Chi / Energy

Science Says: Humans Can Absorb the Energy of Others.

Click on the link to read the article.
http://expandedconsciousness.com/2016/09/26/absorb-the-energy/

Truth

Contemplate the workings of this world, listen to the words of the wise, take all that is good as your own. With this as your base, open your own door to truth. Do not overlook the truth that is right before you. Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything – even mountains, rivers, plants, and trees – should be your teacher. - Morihei Ueshiba

The search for truth is, as it always has been, the noblest expression of the human spirit. Man’s insatiable desire for knowledge about himself, about his environment and the forces by which he is surrounded, gives life its meaning and purpose, and clothes it with final dignity.... And yet we know, deep in our hearts, that knowledge is not enough.... Unless we can anchor our knowledge to moral purposes, the ultimate result will be dust and ashes – dust and ashes that will bury the hopes and monuments of men beyond recovery. - Raymond B. Fosdick

All worldly pursuits have but the one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow: acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings, in destruction; meetings, in separation; births, in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisition and heaping up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent guru, set about realizing the Truth. - Milarepa

Teachings of The Buddha

           When a simpleton abused him, Buddha listened in silence; after the man finished, Buddha asked, "Son, if a man declined to accept a present made to him, to whom would it belong?"
           The man answered, "To who offered it."
           "My son." Said Buddha, "I decline to accept your abuse, and request that you keep it for yourself."

Bhikkus is a Pali word for male ordained monastic monk.

On one occasion, while The Buddha was passing through a forest. He took a handful of leaves and said: "O Bhikkhus, what I have taught is comparable to the leaves in my hand. What I have not taught is comparable to the amount of leaves in the forest. - The Buddha

Faith

Meditation

We are not compelled to meditate by some outside agent, by other people, or by God. Rather, just as we are responsible for our own suffering, so are we solely responsible for our own cure. We have created the situation in which we find ourselves, and it is up to us to create the circumstances for our release. - Lama Thubten Yeshe

Meditation develops the capacity to question your mind. Without it, you are at the mercy of every thought, every desire, every wave of emotion. - Geneen Roth

Suffering occurs when people are enslaved by their thoughts. Meditation teaches one to let them go like one’s breath. - Venerable Hyon Gak

Without meditation we do but talk one after another like parrots, and take up things by mere hearsay, and repeat them by rote, without affection and life, or discerning the worth and excellency of what we speak. It is meditation that maketh truths always ready and present with us. - Thomas Manton

Though observation and instruction, reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, yet it is our own meditation and the labour of our own thoughts that must form our judgment of things. - Isaac Watts

Mysticism

Life is the Great Initiation – a crossing of the threshold from non-existence to self-realization. Its rites consist of the vicissitudes of life, each with its symbolic value. Ultimate attainment is the integrating of the total experience into an order of personal understanding and meaning. - Validivar

The world is the offspring of the Eternal’s thought; thus the Eternal is the Real in all things. Behold it thus with mind full of peace. Being, free of form, see everywhere. Knowers of the Eternal understand that whatever is other than this, is but the sport and workmanship of intellect. - Sankaracharya

There is only the appearance of individuality. The appearance is a result of false interpretation. Interpretation is a direct result of a mental state. The mental state is an illusion – there is only beingness which is wholly undivided and in which all appearance arises spontaneously. Therefore individuality is merely a false motion in time. - Unknown

God

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. - Thomas Jefferson

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. - Gene Roddenberry

It’s a horrible idea that God, this paragon of wisdom and knowledge, power, couldn’t think of a better way to forgive us our sins than to come down to Earth in his alter ego as his son and have himself hideously tortured and executed so that he could forgive himself. - Richard Dawkins

The existence of the world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection, creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell. - Armand Salacrou

If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. - James Baldwin

Universe

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator? - Stephen Hawking

The basic stuff of the universe, at its core, is looking like a kind of pure energy that is malleable to human intention and expectation in a way that defies our old mechanistic model of the universe – as though our expectation itself causes our energy to flow out into the world and affect other energy systems. - James Redfield

The only thing that made me, or any of us, special was that no one in the whole of history would ever see the universe exactly the same way any other of us saw it. - Grant Morrison

How to Explain Your Spirituality to Others

An article on how to explain your spirituality to others by Kalee Brown

Click Here to read the article.

Buddhist Quotes

Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed. - Unknown

Improvement or degeneration, happiness or misery, are all the results of our deeds. We ourselves are moulders of our fate. No one else is to be blamed for our misery, or praised for our happiness. - Unknown

Neither in the sky nor in mid-ocean, nor in entering a mountain cave, is found the place, where abiding one may escape the consequences of an evil deed. - Unknown

The noble swerve not from the right path let happen what may, and crave no longer after worldly joys. The wise remain calm and constant in mind alike in joy and sorrow. - Unknown

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly. - Unknown

Prayers

Nature is impartial; it cannot be flattered by prayers. It does not grant any special favours on request. - Venerable K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera

Prayer is the sign of your weakness. Rely on your inner strength. You will be the winner. - Amit Ray

Prayer is the stimulant of the feeble. - Abraham Miller

Karma

Bad karma is the spiritual debt one has accumulated for one's mistakes from all previous lives and this life. It includes killing, harming, taking advantage, cheating, stealing, and more. On Mother Earth, when you buy a house, you take out a mortgage from a bank. This mortgage is your debt to the bank. You pay every month for fifteen, twenty, or thirty years to clear your financial debt. In the spiritual realm, if you have bad karma, you may have to pay for many lifetimes to clear your spiritual debt. - Zhi Gang Sha

Debts that must be paid ... that sums up the concept of karma. But I would add that karma is not a burden that you have to carry. It is also an opportunity to learn, a chance to practice love and forgiveness, a chance to learn lessons that are valuable to us. Karma offers us the chance to wipe our dirty slate clean, to erase the wrong doings of the past. - J. P. Vaswani

Spirituality

Spiritual awakening is the most essential thing in man's life, and it is the sole purpose of being. Is not civilization, in all its tragic forms, a supreme motive for spiritual awakening? - Kahlil Gibran

All that affliction of the darkest kind ever can work to the true soul is to awaken it up to spiritual things, to open the clear eye, to make the spiritual reality the more real. If you rightly comprehend it, it only strikes that which is round about you, it only removes that which is outward and physical, but it leaves you all the same a greater and a better man for your trial. - E.H. Chapin

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. - William Henry Channing

Religion

I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men. - Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him. - Herman Melville

Chi / Energy

Did you Know …

… that your heart emits electromagnetic fields that change according to your emotions?
… the human heart’s magnetic field can be measured up to several feet away from the body?
… that positive emotions create physiological benefits in your body?
… that you can boost your immune system by conjuring positive emotions?
… that negative emotions can create a nervous system chaos, but positive emotions do the opposite? … that the heart has a system of neurons that have both short and long-term memory, and their signals sent to the brain can affect our emotional experiences?
… in fetal development the heart forms and starts beating before the brain is developed?
… a mother’s brainwaves can synchronize to her baby’s heartbeats?
… the heart sends more information to the brain than vice versa?
… that positive emotions help the brain in creativity and innovative problem solving?
… positive emotions can increase the brain’s ability to make good decisions?

These facts were brought to you by the Institute of HeartMath Research Center where on-going research is being conducted to help explain the connection and the role of the heart in our emotion-based experiences.

Truth

            A king asked a sage to explain the Truth. In response the sage asked the king how he would convey the taste of a mango to someone who had never eaten anything sweet.
            No matter how hard the king tried, he could not adequately describe the flavour of the fruit, and, in frustration, he demanded of the sage, "Tell me then, how would you describe it?"
            The sage picked up a mango and handed it to the king saying "This is very sweet. Try eating it!"

The Teachings of The Buddha

            Monks, even if a monk should take hold of the edge of my outer garment and should walk close behind me, step by step, yet if he should be covetous, strongly attracted by pleasures of the senses, malevolent in thought, of corrupt mind, an purposed, templative, scatter-brained, his sense-faculties uncontrolled, then he is far from me and I am far from him.
            Monks, if a monk should be staying even a hundred miles away, yet if he is not covetous, not strongly attracted by the pleasures of the sense, not malevolent in thought, not of corrupt mind and purpose, his recollection firmly set, attentive, contemplative, his thought be one-pointed, restrained in his sense-faculties, then he is near me and I am near him. - The Buddha

Nevertheless, my friend, I do not say that without reaching the world's end, an end of suffering cannot be made. For, my friend, in this fathom – long body with its sense impressions and its thoughts and ideas, I do declare to you, are the world and the origin of the world and the cessation of the world and likewise the way that leads to its cessation. - The Buddha

Meditation

Scientist discovers what meditation does to you gut and brain.

Click on the link to read the article.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/06/28/scientists-demonstrate-what-meditation-does-to-your-gut-your-brain/

Spiritual

If you practice spiritual discipline for some time in a solitary place, you will find that your mind has become strong, and then you can live in any place or society without being in the least affected by it. When the plant is tender, it should be hedged around. But when it has grown big, not even cows and goats can injure it. Spiritual practices in a solitary place are essential. - Sarada Devi

The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning one’s self and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. - Aldous Huxley

One of the most spiritual things you can do is embrace your humanity. Connect with those around you today. Say, “I love you”, “I’m sorry”, “I appreciate you”, “I’m proud of you”… whatever you’re feeling. Send random texts, write a cute note, embrace your truth and share it… cause a smile today for someone else… and give plenty of hugs. - Steve Maraboli

God

It is not necessary to believe in God to be a good person. In a way, the traditional notion of God is outdated. One can be spiritual but not religious. It is not necessary to go to church and give money – for many, nature can be a church. Some of the best people in history did not believe in God, while some of the worst deeds were done in His name. - Pope Francis

God – if he really exist – is good, alive, self-conscious, and governs all things according to his benevolent and holy providence; but the world shows no indications of such a benevolent and holy Providence. This earth appears to be a hell, or at best a planet condemned – a sort of purgatory: it is filled with violence, tyranny and injustice, and yet God, if he exist, is absolute sovereign, and has willed that things should be as they are! – Therefore there is no God. - William Batchelder Greene