Spirituality for Living

Three friends were discussing death, and one of them said, “If you were in your casket, and friends and family were gathered, what would you like to hear them say?”

The first said, “I would like to hear them say that I was a wonderful husband, a fine spiritual leader, and a great family man.”

The second said, “I would like to hear that I was a wonderful teacher and a servant of God who made a huge difference in people’s lives.”

The third said, “I would like to hear them say, ‘Look, he’s moving!’”

Ancient Hindu scripture says, “There are these three things that are real: God, human folly, and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third.” Laughter has been a survival tactic since we first walked upright. It linked us with other members of our tribe; it was a way of turning aside a tense situation and letting us know we’re supposed to be friends. Children laugh an average of 400 times a day, but adults only laugh about 15 times.

Not only is laughter good for our survival, it also helps us solve problems and think more creatively. Psychologist Alice M. Isen and colleagues conducted a study with a group of college students to determine the effect of humor on creativity. Given a box of matches, a box of tacks, and a candle, the college students were asked how they would affix the candle to a corkboard so that when the candle is lighted the wax would not drip onto the corkboard.

Before attempting to solve the problem, some group of students watched a comedy, while the other group of students watched a movie about math. The researchers found that 75% of the students who watched the comedy solved the problem correctly, whereas only 20% of students who watched the math film got it correct.

Laughter and Creativity

A man walking along a beach was lost in meditation.

Suddenly the sky clouded above his head and, in a booming voice, the Lord said, “Because you have TRIED to be faithful to me in all ways, I will grant you one wish.” The man said, “Build a bridge to Hawaii so I can drive over anytime I want.”

The Lord said, “Your request is frivolous. Think of what it would take. The supports required to reach the bottom of the Pacific! The concrete and steel! It will use up half a dozen natural resources. I can do it, but there must be something else more worthwhile.”

The man thought about it for a long time. Finally he said, “Lord, I wish that I could understand my wife and know how to make her truly happy.”

The Lord replied, “You want two lanes or four on that bridge?”

Creativity guru Roger von Oech explains that if you laugh at a problem, a product or a way of doing business, it frees the mind up from a lot of deeply embedded assumptions. “There is a close relationship between the “ha-ha” of humor and the “aha!” of discovery.” If you apply the same thinking used in humor – breaking set, putting ideas into different new contexts, seeking ambiguity, combining different ideas, asking unusual ‘what if’ questions, parodying the rules – to creativity, you’re likely to come up with some fresh approaches to what you’re working on.

A Few Tips on Adding Laughter to Your Life:

• Be willing to laugh at yourself and situations.
• Hang out with kids.
• Tell jokes, watch comedies.
• Play ball, blow bubbles, draw with sidewalk chalk.
• Join a Laughter Club (www.laughteryoga.org).

Kyle Tuttle
Guest Blogger
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~

This article was written by Kyle Tuttle, who regularly writes about helping students find the right psychology degree. He can be reached at tuttletr33 at gmail dot com.

Trivia question. What do the names Merlin and Horus have in common? Both are linked to a type or predatory bird. A hawk’s name.

Do you know the meaning of the name Merlin? It comes from the Welsh language and means “laughter” or “He who laughs a lot” because laughter is the shortest way to the Formless. Excellent. Yes, that’s true, and it’s a good way to start tonight’s topic of feeling, laughter. We laugh from a feeling, and it’s perhaps one of the most mysterious feelings. What makes us laugh?

I remember someone once said we laugh because we are in pain. It’s a notion. I don’t agree. I think we laugh from recognition. We laugh when freed from pain.

Feeling is the most primal language. It’s even a cross species form of communication. It informs our music and art, our … Seek More

The topic is feeling as it relates to spirituality.

Feeling serves as the baseline of our conscious awareness. Even old theories of brain function have been overturned in favour of newer discoveries. One being the constant activity of what they are calling the default mode network. Regions of the brain that keep constantly functioning without exception. They even see links between them and various emotional and perceptual disorders.

The regions of the default mode network all center around the amygdala (which in short is the “emotional” brain) and all “higher” functions have been shown to be subject to override by the amygdala. This is actually very necessary, because it’s the only way we would be able to act with any speed when it comes to self preservation. But there is greater clarity there than people commonly accept.

In that core of our awareness, … Seek More

Recent scientific research appears to substantiate a static material reality, neither entropic nor chaotic, inflationary nor collapsing.

Matter suggests that you have no heritage, no lineage. You are your parents, and your grand parents, and all those who came before. We are all manifestations of an unimaginably deep latticework of expression having no beginning or end. As in fact, the dimension we name as time has a breadth and depth that can allow for no advent nor terminus. All of this infinite universe is contained in the infinitely minute. Tiny manifold snarls of pure dimensional substance, popularly called cosmic strings, and reality is reflected consistently from the bottom up.

Back to the human. Before feeling we have sensation. Your feelings are holistic states of being that incorporate the entirety of sensation. After feeling we have thought. A referencing of our experience … Seek More

We have, at our core, a “feeling” level of awareness. We can own and direct our feelings instead of being owned by them and directed by anyone who manipulates our feelings.

Emotion and feeling are not the same experience. Emotions are patterns of response, learned reactive behaviours that were based on a conclusion about our experience.

To tie it into spirituality, in order to truly live our practice, we must first grasp what lead us to feel we needed a spiritual practice, and come to terms with what is inevitably the case, that our shortcomings and our strengths are inextricably linked. Turn a vice into a virtue. To my experience, this is what is available to the average person by way of transcendence.

To examine the topic in a philosophical sense if you prefer, the rational over the subjective, the concepts of … Seek More

Many people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do. Bertrand Russell
Why People Are Like That Today: What is obvious? To my view, the obvious is a very popular lie, that if you don’t subscribe to, you are thought a fool. People love their packaging, so much so, that they will poison various parts of life just as long as it keeps things neat, orderly, and obvious.

Nature gave rise to the very complicated, and potentially very powerful, human brain, not because reality is simple and obvious, but because it is amazingly complex and diverse. Whatever higher power there is, shaped for us one mind, yet most of us choose to “paint” for ourselves another.

It’s often argued that reflection is pointless, because the brain is inherently flawed (the mind is obviously the brain…) and supposedly we cannot know anything … Seek More

You probably have heard that you should ignore your feelings in favour of what you “know”. People think they know things somehow outside of the real of bodily and emotional limitations. If this were even possible, I would doubt its wisdom.

We are alive here and living a life that arose over time. The state of being they call “human” wasn’t created by humans, though it may be destroyed by humans, and a big part of why that is possible is this attitude people have about feelings.

If I were to declare to someone that they “hurt my feelings”, they would very likely sneer and scoff. But everything from our economy to our politics, as well as our religion and art, even what frontiers of science get explored, are based on feelings. We decide to do anything because we “feel” like … Seek More

When I learned Daoyin, I started seeing the energy with my eyes (like the vibrations above a road on a hot day) around the person’s hands. It’s a bit like Tai Chi, but solely for healing purposes and not a martial art. It’s very powerful in generating chi flow in the body.

The senses pick up on a lot that people have forgotten, and trained themselves to ignore. With an understanding of chi, you can apply it in general practices of a lot of things.

And it can be used in Magick. Yes. There is a Chinese tradition that does.

We all use our chi whether we know it or not. Just in normal action, but it can be expanded beyond that. I use a chi trick to open stuck jars. Is true though, people actually block themselves with jar opening. They … Seek More

Doesn’t hate have a place in the balance? It does. It’s a clearing force, but normally its role is limited.

Is hates role diminishing, like the role of war? Hates role is actually getting worse. Its force is growing in the world mind and disrupting the mineral minds. They are setting up an angry resonance that will shatter the surface if not calmed, and they are setting up viral compounds in the soil keyed to make some very aggressive changes.

So a disturbing thought that seemingly comes out of nowhere, might actually be from somewhere else? Yes. Your brain is a great mirror, but your brain is not your mind. It just mirrors thought, and the body, to make a unified picture for the mind.

Is that related to the massive energy attunements? It is. There is no intention of genocide. That’s … Seek More

Thoughts tend to make their home in a mind space, an individual persons mind. Space doesn’t really apply to the mindscape. So one thought can be in two minds, but thoughts tend to like the minds they “dwell” in, so they resist outside influence. The thoughts you have like their home and would protect you, just as the cells in your body like their home and seek to protect you.

Is this why thoughts can be so hard to change? Yes, and we also have the false concept of “thoughts my mind has”. The cells in your brain are not the only ones that can have thoughts. Your body can have thoughts too, and this is the basis of psionic healing. I have seen someone, who totally ignored their stomach, develop body thoughts that then began to disrupt their “mind”.

I’ve heard … Seek More

Ever notice how “your” mind seems to do things you don’t want it to? Or surprising things you don’t anticipate? In psionic animism, mind, and even more specifically mind forms, (we call them thought) have their own spirit. They have their own psychic energy and many try to control their minds (and by that, I mean their thoughts). I don’t know anyone who really succeeded and this is a good thing. It would make us twist the psionic world, or “mindscape”, as badly as we twisted the natural world.

You cannot control your thoughts. You can control your mind. That part of your consciousness that is actually your mind, and you can “befriend” your thoughts. Even get them to side with you and go along with your will, but this is why thoughts seem “viral”. That’s a really narrow metaphor, … Seek More

One psionic talent is animal communication. Some people have a natural gift for feeling the emotions, and even the thoughts of other species. Often they can do this with an animal species, but not humans.

A horse whisperer? Yes. The horse whisperer likely has the psionic talent to go with his other insights.

Just as everything has a spirit, everything has a mind, a psionic presence and potential. Even a rock has a mind, but usually too unfamiliar with normal consciousness to communicate with.

One of our Hawaiian chants talks about rock/stone as astonishing food of the mind and heart, and we seek stones for these conversations. Psionic talent is likely a powerful component of the Kahuna tradition.

Even if you don’t feel your path is primarily psionic, it can only be helped by embracing the practice of whatever mental talents you might … Seek More

I will start with some simple explanations of psionics before I get into anything more involved. Psionics is the understanding, development, and practice of the powers of the mind. Everything from precognition to empathic healing. If it’s “consciousness only” paranormal phenomenon, it falls into the psionic category.

For all of the mysteries of the mind, the talents some people display have no unifying view behind them. They often seem unexplainable all together. Artists often demonstrate exceptional psionic perception, though usually they don’t develop an expressive talent, which instead goes into art.

It’s like mana? It would be like mana, if I understand the term correctly.

There are a wide variety of these talents all linked together by having the common link of being based primarily in the minds function, and someone might develop one of these talents or a small set. But few people … Seek More

There is one truth in this beingness we all share. This truth is, “I am.” There is one great error in this life. That error is to conclude, “I cannot be.”

This is what makes us shove our imaginations, and passions, and feelings into that deep dark closet. But for all our obedience to the unspoken edict that our spirits are not allowed to play here, has our world been made any better?

At most to a select few who like the control, but even that must be kind of boring to them. True, but even they betray themselves as they taint the source of supply which is this same world that all our beings stem from.

I see that in the world all the time. The illusion that control and order is more efficient and productive. It’s a delusion, and this … Seek More

Do you want anything? I’m not asking a specific person. Does anyone want anything?

Of course, yes. Doesn’t mean we actually get it. Actually, yes it does, or rather it can mean that.

People mistake want for what it is not. They attempt to embody inspiration in objects. It has links to objects. I won’t deny that. But they can only serve any purpose for a limited length of time, then you will want something else. They say you “outgrow” it. What you want is something that is actually in your own nature and not any single specific object.

In the fullness of your life and personal growth, anything in line with your inspiration/purpose will enter your life. Anything not true to heart will fall away as rapidly as it occurs to you, at least metaphorically speaking. Some people dwell, and by … Seek More