning my space a little. It started with clearing out an area to work with. Then I counseled a few memberships on line then updated my resume and started to apply for work. In a flash, my world once again had changed. I could hear a voice from somewhere telling me to get up and move, to get up and get going. At times it sounds like my mentor Rev. Strickler, just as if I was sitting with him and he was speaking to me directly, other times it is a voice similar to my own but bigger and clearer than the whispering voice I am used to.

The irony of this experience is that I was convinced that I didn’t make the changes necessary to change my situation quick enough to break out of the rut I was in mentally and physically once I was aware of them. It was a month after the first awareness of how far reaching my problem was which was six months after finally accepting the doctor’s diagnosis. The final blow from work hit. Even in the process of making changes, more fallout from events can continue to disrupt things, from the simplest most mundane aspects to the larger more threatening situations that may irrevocably affect your life. It all depends on the size and scope of the events involved.

Now I am working a new job, one that took only two days to find and get after choosing to move; it is the exact opposite of the one I had. I went from a comfortable air conditioned building to walking around all night locking up buildings in the beginning of the monsoon season in Phoenix, Arizona. I get all the fresh air and exercise I can handle! No more sitting around the office for hours on end watching monitors or reading. Now I have to eat right to keep in decent shape, so no more fast food short cuts every night or pizza delivery late night at work. In a flash my lifestyle was changed.

For all the study and practice over the last twelve years as an initiate in the art of Qabalah, I still needed a little help to get up off the ground and push me in the right direction, to get me under way even though I was ready all along. It is very easy to become wrapped up in illusions when your guard is down. That is why it’s important to have some type of emotional and mental conditioning. There are aspects of the alchemical process in the Q tradition of Qabalah that aid and teach in these manners, but one never truly understands them until they have undergone the experience of having to rely on them when faced with a challenge.

I can remember many times in the middle of a fight and looking to the sidelines and seeing my teacher yelling at me to ‘Get Up!’ I finally became aware, engaged in the situation fully to make changes. In the past Rev. Strickler has used the image of the mentor standing by and watching his student from the sidelines as they train and fight in the ring. With the patience of a true master, Rev. Strickler has used image as a metaphor to explain to me how he watched over and waited for his student to engage the process and make the changes that have been worked for so long. There will be times when it feels as if there is nothing more to do, that no matter, what nothing will get better. That is a dangerous time to be down and unwilling to find the ability to get up and keep moving. Even more so when you are up against yourself and all your spiritual disorders, also referred to as the shadow self, the darker part of the inner person created from within.

The shadow self is smooth and can use any number of exploitable vulnerabilities just like a computer virus as a type of sabotage against the efforts of the self attempting to find expression of the true or higher in the physical world. Few things in life are as scary as the realization that you have been under the influence of a shadow.

All the preparation and training in the world is useless to a person who is unable to function when under pressure. Knowing there is a problem can help, but will not do much to effect the situation for the better. It is through the engagement of Will that allows for changes to occur in the world. No matter how big or small a change or world, no movement means there can be no engagement of the energies present.

No matter how dark or overwhelming the situation may seem if you listen closely enough, you may hear someone silently cheering for you. Even if you don’t see any one, there is always a voice saying, “Get up! Get up, Now!”

Blessings,

Adam Crosthwaite

you know you want to do it:

Respect – fully Yours

by Christine Ford

Respect! R-E-S-P-E-C-T! To quote, “Most likely one of the catchiest, over repeated lines in all of music.” Written by Otis Redding and sung by Aretha Franklin, the line that follows is what caught my attention as I was mulling over my thoughts prior to writing this article. R-E-S-P-E-C-T “Find out what it means to me” is a tricky concept to ponder.

Respect; what does it mean to you? Do you show respect to yourself, to those around you, to the One Power that gave you life and sustains your existence through every second of the time you have been given to co-create and expand your awareness as you make your way through this life? How do you personally show respect? And in turn, do you feel you are afforded respect from your family, your friends, your colleagues, your significant other?

Regard for Respect

In searching for a definition of the word respect, the one I found which came closest to my understanding of the use of the word respect. The reason it grabbed my attention was due to the use of the word “regard” in the definition. During the twenty four years that I have been a student of Dr. Strickler, throughout his some 35,000 hours of teachings which continue to not only open new awareness but at times are absolutely amazing, he has instilled in me a particular bias that I would like to, as a side note, pass on to our readers for consideration. Actually, this could be an article in and of itself, but I will keep it short!

Dr. Strickler emphasizes the use of the word “regard” in preference to the bastardized use of “value” as a key to the tone and discernment the writer or speaker is using. The meaning of the word value has been twisted and contorted by politics and society to have more of a greed factor, indicating a definition of materialism and monetary wealth. Regard, by comparison, carries a vibration of esteem and genuine worth. Upon sharing that gem with you, please keep that in mind as you read the following definition of respect.

As a Verb

To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem or admire
To avoid interfering with or intruding upon
To relate or refer to; concern

As a Noun

A feeling of appreciative, often deferential, regard; esteem
The state of being regarded with honor or esteem
Due regard for something considered important or authoritative

Evaporation of Respect

The impetus to write about the topic of respect actually came from my job as a teacher in an Elementary school. I have been assigned the task of monitoring 130 7th grade students twenty minutes each day for recess for the past three years. One of my greatest sighs of relief when school ended for Summer Break was that I had a hiatus from this. At first I thought it was just the heat and sun that bothered me; standing outside for twenty minutes in one hundred plus temperatures can be brutal, but upon examining my reaction, I realized it was more than that. A major contributing factor was that I was truly weary of the verbal battles and disrespect coming from the students that I kept trying to find ways to equilibrate with humor and understanding, without giving away my authority!

Respect is evident within my classroom; with the students I work with each day, special needs students in 7th and 8th grade, I strive to build an environment of trust and mutual respect. Even the toughest of them eventually responds to patience and understanding. They get the idea that I truly do care about them, whatever problems or joys they may be experiencing, and am there to help them learn, advance and grow. It is when I go out among the masses I am horrified by the lack of respect and regard for others that is so evident in actions and words among our young people. In my weaker moments I have found myself beginning to wonder when I became the old coot who looks upon the younger generation in despair, shaking my head while declaring that there is no hope.

Deep down inside I know there is hope. There are many young adults who are respectful; take my beautiful granddaughter for example. She is polite, considerate and kind. She can interact with adults and peers, friends and family, those familiar to her and those she has just met. She has the skill and grace of knowing how to present herself, how to share her ideas and thoughts in an articulate, socially acceptable way, without being combative, abrasive or vulgar. I am sure she has her moments, as all teenagers do, when she is less than respectful at home with her parents, but that is part of the course of moving into the independence she needs to establish to be an adult. Am I prejudiced because she is mine? Well, maybe just a little bit, but I have met students at school who are just as respectful not only of adults, but of peers as well; unfortunately the number of kids who are seemingly rude, offensive, entitled and obnoxious has come to far outweigh the more civilized members of our young society, as seen through the lens of my perception.

Sadly, this lack of respect appears to permeate not only our youth, but all aspects of our society, from rudeness in the grocery store, to road rage, to Donald Trump standing on stage making his disrespectful comments and being cheered for as a result! When did we, as a nation, become so angry and inconsiderate of our fellow man? When did holding in regard with honor and esteem ourselves, others around us, and the Lord of Life itself become an out dated relic to be disregarded?

For some time, I have done some serious self-evaluation and questioned whether my expectations and standards are too lofty. I was raised by parents who expected me to be respectful and considerate of others, but I lived in a culture where that was the norm; I raised my children the same way. Consistent expectations and traits of behavior were instilled in my granddaughter by her parents; she was born in 2000. Being a teacher and in touch with youth, I began to notice a glitch in the matrix along about 2000, the year I took a hiatus from public education. Somewhere over the progression, or perhaps, regression, of the past twenty or so years, there has been a lowering of the bar in general within our society of what is considered polite, acceptable and respectful treatment of others. In a nutshell, the expectation of common courtesy and respect for those around us appears to have gone down the tubes!

When there is such a dramatic change in the foundation of expected behavior, there must be a cause. Articles have been written regarding the lack of respect not only within schools, but within society in general. Lack of empathy among students and diminished respect for authority has been studied. Research does agree that there is an increasing lack of respect and compassion shown towards others; though there are differing thoughts as to the cause. The phenomenon is recognized by educators and the social sciences as well, not only within the schools, but within our society as a whole.

Though I have not done any formal research, I am able to speak from the microcosm of what I experience with my students during that twenty minutes each school day, and to be brutally honest, there are times when the enormity of it overwhelms me! I would venture to suggest the theory that the weakening of the family unit as a result of parents having to hold two jobs in order to make ends meet, kids coming home to nothing but reality shows and video games, the time for sharing family experiences and teaching the courtesy and respect by example has diminished drastically.

The students I work with are struggling to not only discover their identity and truth, to exert their autonomy and authority, but to somehow make their way through what is increasingly becoming a maze of elevated expectations and ever changing norms. They feel the need to fit in, yet at the same time strive to be unique and independent. They share the need to be understood, accepted and held in high regard for that which they are and that which they are becoming, and they need to learn how to give that respect back to those around them!

Hmmm … Pause … now ponder a minute! Those kids’ needs are not so very different from what we, as adults, are going through within every interaction we have whether it be at home, at work, at the grocery store, or online, are they? My students are a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosmic cycle of rampant disrespect, anger and intolerance we see within our country, whether it be based on race, religion, sex, authority or ethnicity. The abuse and demise of respect is what has lead to the fiasco of the idiocy of Donald Trump becoming the Republican choice for the High Office of this incredible concept of the United States of America.

We, however, are the adults, and should know better! My students are lacking the experiences and life lessons upon which to base their choices and that is the difference. We, as the adults: parents, mentors, teachers, have the power and the responsibility to demonstrate through our actions or our non-actions the decisions that need to be made, the actions that need to be taken, in order for our society to once again make respect for ourselves and those around us the foundation upon which human interaction is based. We, as the co-creators of the future of this world, need to ask ourselves what respect does mean to each and every one of us, and we must instill respect for self, for other and for the All That Is within the confused and frustrated youth seeking to find themselves.

We, the people. We, the people, need to regain that respect we had as a nation, as a proud sovereign nation, with rights guaranteed by the Constitution. We, the people, need to show respect for ourselves and others, demonstrating the proud ideals upon which our Nation was based. We, the people, need to acknowledge that we did not give birth to ourselves, that the One Power that created this dimension be held in highest regard, as we demonstrate by holding ourselves and fellow man in highest regard.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T “Find out what it means to me” What does respect mean to you? Contemplate, search your heart, discover what it means to you, and then share that with everyone you have the chance to meet. You never know how far those small ripples travel, or how many souls will be influenced by your words and actions derived from respect.

Respectfully yours

(and bite me SEO, get a brain)

Christine J. Ford

you know you want to do it:

This Is Your Captain Listening

By Wendy Ford

Spiritual growth. For those who are seeking, a great deal of time is spent focusing on the non-physical and spiritual as, after all, you are not your mind, you are not your body and you are not your emotions. This then begs the question of who are you but that is another topic for another article. For Now think of the word captain and the image it invokes.

It occurs to me that with so much focus on the non-physical and spiritual realms it could be misinterpreted that one should eschew the physical to concentrate on the non-physical and spiritual in order to somehow become transformed and become illuminated; that to be able to disassociate from the physical is the key to achieve the goal. In reality this is not true at all.

This discussion is an effort to clarify this, but in so doing can only be spoken from the personal experience of having been enmeshed in and attached to the physical so firmly and for so long; it has taken over 23 years to begin to disentangle and detach from the fixation of the physical and to at last be able to bask in some of the Spiritual Light and breathe non-physical air–at least for moments. Note “detach” not “disassociate”.

This entanglement and attachment to the physical resulted from hundreds of incarnations into the physical—so many that I got stuck and forgot how to experience the nonphysical soul that I am. I had come to believe I was my body and emotions. My emotions, personality and Ego ran the show, I saluted and took orders from them as if they were the captain.

In allowing these aspects of myself to ‘run the show’ further than I should I have ever allowed, I also enabled these reactions to isolate me from what I perceived as the outside world. Why ? Because I often interpreted the world as cold and cruel, in order to insulate myself from misconceptions of pain and/or discomfort. “Poor baby. Stay with us. Listen to us. We will take care of you. Don’t listen to that small still voice that keeps trying to get your attention. No, you asked us to take care of you and indeed we will. Come. Sit, EAT and Rest. Take comfort, child.” I had no idea this was keeping me insulated from even parts of myself and kept me rooted and anchored in physical forgetfulness to prevent any exploration into the nonphysical with the intent of discovering who and what I truly am.

It had been FORGOTTEN. It had been forgotten that my physical container is just that; a physical container through which my soul expresses itself. The physical senses are the only way my soul has of experiencing and learning about the physical realm. The container is just a container but with the instinctual component that left on its own only knows food, fear, sex and responds accordingly; its function is for the survival of the container period. It had been forgotten that the container needs a captain just like a ship. Now the job of the instinctual is a mighty big and indeed essential one, a whole topic by itself, so while being acknowledged it is with intention being left out of this discussion.

It is only within the past five years or so conscious awareness of my experience as soul that inhabits and controls the physical is coming into my arena of awareness, if only for brief moments. Dr. Strickler has taught that the foundation of all spiritual growth is based in the expansion of conscious awareness and selection of experiences. This requires judicious application of discernment. A very simple concept that should not take lifetimes to learn how to use for Spiritual growth, is, ‘an ongoing process and summation’: also one of Dr. Strickler’s trademark-final comments.

So, how does one disentangle and detach from the physical to experience the nonphysical without disassociating from it? Specifically, how does one become aware of the physical container as just that—a physical container through which one functions but is NOT one’s defining characteristic?

Initially it would seem disentangling, detachment and disassociation would not be that dissimilar, but experience has taught me that to disassociate was to ignore and not pay attention to the physical. Choosing to ignore the cacophony of emotional input was not proving to be helpful either. The instinctual, ego and personality just took over the reins and pulled me willy-nilly where I had (unconsciously and unbeknownst to me) instructed them to: protect, insulate, survive. Never mind that the old instructions were no longer valid or useful and were indeed leading slowly to self-destruction.

Disentanglement and detachment on the other hand are done with conscious awareness and intent. It requires taking chosen action. Detachment is like micro surgery requiring acute attention and patience. It takes the assistance of a skilled psychologist to help back track through the entanglement of all the creepy vines of learned and mis-learned emotional responses to identify where the roots are. Once that has been accomplished it takes continued self-work and vigilance to gently and patiently disentangle oneself from the creeping vines of the physical attachments.

It turns out that while being entrenched in the physical there was an acute ignorance of it at the same time. An entire dashboard of information (constant sensory input and information) was at my disposal yet there was very little conscious working knowledge of it or how to interpret the information. It was very much like driving a car with its rows of lights, gauges and signals each with a very specific purpose. One can ruin a perfectly good car if one does not know what the check engine light means or what to do when it comes on; messages from the physical container need to be paid attention to even more closely.

To be able to accurately interpret the input from the physical senses requires constant vigilance and conscious attention. This assumes one has even learned how to recognize when one of the indicators comes on. It is a continual process of scanning the internal dashboard and monitoring emotional responses to the input from the physical and learning how to discern the truth and reality in any given situation. Most difficult is the crucial task of unlearning, correcting and/or modifying misinterpretations from previous similar situations.

Dr. Strickler has frequently stressed to always remember: “truth destroys falsehood.” Once a truth has been discovered and accepted it can be used to dissolve the misinterpretations almost effortlessly. One just has to be willing to be open to the truth and be willing to change one’s mind or response. Again a simple concept that is more difficult in its execution.

How does one become more attuned to physical sense input and monitor one’s responses without being attached to them? Think of yourself as the ship’s captain who listens to the officers, receives their input and then makes decisions on what actions to take or not take. Just as the ship’s captain gives the commands but is not a part of the ship itself so it is with your nonphysical soul that functions through the physical container but does is not a part of it.

It is similar with your physical body. The nonphysical you that functions through the container receives input from the physical five senses and is the interpreter for the emotional responses generated. A finely tuned sense of hearing is required in order to “hear” what being received and this is only honed through practice; lots of practice over a period of time.

Try this simple exercise.

Have you ever sat still in a quiet room by yourself and experienced the sounds and movements of your physical container much like a ship’s captain on the bridge; the ones that are uniquely experienced by your physical body?

Pay conscious attention for the whooshing of the air as the bellows of your lungs move the air in and out and in and out—are the breaths shallow and anxious or deep and relaxed, are the breaths effortless and clear or strained or congested? Can you feel the air move in and out of your nostrils and swirl through your sinuses or are they congested or blocked? Feel the gentle rise and fall of your chest and abdomen that results from the expansion and contraction of the rib cage—is it tight or relaxed and effortless? Can you hear the swooshing of the blood as it moves past the ear drums—if you feel a thumping perhaps your blood pressure is too high. Can you feel the gentle to and fro movement of your trunk as it responds to the flow of the spinal fluid moving rhythmically up and down through your spinal cord sheath from your brain to your tail bone—perhaps this had never been noticed. Can you feel and sense the lub dub beat of your heart as it relaxes to expand, filling with blood, then forcefully contracting propelling the blood out to circulate—is the beat rhythmical and even and relaxed or uneven, irregular and too fast? If it is uneven or irregular, you should probably see your doctor. You might even hear or feel the occasional rumble or gurgle of the digestive tract as it processes the nutrients your container requires for sustenance. You can do similar exercises with the other senses.

Did you notice that feeling or touch was entwined with the hearing? It is as well with all the other senses for touch is the cornerstone for all the senses. Just as your ears are touched by sound waves your tongue is touched by the flavors and textures of foods and liquids that run over it, your eyes are touched by the light, your nose is touched by the odors and aromas carried by the air moving through it, your skin is touched by objects or the wind. All of the senses respond to vibrations that are received, the messages are sent to the brain for response and interpretation. All the Human senses are only able to receive in a limited fashion. Many members of the animal kingdom have much keener senses of smell and hearing and a broader spectrum of light available than the human physical container.

Most of the confusion and errors are generated in the interpretation of the response to the limited reception of the senses. If an error in interpretation occurs and results in an emotional response, that response may not be reflective of the reality; you as captain need to be able to make adjustments (course corrections as it were) that can bring the interpretation of an experience closer to the reality of that experience. Have you ever stuck your hand into really cold water and weren’t sure if it was hot or cold? Chances are the physical instinctual “you” pulled back out of self-protection generating a fear emotional response until the nonphysical “you” interpreted the truth of the situation and calmed down.

All of this occurs so fast we aren’t even aware of it most of the time. Through training we can learn to be consciously aware and modify our responses to more accurately reflect reality and truth in a situation or experience. This is when we are using our emotions as tools for our responses and not letting our emotions rule us. We are then acting as the captain of our ship.

Paying attention to the sounds and feeling of your physical container might give you clues as to how well it is functioning. Perhaps it is trying to “tell” you something and hoping you will “hear” and “feel” its needs. While you are not your physical body it is dependent upon you to pay attention and listen to its needs and notifications of its status. You are responsible for its care and maintenance, it is your vehicle through which you function and move. The nonphysical YOU functions within the physical vehicle or container to learn about the physical experience.

Hello body, it’s me, the captain of this ship. I am here and paying attention, thank you for keeping me informed. This is not unlike Captain Picard sitting in his chair on the bridge of the spaceship U.S.S. Enterprise listening to reports from his officers and monitoring everything that is going on in order to respond with the right action.

The nonphysical functioning through the physical. Once you become accustomed to listening to your container and attending to its needs, being the captain of your ship, you just might be able to discern its voices from that of the still, quiet voice deep within that is the Real You. It has always been there attempting to communicate. Perhaps now you will be able to hear it and dialogue with You and be open to communication from the Higher, the fleet admirals so to speak.

This is an ongoing process and requires vigilance and conscious attention but being able to hear and speak with You is so worth it.

Wendy Ford

you know you want to do it: