What Is Spirituality?

A Definition of Spirituality

Despite the incredible technological progress of recent years the period has also seen a massive resurgence of interest in what might be termed "Spiritual" matters, ie the desire to seek and understand a deeper reality that lies beyond the superficiality of the material plane. This renewed search for a more profound knowledge goes beyond the solutions offered by conventional religions and has been labeled by some "New Age Spirituality".

But what exactly is Spirituality, and what might it have to offer us? (more…)

“Practicing The Presence”. Conversations With Yanni

Below is the transcript of the Youtube video: ‘“Practicing The Presence”. Conversations with Yanni’ Part 1. The link for the video is below.

Heather: Hello everyone. It’s lovely to have you here with us. We’re currently studying the mystical book, ‘Practicing The Presence’ by Joel Goldsmith in our Online Book Study Group (the zoom link for the group and the recordings are in Description). In this series, Yanni and I will be discussing the spiritual principles Joel shares in this book, together with some thoughts and questions that have been asked. We’ll work our way through each of the chapters, and in this video, we’ll discuss the Introduction and Chapters 1 & 2.

So, Yanni, would you like to ask me the first question?

Yanni: Yes. Qu 1. “Why did Joel decide to write 'Practicing the Presence' [PTheP] and how do people relate who've had similar life, or spiritual, experiences? (more…)

Culmination — Everything is Culminating on Earth

by Van / Gabriel of Urantia

I’m a reader and teacher of The URANTIA Book, and my public name is Van / Gabriel of Urantia. I had already studied and taught scripture of the Old and New Testaments in the Bible before finding The URANTIA Book. I have also been used as a vessel to bring through the continuation of The URANTIA Book, found in The Cosmic Family volumes. I consider as valid and sacred scripture:

• The Bible, given by humans, which goes back possibly 6,000 years.
• The URANTIA Book (referred to as the Fifth Epochal Revelation) and given by celestial personalities, who contacted a small group of humans as early as 1911, bringing through the actual Urantia papers in 1934 and 1935, with the book being published in 1955.
• The continuation of those papers first being published as The Cosmic Family, Volume 1 in 1993 and continuing with several additional volumes, known as the Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation.

(more…)

Escaping the Military: Healing the Virus of Violence

From the book RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War

By William T. Hathaway

RADICAL PEACE presents the experiences of war resisters, deserters, and peace activists who are working to change our warrior culture. A young Buddhist novice contributed this account, which we then revised together. To protect the people who have protected him, he prefers to be nameless.

Back in high school I'd been good at languages but couldn't afford to go to college, so I joined the navy for the language training. They have a program where if you pass an aptitude test, they'll send you to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, for an intensive course that's worth almost a year of college credit. Plus they have an active-duty education program that offers college courses. I figured after my discharge I could finish my education on the GI Bill, and with my language skills, I could get a job in international business.

The other military branches offer programs like this too, but the navy seemed the best way to stay out of the fighting. I was hoping for a major language like Chinese, Russian, or Spanish, but they assigned me to Pashto, which is spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After training, I'd be stationed on a ship in the Arabian Sea monitoring phone calls and radio broadcasts, listening for key words that might give a clue about where the Taliban were, so the planes from the aircraft carriers could bomb them. I didn't think about this last part, though. I was focused on my future. (more…)

Consciousness is all there is

By William T. Hathaway

As Mark Twain once said, “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you in trouble, it’s what you know for sure but which just isn’t true.”

Humanity is now in trouble because its fundamental assumption about the nature of the universe just isn’t true. The materialist worldview that has dominated science and philosophy for the past 200 years has crumbled. Discoveries in quantum physics have disproven it, but no consensus has been able to take its place. Materialists and idealists have been arguing back and forth for decades.

This lack of shared understanding has repercussions that go beyond the laboratory. Without a consistent, agreed-upon worldview, societies don’t function well. As cognitive confusion spreads, our common basis for problem solving weakens. (more…)

The Real Vaccine

By William T. Hathaway
Our world now writhes like a wounded worm, helpless
to escape its torment, blind
to the cause but blaming
a bug: “Stop it, stomp it, strangle it!
Too late – inside us, breeding into billions of bugs!
Kill them, poison them!
But our poisons don’t work – oh no!
Swarming with new bugs! Hopeless! Dying!”
All the while Shiva whispers:
“Beneath your terror and turmoil lies the tranquility of the transcendent.
You’re trapped on the surface mind, tossed by the waves.
Now dive to the depths and merge with me.
In my bigness a bit of bugness won’t panic you.
You’ll gain immunity to the insanity.
Come on down, look around,
here is where your Self is found.”

Shiva, Lord of Transcendence

*
The author of eight books, William T. Hathaway was a Fulbright professor of
creative writing at universities in Germany, where he currently writes, meditates,
and hangs out with Shiva. If you’d like to contact Shiva and enrich your life with
his presence, this website will show you how, all for free:
https://meetshiva985866381.wordpress.com/.

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The Great Romance of Shiva and Shakti

A cosmic love story celebrated on March 11

By William T. Hathaway

Long ago in Brahma-loka, the abode of the Gods, Lord Shiva was passionately in love with Mahashakti and determined to marry her. But one big problem prevented that: Mahashakti is the Divine Mother, the primal creative force who manifests the entire universe, including all the Gods and Goddesses. She is the active side of Brahman, the transcendental Absolute, the unified field that contains everything but is neutral, non-active, beyond it all. Mahashakti is too universal to marry anybody.

Mahashakti tried to explain this to Shiva, but he was too deep in love to be able to hear. She finally just had to firmly reject his amorous entreaties, and he stalked off, sulking and despondent. Shiva withdrew from the world and did nothing but sit in a cave and meditate. Without his active presence, the world started to fall apart. The evolutionary cycle of creation, maintenance, and destruction lost its dynamism and began to run down. (more…)

Honor, A Forgotten Concept In America

By Gabriel of Urantia

When we think of any of the Founding Fathers, we think of them as men of honor, which is the quality that seems to be lost in the manhood of American men today. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines honor as:  “good name or public esteem : reputation; a showing of usually merited respect : recognition.” I would like to add that honor also is:  the quality of being trusted and being loyal to a worthy cause. Honor and loyalty go hand in hand.

Free will as a spiritual concept is not taught in grade school, or high school, or college and should be. God created all sentient creatures with free will, and for humans it is evolving into making honorable choices, which is doing the right thing because it’s just the right thing to do, not because we have to do it.

In the true kingdom of God, we are not forced to do anything. Mortals of honor on all worlds in time and space choose to obey God’s commandments, the divine code of conduct, which keep us on the path of rightness. We understand that if we don’t follow those universal laws and make right choices, negative things will happen. We understand that having a healthy respect for and fear of the Creator is in relation to realizing the cause-and-effect law of wrong choices. (more…)

Meet Shiva

By William T. Hathaway

Shiva is the deity of transcendence, the cosmic force that returns all matter and energy, all manifestation and activity, back to its Source. This return is the final stage of an evolutionary process that begins with creation through the power of Brahma, maintenance through the power of Vishnu, then dissolution through the power of Shiva back into the unified field of pure consciousness, the same unified field that quantum physics has discovered. This ground state is the universe’s interface with God. Manifested forms dissolve in it into waves of a nonmaterial, abstract field, and new forms continually emerge from it to continue the cycle.

We can see this evolutionary process all around us. A seed becomes a plant that blossoms, creates new seeds, and dies. We manifest into a body that grows, develops, dies, then we later re-emerge as a new, more highly-evolved person. Socio-economic systems emerge, grow over centuries, and crumble like ours is doing now, then are replaced by more highly-developed, more egalitarian ones. As society enters this dissolution phase, more and more people are turning intuitively to Shiva because we need his support. (more…)

A Quick Guide On Finding Your Spirit Animal

by Ashley Halsey

According to Native American tradition, spirit animals are an embodied form of a spiritual guide. These guides can appear to us whatever way we are willing to see them, and it’s natural for people to connect with theirs anytime, anywhere. Therefore, you may find that you have one main power animal, or you’ll feel close to many spirit animals. But don’t panic! They’re here to give you more ease, faith, and confidence to help you navigate through life.

But, how can you tell which animal is your spirit guide? In this quick guide, we’ll show you some resources to help you find your spirit animal(s). (more…)

Sacred Living

By Niánn Emerson Chase

Being raised by a spiritual, scientific father who was a water and soil conservationist on four different Indian reservations in Arizona (where I freely roamed the surrounding wild lands), I grew to understand the interdependence of humans with the natural environment and to hold sacred not only the life and health of human beings but also all life—plant and animal—and the ecosystems that keep us all alive.

In college and the ensuing years, I increasingly realized that it was almost impossible to live in the sacred manner I desired under the influence and control of the dominant culture of materialism and the conquer-all-in-nature mindset. And so in my 20s and 30s I lived in a conflictive state of compromise within mainstream society, doing what I could to live simply, buy minimally and responsibly, conserve water, recycle, repurpose, garden, participate in a cooperative where we bought organic foods in bulk and split among ourselves, and so on. I constantly researched and learned of better ways to live sustainably and attempted making changes within my nuclear family unit, which was at times challenging when certain family members did not want to participate. (more…)