3 Keys to Triggering a Radically Positive Shift in Consciousness

There’s quite a bit of talk these days about raising consciousness, and despite a growing mainstream awareness it still remains a somewhat vague, mysterious and elusive topic.

What exactly does raising consciousness mean? What does it entail? How can you measure your progress?

All excellent questions that spiritual and esoteric traditions from around the world have been attempting to answer for millennia and the very ones I’ve been asking myself and intensely contemplating for over a decade. I’d like to think I’ve discovered meaningful answers, distilled from a synthesis of the shared wisdom across all the different paths I’ve studied: from Shamanism to Sufism, Hindu/Tantric philosophy to Daoism, Jungian Psychology to Non-Dualism, Kabbalah to Quantum Physics and everything in between. I’ve combined what I’ve learned from these traditions with personal insights and distinctions I haven’t specifically seen mentioned anywhere else to form a very powerful set of ideas, insights and guiding principles outlined below that have the ability to dramatically shift consciousness in a remarkably short period of time.

As far as I’m concerned, expanding your consciousness is loosely about the following four things:

1. Understanding the true nature of reality.

2. Experiencing the full range of human ability and potential.

3. Developing your spiritual awareness.

4. Having a positive impact with your life by being of service in some way shape or form to someone or something other than yourself.

While I’m not going to go into depth explaining what each of those mean in totality, I am going to offer three extraordinarily powerful ways you can experience a massive positive shift in your consciousness. One that will take your life from wherever you currently find yourself to an extraordinary level of fulfillment, happiness, success, freedom, peace, flow, and growth.

I make no reservations about stating that the act of truly and authentically raising your consciousness, which most definitely encompasses and includes living your purpose, is the most important thing you can do with your time on this planet and will result in your life becoming better than you could have ever imagined in your wildest dreams. In fact, I believe it is, as the famed mythologist Joseph Campbell stated, your “Hero’s Journey”—your actual, underlying purpose in this life—at whatever pace you choose, to expand your consciousness as described in the framework above.

And in order to accomplish that goal in the shortest time possible, if that is your desire and intention, I recommend focusing your time and energy on the following three key areas that will radically expand your consciousness.

1. Move Through the Six Phases of Consciousness

One of the most important things to understand is that within the general framework of raising your consciousness, there are sublevels and distinctions of conscious/spiritual awareness you must move through. These are states of mind and perception, meaning that they primarily have to do with how you see, interpret, and experience life and the world around you. I lay them out here as they have been developed and coined by spiritual teacher Mary O’Malley:

1. Life happens to you.

2. Life happens by you.

3. Life happens in you.

4. Life happens for you.

5. Life happens through you.

6. Life is you.

In a nutshell, this describes the process of moving from unconsciousness to consciousness, from the idea that life is happening to you, through the idea that you are creating your life and ultimately into the understanding that there is a greater wisdom in life than we could possibly comprehend, which is not so subtly being alluded to by breakthroughs in quantum physics research in recent years.

Rather than offering a rehashed description of the six phases here, I would recommend that when you finish this article, you take a minute to read Mary’s brilliant, in-depth explanation that can be found here.

Suffice it to say that moving through these six phases is a non-negotiable step up the ladder of consciousness and is an excellent tool for gauging how far you have come. And when combined with the following two keys, radical shifts may be experienced in remarkably short periods of time.

5 World Views that Need to Be Scrapped for us to Evolve

The idea of a world view has two inherent meanings. First it is a personal view of how the world is or should be, and secondly it is a view that is shared or consented to by others not just ourselves. So a world view is both how we personally see the world but at the same time it is something that is based on consensual reality – there is a social dimension to it. In fact, most of what we call world views are not created by any one person but rather a person chooses to adopt a world view that was already supported by others in society. Perhaps this is because he or she feels emotionally inclined to do so or since it fits comfortably with his/her own existing set of beliefs. Allegiance and support for one political party or ideology is a clear example of this since the individual chooses a political view that fits in with his own ‘moral’ beliefs and values.

Adopting a world view has nothing intrinsically wrong in itself. In fact there are world views that are healthy and arise out of authentic, loving and conscious effort to improve humanity. World views can be healthy especially when they are not rooted in irrational choice and when they are open to be revised and changed, hence accepting the fact that nothing is absolute and some of our knowledge is provisional at best – therefore stands to be corrected. The last point is in fact one of the major tenets that makes Science, well, Science.

There are other ‘self-destructive’ world views on the other hand which have been widely accepted in our consensual reality and have been rooted in our psyche for a long, long time. These world views are so deeply ingrained in our framework of reality that they are unconscious and even if we can still call them world views, they are more implicit rather than explicit. This makes them even harder to detect, even more so because they are sometimes heavily guarded by our collective ego. In fact, these are world views that arise out of ego-based fear, judgment and its obsession to cling on to or identify with something. Luckily, global consciousness is moving towards greater awareness and hence away from such views.

At the same time it is good to get a quick reminder of what these world views are and why it is high time to leave behind:

1. ‘Us and Them’

More than a world view, this is a general attitude that gives rise to other misguided world views, yet I will call it a general world view here. It is related to the idea of separation – one of the biggest sources of suffering in Man. The separation of our social tribe, our people, our nation, our political group, our ideology, our gene pool, our culture – from yours. The ‘us and them’ world view is not only divisive but self-destructive since it always seeks to cut off something, whether individuals or groups, from something else.

This ‘cutting off’ is a powerful tool of the ego to keep us from remembering a liberating truth – that we are all connected and plugged in the same cosmic wheel of life. We are all One as the spiritual adage goes and the deeper we sink into this truth, the more we realise that this is the basis of creative and constructive change as we move forward in the global evolution of consciousness. Yet the ego doesn’t want this, doesn’t it? It will fight tooth and nail to prevent it and hence has found ways of implanting the misperception of separateness which in turn fuels irrational beliefs and even political agendas. I find it crazy, in fact, how so many of us don’t see past the veneer of certain ideologies and how we try to ‘rationally’ justify an ideology that is ultimately rooted in a misperception and irrational belief.

The ‘Us and them’ world view is such a creeping malaise in us humans that it also extend beyond social, cultural and political thinking. It is also the thing that has been detaching us from our natural world. Humanity passed through a point where it stopped feeling an integral part of the earth and the cosmos and started seeing the natural world as a resource pool and playground to satisfy our growing greed. So we also became separate from nature. Both Science and religion are at fault with this but would not like to go in the detail here.

There is however hope – a shining hope I would add. There is now more and more people who are stepping out of this illusion and spreading the awareness that there is no ‘us and them’ but rather only ‘Us’ (which coincidentally might be the acronym for ‘Universal Solidarity!)

Technocracy and the Scientific Matrix

“The creative power of the individual is downplayed or even viewed as ‘injuring the group.’ This is no accident. The whole basis of a controlled society depends on people seeing themselves as powerless and surrendering to ‘the needs of the collective.’ This amounts to a political religion—but these days, it’s ridiculously dressed up as Science, as if collectivism were a series of formulas derived from physics and biology.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

As my readers know, I write a great about imagination, the individual, and independent thought.

Some might think these “issues” are peripheral to the elite takeover of the planet, but in fact they are central.

Let’s start here. As author Patrick Wood makes clear, technocracy is really all about establishing a scientific dictatorship. As he also points out, the dictatorship is based on false science.

—For example, the sales-pitch called manmade global warming, which is a jumble of unproven data-mush used to create, in the long run, a worldwide system of energy allotment. Patrick Woods also sees through to the fact that ultimately, every individual would be monitored for energy consumption, and strict limits would be set, in order to “save the planet” from frying. The ever-expanding Surveillance State, including the so-called smart grid, exists in order to make this energy-monitoring possible.

Technocracy is actually a mirage of science. And it begins with the false notion that the brain, an organic piece of machinery, is the mind and the only source of consciousness. As I’ve demonstrated, this “scientific” assertion is absurd. (See also this.) But it suits the goal of exercising complete control over the population:

“We must change the functions of the brain, make it ‘more peaceful’, make it into an adjunct of a super-computer which can automatically provide truthful answers to all important questions.”

Independent thought (and thus independent character) and imagination aren’t emanations from the brain. They aren’t the accidental output of sub-atomic particles whirling in space.

New time, new life: Imagination transcends the status quo

“Just as there are some words that tend to trigger passivity and helpless acceptance, there are words that can trigger opposite effects. One such word is ‘create’, when it is viewed as something an individual does to transform his present and future radically and with great energy. He vaults the quiet fences and boundaries. He embarks on a great adventure. He invents a reality that was never there before. He puts flesh on a dream that stands outside The Group.” (The Magician Awakes, Jon Rappoport)

There are some people who hear the word CREATE and wake up, as if a new flashing music has begun.

This lone word makes them see something majestic and untamed and astonishing.

They feel the sound of a Niagara approaching.

They suddenly know why they are alive.

It happened to me one day in 1949 when I was 11 years old. I was boarding a bus in upstate New York for a full day’s ride back down into New York City. I was sitting by the window as the bus pulled out of a parking lot, and I opened the first page of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, a perfect children’s book.

The word CREATE wasn’t on that first page, but I felt it. It sounded like a great bell in my ear, and I knew I was in a different world.

I’ve been writing and speaking about the creative life for some time. This life is a far cry from the pallid oatmeal of “peace through avoidance.”

The creative life is not about slogans and systems and intellectual finger food. It is about EXPERIENCE.

It’s about diving in. It’s about a kind of transformation that shreds programming and gets down to the energy of the Fire.

Most people don’t want to travel to that grand arena because they have been trained like pets by some sector of this society to be good little girls and boys.

The creative life isn’t about little changes done in little penguin steps. It’s about putting your arms and your mind around Deep, Big, and Wide Desire. It’s about making that Desire come to life.

99% of the world has been trained like rats to adore systems. Give them a system and they’re ready to cuddle up and take it all in. If they have questions, or if they want to argue, it’s about how to tweak the system to make it a little better. And with every move they make, they put another blanket over the Fire Within.

Maybe you once saw something truly free that didn’t care about consequences, and it blew you away and turned on your soul’s electricity for an hour.

Maybe you’re sick and tired of bowing and scraping before a pedestal of nonsense.

CREATE is a word that should be oceanic. It should shake and blow apart the pillars of the smug boredom of the soul.

CREATE is about what the individual does when he is on fire and doesn’t care about concealing it. It’s about what the individual invents when he has thrown off the false front that is slowly strangling him.

A new teaching: Imagination

I call it new because it still has not been given its proper due. Imagination is beyond “subject matter” or “content” or “knowledge” or “systems” or “philosophy” or “metaphysics.”

Imagination is not something you pursue, like a lost mine or a species of plant never seen before. Imagination is not an object.

It can solve problems. It can dispense with a problem altogether. But imagination is not a solution. It isn’t a method.

Imagination is already there in every person, as a potential. To put it in a slightly different way, imagination comes into being the moment you want it. Even more accurately, perhaps, imagination is imagining. It’s an action. When you want to take that action, you can.

What imagination invents is, of course, different from person to person. Why? Because there is no pre-set pattern. There is no “final answer” at which imagination arrives.

A painter can say, “This painting is the embodiment of everything I’ve been reaching for,” but if he think that means imagination has served its function and can then fold up and dissolve, he is mistaken.

Where does imagining happen? That’s an interesting question. Many years ago, an old acquaintance of mine told me the following amusing story: A painter of horses felt she had come to the end of the line because she wanted to paint large horses on large canvases, but she was convinced she couldn’t picture the large horses because…imagining was taking place in her brain, and her brain was small.

When she finally realized this was a major misconception, she executed a course correction and…she was painting big horses on big canvases.

Imagining doesn’t take place in the brain. As untold numbers of artists down through history have understood, imagining takes place in “a space.” That space is invented. That space is not the same space you see when you look through your window or walk down the street or stand on a roof top. You invent other spaces. You populate them with thoughts, images, sensations.

Beyond one space-time continuum: logic and imagination

Logic applies to the physical universe.

It applies to statements made about that universe. It applies to factual language.

Many wonderful things can be done with logic. Don’t leave home without it. Don’t analyze information without it. Don’t endure an education without it.

But art and imagination are of another universe(s). They can deploy logic, but they can also invent in any direction without limit, and they can embrace contradiction. They can build worlds in which space and time and energy are quite different.

Magic is nothing more and nothing less than imagination superseding this universe. Magic occurs when imagination takes this reality for a ride.

Which brings us to what I call the Is People. The Is People are dedicated with a fervor to insisting that this Continuum and this consensus reality are inviolable, are the end-all and be-all.

They strive to fit themselves into Is, and this eventually has some interesting negative consequences. They come to resemble solid matter. They take on the character of matter.

For them, imagination is at least a misdemeanor, if not a felony. It’s a blow to the Is of Is. They tend to view imagination as a form of mental disorder.

Technocrats like to gibber about imagination as if it’s nothing more than just another closed system that hasn’t been mapped yet. But they’re sure it will be, and when that happens, people will apparently give up creating and opt for living in a way that more closely resembles machines.

There are many people who secretly wish they were machines that functioned automatically and without flaws. It’s their wet dream.

Magic eventually comes to the conclusion that imagination creates reality. Any reality. And therefore, one universe, indivisible, is an illusion, a way of trapping Self.

What began as the physical universe, a brilliant work of art, ends up as a psychic straitjacket, a mental ward in which the inmates strive for normalcy. Those who fail at even this are labeled and shunted into a special section of the ward.

But the result of imagination, if pursued and deployed long enough and intensely enough, is:

Consensus reality begins to organize itself around you, rather than you organizing yourself around it.

There are various names and labels used to describe this state of affairs, but none of them catches the sensation of it.

Magic is one of those labels.

What I’m describing here isn’t some snap-of-the-fingers trick of manifestation; it’s a life lived.

The old alchemists were working in this area. They were striving for the transformation of consciousness. In true alchemy, one’s past, one’s experience, one’s conflicts all become fuel for the fire of creating new realities. Taken along certain lines, this is called art.

One universe, one logic, one Continuum, one role in that Continuum, one all-embracing commitment to that role, one avenue of perception, one Is…this is the delusion.

And eventually, the delusion gives birth to a dedication to what “everyone else” thinks and supposes and assumes and accepts. This is slavery.

Freeing one’s self, living through and by imagination, is not a mass movement. It’s a choice taken by one person. It’s a new and unique road for each person.

Societies and civilizations are organized around some concept of the common good. The concept always deteriorates, and this is because it is employed to lower the ceiling on individual power rather than raise it.

“Be less than you are, then we can all come together in a common cause.”

It’s essentially a doctrine of sacrifice—everyone sacrifices to everyone else, and the result is a coagulated mass of denial of Self.

It is a theme promoted under a number of guises by men who have one thing in mind: control.

It’s a dictatorship of the soul. It has always existed.

Breaking out of it involves reasserting the power of imagination to invent new and novel realities.

Under a variety of names, this is art.

Promoting the image of the artist as a suffering victim is simply one more way to impose the doctrine of sacrifice.

In 1961, when I began writing and painting in earnest, I had a conversation with the extraordinary healer, Richard Jenkins, whom I write about in my book, The Secret Behind Secret Societies(included in Exit From The Matrix). This is my note from that time about what Richard told me:

“Paint what you want to, no matter what anyone else says. You may not always know what you want to create, but that’s good. Keep working, keep painting. You’ll find your way. You’ll invent something new, something unique, if you don’t give in. You’ll see everything in a new light. Reality is a bad joke. It’s nothing more than what everyone assents to, because they’re afraid. They’re afraid of what people will say. They’re afraid they have far more power than they want to discover. They’re afraid that power will lead them away from common and ordinary beliefs. They’re afraid they’ll become a target for the masses who have surrendered their own lives and don’t want to be reminded of it. They afraid they’ll find out something tremendous about themselves…”

Nothing I’ve experienced in the 50 years since then has diminished what Richard said to me.

These fears are all illusions that disintegrate when a person shoves in his chips on imagination and makes that bet and lives it.

Here are several notes from the years 1999-2010, while I was preparing my collection, The Matrix Revealed. They take up the subject of reality-construction, mind control, mind freedom, and creative power.

“You have to understand that there are dimensions. In the dimension we call the world, a person needs logic. He needs it badly. He needs to be able to analyze and take apart things and put them back together again. He needs to identify flaws in reasoning and discover deceptions. He needs to recognize formal arguments and trace them all the way through from assumptions to conclusions. But in the dimension where creative power operates, where things happen that most certainly impact this world, all bets are off. He needs to understand and experience and launch a kind of vast freedom for his own imagination that takes him entirely out of the realm of being a normal person, a provincial “realist,” a mechanically thinking human. He has to go light-years past that. He has to stop pretending he is some kind of scientist. In other words, he has to stop burying his own creative power. Two dimensions, two capabilities.”

“Mind control, brainwashing, programming, conditioning all refer to the imposition of systems on the human creative impulse. When you have a whole civilization that, more and more, consists of systems, you have an effort to replace the individual with the group, with the machine.”

“At the highest level, elites are in the business of inventing reality for everyone else. This is more than lying. It’s the wholesale invention of a continuum. Past, present, and future.”

“Imagination is the opposite of mind control. It is creating beyond the boundaries of accepted reality. It is more than perception. Imagination expands perception.”

“Elites are perverse artists who invent reality for everyone else. Part of the plan is convincing everyone else that they can’t invent their own far-reaching reality.”

“Most people define freedom as liberation from certain externally imposed restrictions. But freedom goes much farther than that. It goes beyond how individuals ordinarily define their own existence, their own concerns, their own habits. A person’s own definitions are self-imposed limits. These limits = everything a person does and thinks that excludes imagination.”

by Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Source: No More Fake News

Out with the old worldview, in with the new

Embracing a new world view through a collective shift in consciousness

Mankind is currently experiencing an important shift in the evolution of consciousness, but up against so many global issues we need to embrace a new way of thinking fast, says Giles Hutchins

We are living through a supreme moment of our evolution of consciousness. The old worldview has had its day. This was a worldview of organisations, societies and individuals perceived as competitive self-maximising units embroiled in an evolutionary process of selfish ascendency where we either dominate or become dominated. Our emerging worldview perceives a deeper inter-relatedness of our selves immersed within a sentient sea of sacredness where mind and matter are entwined.

Quantum scientists now concur with what mystics, shamans, philosophers and prophets have known for millennia: the ground of all being is an infinite, intangible spirit infusing everything, inherent throughout nature and cosmos. This Sophia (or primordial wisdom) is within and all around us. As author and Jungian analyst Anne Baring notes: “We need to create a sanctuary within ourselves to listen to its guidance”.

This ‘new story’ of our sacred humanity immersed within a sacred world is emerging within and all around us. As we consciously open up to the metaphysical field of life, we begin to remember our common ground. It is this common ground we now urgently need to turn our attention to if we are to have any hope of successfully allowing new springs of civilisation to flow.

Time is no longer on our side; we are up against it, and our problems run deep and wide. Whether it is spiralling climate catastrophe, deepening biodiversity destruction, fanatical religious fundamentalism or disenchanted and disenfranchised youth, the root cause to our plethora of problems is a self-reflexive sense of separateness which creates psychic atrophy, symptoms of which are disease, anxiety, egotism, individualism and materialism.

At present, we are engaged in a kind of deluding neurosis with devastating ramifications for human society and the wider fabric of life on Earth. And, our ingrained approaches to education, economics and organisational management are, in the main, infected by this neurosis and so exacerbate the acculturation of our insanity – what Albert Hoffman called a “Western entelechy neurosis” and what Albert Einstein called “an optical delusion of consciousness”. No longer can we afford to apply this same corrupting logic to our solutions. We must think and relate in radically different ways. In short, we must shift our consciousness individually and collectively. The good news is, this shift in consciousness is in line with our true nature and is a simple – yet not necessarily easy – case of us remembering our humanity.

Through our intention, we can open up beyond the narrowing confines and restricting razor-gaze of our ego-awareness into a richer contextual world where we find our true inter-relational nature immersed within the deeper wisdom of nature. We can learn to retrain ourselves to see beyond the illusion of separation through our own intention and quality of attention. Tried-and-tested approaches such as phenomenology, ecological psychology, Theory U, heart awareness, somatic experiencing, contemplative practices, applied improvisation, expressive artful practices, and more, all aid a deeper consciousness within and all around us.

Our shift in consciousness can be seen as a joyous art of love-making, fertilising our responsive self-awareness within the deeper receptivity of nature – a yin yang communion – allowing for a coherence of inner and outer worlds even if only for the briefest of moments to begin with.

The good news is, this ‘new consciousness’ has been traversed by many minds already. While today’s challenges and opportunities require us to apply this consciousness in novel and creative ways, there is much we can learn from ancient wisdom traditions and great minds before us.

Aristotle for instance – a mind often referred to as foundational to Western civilisation, science and philosophy – understood nature as an active and creative outpouring of spirit infusing all things. He knew that the truly ethical life is not found through obedience to exteriorised social commandments, organisational dictum or cultural charters but is found through a conscious attuning – a gnosis – of one’s self within nature’s wisdom. Here, the ethical life is lived by being in touch with one’s true nature whereupon we attune with the divine ground of being within and all around us.

A new coalescence of human nature and sacred nature is happening in our midst, a metamorphosis of consciousness no less. And so we begin to walk the path of our destiny; through small conscious steps, inter-relations, thoughts, words and deeds we remember our humanity; nothing more nothing less.

by Giles Hutchins

Source: Positive News

Bounce Back and Thrive: The Secret to Turning Adversity into Opportunity

“Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.” ~William Shakespeare                                                                        

It’s hard for me to write about this. I suppose it stems from being a mutt of Italian and Irish ancestry, two cultures famous for intense pride and keeping personal things “in the family.”

I wonder if my parents ever loved each other.

By the time I was eight years old, it was clear they did not get along. I never witnessed them getting along, or even being affectionate toward one another. But I always felt loved.

My parents told my younger brother and me that they loved us every day, most days multiple times. We never struggled for anything.

My father had sold his garage door business years earlier, but that money seemed to be drying up. We lived in a 3,000 square foot house that my father had built six years prior. Six years later, it was in foreclosure.

I’m sure the pressure was tough on them. My mother was not herself either. She was acting erratically. Inconsistent.

One minute she was playful and full of life, the other she was angry and depressed. We soon found out that she was battling bipolar disorder, and she was forced to spend time in the hospital for evaluation and recovery.

An Overlooked Key to Success: Practical Humility

Every once in a while, some prominent figure in the public eye is praised for being humble, usually at their funeral. Humility isn't a quality our society often applies to success, since it doesn't sit well with other qualities--drive, ambition, ruthlessness, competitive fierceness--that are equated with success all the time. To change this, we need to consider humility not as a religious virtue--the models for it have traditionally been selfless spiritual guides like Jesus and the Buddha--but as a practical way of life.

Seen in that light, humility has one great advantage--it allows you to set your ego aside. At every level of achievement, the ego likes to claim credit while overlooking that the same ego blinds us, leading to bad decisions, poor relationships with others, and a false sense of invincibility. It's often said that there's no "I" in teamwork, but there's no "I" in "clear and open-eyed," which is what a truly successful person needs to be.

 I'd suggest the following steps as a start in practical humility:

1. Keep your feedback loop large. On any project, leaders and followers co-create each other. There is constant input and output. If you get input only from your closest circle, you won't be in touch with the whole picture.

2. Stay flexible. It's not hard to detect when someone wants to hear only praise and support for their own ideas. Be flexible enough to allow your core beliefs to be challenged. Such beliefs make the ego think it's always right, a dangerous delusion.

3. Welcome criticism and know your opposition. Leaders who rise high often feel insecure about their position. They are constant targets of jealousy and criticism. Since this is inevitable, start early on to embrace other points of view, accommodating them when you can and at the very least listening to your critics and taking them seriously. There's no better way to disarm them.

4. Be good at giving sincere feedback and be alert to the repercussions. Everyone takes notice of how praise and blame are handed out. No one is indifferent. Make sure your feedback doesn't demean anyone, and if you are in doubt about hurt feelings, see the person privately. "Are we okay?" isn't enough. Look and listen to their personal reactions.

5. Don't claim a monopoly on the truth. Keep in mind that you do not see the whole picture. This will instill a desire to hear as many perspectives as possible.

6. In any meeting, never lose sight of one central question, "What do these people need?" Never leave the room feeling confused about this. Behind every discussion, somebody needs something. Your ego needs are just part of the mix.

7. Know the difference between what somebody needs and what they want. We all want more of anything that is available; that's how the ego is designed. But most of the time, what we actually need isn't clear. Ego and emotions stand in the way. If you can state your real need in any situation, undistracted by what your ego wants, you will qualify as extremely clear-sighted.

It's undeniable that the ego, with its focus on I, me, and mine, plays an essential role. The hidden trap as far as the ego goes is that we seem to need one all the time, the stronger the better. Leaders at the top are expected to be decisive, certain, and self-directed in the face of pressures from all directions. Yet even in this real-world scenario there should be a value on setting ego aside temporarily, not simply to make a show of being humble but to get things to work better.

Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 80 books with twenty-two New York Times bestsellers. He serves as the founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing. His latest book is The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure.

by Deepak Chopra

Source: Linkedin Pulse

Inside the Heart and Mind of the Extraordinary Visionary Genius Nikola Tesla

This Rare Nikola Tesla Interview Reveals his Extraordinary Personality

Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest electrical inventors who ever lived. Tesla was also a visionary thinker, and in his papers and interviews he anticipated the development of radio and television broadcasting, robotics, computers, faxes, and even the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Tesla was so far ahead of his time that many of his ideas are only appearing today. His legacy can been seen in everything from microwave ovens to MX missiles. But more than this, Tesla’s life inspires us to believe that anything we can imagine can be accomplished – especially with electricity.

Recently a very rare interview Tesla gave for magazine “Immortality” in his laboratory in Colorado Springs has surfaced on the internet. It makes for a fascinating read and will give you an incredible opportunity to gain a unique insight into Tesla’s incredible personality.

Here is the interview in it’s entirety:

JOURNALIST: Mr. Tesla, you have gained the glory of the man who got involved in the cosmic processes. Who are you, Mr. Tesla?

TESLA: It is a right question, Mr. Smith, and I will try to give you the right answer to it.

JOURNALIST: Some say you’re from the country of Croatia, from the area called Lika, where together with the people are growing trees, rocks and starry sky. They say that your home village is named after the mountain flowers, and that the house, where you were born, is next to the forest and the church.

TESLA: Really, all it true. I’m proud of my Serbian origin and my Croatian homeland.

JOURNALIST: Futurists say that the Twenty-and Twenty First Century was born in head of Nikola Tesla. They celebrate conversely magnetic field and sing hymns to Inductions engine. Their creator was called the hunter who caught the light in his net from the depths of the earth, and the warrior who captured fire from heaven. Father of alternating current will make the Physics and Chemistry dominate half the world. Industry will proclaim him as their supreme saint, a banker for the largest benefactors. In the laboratory of Nikola Tesla for the first time is broken atom. There is created a weapon that causes the earthquake vibrations. There are discovered black cosmic rays. Five races will pray to him in the Temple of the future, because they had taught a great secret that Empedocles elements can be watered with the life forces from the ethers.

TESLA: Yes, these are some of my most important discoveries. I’m a defeated man. I have not accomplished the greatest thing I could.

The Evolution of Perception

In any attempt to save the world we are in one sense an immense help in changing the world, and in another sense, paradoxically, we are a hindrance and destructive burden upon the world. The world which most people seek is invariably based upon their own sense of pleasure with the exclusion of pain. The socially accepted freedom that we value and associate with liberation, the one that drives most us to change the world, is a separatist effort to impose our own individual agenda upon others and the world. German psychologist Erich Fromm would suggest that this is “freedom from” or “freedom to”, but not real freedom because it is based on the differing points of view that each and every one of us believes to be physical and psychological comfortability.

This social and cultural motif that humanity perpetuates is only one dimensional for the sheer fact that we have excluded the reality of pain from our existence. We are suffering from an illness within the psychological and spiritual sphere as a result. An individual will do anything no matter how absurd to avoid their latent psychological and spiritual pain. We dissect and edit out of our life what is not in accord with our hypnotic conditioning, as we continue to try and bypass the inevitables in our life. Pain is experienced when we begin to break our psychological limitations. The very nature of our perception is contaminated as a result of spiritually bypassing our psychological pain, to the point that the root of our awareness is continually veiled from the excessive stimulation of pleasure within the physical and mental planes of consciousness.

The arcane wisdom of the sages expounds to humanity that consciousness is composed of three planes of growth which is an evolutionary process our perception undergoes through sincere self-work. The wisdom traditions, the esoteric mystery schools of antiquity, the perennial philosophers both ancient and contemporary, and the metaphysicians all refer to these three planes as the physical, mental and spiritual. Majority of humanity only perceive the temporal plane of the physical world, and are somehow under the delusion that this sphere is a permanent realm without ever undergoing vibratory and rhythmic transformations of change from the spiritual sphere. In John Holman’s The Return of the Perennial Philosophy he writes about this evolutionary process of perception through the three planes in relation to Christian Theosophy,

There are actually three births. The first is the natural or ‘outward’ birth, the second is the birth of the soul in the human consciousness, and the third is the birth of the spirit or the highest divinity in the soul. In Christian Theosophy man – every man – is body, soul, and spirit, and the three births relate to each of these. At the end of the road, man sees through his highest spiritual eye. This ‘eye in the heart’ (a phrase also popular with Frithjof Schuon) was/is the eye ‘with which God sees himself through us’, says Versluis. The Fall of Man (or Adam) is a moving away from this higher (Aevertinal) consciousness to a lower (Character or earthly man) consciousness, so that instead of seeing transcendent reality, we see only the temporophysical world.

The sincere spiritual seeker and esoteric student travel through these three planes of growth, where one’s perception begins to evolve from the physical and mental planes of material and intellectual orientated consciousness, onto the higher plane of spiritual consciousness. If one is sincere in their own introspected self-work, our perception of reality will embark upon a journey from matter to spirit where consciousness is perceived in all forms of life. British author and philosopher Philip Sherrard explains this journey from matter to spirit,

I see the universe as a hierarchy of levels descending from the formless spiritual level down to the most dense material form.

The Art of Breaking Chains and Taking Names

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.” –H.L. Mencken

Here’s the thing: you are a force to be reckoned with. The question is, what kind of force are you? Are you a weak force or a strong force? Are you indifferent or cool with being different? Are you ordinary or extraordinary? Are you healthy or unhealthy? Are you a victim or a warrior? Are you codependent or independent? Are you a pawn or have you learned how to turn the tables on power? Are you a lamb afraid of wolves or are you a lion keeping wolves in check? Are you overly independent or have you made Ego your bitch and become interdependent? Are you allowing the world to kick your ass or have you flipped the script? Are you a slave or the one who breaks chains?

First off, it’s high time that you realized everything is connected and everything changes. That means you. That means you are connected to everything else. That means you will change. You are a force of nature first, a person second. The force of nature part is the interconnected-everything-changes part. The person part is how you react to this absolute fact. Indeed, there is more to being human than choice, there’s vicissitude. All your anxiety and stress, all your depression and despair, all your neurosis and psychosis, and all your fretfulness and dissociation comes from your having suppressed this absolute fact: everything is connected, and everything changes. You can either align yourself with it or be at odds against it. The choice is yours.

This article is about aggressively getting back into alignment with the cosmos. It’s about soul reorientation, existential realignment, and spiritual readjustment. It’s about untangling ourselves from the briar patch of human ignorance. It’s about getting back to a place, a sacred space, where we can resonate with being an interdependent force once again. A force that must change, and keep changing, lest it devolve into being stuck, stagnant, and corrupt. And it starts with breaking chains.

Running GMO Crops Out of your Town: A How To Guide

The last year has seen more happen in conscious defiance of genetically modified food and its associated chemicals than perhaps the last 20 combined. After a slow start, humanity is awakened, activated and taking no prisoners. There are now blueprints in place from individuals, communities and states to easily follow and replicate on the way to running GMOs and their chemicals out of American communities. Thanks to the initial trailblazers doing the leg work and absorbing the full force of attacks from challenging monopolistic agrochemical giants, the fruits of their labor are ours to cherish and utilize.

Ron Findley: The Power of Individual Action

Findley is looked upon as an icon in the gardening, permaculture and activist community for his defiance and TED Talk with over 2 million views sharing his experience and wisdom. After Finely illegally planted a small food forest in his Los Angeles 150 x 10 community parkway, he was fined. After repeating the offense the legal system aimed to make an example out of him. This was a mistake that back fired monumentally as Finley is now revered around the world as a symbol of gardening revolution. Carrying a business card reading “Head Trouble Maker” as the job title, Finley sums up what he does in a simple statement “I change culture.” The second largest city in the United States has officially legalized urban gardening. Nearly 4 million Los Angeles residents have now been activated and awakened to grow a new future away from abusive corporate food practices. In March of 2015, the Los Angeles city council passed an ordinance that allows residents to plant gardens in their parkways (that strip of city-owned land between the sidewalk and street.)

Jackson County Oregon: American Famers Avert Forgein Takeover

In 2012 organic farmer and founding member of The March Against Monsanto Chris Hardy stumbled upon massive, secret and illegal Syngenta test plots. After digging further, he found that 23 banned pesticides and herbicides, banned in Syngenta’s home town of Switzerland, were contaminating his town and its inhabitants. In addition, Syngenta’s GMO test crops were acting as a trojan horse slowly contaminating and threatening to bankrupt all the county’s organic farms. Three years later the effort of like-minded famers and concerned citizens in both Jackson and Josephine County Oregon voted into existence to ”ban any person from propagating, cultivating, raising or growing “genetically-engineered plants.” 

This has given the green light for each county throughout the United States to replicate their own local measures immediately as the dominos continued to fall in favor of preserving crop biodiversity, human health and the food supply at large.  

The People of Maui: Integrity Leads Truth

As the people of Maui have have found, like their extended Hawaiian family in Kauai and Hawaii did previously, the courts  and political system are often not stacked in their favor. After The People of Maui voted for a moratorium on pesticide and herbicide testing in 2014, the legally stalled and corrupted court case has now ended with Judge Susan Oki Mollway ruling against her island family’s simple request. It appears at this juncture an equal mix of local organic farming mixed with collective legal action will provide the slow working poison needed to phase out the failed GMO experiment from the Hawaiian Islands. Resistance to the coming paradigm shift to non-GMO & non-chemical farming appears only to be coming from a questionable legal system and an alternative to replace the secure agrochemical salaries given to locals.