Awakening Secrets

Agree

“Agree to arrive at awareness and truth.”

At the time of birth there is no choice but to agree to what our parents or caretakers give us. There is no opportunity to disagree with the cultural and societal arrangements made for us by our caretakers upon our arrival. We are, in a way, forced to agree to how things have been done in the past.

A baby doesn’t have a voice or a developed mind to be able to know what is true and what is false. Yet a newborn does know the truth. The many Masters agree that a child, so very pure and untouched, is closer to the truth than
any adult.

We agree to take on the religious paths given at birth since we don’t have a choice. We agree to all the ideas, plans, words, and thoughts that society has planted in our minds. We agree to listen, for from the time we are born until early adulthood most of us rely on others for guidance.

Parents, environment, and schooling, plus external programming and conditioning provide us with standards and truths that we take for granted.

When we take the next step to become a spiritual seeker, we discover that we can disagree with this conditioning. At that time, we agree to learn how to arrive at awareness and truth for ourselves. We agree to become awakened!

Alone

“Never say you are alone, for you are not alone, your G-d and your genius
are with you.” – Epictetus

The Talmud states: “For this reason was man created alone, to teach thee that whoever destroys a single soul…scripture imputes [guilt] to him as though he had destroyed a complete world; and whoever preserves a single soul…,scripture ascribes (merit) to him as though he had preserved a complete world.” (Sanhedrin 37a) One cannot become one with all until one is able to spend time alone.

The word “alone” holds the term “one” and the word “all”. Words hold mysteries in their meanings. Once we begin to pay attention to them, soon we can decipher them. Nothing is a coincidence, even in the language of words.

Did the Masters of the past forget to point out in their books, texts, and scriptures that the most important word for self-realization and awakening was the word alone? It is the exact opposite of the word for group. Or has the word been removed through later revisions, interpretations, and rewriting that took place century after century, or yuga after yuga? If mastery required it, why was this word not included in many of the texts of the world’s religious paths? Was this an oversight? Or were the various paths that were always meant for one to self-realize just kept back from humanity, so those who controlled the masses kept everyone engaged with one another and the group? Was humanity being deluded into believing the ‘group’ version of self-realization was the sole method to attain to truth, so awakening would be kept for a selected power elite? Did those few require everyone to always
engage with the social group?

The word alone is a most important word for self-realization, seeking truth or coming to find ourselves. Western culture and society is trained and conditioned by media and society that being alone is not normal. The word alone has a negative connotation from this deep conditioning.

We may find it difficult to be alone, for we have been made to believe we are never supposed to be alone. We are bombarded with comments like: “You shouldn’t be alone!” “Loneliness kills!” Says who? We have bought into this attitude so much that when we have time to be alone, then anxiety, depression, and other afflictions or diseases of the mind/brain arise. This is due to our own expectations based on the conditioning of society. But, says who?

Masters of the past spent significant time alone. Jesus spent 40 days and nights in solitude, prayer and fasting in the Judean wilderness. Moses, also, went up to Mount Sinai alone for 40 days and nights in prayer and fasting. It was he alone who received the message of G-d from the burning bush, that later came to be known as the Torah. Mohammed often went to a cave on his own. It was there that the word of G-d was revealed to him by the Angel Gabriel. He had many occasions when he was alone and not in the company of anyone else. From the age of six, he was not subject to the watchful eye of his mother since he was known to have been an orphan. He lived in the barren empty desert. In that vastness he found true solitude and contemplation. Deep contemplation can begin through the space that the Masters found only when they became alone.

Alone is a central theme of many masters, spiritual teachers, yogis and awakened beings. Like Jesus and Moses, Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree so the meaning of life would come to him. He, too, was alone and on his own, having left a wife and an innocent, newborn son in his home to find “truth”. There doesn’t seem be any other way to reach awakening unless one goes about it alone. Most organized religions are based on small and large groups that come together to pray, read, and congregate. They then segregate from the main groups that have different beliefs of their own, and smaller groups that separate from the larger groups, such as the Shiite and Sunni in Islam.

But never does religion promote being alone. These groups resort to outer means of prayer. Each religion or faith then makes its congregates believe that looking at the world in their one way is the right way. Segregation starts its deep conditioning. Nowhere does it state that we must chant, pray or meditate in groups. Nor does it say we can only find G-d in a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, Gurdwara or any other specific place of worship.

It can prove difficult to meditate in a group setting in any church, temple, synagogue or mosque. Places of worship are very busy due to the many distractions.

People have been made to believe that G-d, the Divine Source, is outside the human being. None of the organized religions promote being alone and seeking union with G-d, truth or awakening on our own. Instead, groups congregating in a religious institution or place of worship is the sanctioned way of prayer. A pray here and pay over there policy seems to exist in many places of religion.

Group prayers can be a dispersal of one’s energy. We can read every single book for all faiths in our own home where we can become still, quiet, and can be alone. Groups are more loud, noisy, cause more ‘mental noise’ and distractions. Conversations, and the desire to be understood through speech occurs in groups. There is little quietness in any church, temple, synagogue or mosque, since so many congregate there. It is quiet when nobody is there, but people are everywhere causing us more and more interactions. Time to meditate, to be quiet, to be still, to contemplate, and be alone is crucial in the path to becoming awake.

Masters of the past spent plenty of time alone. Yet, the collective conditioning and programming of humanity is such that this is seen as bad or negative. This fixation on being social extends by being in touch and keeping in touch all the time. When we are engaged with the other outer people around us, how is it possible to hear the inner voice of the Divine?

The time must come that the inner voice will prevail over the much louder, outer voices of the other. It comes when we allow ourselves to be comfortable being alone and try to do things by ourselves. When we are alone, deep contemplation can begin. It is here that intuition is fostered, psychic abilities are developed and the Divine begins to reveal itself in us.

Enjoying our own company is necessary even if it is so very difficult in modern times, due to the outer chatter, or as modern Master Eckhart Tolle put it, due to “mental noises”.

Right from the beginning, the conditioning we receive makes us think we should be social. It is one layer that is very difficult to peel away as we learn to be alone. Some of us find it easy to be alone while others are alone by no choice of their own. Introverts or those who choose to be alone are called “loners”. We are told that nobody likes to be alone, so right from the beginning our conditioning takes over the mind. The terms “you shouldn’t be alone,” or “nobody is supposed to be alone,” or “loneliness kills” makes us feel we should keep in the company of people all the time. In this social programming the mind and brain become transformed or fixated. We think in the opposite manner from how we were originally born at Source to be.

Humans are social beings but even social beings need down time. That down time is when the spiritual seeker is born and begins to be awake. The truth is that at birth you come into this world alone. No two people are born at the exact same second, millisecond of time or place. This is also true upon our death. No two souls die at the same instant of time. Yet we are constantly being fed society’s command that we should not be alone.

Becoming aware, alert, and awake requires spending time alone. It is something that one needs to make a positive habit of, instead of loathing it. Being alone makes us totally and absolutely depend on G-d for all guidance. It can be difficult to be alone when we marry, live with others, have a child, and must deal with 7+ billion people in the world – and counting – through our everyday social interactions. Techs and media control so much of this cycle on Earth that it is now impossible to be truly alone, unless we disconnect from it all or at least limit it, so those forms of keeping in touch are no longer irritants.

Being alone is one of the trademark aspects of coming to our own light. When one becomes alone, the light which is the creative force turns on and shines. We cannot become awakened when we spend no time alone in space and solitude.

Choosing to do things alone must become a habit until being alone is preferred over being social. A constant need to be social is counter productive to awakening processes. Spending time alone is the only way we can truly get to know ourselves, to answer the big question, “Who am I?”

Will the “I” realize it is self-reliant? One can listen to the inner voice when no other voices from the outer are in its way. The other voices all around us are the limitations imposed on human life, and they are the voices that prevent one from being free. These are the “mental noises”. They belong to the other people we interact with daily either through physical contact in person or through cyberspace, email, phone, texts, mail, cable, media, tweet, and pages. (Note the five-lettered words.) And yes, it includes the voices of family, caretakers, co-workers, people chit-chatting in the mall, friends, siblings, aunts, uncles, mommy or daddy. Having people around tempts us to look for the answers to our own questions from the other. Being alone is not only necessary but mandatory for us to come to the point of “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” You are the only person who can look into yourself with introspection.

Given we must be alone to answer our own questions, this is one of the hardest things to do today with so many distractions. The techs, the other, media, chatter, noise, children, work, school and everything around our lives prevents us from being alone. Even when we are alone, we are wired to the world. This makes being alone very difficult.

Often people feel the need to resort to the other for a path, an answer to their prayer or even find the right way to live. How can this someone give you the right answers when over 99% of the world does not have the answers to their own problems? Sure, asking is good for guidance but real truth is found in or through personal experience. Wisdom of this sort is referred to as experiential wisdom. Few ‘others’ can tell one what to do. They are the outer voices that sometimes confuse rather than give the correct answer that we seek.

If we take a closer look, nobody is alone unless they think they are. Too much of life can circle around ideas of blame such as “I am all alone, poor me – I have nobody!” Yet in reality many accomplishments in the world can attest to this often-quoted sentence: Once you listen to that inner voice within you, you are simply never alone. That voice can get lost so very easily when we seek the other for an answer. We all know the answer but need to find it ourselves. The inner voice is that of G-d or the Divine, for we are all part of G-d.

Alone can be found in two ways. Some of us are alone by choice while others just are naturally alone. Since we are creatures of habit, we can become used to being alone if we have done it for long enough. One can manage being alone if that is all they have been accustomed to. It becomes harder when you have to deal with people all the time and then are forced into being alone. Alone does not mean literally alone but having to rely on the self in all facets of life with limited or little interaction with the other. Figuring things out by ourselves enables us to better understand ourselves, and leads us to become strong, independent, and self-reliant individuals. I learned to be alone and make the habit of being alone until it became comfortable. My childhood circumstances before the teen years show how important it was to be alone. By grade five, wearing heavy, large reading glasses, having braces and a severe acne problem made sure that not too many people wanted to hang out with me. Add to this the plain fact that I was one of the two only brown people in school, the other being my sister. Brown-colored people in an all-white school means being alone all the time with little effort. In all of these childhood experiences I did not have a choice, but had to deal with it as a part of life.

From personal experience, children can be mean, but there is not time to feel sorry for ourselves and take things personally. Children can only mimic conditioning given to them, knowing they may have only been taught hate or meanness by their upbringing or environment. Living in a lower income class with immigrant parents who could not help with homework only meant relying on the self. These dynamics meant that the teen years were spent alone more often than not. Nobody was going to ask me to a party or prom anytime soon.

It was in this alone that a total, absolute surrender to G-d started to take place, and the inner voice began to lead. A total dependence on G-d occurred without me even knowing it. The “in” crowd in school walked by as if they had never seen anyone so hideous. What was I to do? Well, the library was great place to start. It was quiet, there were many other people just like me who were alone or might like to be alone by no choice of their own, to actually study in school rather than socialize. I discovered the library is a great place to study, with plenty of books to read and learn from. Nobody bothers anybody in the library. It is the only place in the school accessible during recess or lunch, and even after school. Children conditioned by racism cannot yell remarks like “Hindu!” “Paki!” “Brown girl, who put shit on you?” and “Eew, a Punjab!” It is an open place where people are not social. When people are social, people may get anxiety and become susceptible to depression, in part due to people making comparisons with one another via social media and techs, which tend to exacerbate this problem. The focus shifts from the self to the other. When we hear things and take them personally, it affects the mind. To keep the mind clear and clean makes sense.

We must remove ourselves from that negativity that gives rise to afflictions of the mind due to what other people say or make us believe is truth. In a quiet library, one hears none of these schoolyard words or children’s evil lingo lingering in the mind after it has been said. The library puts on a mask of silence for students to engage in whatever they like to do without so many words or the need to speak unnecessarily. The schoolyard is loud. The library is quiet. It was a great place to be alone to concentrate, escape and get myself together. It was a silent place that allowed me to see how all negatives can be made into a positive.

I had to figure out fast what kind of edge can be had with what I had been given. In the library, the alone time paid off by getting focused, with utter silence for schoolwork and perfect marks in school. This allowed my self-esteem and confidence to rise. Receiving excellent marks and being number one in school was something many kids who had looks did not achieve. That was when the Ah Haa moment came to be, from all this quiet, aloneness. I was being smart, learning fast and getting amazing grades in school. Alone worked out like this for many years including high school and university. It was a matter of making this alone time work somehow. Simply planting the
ass on a chair to learn is not everybody’s forte. Learning requires discipline, goals and focus which can’t be had if one is a social butterfly or socially engaged with others. Ah Haa, the Divine, had given me a direction and a brain but not looks. So what?! Just do what works.

As time fast-forwarded to today, it became obvious that being alone was necessary for me to find the light in awakening, for it makes me self-reliant, self-sufficient and self-confident. When you are among the alone, you find intelligence. Comfortable in your own skin, you can survive by yourself in a crowd. You have the unique ability to eat, dance, listen to music and work alone.

Since I came to be a retailer, other people were always around. Interactions with others were daily, hourly and sometimes by the minute. I learned that some connection was necessary while other communication was not. Interacting with co-workers was unnecessary after training. Retailing involves talking and hustling. That energy must be kept for the clients, not coworkers who wanted to share what they did last night. Being self-employed meant that the calendar could be made with only one person working during non-busy periods. Working alone made productivity and sales increase, with a decrease in the time spent in chatter with the co-workers. This work enabled me to spend hours alone. Dealings with clients were kept to a minimum as discussions were to do with the sale. Extra staff was not kept on during the day as it meant the engagement of extra idle talks, ideas and yadda-yaddayadda that nobody wanted to hear. It was this way for over 27 years. Of course, during that time, quiet time was spent in meditation on the Divine/ G-d, rather than engaging in useless gossip.

Being an entrepreneur in business helped me to quickly come closer to self-realization. It makes it possible to deal with people and without people. Alone, therefore, became a choice rather than something imposed. Over time a level of comfort arose. That is important for spiritual success. It allows for growth and brings us closer to knowing who we are. Being alone can be seen as a call to being me, myself, and I all in one, alone. It becomes the starting to point to self-realization.

Start by seeking to spend time in quiet solitude, so that time is made for the G-d or the inner voice in yourself. Soon, spending time alone becomes such a habit it is sought after and yearned for. It only becomes a problem when we listen to the outer voices that keep claiming we “should never” be alone! How ironic, as this is the only way one can come back to G-d and self-realize. It appears to be the exact opposite of what we are taught in schools, through media, by the large companies and all those techs who feel we should always keep in touch.

Alone can apply to being self-reliant, independent, and able to challenge ourselves to try things without help. Being alone also ensures that we mind our own business. If we focus so much on what other people are doing, then we cannot learn how to become ourselves. When the brain is involved in things that don’t matter to us personally, it engages us in things that matter to the other people. And all the outer stuff doesn’t matter at all.

AWAKE

“Spiritual awakening is found when we return to the exact same point at the time of birth.”

We humans do not remember when we first became awake because that was the time we had just arrived from our mommy’s womb. When we first awoke, we as babies did not eat meats, did not drink dairy from cows, did not care for views, did not engage ourselves with others through sexual relations, care for the trips, homes, cars, foods, money and everything else that humanity has made important during this “cycle” or “yuga”.

We came naked, empty-handed. This clean slate has been referred to as “tabula rasa.”

We did not arrive with anything except our desire to suckle milk from our mothers (mommy), being able to cry and then calm down when comforted.

How can humanity come to the level of awakening we experienced at birth during this time of materialism?

The spiritual awakening or truth as some call it, is found when we return to the exact same point as at the time of birth. It is a most difficult process to arrive at. During modern times, humans cling to materialistic stuff as if they are losing something. Humans during materialism are so far from spirituality it is difficult to teach the awakening process. Bringing the human back to humanity seems like an impossibility when there is so much keeping us busy and desiring to come back for more on Earth. Clinging to earthly desires subjects humanity to continue the cycle of birth and death.

The second awakening is comparable to the first, yet during the second awakening one is older, wiser and more experienced, plus it is by choice. In this awakening, we remember the love we once arrived with. That love is everywhere and in everything. We return to the Source and seek the same things we once did when we first arrived as a baby. Yes, the human will forgo the desire to eat meats, eat dairy, engage in sexual relations seeking more penis or pussy, the desire to gain more stuff – homes, autos, money – and will forgo greed, power, and everything else worldly to obtain union with the Divine Source. There is nothing as beautiful as this union. Once found it is the ultimate drug of life. It is pure bliss and ecstasy!

We awoke first at birth. From that moment on, in the words of Rumi, the ‘hangover’ started. Until then, we belonged to the Divine Source. The doctor, the nurse, mommy, daddy and others came and looked at our face then gave us a race, a name, a religion and more. After that came all the other things that nobody ever asked for but got. They were all predetermined due to the caretakers (mommy and daddy) we were born to. We were given many things we never asked for, ever. We were even given a religion based on our parents and society. We were given a culture by those vultures around us who wanted to shape our new life. We were made to believe there were already plans in life made for us by society and the others around us, as we were heirs of someone or an important child of a childless couple. We awoke with a “tabula rasa” only to have our life written before we learned to speak. We were this and that, and were supposed to adhere to it because of dogma all around us. We were given our conditions that would become so very hard to escape later when we awake for ourselves again. These pains and the suffering would last until we become awake once again.

This is referred to as returning to the Source. It is a return to the way we were the day we opened our eyes to humanity. To become awake is returning to the world with open eyes. The day we knew the truth and knew what true love was, before humanity gave us the ‘headache’ to fill our entire lifetime with anguish, stress and worry. It is one of the most difficult tasks to overcome this, and we try to escape it all our lives.

When we awoke from the sleep of illusion, there was no care for the brand, the biggest house, the most money, the shows, the desire to beat someone or many other trivial matters that humans have created. It was all nothing! Everything all around was nothing. “There is nothing down here!” some say. People walking around in the need for greed, desire for power, beast-like appetites for foods, money being their honey, the desire for the fames with their names – and the joke was on us.

Awakening brings relief. There is no more grief! People, places and things are the way they are supposed to be. Nothing is wrong but nothing is down here either. We smile at people in stress, chaos, or despair because we know that fundamentally there is none. We have awakened from the sleep that the world made us wallow in. Everything around seems fake and unreal. Life begins again, only this time you are not a baby but an adult who knows what to do and how to do it. Everything is easier for there is no more pain or suffering. We become in control of the outcome of the life we create in sync and in union with the Source. This is true liberation. It is being free to be awake.

BOOKS

“Books generate ideas for learning and experiencing life through the eyes of those who have already lived it.”

What seems so redundant about following just one path is that one is expected to read the same books over and over again and again to become awakened. Isn’t there something so very boxed in about this logic? Would it not make sense to read all the books from many paths so we can become one with all and not just one specific group? To awaken and be open one gathers from all those who have awakened. It is boring and useless if one is attempting to “turn the light on” to become awake, only to turn it off by going to just one path we have been conditioned to believe is truth. Books allow us to learn about the various paths in life and broaden the mind. Interactions with people from different paths, books such as the Kalpa Sutra, the Aqdas, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Quran, the Bible, the Torah and the Vedas open us to see life from many facets.

Has anyone come forward and said because of this one book from this one religion, humanity has been awakened in current times? Does anybody else wonder about these things? Since first being created by the original Masters of the books, who has awakened since that book was produced after the original Master had? Does anybody want to go beyond one book? We may discover the possibility of a revision, omission, or deletion that occurred over time, done by those in power who might want to control the other from having too much information. Are we to believe a scripture written thousands of years ago is in its absolute form? As time goes on nothing is absolute except Absolute Vodka, right? Is there room for error or is each book considered real truth? Good science demands progression. Awakening or spirituality is no different. It, too, should challenge past ideas and thoughts to ensure if they are indeed true or false.

Everything in life is open to some errors and omissions with the possibility of progression. Words can be changed to mean something other than what was first intended. Some Earth cycles differ from others. This is why all books of as many paths as possible should be read, not just those one has come across due to their birth parents, caretakers, culture, society, religion or those that are forced or imposed on a nation. Books from all paths are available for reading in the West. Democracy allows this freedom of religion to explore all paths. The West is best for books and thanks to our wonderful libraries plus cyberspace, we can awaken with a wealth of information.

It is always a shock when a parent states “reading too many books confuses the proper direction that you should take to become awakened.” That is what the Guru also said to his Sikhs. The Guru instructed his Sikhs (disciples) to be students for the rest of their lives, with the same book over and over again. This ensures that the students or disciples stick to Sikhism’s teachings and no others. This approach is contrary to what modern awakening is about. Reading as many books as possible to learn and dabble in as many concepts is a way to learn, get knowledge, and experience life, so the door to the house of the promised gift opens one day.

How sad that some have resorted to reading only one book over and over again to find awakening. Did it ever occur to them that, other than the original Master, not one from his religion of 27 million or so has stood up and said, “From reading this book over and over again, I know G-d!” What a shame, not to wonder and ponder if the books our parents, caretakers or grandparents had given were the actual path to awakening, or not! It is a little redundant when a Master asks his students to only read the same book(s) over and over again. Does anybody ever want to go beyond one book to discover if there is the possibility of a revision, omission, exclusion, reprint, reinterpretation, missed interpretation, as understood by so and so, or deletion? Aristotle recognized that scientific knowledge is progressive, subject to revision. Religion and spirituality must adopt that same view to move forward and progress humanity to a higher spiritual level. Following only one book in complete and absolute form ensures that the religion  keeps the power to itself and grows.

Books are guides to awakening, not meant to be taken literally. They act as guides in life. They add to our personal, independent and private experience to help awaken us. Many have read books of one religion and gained amazing insight, but to become awakened by only one book has not occurred. Subsequent editions of any book results in errors, interpretations, omissions, and changes sometimes without even any intention. It is almost certain that everything in life is open to some errors, omissions, and interpretations. Words can be changed to mean one thing when they mean another. When they are written in so many languages they are even more subject to interpretation. This is why all paths have books. The spiritual seeker should aim to dabble in as many books of all paths, and not rely on the one they are born into.

The beauty of the West is that we have freedom of religion in our laws. This makes one wonder why those in North America, where this freedom of religion is ingrained in our constitution, are not seeking awakening as the path on their own. Why not add to the religion that was given to us at birth so we gain more insight? This gives us an opportunity to keep the path we are born into or choose to become awake. By sticking to one religion, intolerance arises that leads to an us-vs.-them scenario: our books are right and theirs are wrong. However, democracy allows all of humanity to learn. Libraries, online searches, schools, religious institutions/organizations, wellness, spiritual groups, new age groups and so much more are all available. Awakening in the West promotes self-discovery, it develops us for a private, personal and independent experience of all paths, not relying on only one book to find the Divine, G-d and awakening.

Nowhere in any of the books does it state that the books are only to be read inside a church, mosque, temple, synagogue, Gurdwara, ashram, or any other place of worship. A book is no more holy there than in one’s own house. Reading each of the religious books, there is no mention of a need to create a place where many people should gather and read the books that the Masters have given. Each of us can read all books in the privacy of our own homes in a quiet setting where the potential for meditation or union with the Divine is more likely to occur than in a noisy place of worship filled with many people all around us who are interested in socializing rather than realization.

The predominant books that are being read in the West are the Bible, the Torah and the Koran. Other books are also common such as the Guru Granth Sahib (Sikhs), the Holy Vedas (Hindu), the Aqdas (Baha’i), Tipikata (Buddhism), Zoroastrianism (Yasna which part of the Avesta) and so on. Examining all books opens new ideas and concepts. (It should be noted that many of the books have titles made up of five letters, which keeps bringing up those fives.)

The literate world realizes that anybody with something to say has written it or will write about it. So, we need to know how to read and write. Yes, write books. Printed books can be passed on to others and are re-used over again in libraries. Books are where movements, ideas, and thoughts are born. A world without books would be a fearful place. Books generate ideas for learning and experiencing life through the eyes of those who have already lived it. They are teachers without having to have a physical human being talking to them. Books that are non-fiction and based on philosophy, spirituality, or on previous awakening periods are of most significance for the seeker to become awake. Reading the Bible, Torah, Koran or other such books allows the Western world to understand what shapes and conditions other peoples’ thoughts and ideas. Reading all the different books from various paths enables one to experiment, conduct tests, and choose a path that works best. This is one of the most crucial pieces of information for a seeker: understand others’ religions, books, ideas, thoughts, and knowledge of “truth”. Books allow us to become open. Without reading other books, we are locked into one path so we cannot self-discover and self-realize. Locking into one path ensures that life is seen in one way only and not in the many ways it can be.

An excellent example of the power of books is seen by examining the Nazis of Germany. When the Nazis wanted to eliminate the Jewish people, they targeted their books by burning them. To get rid of printed books they had to be burned. The same occurred when the Taliban of Afghanistan looked for people who were educated and learned by attempting to locate the books they read, hid, or had in their possession. Many had their homes raided and vandalized. In their attempt to suppress society, the Taliban did not encourage reading or writing, especially for women. This keeps control and power in the hands of the Islamist extreme group. It is a means of keeping society in the dark through their veils of evil. The Egyptian government’s attempt to suppress the rebels was clear when during the 2011 overthrow of Mubarak, Egyptian rebels were coerced, threatened and asked what books they had been reading in the days that led up to the revolution known as the Arab Spring.

During major human movements or wars, books have played a very significant role in the shaping of political ideologies. People need printed books. Not necessarily electronic books since they are just part of this cycle. Written books can be passed on as legacies of ideas, knowledge, know-how, techniques, styles, social/political/economic trends and many other topics of life. Written books keep for a long time if preserved. Electronic books have not yet proven themselves to stand the test of time. Printed books have gone through many cycles on Earth.

Books are crucial to society and future progress. Anybody who has anything to say writes books. Anybody who wants to learn reads books. We, the adults, already know a child is like a sponge when you teach them to read books. If one’s intention is to raise a genius, then it would be prudent to give them as many books as possible rather than another screen to view. This includes opening a child up to the dictionary at the early ages of three, four or five, whenever they can read. The path to awakening of a child is being surrounded by books, music, and adults whose interaction is as positive as possible. Books allow us to become awake to new ideas, creative thoughts, and stories. One can introduce all books that relate to the main religious books of the world along with the books that are associated with their own faith. A child can become more aware and open to all people. They will not live in a boxed world that only deals with “their own kind”, their own culture, their own people and their own religion given by our parents (caretakers). Not only do books make people more aware of how others around the world feel but people are better able to align themselves with their own belief system.

By opening the mind, one can reduce how we judge people before we have seen how they are educated. One of the most helpful books one can read is the dictionary. Giving kids this book opens their vocabulary and gives rise to whole new ways of speaking and writing. The dictionary helps them to write more interesting stories and enhances language arts skills. Other useful reads for children, teens and adults are the Charter of Rights, the Acts and Statues of any province or state, or the laws of the city you live in, Read the Income Tax Act, and eliminate worry about taxes. Helping to understand the why takes fears and worry away.

Books must be reusable, recyclable, rereadable and available to all people no matter what their economic or  education level may be. Kids often collect books for school book drives, so these books are donated and shared. This means many people may enjoy the words of knowledge and intellect, not only those with money.

CHILD

“The soul is healed by being with children.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Bible states in Matthew (18:2-4), “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. So, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

We were each an infant and then a child at one time. Children are most untouched, unconditioned and pure when they are infants and they are closest to the source at the time of birth. The spiritual seeker can consider several different aspects of child and/or children when pursuing awakening. The first is that a seeker must choose to become more child-like, trusting and naive, choosing the inner self rather than the voices or noises from people and the outer world. This is difficult due to the layers and layers of false and toxic conditioning. The open mind of the child takes in all that the adult gives like a sponge. Some call it brainwashing, others refer to it as conditioning. Whatever it is, the child is no longer the same person as when they arrived with a mind of tabula rasa (blank). It may start with “you are this race and it is the superior race.” “Indian people are like this or that.” “Chinese people are like this or that.” “Islam is this or that.” In reality, it is neither this nor that. The list goes on and on, for peeling every layer of falseness that we have been given by our family, friends, caretakers, society, religions, cultures, and so on.  Others around us all the time shoot constant noise into our ears even when we don’t ask them to. This mental noise shapes, forms and conditions us and keeps us separated from the real truth. Certain beliefs, fears and limitations must be shed, for they have passed on to the child concepts that make some things seem impossible. A child lives from the soul more than the programmed/conditioned adult. A child is naturally able to make the adult see that we are all spiritual beings living in temporary human bodies, going through human experiences of learning, evolving and advancing towards self realization. A child needs care, guidance and love to realize their gift in life. Only through a human life can a soul realize, since the human has been given consciousness. Other beings like the plant and beast (animal) beings have not. Having a child is necessary for continuance of the human population, but also to ensure that souls have a chance to self-realize which is the whole point of human life. But the question remains as to how many children should we have, so our own soul may also have a chance to self-realize in this life. After having one child, there is less time for meditation due to the duties involved in caring, loving, and feeding a child to survive and thrive. Later, with the birth of additional children, the time for quietness to connect to the Divine intelligence or source is further reduced. This may be why having children is referred to as being engaged in “worldly” duties. Yet religions say we must have many children without consideration if we can or cannot care for them properly.

Religions and paths of the world have written and directed humanity to multiply and flourish the Earth. For example Genesis 1:28 states: “God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the Earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Could this line and other lines from the various religious texts be taken out of context? Other paths such as Islam allow for multiple wives, which naturally has resulted in many children. Following some religious paths have resulted in large families with five, six, ten, twelve or more children. This has caused the world population to balloon to 7.6 billion people by 2017 and counting. Children are being born to adults in impoverished nations like Africa who are starving. How could a child and its soul self-realize if it does not even have food to survive waiting for them upon birth? Caretakers who don’t have enough food, water, shelter, education, time and love or even a peaceful environment to thrive in continue to reproduce based on religious texts without consideration for their ability to provide. Many parts of the Middle East are war-torn yet humanity still brings souls to a tent with no running water, food, and no education because a religious text has commanded that the human life is a blessing. Yes, a human life is blessing if the life has food, water, shelter, love and education waiting for them. But instead a human life is put through pain and suffering when it is brought to an environment that is not conducive to a soul to self-realize. Humanity has taken words from a book literally, and brings children to the world based on what is said there. A child cannot possibly awaken in starvation, when the whole of life is spent in worry and stress in search of food. How can this possibly be a blessing? What has the West done to awaken from this?

The West and European world are hovering around two children per family on average. This gives the West a greater opportunity to come back to the self, which offers a better chance to pursue awakening. Most places where religion, poverty and authoritarian dictatorships prevail, the number of children in families remains high. The women bearing all these children face pain and suffering, giving birth multiple times. This means more mouths to feed. The West and European world are given democracy where the populations are more able to think for themselves. People can see that caring for large families is obviously difficult, time-consuming and costly. The West and Europe are collectively much more aware, awake and alert to what is manageable and workable for the life cycle. This strengthens our ability to pursue awakening sooner rather than later.

Everything is subject to cycles. When does the time come for us to come close to the Divine intellect, for those of us who have chosen to live worldly lives which include children? The time may be once we are done child-raising so they are self-sufficient into their adulthood. The faster that takes place, the faster the parent or caretaker is able to focus of themselves. This, of course, means that the child was given love, food, shelter, water, education and proper care so they are independent of the parent or caretaker. Naturally, it is easier to reach this point when there are only one or two children than when there are five or twelve or more. The time to reflect, become silent and still may seem to never arrive when we are engaged in the unending duties of taking care of little ones. This doesn’t include the time required to take care of the self. That comes way down at the bottom when everybody else in the family and children are taken care of. The more children are born, the time spent on meditation on the Divine seems to diminish.

Could it be that we have come close to 8 billion people on Earth just to fulfill the promise to multiply and flourish without realizing G-d in life since the “worldly” duties of raising children take up so much of our time? Religions would not grow so large, or have so much control over people if all of humanity became awake or focused on awakening right away, or after having fewer children. There would be fewer people to control if all the religions encouraged us to meditate instead of having a large number of children. Having families that are manageable gives proper time for the parent/adult to pursue self-realization or contemplate on G-d towards the latter part of ones’ Earthly life. It enables one to manage the human cycle in balance with the result of eventually awakening. With smaller families there is more time to learn, to care for the self and a chance to look after the child in a proper manner. Having a reasonable number of children would also allow some families to not worry about marrying off their girls at the tender age of nine to older men for money or a dowry just so they have one less mouth to feed at home. In the East, child brides are still a common occurrence in order to alleviate the families’ financial burdens of having a mouth to feed, clothe and provide shelter for.

The next aspect of the child that should be considered by the spiritual seeker is the experience a woman goes through from the time of conception to the time of giving birth in labor. A tremendous amount of pain and suffering is involved when we bring a child into the world. Childbirth is difficult from personal experience but to be put through it multiple times only adds to the pain and suffering of the woman who brings humans to Earth, not the males. This does not include the pain and suffering after the child leaves the womb of their mother. The child must be reared, fed, given shelter, educated, and disciplined among the thousand other things that are involved in having and raising a child. These responsibilities are massive for one child. So, when we have many children, there is additional stress and worry along with the responsibilities of raising them. The main religious paths, plus books that go along with them which were all given to male Masters who don’t give birth nor will ever experience the pains or sufferings of childbirth, encourage more and more children by literally writing that we are to “be fruitful and multiply”. Consideration should be given to the true pain and sufferings of creating a human being from birth to death. Simply fulfilling religious commands without taking into full consideration of how a child will impact the life of the adult who brings them to life needs to be examined.

Having one child is considered being engaged in worldly matters by some Yogis, Swamis and Masters. Masters like Jesus were not known to have any children of his own. Master Bhudda had a son and wife but chose not to form an attachment to him in favor of awakening. He was known to have not even picked up his son shortly after his birth and decided that the bond that would be created would prevent him from self-realizing. The Guru Nanak of the Sikhs had two children of his own. Yet he spent 25-30 years away from his family and children in order to teach, learn and awaken. He was definitely not a hands-on father. Modern Master Echkart Tolle does not have any children either. Most of humanity does have children, so is it possible for us for awaken also while engaging in worldly duties of bringing life to Earth? Yes, it is! A child is part of the human life cycle. So humanity doesn’t just stop having children. It just means that once a child reaches adulthood, the parent or caretakers who have finished their duties of raising that child should pursue awakening. This is done by “doing” what the Masters were “doing” prior to their awakening which are discussed in this text.

Another aspect of child that one should consider is that a child is a blessing. A child can help the adult in many daily aspects of life. The child can help the adult stay away from harmful distractions and habits that cause the adult to sway away from becoming awake, alert and aware. A child gives good routines, good patterns in the daily cycle so that the adult can stay focused on what is important. Taking care of a child is a big responsibility so a child can steer the adult away from negative habits such as booze, drugs, and pills (legal or illegal alike) and the desire to smoke. Having absolutely no children can sometimes cause the adult to have too much free time to engage in activities that are not conducive to awakening. The rearing of a child can keep the adult on track and even provide the adult a chance to practice love, patience, caring, sharing and teaching while learning at the same time with the child. So, yes, the possibility of awakening after living a family life in the latter part of the life is absolutely possible. We all can’t stop having children. How would other humans come to self-realize?

CLEAN

“The seat of G-d sits within us, so it is necessary to be clean.”

Bobby Dazzler was no different from any other retailer. Staff that were well-groomed and clean naturally sold the best. Staff who took good care of themselves arrived with washed and combed hair, dressed nicely, and wore make-up to make their face look great too. Being clean was essential to be successful as a salesperson at Bobby Dazzler and everywhere else. Clean was not a given. Some staff and even clients came in drunk, high or smelling as if they needed a shower. There was no choice but to turn them away. Being clean is the only way to serve in retail or to expect great service from sales people.

The seat of G-d sits within us, so it is necessary to be clean. When “clean” refers to coming back to or when approaching G-d, it can refer to personal hygiene, the foods we eat, and also to a clean mind/brain. In personal hygiene and care of the body, there are several ways this can be done during modern times. Clean today is not just bathing or showering in the morning. Clean today can mean cutting our nails on our toes and fingers so they are clean. Modern times enable us to take advantage of a pedicure and manicure professionally at reasonable prices so the feet and hands are clean. It is possible to indulge in a spa from time to time to have a massage or body wrap so the body can relax fully. This is especially important if the body is always in stationary or sedentary position when it is at work. The body needs to unwind and taking care of the body includes not only washing it but pampering it too. Brushing teeth and seeing the dentist are also essential so the mouth is kept clean and healthy. Modern times enable us to keep our teeth in tip-top shape. Hair must not just be washed but it also must be cut so proper care of it makes the body feel clean. It must be kept where it is not bothering one while taking care of our daily duties and can be styled to one’s own liking without the need to use funky unnatural colored dyes. Dyes cause damage to the hairs and even can lead to hair loss due to the strength of the chemicals.

To be clean in your personal hygiene is not the only thing that needs to be clean in your life. Personal hygiene is at the top when describing clean. Clean on the outside also refers to order and cleanliness in the home that we make for ourselves and others. Operating daily in chaotic, messy, and unclean surroundings does not offer very much progress. Finding things, organizing items, and living a life where things run smoothly is part of living well. This does not require one to be a neat freak per se, but when all around us is clean we function smoothly and find things easily. The mind is less stressful when running our life. Clean surroundings are good for health. Living in a dusty, messy or bug-infested environment cannot be good for one’s health. That also means one should not hoard.

Clean from the outside then needs to brought into the inside. Thoughts that are clean, positive, happy, and loving, plus joy, excitement, and beauty are also essential when seeking the Divine. Many Masters claim it is all in our head. This is true. The brain needs to become so clean it can seem to be mindless, without junk blocking it. Mindless is a brain that just sees what it sees, purely. A mind that is a happy observer only. A brain that does not judge, does not find answers to what is in front of them, a brain that does not question or react. A brain that is an observer of the real life dramas that unfold before us.  Not one attached to the techs. The brain that is systematically ready to be strong and deal with life with no interference is a clean brain. This mode of clean makes the mind and/or brain ready to receive. Your mind does not even want to deal with things that bother it so it goes astray. The plan for the clean mind is for it to seek to be mindless, which means less conditioned or not conditioned. The mind seeks to be clean by avoiding habits that cause it to cloud. To be clean is not wanting to deal with any habit that is in excess or will cause the body to be unclean. Check it out for yourself, you will feel clean when your brain is free of all toxins and feelings that make it cloud Let go of all the feelings that cause anger or meanness. Think of this as a shift in focus to the self. The brain will make the shift on its own to your clean train of thought. Just love with humility and forgo any needless wasteful gossip. Just give, expecting nothing in return. Just be a clean person with no hidden agenda or plot. Just think clean thoughts that create positive feelings and let go of the negative thoughts. The mind will automatically clean itself of any toxic ideas, plans or plots.

Another form of clean refers to foods that are fit for consumption. This again means taking care of the inside of ourselves. Foods must be fresh and not processed, as those are fakes. The body needs nourishment that keeps it functioning at an optimum. This begins with examining foods, meats and dairy. Not everything that is available is okay for consumption. Why? One cannot become awake if the foods consumed clog the body, brain, heart, soul, mind, or arteries, vessels, organ and any part of the body that disables it from performing its functions. Foods are a necessity, but pleasing our senses is not! Clean foods for eating are necessary for those who walk the path of self-realization. For example, if one eats foods that might be harmful but taste great, then one is choosing to live in ignorance.

Humanity must take responsibility to become well-informed about consuming unclean foods. With the techs, cyberspace and other tools, the time to be better informed about what we put in our mouths is now. It is too bad that humanity has not learned from the saying, “You are what you eat!” This is one of the hardest sells during the Age of Materialism as humanity has somehow made the foods that were given to us to survive upon, thrive on or live into art, entertainment and even decoration.

Since the seat of G-d sits within every single individual, then it is necessary to be clean and to eat clean foods. Judaism is one path that points this out by using the term kosher for foods are acceptable for consumption. The secular society can see that natural, organic and fresh foods are clean so they are acceptable for consumption. Determining this on our own is important as not all foods a religious person claims to be clean are suitable for the self to consume. If the physical body nourishes itself with foods that make us feel lazy or make us ill, then those are not fit for consumption. In the modern world, not everything is okay for us to eat. Clean is necessary to those who wish to self-realize. If one chooses to consume the bottom feeders of the ocean like octopus, clams, oysters, shrimps, lobster and many other shellfish that are covered up with butter, garlic and sauces without taking a look at what they consume in a scientific manner, then this is ignorance! A quick Google search reveals that the bottom feeders/shellfish eat junk and ingest micro plastics and micro fibers that are littered in our oceans. By covering the shellfish up with butter, garlic or other sauces just to enjoy the flavor for taste and please one’s senses, is ignoring the negative aspects of this particular food. Thus in order to indulge in the bulge because everybody else is means one is not living awakened or being on alert to the possibility of introducing disease to our Divine vessel (body). It is just unclean.

EMPTY

“To be empty, completely empty, is not a fearsome thing;
it is essential for the mind to be empty, unformed,
for then only can it move into depths.” – Jiddu Krishnamutri

When we are sent down to Earth we are empty. The mind has no ideas or thoughts planted into it. So, know that we arrive empty. Learning truth means leaving this world just the way we came empty, with no need to grasp or cling to anything or anybody. Empty applies to the material things along with the thoughts, ideas, experiences, programming and conditioning that is given by those all around us and by our experiences. We arrive in the world empty just like the tabula rasa (blank slate) and that is what one aspires to achieve when seeking self-realization. At the time of our death, we are to be empty as we cannot take anything with us. Djavad Mowafaghian, a self-made millionaire who was born and raised in Tehran said he wants to leave his pockets empty when he dies. He put it simply and correctly after undergoing a stroke and found out he, too, wished to give it all away. He donated millions to many organizations including hospitals, educational institutions, charities, and facilities. This is how a man can do G-d’s work here on Earth during materialism by sharing the wealth that the Divine has blessed him with. He is one example of a human who realizes that we should leave this life the same way we came into it – empty.

We are only here for the tests to see how we get along with the rest.

The rest being humanity in unity. If we look at the word humanity, we will find the word unity inside it. When we realize we must leave empty and the only thing that matters is if we did what we were supposed to do and did it with success. However, one learns that we must leave without the need to cling to anything. Not a thing, including our family. Why? The world is made in duality.

Once we leave with the desire to cling to a thing or those lovely, beautiful material things, then we arrive on the other side of the material world so we can repeat that whole lesson of life once more. Just to see if we can be happy to leave empty.

Many great movers, shakers, and outstanding individuals who have made amazing contributions to this earthly cycle have already realized that they must donate whatever material wealth they have amassed to leave the world in a better place than it was when they arrived here empty. Those blessed with their gift realized this whole ‘empty’ concept. They have already declared that they are going away empty. Giving more to one’s heirs could make them lose their drive. Each wise man or woman who has realized that is how the world works, giving to others who suffer poverty, and disease. This is true loving kindness!

Without naming every single great person who has made significant contributions to the world since that list would be a entire manuscript of its own, the following is a just a sample list and plants the seeds of leaving empty to all of us. Djavad Mowafashian speaks absolute truth when he states that he wants to leave with empty pockets.

1. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with The “Giving Pledge” and the multiple millionaires and billionaires who have already pledged to give their wealth back to humankind, since it is other humans who made them. The West and the developed world make them wealthy so they can give back to the rest of the world, i.e. Africa, India, Middle East and so many other impoverished nations.

2. Scott Cousens of Fortius Sport and Health donates $23 million towards the completion of a $61 million sports medicine complex in Burnaby which stood still until the donation came about. Donations to make the world a better place can be large or small. It doesn’t matter! Leaders who arrive at this point in life are overcoming their desire to cling to greed. They are pursuing spiritual goals related to karma. The actions they take now towards others will be those that they take with them. Overcoming desires for more material wealth is the gateway to the spiritual world. They choose humanity over the material world. It is a choice if one wishes to arrive empty to the Divine or if one chooses to ‘cling’ to this world.

Governments such as those running many of the world’s nations pursue worldly material wealth instead of providing for their own people. Without naming every single nation guilty of corruption, the following is  only one example of what humanity today is facing regarding the desires of materialism. The son of an African dictator in Equatorial Guinea spent $100 million of his impoverished country’s wealth on luxuries such as private jets, a trove of 24 cars valued at $10 million, mansions and memorabilia of Michael Jackson, while his tiny nation of 680,000 lives below the poverty line with no access to electricity, education, or clean water.

Many wise men claim we live in a time of immense energy. Unfortunately, the energy is being exhausted on many things that are not important. Similar situations existed for Tunisia until the dictator of that nation was ousted. It just takes one individual to make the change.

We came here with nothing at birth and leave with nothing at death. Why cling to anything as we come back in the cycle of birth and death clinging to the same thing that we left in our last life? The poor in this life can arrive rich in the next. When the rich in this life will arrive poor in the next, until the soul self-realizes it is not this nor that. It is nothing and wants nothing. The Divine Source fully knows that he who clings to the material world is attracted or attached to the material world. So, the human is sent back for some lessons until we “get it”. To complete this cycle properly requires one to let go. Until that time arrives, we continue these cycles over and over again until we arrive at self-realization.

Light

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light”- Plato

We were all created with light and energy. This makes us light, but it hasn’t been able to shine through easily due to the layers of “stuff” that have made us think that we are this or that. some of us even wear physical layers of clothing to cover that up. some of us have so many layers, and layers and even more layers of life hiding that light that we might wonder if we will ever get underneath to the source of this light. Coming back to the light requires us to become fully alert, awake and aware. this is awakening. awakening requires us to challenge the self, whereas religion (faith) keeps us engaging with other people in a cat and mouse fight that calls for peace.

To turn the light on means we choose to seek that potential, that possibility and that nectar called light – a word found right inside of enlightenment. When we turn the light on, we heighten our intuition, expand our awareness and develop deep insight. We evolve our clairvoyance and may even be able to perceive the end in the beginning. Choosing to awaken also means we move beyond the boxes that religions have created.

Light, part of awakening, has nothing to do with all the regions or any of the religions. It has nothing to do with the outside as it is based on the inside. The light can turn on in all of us when we have reached awakening. But this light can only turn on when we have a desire to awaken. Many Masters in the past have come and gone. Many have come to teach but are unable to reach humanity as it is very difficult to bring the human back to humanity. The human feels this need to be unique, different and something better, more and even a little more special than one another. The human fails to see just how much familiarity and similarity we have with all of humanity. Like vultures we look to study each of the varying cultures yet never realize that no one has won. We are all just one! We strive for the label and then even decide to fudge and judge just to be right and forget about the light.awakening is upon us and it is for us to realize it with or without a fight.

That light is within all of us. It isn’t a matter of just turning on the lights that have been turned off accidentally. Light is part of each human being and it’s  brightest at the time of our birth. It is shining at the moment of birth  as that is the time that we first become awake. Some of us get the lights dimmed as conditioning of some sort starts to set in almost immediately by the environment or the caretakers, mommy or daddy, or whoever they may be. Others are lucky as their light remains bright until they get to school. Still others are able to keep their flame stronger by becoming resilient and not buying into or believing anything that is said to them. Some people get their conditioning later in life as adults while others remain true to their belief in the search for truth.a seeker of awakening cannot come upon enlightenment, for it is said that it just comes to those who weren’t really looking. However, a certain set of circumstances can help bring about awakening.

For a child the conditioning is given by parents. But to really want to experience truth, one must not always  believe everything that even our parents or caretakers say. Why? the truth that they give is truth that belongs to some book they were given by their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents or distant relatives from ages ago. It is not wisdom that is experienced by the self. It is wisdom experienced by the teacher, master, guru or awakened teacher from a cycle that has nothing to do with the modern era that we live in today.and it is a truth that belongs to that master specifically. So, one cannot obey, disobey or even agree with this as being truth since it is not one‘s own truth which is subject to one‘s own experience.

Of course, caretakers want the best for us.this concept is very, very hard to point out to them, since they are the ones who have the most profound influence in our life right from the time of birth. Coming from a very poor family of Sikhs, all that many really had was their religion at their place of worship. Parents clung to things that were from their childhood in India as it was easier for them to be around those most like them, rather than find new paths with others from different backgrounds like Italian, Portuguese and Asians who lived right next door in the West. They indicated that Sikhs must go to the Gurdwara, a place of prayer for Sikh, and pray. After going, many people were observed not being so happy but sad. They were sitting on the floor, with the men and women separated. This couldn’t be the place of G-d as observed from childhood memories. This is still the personal feeling that arises today when an event occurs. This revelation didn’t go over very well with the parents and was considered to be a rejection of a part of their past. After asking if an English version of the book was available to read by the age of 8/9, it become apparent this was not the book on truth from Divine memories. Of course, the caretakers take this as blasphemy as we should just be following what everybody else is doing. Right?!? Wrong! After refusing to bow down to this book, the old man, and put money in the box, there was no way that I would want to come here. Refusing to attend services and thinking that this is not truth caused problems in the family. However, going to school and doing personal research on religion helped to better understand it. The library was very helpful in my fully understanding what the Sikh religion was all about plus I used to read up on all the other religions, history of people and where all the different cultures came from. After reading the English version of the Sidur which is the Sikh bible, a better decision could be made as to whether this book was truly the book of truth. It wasn’t necessary to go back to the Gurdwara since they didn’t do the prayers in English. It was much quieter at home to read it and to understand it without the distractions. There was no need to worry about the separation of women from men. It just seemed pointless to go to the Gurdwara, put money in the box, bow down and pray to the book when it is right here in my hand at home. It seemed more logical to read it on my own time. In the meantime, other peoples’ religions were more interesting, so the good old library provided all the information that was needed on each of the religions. I requested to my parents that I be allowed to pick my own religion not the one that they picked for me at the time of birth. This was not allowed either. This according to them this was apostasy. You must be the religion that we have and follow it because we said so and you live in our house so you must follow it. Going along with it just because I was a child was fine. But, in the heart, it was not it! This religion didn’t turn the light on. After reading up on the religion, I saw that the leaders and people who were at the Gurdwara were actually not the ones who were following it the way it is supposed to be. The Sikhs were making certain things up based on cultural norms and gender-biased studies that were clearly out of context of the actual religion in its true version. Modifications of it were done so that it better ‘fit’ into the way the leaders and the people wanted the religion to be. This is not the path to the light of G-d as I understood it. In this way, a rejection of the current system of doing things was the start to seeking the real truth, light!

Next was the decision to seek truth in every aspect of life. Truth in all schooling activities, jobs and dealings with all people no matter what caste, creed, race, culture, nation, country, or those who think they are. Respecting each and every person that comes across one’s way. This was again missing at home because the teaching or ‘conditioning’ was such that only Sikh people are the ones to trust or the best to deal with in life. That parental influence was not positive towards others who were not like our religion, our race or anything else that appeared to be different from the Sikhs. But since we are in Canada with such a limited Sikh population, we cannot always deal with them only. Experiencing contact with so many other people, I discovered that all people are great, all people were indeed the same no matter their religion or their race. Everybody is part of the source. The conditioning did not belong to the source.

As time went on, facing struggles of life, strife, sadness, madness, anger, grief and problem after problem causes one to look for the truth without giving up. this cannot be it! One starts to seek out those who are happy, bright, full of life and light. Hey, we can actually find these people on our own but unfortunately they did not always belong to the Sikh faith or the ethnic enclaves that we live in. Happiness appeared to be something that one must discover on our own. It could not be something that was teleported from our parents. Nationalistic views were also taught to other kids by their own parents, which made further divisions.this caused people to be unhappy with others, judging and making it appear that they are right and all others are wrong. The constant struggle with our immediate family or caretakers who were not really well informed, well educated or open minded meant that one must take the steps to turn the light on by ourselves.

Nobody wants to be around miserable people who judge or think they are right when in reality they are not. This can be said of any religion or group who feels that they are superior to another or other people so lights can be turned off in many places at the same time in many faiths. One is able to see it on their faces. as a child becoming a youth and then into adulthood, the light was inside the eyes of each person who came with love, truth, and hope that there indeed is light in the world. Some of us have just turned it off by ourselves. People then become negative and cling to the mind viruses, poisons or ’conditioning’ that had been planted in the mind since the time of birth. Unwillingness to explore outside of the boxes that society creates causes individuals to become dark and unhappy. They are not willing to turn on the light.turning the light on sometimes means being a rebel.

Light is bright, open and very much within each of us. some of the ways one can open their heart, mind, and souls is to read books of other religions, ways, cultures, study with different people, open the mind to new friends with different upbringing, finding jobs outside of the norms for one specific group, and seek to open up to whatever it is that is available to them.

So, what to expect when the light turns on?

Once the light in the awakening gets turned on then, all one is able to surmise is, “there is nothing down here!” You just want to leave this world as now you are living but in reality you died while you were living here. It is actually an amazing feeling. It makes one feel high all day long. a feeling of euphoria, happiness, bliss, peace – in ecstasy without having to take the drugs. Worries are all gone along with the stress and strife that many people face. No more anger and fighting with anybody. The light made the skin glow, the energy in the spine would go up and down when it was active, the center of the head or head chakra would tingle most of the time especially during physical exertions of the body and the body functioned at a higher level – nails grew faster, hair became softer, darker and felt baby-like, marks on the skin faded and the body felt really efficient. This light took a few years to turn on due to bodily processes, but once turned on, it can’t be turned off. The light in awakening turned on by about forty.

It is hard to let the light in when we draw our drape or our blind to block the beautiful rays on the sun. In so many instances, humanity was observed blocking the light of sun. The sun is our energy and so too our source of the same energy. When the light hits our eyes, our skin, our face and our body we feel that energy. That energy is seen but when we block that energy with a drape or blind then our energy is also reduced to darkness, night or black, which does not allow energy to flow. Drawing a drape or blind causes us  to see nothing so that everything becomes black. When we relate the color black to the source, it doesn’t make sense. Black has nothing to do with light or energy. It almost blocks light and energy from passing into us. Perhaps the plant beings are actually smarter than us, as they always tend to move towards to the light – as we should too.

Foods

“The mind is being made to believe we should think about foods all the time.”

No book on spirituality is complete without a discussion of foods. For the seeker, foods are just a means of nutrition, a means for us to survive and thrive. Foods, and some more foods is all that the modern world is focused on. Foods are related to our sense of taste, which is one of our senses that is most “beast” like. Once we get going on foods then our sense of taste has no limit. It is not known when or how but we now see foods as forms of entertainment and art, through conditioning by large business that we must be social. Foods are a means of our being able to survive and thrive. We are now decorating them, putting bows on foods, taking pictures of food – calling it food porn. The human body has become so greedy and needy, seeking evermore novel foods.

Foods for those seeking spiritual freedom are contrary to those novel foods. Foods known to be clean, pure and edible are termed as Satvic (pure/balanced) by Yogis and Kosher (clean and fit for consumption) by the Jewish people. Foods that are calming and harmonizing, and those that promote wakefulness are the correct foods for consumption by those seeking to bring the body into balance. Some foods that assist in mental clarity are vegetables (especially greens such as broccoli, cucumbers, tomatoes, avocados, grains, all fruits, nuts, and beans. Look for foods that nourish the brain rather than make it feel dull.

Foods are part of our cravings and desires. So much so that humanity engages in gluttony. Craving causes all suffering according to the Buddha. So why do we always crave foods all the time? It is the “in” thing to do, as we seek chefs who cater to more foods that are novel. Foods are not just a trend because some of us are even given the term “foodie” since we love foods so much. Could it be because everywhere we go, we see pictures of foods (food porn), chefs preparing foods, restaurants with more delicious foods, entire channels on cable dedicated to foods and their preparation, celebrity chef cook-offs? Or is it because we have nothing else to do but think about foods? Who said we need to eat three meals a day to stay healthy? Shouldn’t we eat when we are hungry? Why do we continue to fit into some made up out-of-date model or guide to when we “should” eat and “what” we should eat along with “how much” we should eat? Are we so gullible as to believe we need three meals a day of meats like sausages, bacon and a lot of pork on that fork? Come on this is the developed world, right? Are we going from the cave and back to the caves?

Those that might need to hear this might not read it because they are too busy at the next restaurant chowing down on some sushi, pizza or steak. Foods give us energy to sustain ourselves but too much slows us down. The current diets in the West cause some diseases in humans to soar past normal readings. Cancers of the stomach, throat, and breast are out of control. Diabetes, strokes and heart attacks are harming humans, mainly due to foods and the lack of exercise that goes along with eating those foods. Living a disciplined life regarding the foods we eat is best, for discipline is based on focus or living in yoga. Mind, body, and soul cannot connect if all three are being drained by foods all day long. The mind is being made to believe we should think about foods all the time.
Foods are part of cravings and these are part of our habits or hindrances of life. Come on everyone, we have to eat to live. Why do so many of us live to eat? We need to make sure that the foods we eat are tasty and healthy. One can’t just eat healthy and hate the tastes of food that we eat every day. We need to make sure we eat with taste in mind. Eating well means healthy eating. Just programming yourself into the habit of eating vegetables and fruits means that other foods will not taste that great anymore.

As a child, fast food was a treat. Today it is everyday food for all people, because we are too busy and live fast-paced lifestyles that prevent us from making healthy foods at home. People come from many places all over the world with so many delicious foods from their countries only to enjoy fast foods more. Foods from the old country are still made by many of our parents and they are tasty, plus healthy.

A very big part of self-realizing today is being knowledgeable about what we put in our mouth. It is up to us to realize whether the foods we were brought up with are good for us or not. Too much dairy, curry, meats, garlic, onion, and other foods can make the mind foggy and groggy. We can awake to what is good for us and what is not. Knowing the South Asian community is suffering from a high heart attack rate could mean that when there are so many fried foods involved, the foods are not that healthy. It is always difficult to tell ones’ parents that the foods they are eating aren’t good for them and they should abstain from food that is part of their cultural heritage. Foods that have been made for thousands of years in India may be hard to let go of. Foods from India are just one example. A careful examination of all foods from any country is necessary when one becomes aware, alert and awake.

Healthy eating doesn’t appear to be a problem for the wealthy since they never complain about a thing as they belong to the top 5% of the population. So when you hear of one saying, “…we had a very difficult background, it was rough, we had nothing, we grew up poor, we grew up in the hood, my parents gave me nothing, my parents never supported a thing I did, it was tough..” Welcome to the club, this is 95% of the world. Having fewer foods is being closer to the Divine than one who is over-consuming them. It used to be that a rich man had the rich man’s gut. Yet more and more of humanity is feeling the effects of foods, as the number of people who are obese is growing. Being obese is suffering. It decreases one’s lifespan and increases the chances of many diseases. Foods today have become a habit rather than something required to just sustain our human body. Foods are being sensationalized and overemphasized. The industry makes their preparation novel through chefs who cater to the wealthy.

An industry from foods has been carved based on habit. Just like drinking, smoking, pills, and drugs, foods have become a nasty habit. The industry relies on our need to nourish but it encourages fast, easy and cheap foods. It is a bad habit that leads to health issues from obesity to anorexia. The foods we eat are a true reflection of who we are. Bobby Dazzler’s store was in a mall. The food court was jam-packed with line-ups galore. It appeared to be the only place that made money. It was unbelievable to see the amount of food being consumed beyond a normal amount required for that meal in the day. The foods were not proportional to what was required for the amount of activity, age or health of the person. Watching the food court scene makes one feel not so hungry. With line-ups 10-15 minutes long, wasting a 30-minute lunch break standing and waiting for service was the norm. Why would anybody be willing to spend so much time in lineups when a lunch could be brought from home? A brown bag lunch allows for mindful eating in a meditational manner. There is a sense of peace when one opens their lunch to actually enjoy a relaxing and quiet break.

Why not bring our own foods and enjoy our break without the stares and the crowd? The fast-food industry lives off of the fact that the world is lazy. We need to drive up to a window or cashier to order a meal that costs $2-$3. It is a wonder how a fast-food joint can make cash from a meal they retail for such little money. Well, it does not require an MBA in foods for one to figure out that through this money, the fast-food place will pay its employees, rent, cost of goods and still make a profit. Where’s the food? Is there any food in the meal? There is none, we are paying for nothing. Fast food is just that, fast with no substance. You could buy a bun, yogurt and vegetables at the supermarket for much less. This is not only a healthy option but also gives tremendous amounts of great energy. The effects of the switch will amaze the body and soul after a 21-day cleanse of foods is undertaken. No kidding! You can feel better and healthier by getting into a habit of eating foods that are tasty. Even if you are addicted to the habit of foods (that is eating,) then why not be an addict to healthy foods?

We need to eat every day to sustain ourselves so it is important to be with someone who enjoys the same foods as you or who cooks. Growing up with Indian cuisine meant there was a lot of curry and spice. When the teens arrived, it was a blessing to enjoy raw, uncooked or steamed vegetables or fruit. Opening to different foods also meant not being so boxed up in everything we are given by our parents. This also allows us to select foods that make the body feel great because only the self knows how they feel. Parents will always give us what they were given because that is good for them so why wouldn’t it be good for their child? Perhaps the best thing to do is go through a trial and error with foods to see which give us energy and which take energy away.

Foods can be healthy when they are simple, raw and easy to prepare. We are not talking about being a gourmet chef or something like that but it is well worth ones’ while to learn some of the ins and outs of cooking. One cannot think going out and eating at restaurants is the way to live every single day. This is what we are doing. Nor can we believe we should eat TV dinners for the rest of your lives. This is not practical or economical. Our bodies are important to our livelihoods but we seem to disrespect the body. Part of knowing the self means we need to get rid of the excess fats, fast food, MSG’s, dairy, meats, and bacon. The world is full of terrible habits that have been made into life. The time has come to stop and think about every single food you are about to put in your mouth. It is not just a saying, “you are what you eat,” or “eat only those things we can pronounce.”

It was once said that eating is such an intimate act that it should be done with those who are like-minded. Sitting to enjoy foods with those who love the same foods gives value to our lives and makes us happy. What happens when you see a vegan eating with a carnivore? Opposition can occur when we are in the company of someone who has bad manners, eats unhealthy foods or does not respect the life of animals the same way the seeker does. A seeker would not be afraid to eat alone as it allows for meditation to take place. Eating becomes mindful.

Free

“Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.” – Plato

All Masters of the world would say that to be free is at the top of their list in what they value the most while living a human life. so, when we have freedom of religion in the West, Canada, United States, EU, Australia and the New Zealand then why wouldn’t progressive, intellectual and educated humans take advantage of it and become awake from the darkness. Moving to the West provides for freer thinking, open-mindedness, and the ability to add to the current faith or religion we are born into. Freedom of religion is found in the laws of many, if not all, Western countries.this makes the West the best.

A rebel dies, a group will suffer to ensure democracy prevails in a nation. to  be  a  free, a  man  or  woman  may  divorce  when  a  couple  grows  apart. Getting out of jail or prison, leaving a negative job, taking part in a civil war to be free from an autocratic leader all happen for freedom. a person is freer following whichever faith/religious path they choose, or a person will sever their ties with a family, a teen will drop out of school to seek freedom and the list goes on and one of those who wish to be freer.

One is not freer when under the control of any individual or group, be it a religious group, a controlling marriage/relationship, a job or any other situation that dictates how one should live or believe.this includes our own parents or caretakers. One of the requirement of living towards becoming awake is freedom. Be a prisoner to nobody. Be free from all those who are soaked in the desire for money, power, wealth, multiple homes, or anything in life when somebody else other than yourself is in charge of your survival and your well being.

However, even in freer Canada, a nation that is voted as one of the greatest places in the world to live in the world, one can see that even it is not as free as we once thought. One cannot ignore the obvious that is taking place right now as we attempt to live in a freer country. Five very large businesses control the foods we eat daily through supermarkets and foods. It would be hard to believe food’s prices are not in the hands of a select few who have full control over the foods and the prices we pay. are food prices increasing or are they being inflated to enrich the pockets of these five large corporations in Canada? Well, there had already been a bread price-fixing issue that has been brought to the attention of the competition bureau by the end of 2017.What other foods are affected by similar price inflating?

Looking a little deeper into our Canadian banking system, one can discover that our five major banks control over 80% of the Canadian peoples’ money. These five banks have control over so much more of our lives than we may be led to believe.

These banks control loans (mortgages), business and auto loans which means they control our shelter (house), our businesses/jobs plus our means of transportation/cars.these same banks control the cards – credit/debit cards, RRSP’s, RREP’s, saving/checking accounts and safety deposit boxes. When so few have control over so many then being free and freer is compromised.

It becomes even more surprising when we examine the enormous power that media has over our lives. When one takes a look at the media in the democratic United states thirty years ago, 50 companies controlled 90% of the media. today, only six large companies control media in the Us. those in media are fully aware of the enormous power that media has on the people so this makes it all the more puzzling! If Americans rightfully despise totalitarian nations then why have they bowed down to “state” controlled media that is in the hands of the few? What does it mean when the so few hold undue influence over the state and the media? Well, they control your cable, radio, papers (newspapers), books (magazines) and all those lovely annoying ads (advertisements) that are everywhere – billboards, books, cable, online, papers and radio.the viewpoint become skewed.

The large keep getting larger and larger as the Age of Materialism picks up more momentum. In recent times, big dental is swallowing up practices with lined pockets of cash. Operations like DCC (Dental Corporation of Canada) and the Ontario teacher’s Pension Plan have made investments as large as $1.3 billion to purchase controlling interests in a U. S. firm called Heartland Dental. A firm that operates 375 clinics! The large have been scooping up hundreds of practices in the United states and Australia so centralized clinic management  soon  resembles Walmart  in  the  dentistry  world. this  is  not news for areas like Pharmacy and Optometry which have gone down this path years ago. One wonders just how free and democratic we are if the Ontario Pension Plan alone is controlling the oral care of so many people. are they interested in your teeth or health or is this just another move to increase profit or to consolidate power?

The world wants to be freer but there are so many nations and their people who are not freer. Putin, along with the state of Russia, recently sent three singers from “Pussy Riot” to prison for going against him and the Catholic church for blasphemy. He also wants to fine people for being homosexual. China still does not have a rule of law.these nations along with their people are forced into dictatorships. One is not free if they are forced to follow a political, social, economic or religious movement that presents people from being who they are and doing what they are supposed to be doing. Once we escape the clutches of the autocratic dictators of the world, the democratic world finds itself caught in the web of a different prison.The West becomes freer until it succumbs to media and large business.the ideas of freer society come with maximum freedom-distractions that interfere with our being able to become still, quiet and aware.

The whole point of becoming freer is not to set up another political group/organization that fights for freedom/peace but to become freer through  self-realization. the  rules  of  power  always  prevail  when  a  large group gets together to fight for peace/freedom. The only way to be free is to practice awakening, self-realization and awareness as the end goal – to not have to come back to the reborn and face the music again with life here on Earth where those in power prevent actual, full freedom. Joining the Divine is the only freer way to true bliss.

Habits

“It destroys the physical body so that the mind cannot attach itself to the Source.”

Humans are all creatures of habit. It is important to know this and apply it to the way one lives in life. Habits are easy to acquire but most difficult to break, particularly the bad ones. One either succumbs to it, overcomes it or overlooks it all together. We easily fall into the traps that carry a heavy price when we fall into a habit. Books from the past cycles don’t mention or emphasize the dangers of habits like drinking in excess, smoking cigarettes or doing drugs. the most common modern habits are booze (beers/wines/spirits), smoke (cigarette/tobacco/marijuana) and drugs including pills both illegal and legal. In 1990 when Bobby Dazzler first opened, we did not carry even one item related to any of the habits. By 2017, 85% of all the items related to drinking, smoking, and drugs. a quarter of a century later, times had changed. the habits of humanity are everywhere. Habits cause the physical body damage, so the soul ends up living in a body that is not clean. and when one is not clean then one cannot awake.

Everybody has stress and worry. That is part of this life cycle since duality is part of living. We all express the upper and lower levels of life. Once a traumatic event happens, the first thing that one reaches for is a drink. The adult is not the only one reaching for booze but our teens and youth also experiment with their friends. the habit of drink starts at a young age. Booze can rule one’s life, turning to liquor every single day so the mind can relax, settle itself, and unwind. Unknown to the brain is that the habit becomes worse and worse as time goes on until more is needed to satisfy craving in the body.

Many teens and adults say it was just one puff, and they found themselves addicted to smoking. Many people never can overcome this habit until it is too late or harms the body. When one smokes, the smoke can also lead to many other drugs to get a higher high than just nicotine or tobacco. to smoke the following drugs is very common today and dangerous to the mind, body and soul: Marijuana, Opium, Crack, DMT, Heroin, Meth, PCP. But one cannot awaken when the habit to smoke lives in the body. It destroys the physical body so that the mind cannot attach itself to the source.

The last category is drugs. Drugs for this discussion will include both illegal and legal. Drugs of this sort are not new, but during materialism there is so much money and more free time, drugs become a habit just because people have the time to relax and enjoy themselves. Drugs are bad for the physical body and prevent the human from becoming awake. Drugs harm the body that the soul lives in. It is impossible to be in a habit to do drugs and expect to become awake.

Stresses of life cause people to resort to escape or to get over some stress or worry. People read, jog, go for walks, knit, sail, cycle, build, write, or work too much. When you find the right balance, you have found the secret to life. Living with excesses in our life can also lead us to try these bad habits. the human body is a creature of habit and will stick to the habit once it is introduced. Perhaps taking up a sport, deciding to write, focus on working or our children might be a better outlet to relax, rather than to take up a habit that will be very difficult to get rid of once in place. The modern world tends to being running on empty in the sole search for money, power, and fame. some have let it all go so they can satisfy their habit all day long. this is a terrible waste of the human life. Bobby Dazzler saw so many people who felt it was much easier and better to deal with the world when they are high, drunk or stoned. The legal, social, physical, mental and financial considerations of habits all take a toll on society. Our teens, youth and children slide along the paths that the adult is creating.

Once your body is free from all of them, it can truly think, make plans and reach the highest goals. the body will only then be able to function at full speed and with all the right intentions. Being in constant check of the habit to drink, smoke, or take drugs will help your whole inner self to be who you want to be. these habits may seem obvious, but it is important to mention them because part of the awakening in the past did not include such habits. Drugs, pills, and smoke were rare during past times of awakening. But now they are available, created, used and abused by so many, poor and rich alike. these habits were not bound to any social or economic classes. the time had come to detox and hit rehab for many of us.

Inner

“The great solution to all human problems is individual inner transformation.” – Vernon Howard

The inner stuff is what it is all about and it is the juice of life. People often speak about our inner and our outer self. What is more important – our inner self or our outer self? What does the inner self mean anyways? the inner self is in your heart, your soul, your spirit, your mind and the real you. It has nothing to do with the outer stuff at all.What’s the outer stuff? It might have to do with the choice of being an introvert or extrovert.

The outer is the exact opposite of the inner. It duels with the inner and this is where we are today in humanity. Our outer world has everything to do with the material world and nothing to do with the inner world concerned with spirituality. Materialism concerns itself with making all things natural into something other, outer and showy. We have materialized breast milk by making baby formula. We have made the most basic staple of life, water, into a material object by bottling, labeling it, giving it a funky name and selling it for money. We have made foods that are a necessity to life into art and entertainment by taking pictures and gastropics. We have created nonsense out of the most basic, simple things in life, leading humanity to many human- created conditions such as the desire to hoard, buy it, get more stuff and seek things that please our senses. We are as far away as possible from the Divine source, or the spiritual eye, as can be.the outer makes it appear as if the Divine is somewhere outside, so we take part in offerings, expressions, pujas, pilgrimages, and animal sacrifices to please G-d. None of which have anything to do with the inner Divine in ourselves.Western awakening brings the shift to the inner rather than focusing on all things that are outer.

The inner stuff is what it is all about and it is what makes you run. It has nothing to do with the outer stuff.the outer stuff is fueled by the other people, what other people think about you and those that end up taking control of you until you become lost in the mess of all the outer. When inner stuff gets forgotten and lost, we lose faith in ourselves. the inner stuff is private, secret and even protective. It never shows itself until we can get to know ourselves.that is the true awakening of the person. some beautiful spiritually awakened souls come to us already awake and ready to heal while others come to it through their processes. How does one unlock the secrets of the inner self? Just as Buddha sat underneath a tree to find the truth, one must constantly search for it, but it can only be done when one is alone, on their own, and in inner silence. the inner voice of G-d can then be heard, as we, too, are part of that Divine spirit.the light within. Jesus said “Light of the world! “ meaning we are all light. But it is the test, we must carry out the rest to discover this light.

It was written in Corinthians, “Don’t you know you yourselves are God’s temple and God’s spirit dwells in your midst?”

G-d’s spirit is in the inner of us, it is our duty to find that spirit from within and listen to what it has to say. the inner is where the truth hides, along with love. It is the absolute and unconditional belief in that truth and love which is known as G-d. the inner stuff is what we were aLL born with and it is within every single one of us to find. It is the real stuff that is the source of you and so very pure! this is the base of why we are here.We are to realize the inner so we may lose all care for the outer stuff. Humans are pure on the inside. But the outer world which is known as our environment sets us up to face the struggles, strife, fights, suffering, and chaos which the outer world brings. Peace comes once one can find the inner spirit that is a part of G-d.that inner in them will not only give them the peace, bliss and the ecstasy they are looking for in this life on earth but the final freedom which is known as Moksha in Indian traditions. Moksha, the final liberation, is to be free from the struggle on this Earthly plane. Life is full of problems but we can be free and awake.this doesn’t happen often, and it takes many struggles, grief, pains, and much love to find final freedom. A human being can come to the source of all life, which is G-d or the Divine spirit.

Light

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light”- Plato

We were all created with light and energy. This makes us light, but it hasn’t been able to shine through easily due to the layers of “stuff” that have made us think that we are this or that. some of us even wear physical layers of clothing to cover that up. some of us have so many layers, and layers and even more layers of life hiding that light that we might wonder if we will ever get underneath to the source of this light. Coming back to the light requires us to become fully alert, awake and aware. this is awakening. awakening requires us to challenge the self, whereas religion (faith) keeps us engaging with other people in a cat and mouse fight that calls for peace.

To turn the light on means we choose to seek that potential, that possibility and that nectar called light – a word found right inside of enlightenment. When we turn the light on, we heighten our intuition, expand our awareness and develop deep insight. We evolve our clairvoyance and may even be able to perceive the end in the beginning. Choosing to awaken also means we move beyond the boxes that religions have created.

Light, part of awakening, has nothing to do with all the regions or any of the religions. It has nothing to do with the outside as it is based on the inside. The light can turn on in all of us when we have reached awakening. But this light can only turn on when we have a desire to awaken. Many Masters in the past have come and gone. Many have come to teach but are unable to reach humanity as it is very difficult to bring the human back to humanity. The human feels this need to be unique, different and something better, more and even a little more special than one another. The human fails to see just how much familiarity and similarity we have with all of humanity. Like vultures we look to study each of the varying cultures yet never realize that no one has won. We are all just one! We strive for the label and then even decide to fudge and judge just to be right and forget about the light.awakening is upon us and it is for us to realize it with or without a fight.

That light is within all of us. It isn’t a matter of just turning on the lights that have been turned off accidentally. Light is part of each human being and it’s  brightest at the time of our birth. It is shining at the moment of birth  as that is the time that we first become awake. Some of us get the lights dimmed as conditioning of some sort starts to set in almost immediately by the environment or the caretakers, mommy or daddy, or whoever they may be. Others are lucky as their light remains bright until they get to school. Still others are able to keep their flame stronger by becoming resilient and not buying into or believing anything that is said to them. Some people get their conditioning later in life as adults while others remain true to their belief in the search for truth.a seeker of awakening cannot come upon enlightenment, for it is said that it just comes to those who weren’t really looking. However, a certain set of circumstances can help bring about awakening.

For a child the conditioning is given by parents. But to really want to experience truth, one must not always  believe everything that even our parents or caretakers say. Why? the truth that they give is truth that belongs to some book they were given by their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents or distant relatives from ages ago. It is not wisdom that is experienced by the self. It is wisdom experienced by the teacher, master, guru or awakened teacher from a cycle that has nothing to do with the modern era that we live in today.and it is a truth that belongs to that master specifically. So, one cannot obey, disobey or even agree with this as being truth since it is not one‘s own truth which is subject to one‘s own experience.

Of course, caretakers want the best for us.this concept is very, very hard to point out to them, since they are the ones who have the most profound influence in our life right from the time of birth. Coming from a very poor family of Sikhs, all that many really had was their religion at their place of worship. Parents clung to things that were from their childhood in India as it was easier for them to be around those most like them, rather than find new paths with others from different backgrounds like Italian, Portuguese and Asians who lived right next door in the West. They indicated that Sikhs must go to the Gurdwara, a place of prayer for Sikh, and pray. After going, many people were observed not being so happy but sad. They were sitting on the floor, with the men and women separated. This couldn’t be the place of G-d as observed from childhood memories. This is still the personal feeling that arises today when an event occurs. This revelation didn’t go over very well with the parents and was considered to be a rejection of a part of their past. After asking if an English version of the book was available to read by the age of 8/9, it become apparent this was not the book on truth from Divine memories. Of course, the caretakers take this as blasphemy as we should just be following what everybody else is doing. Right?!? Wrong! After refusing to bow down to this book, the old man, and put money in the box, there was no way that I would want to come here. Refusing to attend services and thinking that this is not truth caused problems in the family. However, going to school and doing personal research on religion helped to better understand it. The library was very helpful in my fully understanding what the Sikh religion was all about plus I used to read up on all the other religions, history of people and where all the different cultures came from. After reading the English version of the Sidur which is the Sikh bible, a better decision could be made as to whether this book was truly the book of truth. It wasn’t necessary to go back to the Gurdwara since they didn’t do the prayers in English. It was much quieter at home to read it and to understand it without the distractions. There was no need to worry about the separation of women from men. It just seemed pointless to go to the Gurdwara, put money in the box, bow down and pray to the book when it is right here in my hand at home. It seemed more logical to read it on my own time. In the meantime, other peoples’ religions were more interesting, so the good old library provided all the information that was needed on each of the religions. I requested to my parents that I be allowed to pick my own religion not the one that they picked for me at the time of birth. This was not allowed either. This according to them this was apostasy. You must be the religion that we have and follow it because we said so and you live in our house so you must follow it. Going along with it just because I was a child was fine. But, in the heart, it was not it! This religion didn’t turn the light on. After reading up on the religion, I saw that the leaders and people who were at the Gurdwara were actually not the ones who were following it the way it is supposed to be. The Sikhs were making certain things up based on cultural norms and gender-biased studies that were clearly out of context of the actual religion in its true version. Modifications of it were done so that it better ‘fit’ into the way the leaders and the people wanted the religion to be. This is not the path to the light of G-d as I understood it. In this way, a rejection of the current system of doing things was the start to seeking the real truth, light!

Next was the decision to seek truth in every aspect of life. Truth in all schooling activities, jobs and dealings with all people no matter what caste, creed, race, culture, nation, country, or those who think they are. Respecting each and every person that comes across one’s way. This was again missing at home because the teaching or ‘conditioning’ was such that only Sikh people are the ones to trust or the best to deal with in life. That parental influence was not positive towards others who were not like our religion, our race or anything else that appeared to be different from the Sikhs. But since we are in Canada with such a limited Sikh population, we cannot always deal with them only. Experiencing contact with so many other people, I discovered that all people are great, all people were indeed the same no matter their religion or their race. Everybody is part of the source. The conditioning did not belong to the source.

As time went on, facing struggles of life, strife, sadness, madness, anger, grief and problem after problem causes one to look for the truth without giving up. this cannot be it! One starts to seek out those who are happy, bright, full of life and light. Hey, we can actually find these people on our own but unfortunately they did not always belong to the Sikh faith or the ethnic enclaves that we live in. Happiness appeared to be something that one must discover on our own. It could not be something that was teleported from our parents. Nationalistic views were also taught to other kids by their own parents, which made further divisions.this caused people to be unhappy with others, judging and making it appear that they are right and all others are wrong. The constant struggle with our immediate family or caretakers who were not really well informed, well educated or open minded meant that one must take the steps to turn the light on by ourselves.

Nobody wants to be around miserable people who judge or think they are right when in reality they are not. This can be said of any religion or group who feels that they are superior to another or other people so lights can be turned off in many places at the same time in many faiths. One is able to see it on their faces. as a child becoming a youth and then into adulthood, the light was inside the eyes of each person who came with love, truth, and hope that there indeed is light in the world. Some of us have just turned it off by ourselves. People then become negative and cling to the mind viruses, poisons or ’conditioning’ that had been planted in the mind since the time of birth. Unwillingness to explore outside of the boxes that society creates causes individuals to become dark and unhappy. They are not willing to turn on the light.turning the light on sometimes means being a rebel.

Light is bright, open and very much within each of us. some of the ways one can open their heart, mind, and souls is to read books of other religions, ways, cultures, study with different people, open the mind to new friends with different upbringing, finding jobs outside of the norms for one specific group, and seek to open up to whatever it is that is available to them.

So, what to expect when the light turns on?

Once the light in the awakening gets turned on then, all one is able to surmise is, “there is nothing down here!” You just want to leave this world as now you are living but in reality you died while you were living here. It is actually an amazing feeling. It makes one feel high all day long. a feeling of euphoria, happiness, bliss, peace – in ecstasy without having to take the drugs. Worries are all gone along with the stress and strife that many people face. No more anger and fighting with anybody. The light made the skin glow, the energy in the spine would go up and down when it was active, the center of the head or head chakra would tingle most of the time especially during physical exertions of the body and the body functioned at a higher level – nails grew faster, hair became softer, darker and felt baby-like, marks on the skin faded and the body felt really efficient. This light took a few years to turn on due to bodily processes, but once turned on, it can’t be turned off. The light in awakening turned on by about forty.

It is hard to let the light in when we draw our drape or our blind to block the beautiful rays on the sun. In so many instances, humanity was observed blocking the light of sun. The sun is our energy and so too our source of the same energy. When the light hits our eyes, our skin, our face and our body we feel that energy. That energy is seen but when we block that energy with a drape or blind then our energy is also reduced to darkness, night or black, which does not allow energy to flow. Drawing a drape or blind causes us  to see nothing so that everything becomes black. When we relate the color black to the source, it doesn’t make sense. Black has nothing to do with light or energy. It almost blocks light and energy from passing into us. Perhaps the plant beings are actually smarter than us, as they always tend to move towards to the light – as we should too.

QUIET

“The quieter you become the more you will be able to hear.”- Ram Dass

It is the quiet ones who glimpse the real spiritual path to actual meditation. Often quiet is misconstrued as stupid or dumb. It is the exact opposite. Pure intelligence is born of silence. Most people feel they are so smart they must speak up and say their two bits. Isn’t this, after all, what we are taught in the West? “Don’t just sit there, say something!” Yet, all blabbermouths do is reveal their purpose to the quiet ones who watch and observe without reacting. The quiet ones only make a move or say words when necessary. Sure, a mouth was given to be used. But the loud ones can always be heard miles away even when they are not spoken to. The West has over-socialized the world by means of email, texts, phone, tweet, Instagram, Facebook and many other forms of social techs. Even with the mouth shut, the techs have enabled those that don’t want to stay quiet to be touched in so many other ways. The concept of quiet should be extended to mean the quieting of the mind. The mind cannot be quiet if one is still engaging in the many forms of social networking through techs or oral conversations. The mind is still awake and being loud. It is only in silence that the eternal source is able to connect to the individual. It is in this silence that space is created. That space and those gaps are where intelligence lives. The more times we grow that space daily, the more chances intelligence has to enter our minds.

One gets to know the self when one becomes silent and quiet. In quiet, you can finally hear your breath; you can think and sort things out without pressure or influence. You can relax, chill or even do nothing but meditate. Meditation becomes possible when one is quiet and alone. Quiet in a room all alone is so much fun to do – if you haven’t already done this, try it! You will yearn for this once it becomes a daily practice. You will wonder why the phone, email, tweet, grams (insta), or texts keep going on while offering nothing but distractions. Distractions are nothing but problems.“He said, she said”… “ “blahs, blahs, blahs”… “What are they doing?” … “Where are you, what is up and what is going on?” …. Then more yadda, yadda, and yadda. What does this accomplish other than putting more clutter in the mind? Meditation make one smarter, relieves pain, inspires creativity, decreases health bills, improves memory, sweetens dreams and enables us to have better relationships.

Only when we learn to be quiet will we learn to hear ourselves, which is the inner voice of the Intelligence, the higher Self – also known as G-d.The answers you have been waiting for come racing in. But quiet cannot come until one learns to be alone. Meditations, whether online or in public groups cannot enable a real place of inner stillness. This can only be done alone. In reality you are not alone but in tune with yourself on a higher level than those who grasp at others out of a need to belong or feel needed as part of the group. Awakening means deeply knowing the self, being self-reliant, and having self-control. Awakening is impossible to obtain when we are outer- directed and grasping at people and places. It is possible to have a constant undeniable feeling that something else is watching over one’s best interest. It is indeed desirable. Knowing there is this higher power, this higher creative force, this connectedness to all humanity makes becoming quiet quite fun! When one becomes quiet, silent and still, the feeling of this energy will be like a tap on the shoulder. It will feel as if someone is pushing you forward, with proper guidance, giving the nudge we all need.

Shifts in our ability to see things that normally cannot be seen start to occur. This can only happen when we become quiet. When one is in a quiet room alone, intuitive insight naturally appears. Only you know what is good for you! Others may provide wise advice but only you know where you want to be and what you want from life. In the best-case scenario every person is this world has a mommy and daddy to provide the basic foundations necessary to carry on with life . Failing that there are others who can give the same stable forces such caretakers, guardians, aunts, foster parents and so on. The ultimate motivating power and seat of force to derive the goals and drive the heart and soul is found in the self. Blame gets us nowhere. It becomes the blame game leading to brain drain. When the self hears that voice in quiet, then the self can build its own dream. Make it happen for yourself by choosing to be quiet and meditate. Quiet allows one to be uninterrupted and create the plan without that annoying other attempting with noise and advice to do it this way, that way, or no way.You ask yourself, how would they know what is best for you and what works for you? They don’t! Only you know your own self. So, quiet is a must.The outer voices will bother you until you cannot develop yourself, find yourself, nor reach your goals – whether they be material or spiritual.

We can observe without reacting. If we truly desire to come close to Intelligence, then it would be wise to mimic Intelligence. If Divine Intelligence can’t be heard verbally through spoken words then we must refrain from oral, verbal or vocal communications of any sort, also. This does mean that repetition of hymns, mantra chanting and any other sounds from the mouth are not necessary for awakening.

The quieter you become, the more you hear. We can engage our five ordinary senses in a way that allows one to see past what the ordinary human can see. In addition, it develops our intuitive sixth sense. Intuition then strengthens our remote sensory skills which lead us to kick in our seventh sense, which I refer to as the “omnis” sense. Omni is Latin for “all”, every, the whole of every kind of unknown origin. The all-knowing sense! This is the ultimate sense of all senses in the human being, and leads us towards becoming awakened, superhuman, and omniscient. All this is only possible when we become quiet. After all, we can’t hear G-d verbally in chanting, in oral conversations, and practicing mantras. So why should we? It’s time to mimic G-d and be quiet.

Sport

“Glorify God in your Body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” – Corinthians 6:19-20

By means of a sport, a human being honors the body that holds the spirit of the Divine Intelligence. What is known as hatha yoga in the East is sport in the West.

In the past, when the great religious revelations occurred, humanity was busy with toil working the soil, which gave a natural workout.Today, however, so many jobs are performed in a stationary or sedentary position. Physical exertion of the body is necessary for it to function properly. It is good for children to play sports from an early age to accustom their bodies to being doers of sport rather watchers of sport. Children should be put into many sports to see which they enjoy, such as soccer, swimming, tennis, karate, judo, and other sports that require children to challenge their bodies. Some contact sports are unsafe, such as football, rugby, or ice hockey where the dangers of injury such as concussion are high. However, if a child enjoys it and is good at a sport, then it is potentially an excellent character builder.

After a child grows into an adult who wishes to become awakened or become awake, social sports should be set aside in favor of sports done alone in silence. For example, walking, swimming, running, jogging, hatha yoga, martial arts, cycling, rollerblading, snowboarding, skiing, surfing, are all sports that are done alone. This ensures we connect to the inner self and not to the outer social self. The idea is to limit the social aspects of the sport and focus on its physical aspect. Some sports just require one to engage in too many talks.

It is something that we should consciously engage in, as the body is meant to be moved. It is surprising that in these times we need to tell people to exercise, when so many suffer from obesity and cardiovascular diseases linked to sedentary lifestyles. The scriptures of the past did not emphasize the importance of physical engagement of the body through exercise or sport, since the body was kept active by daily physical work.

We are all part of the Divine Source, including plant and animal life. One becomes closer to the Divine by taking care of the physical body, our temple where we perform our worldly duties here on Earth.The light which is our souls lives in the human body. We come closer to the Divine when our bodies are engaged in a sport, as doers rather than watchers.The Divine reaches us faster when we are not distracted by infirmity or disease but are instead engaged in the proper functioning of our body in physical exertion, movement and challenge.

Conscious physical activity is as important as healthy eating. One cannot meditate on the name of G-d and expect to become awakened in this day and age without taking care of the body.A path that includes a sport is necessary as a piece of G-d is in each of us. Physical sports are not written about in many scriptures, but clearly we need to keep the vessel that carries out our daily duties here on earth maintained in proper order through physical activity. Humans choosing to forgo on keeping their body healthy, clean and physically active are becoming slothful and causing their own body to be riddled with disease and destroyed. Such a body can never rise to G-d. After all it is written: “If any destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.” 1 Corinthians 3:17

Some of us like to watch sport while others like to do sports. And there are those who like to watch and play. It is something that we should consciously engage in and should be put into play just like when one sits down to eat. So many of us are finding ourselves in sedentary lives that doing a sport or two is a must for healthy living.

Sport is not just necessary for our health but it is necessary for the mind, spirit and body together. If the body is running optimally, the chances of becoming awake are much easier and clearer. Many people who play any sport will say there is nothing like that rush you get when your adrenaline gets going.That high after a brisk walk or run. Even walking is a sport as it is movement, especially brisk walks.The runner’s high is like the feeling one gets from doing a yoga class. The body just feels great and so does the mind. The benefits of doing sports are many. Great well-being comes from partaking in any sport that one wishes to do. Living longer, healthier and active lives has so many benefits.The benefits along with the feelings it gives are just amazing!

And then there are those who like to watch sports. What is so great about sitting long periods of time and yelling at the television or at the players when they can’t even hear you? What is so great about spending three or more hours watching other people play their sport? This sedentary activity does nothing to stimulate the body. A look around will also show you that those who watch sports are also engaged in an excessive consumption of foods and alcohol. It is unbelievable that many are willing to take up to three hours of their day, not including travel time, to watch this little black puck or ball go into the net or over a line. From the perspective of a seeker, there is no activity that is more of a waste of time, energy, and money. Equally mind- boggling is the fact many are willing to pay $400 per seat to watch this live, around people who are screaming, swearing, cursing the referee, and engaged in gluttony to the maximum.

As children, many of us were exposed to similar scenarios of having to watch a full hockey, football or soccer game from beginning to end. It was easy to give up cable as an adult, so that the same waste of time did not happen again into adulthood. It was much better to engage in doing something rather than watch this little black puck roll around the ice for hours at a time.There was no missing of the loud cheers or boos that eventually started to sound like white noise. Nor was there any need to relish the junk food that was consumed on game night.

Playing street hockey with the neighbor’s kids was something else. Playing it meant that the body had to be ready for running and speed. It was exhilarating, fun, fast, and made the mind feel great, too. The playing aspect of hockey was great fun and exercise at the same time. Team sports are wonderful early in life, but a sport done by oneself is preferred for those seeking to become awake. Doing sports by themselves allows for a moving meditation to take place where there is little or no talking. It is important to do as many sports on our own without another person so that the mental noises can stop while we are doing the sport.This means not bringing a friend along to do a sport with you but doing it alone. When we engage in sports with others, the need to speak naturally arises, since two people can never be quiet for long periods of time without words coming into play. These words prevent one from being still and quiet, which is essential for a spiritual seeker on the path of awakening.

So why are so many people spending so much time watching the game? Well, it may have to do with the whole group behavior of socializing. Sure, humans are social and like to be around other people but a seeker may be someone who is okay being in solitude for extended lengths of time.

However, people love to belong to a group and believe they are more alike than not. So, one thing that brings them together is that they love the same teams, wear the same colors, chant the same songs, cheer for the same team and vote for the same team to win. So, this spectator-sport thing is more of a get together for people who are like-minded to have fun, party, be social, get in touch, make some noise and wear the same colors to support their teams.The many large businesses which control $115 billion of media would never make a dime if we all became doers of sport rather than watchers of sport. Don’t wait until the doctor tells you to take a sport up after that stroke, heart attack or other medical condition. The time has come to take up a sport that causes the body to perform optimally and at its best always.

STILL

“Make stillness a daily habit.”

Spiritual masters always tell us to become still. How is it possible to become still in a busy, over-scheduled and over-stressed world?  The West is finding it difficult to become quietly still due to the restlessness and nervousness of society, the constant need to go out and the desire for thrilling, novel experiences through the use of our senses which only feed the ego. This is compounded by social media, subliminal messages, flyers, constant emails, tweets, texts, and bombardment of advertisements that constantly create those images that we should go out, get away, take more trips, tours, and travel. Humanity is being molded to search for more interesting views, travel senselessly like a modern-day nomad, and do as much as possible to keep busy. This is on top of being engaged in those crazy renos in overheated real estate markets that are taking up our valuable time so we renovate, sell and make more money to upgrade to that even larger house, and then go on even more trips, go on more adventures, more outings, more places to eat and so on. Along with those trips come more foods, views, booze, things to smoke and sometimes more drugs. If one has a child, that means more games, trips, foods, outings, play-dates, and more stuff. All of this prevents the mind becoming still. When we are attempting to understand what it means to become still, we need to examine the different activities we engage in daily.

When we cannot become still we prevent the mind, body and soul  from making a connection for union. Union with Divine Intelligence (G-d) that is. For the human being today, being still is difficult when everybody is moving around so much. Even when one becomes still, the other comes to convince them to take in more of life. Some may say that is living life! It has become in style to parachute from airplanes, ride motorcycles, parasail, bungee jump and try more daring things, so we can say we tried it. It is stylish to outdo the other, and that is making it difficult to become still. Renos keep us moving from homes to another house, hindering our ability to become still. It is a world in which more of everything is better than less of anything. Getting bored, being still and quiet is out of the question for many. It is even more impossible when we engage in the techs daily to constantly keep in touch with everybody underneath the moon except for yourself.Techs cause constant distraction, making stillness impossible.

But what happens when you become still? Space is created. Gaps of space emerge that were not there when we engaged in the distractions of life. In this space, the peace that we are searching for is found. In this emergence into silence we are able to connect to the eternal and unlimited intelligence. There is no more inner or outer. One sees no peace or fight because they are both one and the same. There is no need to curse anyone as to bless would be the same. Duality of opposites is eliminated when one sees them as equal. There is no need to react when all situations can be seen as equal. That is what becoming still is!

Being still is what many speak about, but during modern times, it is one of the most difficult things to do. Why? Humans have many thousands and thousands of thoughts per day. However, in between those very thoughts   is space. In this space is peace. We access those spaces by becoming quiet, silent and still through meditation. In the exaggerated general restlessness of society, life has so many distractions. Restlessness in the mind and heart increases as we are made to believe we should seek novelty in every possible way. Becoming still involves forgoing the need to seek that which is novel.

Meditation in a general sense usually involves sitting quietly alone so that silence can be accessed. However, for stillness to be effective, it must be made a part of our lives daily in every aspect, for awakening to start. Here are simple examples of ways to become still:

1. Once a house is found to meet all the needs for shelter then staying in that house should be the priority. That house becomes one’s place of prayer and meditation.
2. Read books quietly at home, even choosing to stay home and cybersurf rather than going to a café to sit with all the noise for a latte. Bring it home and make that quiet time.
3. Make the commute home to be in a quiet drive without the radio or play music only without vocals/words. This gives us some quiet time in between work and going home to more noise, family, kids, techs and all the other distractions that prevent the mind from becoming still.
4. Do regular physical exercise or a sport, so that practice can become a moving meditation for you. this sport or physical exertion should be done alone, not in a group or class. For example, walking, swimming, cycling, yoga, kayaking, jogging.

5. Do daily chores methodically, like washing dishes, cleaning the floor, folding laundry, weeding, ironing, cooking and all other household duties in quietness so the mind can become peaceful, still and not engage itself in any thought.
6. While working, choosing to forego gossip, gab, and talk at work that has nothing to do with the job. Taking lunch by yourself to eat mindfully and maybe taking a 10-15 minute walk after.
7. Limit the amount of time spent on techs/screens. Not going on the phone or carrying it around everywhere. Checking emails only twice per Letting calls go to voicemail so only the important calls are returned, not those with fresh new juicy gossip or gab. Possibly even disconnecting the phone for long periods of time if not needed.
8. Connect with nature as much as possible to see the natural beauty of life.
9. Choose to forgo going to relations’ or relatives’ homes for social occasions, and instead focus on the self by doing a sport, reading or walking alone. Thus, avoiding constant socializing in favor of down time.
10. Choose to take a relaxing shower or a bath in quietness, with minimal lighting or This is one of the most unintentional meditative methods of becoming still, right in the comfort of your home.

These are just some simple ideas to make stillness a daily habit. Find your own example from your own life that fits into this idea of becoming still while still living in this modern, noisy, and busy world full of distractions.

Technology

“Techs was no fad.”

Techs is short for technology. It was obvious that techs were used by all patrons of Bobby Dazzler. People would come in to comparison shop, take pictures of items and even make calls to make sure if they should make the purchase or not. The advancement of technology made people uncertain and indecisive when making retail purchases. Techs turned normal business transactions of a few minutes into complicated tasks of finding out from ten people if a purchase should be made or not.Techs made it more difficult for Bobby Dazzler to retail.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple until his death, admitted to being a “low tech parent” to a tech journalist. When he asked Jobs in 2010 whether his own kids loved Apple’s iPad, Jobs replied, “They haven’t used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” This, from the mouth of one of the most powerful tech gurus of modern times. His products are so potent that he limits them from his own children. They are made just for the rest of us sheep. If the man who created such techs won’t give them to his own children then why should we?

Techs and cyberspace are the greatest concerns of modern times, occupying much of our valuable time. Time that could be used to find our creative force or come to the light of G-d – yet we are bowing down to this little blue light as if it were our new G-d. The techs are both the world’s largest knowledge machine and the largest distraction device ever created. They keep the human from any meditation. If those of us thinking meditation can be done in a group-like setting, by connecting groups via techs into cyberspace, that is not meditation.True meditation is done without any techs. Techs are everywhere: in education, business, economic exchange, communication and social connection. Technology has gone from being a simple tool to an entire way of life. It is difficult to look back only 40 years and imagine we ever managed without these techs. Schools are phasing in techs and phasing out handwriting on the assumption that no one will ever need to hand write again.Techs have grasped onto every single aspect of our lives – in our homes, work, schools, and personal lives.Techs control a massive and growing gaming industry. This is all happening as we allow techs to take control of our lives, more and more every day.

Everything moves in cycles. Could techs have destroyed creativity? Most techs are used when we are in stationary and sedentary positions. one is only rarely running or walking when watching cable,YouTube, writing an email, sending texts, on the phone or cyber surfing. Techs have caused the decline of creativity and of movement of the human body. It truly is use it or lose it. Losing it means more diseases on the rise, and a general population that is unhealthy and obese. everything is related and connected. Losing it also means a lack of creativity, which can be seen by all that is being culturally recycled today. We have constant remakes of movies like Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Star Wars and so on. So many things that were created when the techs were not around are being updated with techs and remade, revised, and resold. Techs have made humanity less creative in what we can come up with. Why are we are still finding the superheroes of the past so popular today? Shouldn’t we have made new superheroes for the present time? What about all those bands that keep going strong after 50+ years of making music? Bands like AC/DC, Metallica, Kiss, Rolling Stones and so many more are still selling out concerts. The music of today is not as deep as it was when the rock bands come out. Old school is still cool in many aspects of our lives. The techs have changed the world in many respects, but to the detriment of “actual” human interaction. Children now find it difficult to even hold conversations with peers, adults, and teachers because they are so used to not having to properly speak anymore. They can send out texts to converse, full of typos and lacking proper grammar. However, in face-to- face interaction, the children end up being unable to partake in intelligent conversation. The habit of relying on our techs to control social interactions through the computer or phone has now made it difficult to communicate in person.

What will happen to all these techs as we move forward? Humanity will have to limit their use or even disconnect an amount of techs from their lives, so the mind can live in union with body and soul.We don’t have to walk around with phones glued to our ears! How did we ever get that idea in the first place? Why do we need to stay in touch with people so much? People will realize that the more techs they have, the more anxiety and depression they have. When pursuing self-realization as a seeker of truth, it is important to limit the use of techs, and possibly disconnect from techs altogether.

Women

“The world will be saved by the Western woman.” – The Dalai Lama

If the Divine had told us before we came to earth that girls in some cultures are not as valued, then the souls would all reconsider and think that it would be best to stay united with the Divine or look for union with the Divine as quickly as possible. However, the pain and suffering of being born to some traditions such as Indian or Muslim parents is felt by many girls and women all around the world. could this possibly be due to the books of the past? The West is more advanced so treatment is equal. but the conditioning that some cultures are prone to is hard to overcome. This treatment of women is also found in many other religions such Islam, Hinduism and some orthodox versions of Christianity or Judaism. Some regions and cultures, like china, still prefer boys before girls. The problems arise as there are 1.6 billion Muslims, 1.03 Hindus, and 2.17 Christians.This made up 69% of world population by 2010 so these taboos affect the lives of girls daily. It affects the treatment of women and children and this conditioning is hardwired and very difficult to change.

Women still endure sex trafficking, sex slavery, war crime rapes, violent domestic abuse, murders, assaults, kidnappings, and many other abuses and indignities. This is due to gender inequality instituted in our society through so many aspects of life in politics, cultural norms, media and the workplace. How can this be sanctioned by religions which are supposed to be paths to awakening?

In 1997, an older male greeted the opening of the Bobby Dazzler store’s door with the oddest yet true statement. His reply to “good morning” was, “It is a good morning as I am not a black Muslim woman living in Africa today.” He explained that he had won the birth lottery. I stood dumbfounded for trying to figure out what he said, and it finally resonated. It was only 10 am, and the coffee hadn’t even been sipped yet, so it took a little while for his statement to sink in. after two minutes, it made sense. Life in certain parts of the world is much harder for a woman than it is here in the Western world. Living with so many obstacles in life such as poverty, sexism, cultural and religious values, and marriage traditions means it is very difficult to be a woman. Never mind becoming a seeker of awakening! being a woman is difficult enough trying to keep up with our male counterparts in salary and benefits, positions in work, business, and politics. But to deal with other pressures when we are living in a country that fails to allow an individual to express themselves is even more difficult given religious, societal, tribal values and norms, and economic barriers, or even pure ignorance, that all prevent women from moving towards truth. It is being born into a prison of confined circumstances. This man’s response struck a resonant nerve in me and it still haunts me today when I consider the state of the world today for women.

Loving all, fostering loving kindness and ensuring that none of the Divine creatures are “dirty”, this is what an awakened one sees. all other beliefs about the woman are poisonous belief systems of the past, created by the man.

The woman bears children and brings life to this world. Where does this hate for the woman come from even now? The three main Western religions all consider woman to be unclean while she is menstruating. This is an orthodox viewpoint, accepted by many as truth. Scriptural passages transmitted to uneducated people out of context can blind the mind.  It plants negative ideas, opinions, and thoughts into minds that only pay selective attention to what is heard or read. This harm can be considered as brainwashing over time through repetition. How are we to understand why a naturally occurring part of a woman’s reproductive system that is linked to procreation could ever be considered “unclean” in any book that is associated with awakening?

All souls have potential for self-realization. However, women must bear the burden of pregnancy, birth, and most of the child rearing. This has given so many more chances for males to become awakening masters. Great Masters include Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed and even modern Masters like the Dalai Lama. These Masters are all men who came from women. Real Masters realize how wonderful women are. The Dalai Lama put it best when he stated, “The world will be saved by the Western woman,” adding with a chuckle,“Many people call me a feminist.”

Woman is the chosen vessel for humans to arrive on mother earth. a world with more love for woman is needed. Love is a synonym for G-d or creative Intelligence. There is a need to promote basic human values of compassion, affection, love and kindness. Women have an opportunity to develop a greater sensitivity for others’ pain and suffering due to the immense amount of pain and suffering that is experienced during pregnancy, childbirth and in raising children. In order for this to be possible, women must go through menses on a monthly basis from as early as 12 to as late as 55. The menstrual cycle is designed by nature to optimize fertility, requiring that the lining of the uterus shed and be renewed if the egg that is released monthly is not fertilized. It is a normal bodily function in the woman, without which reproduction is not possible. How has a process linked to procreation become so “dirty”? Menstruation is a necessity and there is nothing dirty, unclean, or abnormal about this process!

Orthodox, extremist versions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have convinced the masses that women are “unclean” when they are menstruating. Such teaching is easily misused to incite misogyny and cause chaos in the world. This is exactly what has taken place. Menstruation may be a little messy and uncomfortable for the woman, but that does not justify labeling the sex that brings life via natural and normal bodily processes as “dirty”. It seems as if ignorance has prevailed again. The bad seeds of ignorance planted into humanity will take many cycles to shed. Seeds of hate, harm, and cruelty are in words that are always open to interpretation and misunderstanding in the religious scriptures that prescribe how we are to live. In the minds of the uneducated and misinformed, these types of statements, opinions, and beliefs can bring no benefit to the modern world where both sexes interact harmoniously. Such beliefs are not conducive to the general harmony that humanity desperately needs now.

Not only do women suffer from such superstitions, so do the children being shaped by these wrong ideas, and bringing them into the next generation. Paths that promote sex-based systems are not progressive and have nothing to do with turning on the light, or awakening. Dogma of this sort still sadly hinders the progress of the Western woman. Ideology that does not serve all merely brings additional suffering, inequality, and hardship. We in the West appear to have freedom of religion, but we are still burdened by superstitions at cross-purposes with becoming a truly progressive society, moving forward toward awakening.

Western women have already begun to rise after many years of oppression. There are many examples of women who have made it into positions of leadership traditionally in the hands of their male counterparts. There are more women than ever in schools, colleges, and universities so the prospects of success in business, employment, and work are looking better and better for women.Looking for G-d in everything and everyone of both sexes will ensure that peace is found without hate. The world has been dominated by men for quite some time now. but, just as everything else in the world goes through cycles, so will the current cycle of the males’ domination shift. The Dalai Lama proclaimed the ascendancy of the Western woman. It was a prediction of things to come.

In modern awakening, a woman doesn’t have to worry that her religion’s place of worship doesn’t allow women. She can meditate in her own house or home of prayer. It can be done while living a secular life, doing chores, working, driving, and when the woman raises her children in love.

At the end of the day, souls are gender-neutral and a part of the Divine. It is just the outer cloak that changes upon subsequent birth. It doesn’t matter if one is born to the girls in this life and to the males the next. For the awakening, all that matters is the soul’s coming to realize truth.