THE CURRENT SPIRITUAL SITUATION AND ALL THOSE ASCENSION IDEALS...

I asked my husband to help me do some searches on the internet because he's so good at coming up with search terms. I have been feeling as if it's very hard to breathe, and in general felt pretty under the weather for no apparent reason. Well, one reason might have been some issues and worries about my mother but the feeling continued and didn't seem to make sense. Maybe it's just the weather and low pressure (literally feeling "under the weather", ha!). Perhaps this climate isn't very good for me. I was curious though whether there was anything going on cosmically speaking. We looked up "cosmic weather reports" and such, but could find nothing of any interest. At best there were explanations about the current situation of global economy and how it's all still a great mess. Apparently a few days there was a full moon and a constellation that might have brought out some emotional issues. 

We then looked up some lightworkers to see if there are any signs of life and if there are thoughts about what's going on from an esoteric point of view. Well in fact the big site lightworkers.org was not available (it seemed to have disappeared but it could have something to do with our server). We figured they had all ascended! Oops. There are many very pink (ok read gaudy and utterly tasteless) sites out there that are basically just repeating the same old, and nobody seems to have anything very new and thought provoking to say. "The ascension symptoms" is still the same old list of issues and as my husband said, it really just sounds like being human! From my point of view, many of them sound a lot like fibromyalgia which of course is increasingly common within the female population. Some of the issues are of a more spiritual nature but I'm sure that people who have a lot of mystical experiences are quite aware of what they are and don't need to read about them from a list... Anyhow, maybe it's a good thing if there aren't too many predictions out there (or maybe I just didn't find them) - perhaps the truly evolved are hesitant to say things that could be misinterpreted.

The whole idea of putting labels on things so that people fit into categories seems very perilous to me. Many people so want to feel special and part of an elite. Very often people are not what you think they are anyway, looks may be very deceiving! People have a frame of reference for deciding on what kind of level others are, and it may be very false. In reality we are probably all here for very different reasons.

And seriously - too many times I have already heard people who claim to be psychic say oops, things didn't go according to plan because not enough people were ready for spiritual changes. It doesn't take much to see that most people are still in a state of oblivion and not very interested in self-development, struggling to survive in times of great global imbalance. It takes time, here on Earth, for collective evolution to take place. I don't know how much time but I am not surprised that profound changes aren't instant. At them moment, collective insanity is definitely increasing, but I certainly hope we have reached the peak!

It occurred to me, that the fact that I have no clear feelings on the subject of ascension is maybe that there aren't any to be had. I do think there's an acceleration of evolution on the collective and individual levels, and I am quite certain of this. In fact all you need to do is just look around and see how society is speeding up, and this is obviously not isolated from the individual psyche. It seems dangerous though to read too much into these things, to hypnotize yourself into believing in hypotheses. To be centred in yourself or at least attempt to be, is the best way to be in my opinion. Flirtation with religious concepts often takes people away from who they really are, something which needs to be acknowledged and integrated before they can expect significant spiritual changes. I am not saying there aren't people who aren't very evolved, but don't ever make the mistake of comparing yourself with them. We are not here to compete, in fact we need to get out of the habit of comparing ourselves with others. Note what's going on and decide what sort of person you really want to be. Then keep this in mind at all times. Avoid putting on the role of the happy happy lovey dovey person if this is not who you are naturally. Too many people who are interested in self-development simply take on a new persona and think they have solved their problems - it's a kind of spiritual role playing and highly deceptive.

Positive thinking is an anti-thesis to negative thinking and will therefore not remove negativity. It's a polarised way of thinking that keeps you stuck in dualistic behavioural patterns. You cannot force these things, only gently acknowledge your negativities and see what you can do to break the patterns. One important thing is to give up some of the control we are so used to exercising, but doing it in the right kind of way! You don't just decide to rely on the universe providing you with everything... we do need to be proactive and responsible, not passive. We need syntheses and ways of integrating life as it is while gently working towards greater emotional openness. Gently, I say - myself and others (anecdotally anyway) have sometimes worked with ourselves so much we have become too open too soon, and the heart energies have gone all wiry and in some cases even worse things have occurred. One becomes vulnerable but not resilient - herein lies a danger. To dare open up again from having been too open to attack becomes the focus of some new inner work.

I find it deeply disturbing that the ascension ideas have driven a wedge between "the evolved" people and the ones who are not. Again I'm not saying everyone sees it this way but I think a lot of the talk out there can reinforce elitist thinking in immature individuals. We also have to remember that there are many, many chronically ill people who really have a hard time keeping up with everything. Their task is sometimes immense, and should be respected rather than spit on as the result of their own inability to create a better reality. At best it can be a noble task.

It's a bit telling when someone posts an advert about a book about Kuthumi in the comments section on my blog. From Wikipedia: "According to Theosophy, Kuthumi is considered to be one of the members of the Spiritual Hierarchy called the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom which oversees the development of the human race on this planet to higher levels of consciousness. In the Ascended Master Teachings, Kuthumi is one of the Ascended Masters who collectively make up the Great White Brotherhood."  I do take objection to the fact that someone posts adverts on my blog - it is not a very evolved way of acting. As for ascended masters and all that... well believe in it if you feel it's important to you, but don't feel obliged to. You may have a different sort of spiritual life that doesn't include beings from other dimensions. You are, after all, on Earth! There's plenty enough to focus on right here... beware of getting distracted by shiny things and what appear to be elevated ideals of other dimensions!

I do think that some people have very heavy and difficult lessons to learn, and it may be the greatest purpose of their current existence. It can be very disconcerting not to know for sure why you feel a lot of things that appear not even to come from yourself. On the other hand, you may have surges of self-developmental reactions that are peculiar to yourself at any given time. Not dwelling on this too much but trying to do something creative with it would be my advice. For what it's worth! Also, there are people who are very serious about spiritual evolution and who are acting it out in the world rather than outside of it, not afraid of including all aspects of being into their belief systems.

Artwork: Digital photograph, "Things Were Not Quite What They Seemed To Be", copyright 2011

Gratitude - Not to be Forced

They say that feelings of lethargy, apathy, bouts of anger and other negative states of mind can come to sensitive people as this world is undergoing a transformative process. I suppose that's what I'm feeling... not like me to feel so listless and have such trouble getting along with people. I just want to run away and hide... I'm sure I'm not showing the best of myself but neither are people I meet. Things that wouldn't have been an issue ten years ago seem somehow aggravated today, as if people just can't help themselves. I so wish I could feel more compassion but I am just SO tired. I try desperately to hang in there and not fall prey to despair, so I suppose what I write about isn't always so uplifting either. I am here adding some things to the theme of forced gratitude. A few points overlap what I wrote in my last post.

I recently learned that children who were evacuated to Sweden from Finland during WWII are still plagued by the way they were always told to shut up and be grateful. They wanted nothing more than to be with their parents even if it meant chaos and famine, yet at the time it was thought better for them to have peace and enough food to eat in neutral Sweden. If they were unhappy, they were often severely punished. My dad was sexually abused. My mother was sent to some rich fosterparents in the capital of Finland where they only fed her cakes overflowing with cream and sugar. She was saved by this woman's sister and taken to a famous pediatrician who told them what she needs to eat to regain strength. They eventually adopted her and though they were quite rich, she had to sleep in the father's drafty reception room and always had runny eyes. When I was younger, she used to tell me quite often how she hated the idea of having to be forcibly grateful. Perhaps I have inherited this from her but I also don't like to have the idea of gratitude shoved down my throat. It was never a problem until I started to hang out with spiritually minded Americans online. They seem to be in love with inspirational quotes about gratitude and love to teach it to those of lesser knowing. The country's highly religious backdrop might have something to do with this. What strikes me as really odd though, is why anyone thinks that this should be necessary? I mean, I don't go around feeling totally hateful about life all day long and then communicate with spiritual people online in the evening. Of course there are things one feels grateful for during the day. As a means of self-preservation, one naturally looks for counterparts to all the shitty tings that happen in life. Don't people do this?? I'm sorry but it's hard for me to buy into the idea that people would be so dumb as not to get such fundamental issues on their own. But maybe people really are so removed from any natural sentiments/sensibilities and common sense? I was wondering about the same thing when Feng Shui became popular.

I promised to help an elderly lady with her new computer the other day. I guess it's my own fault that I didn't focus and really think what it is she might need. I trusted that it was just about a few things that I should be able to figure out for her so she didn't have to take in anyone expensive. I didn't expect to get paid but I knew she'd give me a little something. Ok, good deal. Funny enough, everything that could possibly go wrong, did. Since I have no stress tolerance I was quickly in a really bad state of panic, but determined to see this thing through stoically. She however, became frantic as we didn't get anywhere and she was in a hurry as well. The irony is, she probably has money to pay for a professional and only wanted to help me. However the humiliation and the stress took a great toll on me. In the end I felt like an idiot (and was biting my tongue so as not to come out with the usual defensive nonsense arguments) and did of course not feel that she was grateful for my input. It hurt a little but what hurt the most was that she didn't consider my low stress tolerance though she knows about it. The totally unexpected negativity that came out in the situation made me want to run home and cry, which I did later on. She showed some surprising hardness that I wanted to escape. Now I am not wanting to hear some advice that I attracted it through some funny law that came into fashion yesterday. Sure some of it is fine, but when it becomes dogma... well I'll leave it at that.

I simply thought more of my abilities than I should have and was trying to help where my help was maybe not really needed, and the karma came back to me at once, which happens these days, since the pace has been accelerated. Of course, there was also an unhappy combination of circumstances. Anyhow, I really think the law of karma is as good a law as any, and it's been around for a long time. It's just a matter of understanding it. Perhaps in time we will gain more freedom and manifest things that are not from ego, but the way I see it is, as long as we're on Earth we're attached to karma. Funny though, I've had a dream in which I felt complete and utter lack of self-worth. I have never felt anything like this in real life. So I guess there is some subconscious process going on in regard to such issues (and it may well be connected to the collective). I feel that I'm having to battle it in some sense. I don't really feel appreciated by people right now.

People are quite out of control these days, I think that's pretty obvious to anyone who is able to see reality for what it is and feel real feelings. Sometimes we just can't muster loving feelings, compassion or anything else of a positive nature, even when we believe we should. We feel irritated and stressed. We may be aware of the possibility, that in some way the negative encounter was a lesson, but we don't always have the energy to go into it and it's not always sure this is what we should do. You know what? It's all part and parcel of the transition. We may be limitless beings but here in human form, there's a lot to deal with. Those who like to preach from above are not doing any favours. People who are dealing with real life feelings will eventually resolve them, or they will not. It's not for anybody else to determine. You can only let go of your negative feelings when you CAN let go of them. If I started to feel guilty about feeling negative feelings I would indeed only be prolonging my own process, as anything denied or repressed will still be there. I also believe that guilt really drags you down. Common sense, right?

What also strikes me is that people preach about the importance of feeling gratitude all the time and instigating "gratefulness days", yet when I look around online I see little of it expressed towards other people. For instance, considering all the time and effort some people put into replying to other people's questions or blogs, well one would expect a glimpse of "thank you" or a simple acknowledgment of the other's effort a litte more frequently than what one sees now. It doesn't have to be any bombastic feelings of gratitude of course... the more modest kind called common courtesy! One thing my mother did teach me was to express thank you a lot so maybe it's just me... not understanding that not everyone is used to it. It's also not very nice to respond to someone in a forum only to find someone else say the exact same thing further along the line.

I don't (as a manner of speaking) know what goes on in people these days and maybe it's best to know as little as possible. I mean, what I do see is already overwhelming... I have learned, that it's ok to say no to people although I was raised to be kind and nice to everyone. These two attitudes don't always seem in synch but we are living in times of change and there is no reason to plague oneself more than necessary with stressors that lead nowhere. A little bit of toughness is needed at times to get through to people. The compassion comes when it comes. You can't force anything. And you can always consider, whether all you want is to become a more succesful human being or an enlightened person. The latter is apparently not always a very cheery path to take, but somehow I suspect that it's a choice some people have made before they came here and so any attempts to manifest the opposite (a happy, succesful life) will probably go down the drain because it's not what the soul really needs. And gratitude comes when it comes! Courtesy can be taught, but not gratitude, though maybe one can work towards it in some indirect way.

Artwork: "Early Morning", mixed media on paper by author, all rights reserved 1997