You Can’t Count the Flavor in the Soup (A Collection of Thoughts)

Breaking the Spell (Afterword)

Afterword

You Can’t Count the Flavor in the Soup

(A Collection of Thoughts)

· To work harmoniously with people, with courtesy, respect, and correct manners, is a prerequisite for any achievement in human development. It is as simple and as hard as that.

• The ability to be functional rests on the type of knowledge we work with. Working with information that is useless will not prepare us for encountering our future needs. We must ensure that each of us has the correct tools, the terms of reference, to be efficient for the participation that is required of us.

• Do we fit our intentions into our lives, or do we fit our lives around our intentions?

• The human family is a single organism that connects through the heart. We do not need any secret code or password – we are eligible for our inherent emotional and conscious empowerment by being human.

• The changes we need to see in the world will come: it is the responsibility of those who can – who feel/sense the urge – to do their work by first working on themselves. First, people need to familiarize themselves with certain information.

• Nothing in the world is free: as the aphorism states - ‘Take what you want says God – but pay for it!’ In this life everything must be learned. It is our responsibility to make ourselves open and available to learn, whether de-learning, re-learning, or learning anew.

• Old ways, however valuable, are not always automatically the most suitable for what humanity is facing now.

• Many revolutions have been fought in blood for social change; too few have been fought compassionately for inner development.

• In what we do: is it in service or is it for ourselves?

• Our greatest obstacles to development are anger and fear. Without first achieving balance within ourselves we will not be equipped to move forward in a harmonious and functional manner. We must always begin with ourselves.

• To believe that we live outside of the world of humanity is nothing other than vanity. We are each of us a part of the world, and we are thus compelled to follow and work with the realm of humanity. This is the hardest path, yet one that should not be forgotten. Change must come through human involvement as well as through other means. Each individual is an agent of change, or has the potential to be.

• Don’t make things into issues – make them into targets.

• It is important that we embrace ideas now so that they may become acceptable mental currency in advance of their actualization.

• Working with what one instinctively feels to be necessary can be different from working with what one thinks to be important. This distinction is subtle yet often crucial.

• What are we doing here? No one has given me an answer. The truth of it must come from within – I wonder how many of us ask ourselves this question regularly?

• An evolving consciousness reflects the understanding that conscious energy is primary, and the need to be aware and open to ideas and impacts of evolutionary and spiritual thinking. The view that consciousness is a primary force/ energy in our reality is the key to helping people expand their consciousness and identify with ever more non-local ties and responsibilities.

• A shaman once said: ‘A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.’ Today, agents of change are the new warriors, as hearts in action rather than minds in abstract. Yet this action does not call for a physical demonstration against the incumbent system. Instead, it calls forth an energetic push – a heartfelt impulse – towards an alternative way of being. It is not our aim to be confrontational; rather, it is our aim to be creative.

• We are entering into a world era of greater responsibility. This is not only in terms of our individual actions but reflects also for each thought, emotion, intention, and energetic expression. Increasingly what we manifest within ourselves becomes a part of the external world. This is why we are encouraged to ‘become the change we wish to see’. We can each participate in manifesting the change we wish to see in the world around us. This is not metaphysical or occult – it is simply how our integral relationship with the world operates. This relationship is becoming more apparent to a growing number of people as more and more individuals awake to the power of change inherent within each person’s mandate of responsibility.

• Each of us helps to support, renew, and rekindle the world through our own separate internal dialogues. It would be helpful if we could consolidate our internal narrative into a unifying, cohesive intent. Now that would be something!

• We should take each step with the knowing that it will count – without doubt or egoism – yet with intent, full personal power, and self- conviction.

• When we ‘work’ on ourselves we need to do it with a sense of responsibility – just as if we were getting paid for it.

• It is important where one focuses their attention. It takes almost the same energy to make ourselves miserable than it does to make ourselves strong. It is only a matter of personal emphasis. It is our duty to balance the critical nature of our world situation with the joy, wonder, and honor of being alive at this time.

• Respect for others begins first with respect to one’s self. If we are unable to achieve this we may find ourselves working to fulfill a self-need rather than working towards selfless action.

• Many people look for a ‘Path’, a teaching, as an alternative to their current social lives. Not because they necessarily are looking for truth, but because they are unsatisfied socially.

• Individuals do not win victories by banging their heads against walls, but by bypassing them. We can demolish the walls that stand before us by a conscious side-stepping rather than engaging with the old paradigms of conflict and attack.

• No one is born complete or self-attained. Yet we are each born into this world with the possibility to achieve this. How we choose to become, to grow, rests largely upon what we make of ourselves under the given circumstances. It is not so much what happens to us but rather how we respond to our circumstances that determines what we become.

• Challenges are simply challenges, and life is a constant challenge. It helps us to grow within the influences if we do not give ourselves over to complaints and regrets. By lingering too long upon our own judgments we impede our way forward. Self-pity lowers our energy potential and our ability to be an active force in the world. Self-indulgence distracts a person from what they can truly achieve when they are free to focus and concentrate on their intention.

• We are more timid, less courageous, when we are saddled with fears over what we may lose. This is the old paradigm of thought, keeping us tied to struggling against change. We don’t like change; it is something new, uncertain, and involves letting go of something. In this thinking we can never be free enough to move forward openly. The world is constantly moving up and down: each of us, however, must learn how to harmoniously move through.

• Don’t try to control things; it will only bring more anxiety into life. Trust in those internal movements that will manifest circumstances in life. Such trust embraces an elegant design of what is already to be.

• Some of the old ways of behaving are expecting to be told what to do, and then fighting against not doing what we are told. This is a typical entanglement that entraps and distracts a person from moving forward in the right direction. This is why it is the hardest path to work effectively within the world of people, and also why it is so very necessary.

• It needs to be recognized that a consciousness shift is now underway as the world has come to a point where it cannot continue without a shift in perceptual reality. The world humanity inhabits is, as never before in our recorded history, globally and integrally connected. During this crucial ‘phase change’ we are experiencing ‘perceptual disturbances’, as well as Earth changes.

• Human dreams can exercise great power, or they can be passive distractions. Dreams must take on a residue of power, of focused intention, if they are to manifest and exert influence in the physical world.

• This phase of human history is set to end; the parameters are being shifted. And the younger generations instinctively know this – they ‘get it’ – and are already working to see the shift manifest on this planet within our lifetimes. There is already a world-shift happening.

• Our brains have the biological capacity to form a myriad of local and non-local connections, to adapt and readapt our neurons (re-wiring by re- firing), and to empathize with others through the unconscious firing of our mirror neurons. We also now have technologies that enable us to materially achieve our greater connections – yet we need a worldview, a consciousness and perceptual paradigm to embrace this. We are getting there, but we have not arrived yet.

• We are re-patterning our social relations and forming new modes of interpersonal connections and communications. This will herald a new set of shared values, understanding, empathy, and respect. As a global family we have already suffered enough from existence within an egocentric world, driven by cravings of power, greed, and control. These institutions are now archaic and destructive to our continued survival. They are the dregs of an old mode of existence, one that is unsuitable for a world to come.

• The ideal set of relations would be that which honored the Golden Rule; exchanges on mutual trust and respect. We may be a long way from this, yet the seeds have been planted, and are growing in firm soil around the world – in projects, communities, networks … the new Renaissance will not emerge from the center like the previous one that sprung up in Florence in the Late Middle Ages…it will come from the periphery, a distributed and network emergence of conscious individuals and groupings. Like ink dots on blotting paper, these conscious and creative centers will spread their influence throughout the networks until a time will come when the ink dots begin to fill the blotting paper.

• The new Renaissance will be a decentralized movement – a movement from the people; a shift catalyzed within the hearts, spirit, and minds of the people. Mass connectivity will require a greater sense of resonance between all humans. Resonance, a vibratory force, gradually retunes those in its field into a shared harmonic. Human beings are both individually and collectively resonating tools. In our changing times we will increasingly be reaching out to those who attract us, with whom we can communicate, and to like-minded people. We will instinctively feel the rising need to connect with others who feel, sense, and think as us.

• As a species we are beginning to fuse; we are still fragmented and rife with cracks and schisms. These have often been deliberate policies of control – divide and conquer – which are now being overridden by a new program: a program of respect and unite. Our schisms will eventually bring us closer together, as we collectively transform the brutalities of the old world systems.

• We are called to respond differently to the world around us – not in fear or with anxiety, with trepidation or apprehension; but with robustness, energy, flexibility creativity, and positive intentions. The world in which we live is an ecology of which we are a part – we must learn to respect this, to feel it, and to develop our lives around it. It is our duty to be responsive in a functional yet compassionate manner, with understanding and knowledge; with action and inaction; with exertion and with patience. We must learn when to do and when to be.

• We should be mindful and aware of our own transformation; how each day brings new impacts, emotions, learning opportunities. We live in a vast, dynamic, living school – nothing is static. We are not machines, robotic automations that respond to applied stimuli. We are complex emotional and spiritual beings that have a myriad of encounters, events, and experiences from which to learn, grow, and evolve. We should strive to always remember this, to avoid those things that pacify us, that dull our senses and make us feel small and worthless.

· We are energetic beings. We are here now to be empowered, not suppressed, oppressed, nor repressed.

• Current social breakdowns and crises are catalyzing innovations, creative systems, and humanitarian networking. When the center begins to implode under its own weighty inefficiency, the periphery gains regenerative energies.

• Change will come through the living spirit of people. When a sincere intention is placed into the world, it can, and does, move matter into its alignment.

• Just as the communications revolution catalyzed a global consciousness, so too will a consciousness revolution impact our collective spiritual hearts – this will be the true mark of the maturity of our species. No true sense of physical unity (nation blocs – planetary society) can come into being if we are unable to cultivate and nurture the ‘being’ of unity within our very own internal states.

• Inner resolve and balance can be a powerful ally to sheer willpower. Our internal state is a measure of our own strength, forbearance, and fortitude. We need to cultivate this focus, this ability for calmness within change and adversity, in order to manage our maturity into the next phase of our evolutionary development.

• The meaning of humanity can be said to be evolutionary. Each person has the capacity to ‘polish the connection’ between themselves and a living, energetic universe.

• The ultimate revolution needed on this planet of ours is a spiritual revolution; that is, a revolution in our inner gnosis, understanding, and our inherent conscious selves – an opening up and further development of our spiritual dimension.

• If we live our lives purely externally without an inner dimension we will be lacking in the full and complete development of qualities needed to bring a harmonious and sustainable long-term future into being.

• It is important that a person acquires the ability to correctly assess or measure: i) what they need; ii) how to go about achieving it; iii) what is true; and iv) what is false. Many people falsely believe they know all of these things, when in fact it is usually the case that these things are only understood in a limited sense.

• The human need to struggle and be successful – to progress in life – is the manifestation of an evolutionary imperative. However, it is only a secondary expression of this essential urge. To fully develop as a human being, we are called upon to focus on its primary manifestation: the evolutionary imperative within each of us to develop our conscious self.

• Sincerity – with others and with oneself – is one of the few tools we have for gaining our personal freedom.

• We continually hear calls for us to ‘wake up’; that humanity is ‘asleep’, etc. – yet seldom are we told that once awake we need to have the means to profit from this wakefulness. Such preparation is as much important as the waking itself.

• Most people want to learn, yet only in a manner laid down by them – or in a way that is emotionally satisfying to them.

• Each person should decide for themselves if they are actively looking for intellectual and emotional stimulus. If so, then such things can be found – indeed, are offered – all around us. Yet they may have little or no developmental value.

• We all too easily adopt relative truths and sanctify them as idols. This lack of perception effectively blocks access for the appearance and application of absolute, objective truths.

• What may help us at one stage of our lives may hinder us at another. We should be open to evaluation at all times and to learn to recognize this difference.

• It is a human tendency to take constructive ideas and turn them into recreational toys. Thus, when playing they are able to tell themselves they are involved in ‘higher things’. That is why cults are so numerous in human cultures. Also, why mimicry is lauded as a worthy endeavour.

• We should strengthen our capacity to see beyond paradoxes; to perceive the harmony within inconsistent things.

• Beliefs are not facts: a belief is a belief because it is neither knowledge nor truth. It is a conviction of faith—a thought backed by emotional attachment.

• We need to know and to feel that we have the spiritual impulse running through us and that it runs through every aspect of our physical lives.

• When conscience and genuine intuition are operating together there is an intention that is not thought, wish, or an object. It is an intention that can override the thoughts of conditioning.

• Mental stabilization and social harmony are not ways to higher consciousness but rather the very necessary needs of our basic functioning. These are our minimal requirements, not our end goals.

• Knowledge shares itself with those who approach it in the correct way.

• The world we are moving into requires of us that we both inspire and be inspired.

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Taken from the book ‘Breaking the Spell’ (published 2013/2020)