The Malleable Light

I have been reading Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now and in doing so I have learned some new things and reinforced others. While riding my bike today I was putting Tolle’s words into action and became intensely aware of the unconscious state that everyone was in while driving, walking in out of stores, etc. Even fellow cyclists were somewhere else while they listened to their mp3 players.

I tried my best not to analyze the thoughts that entered my mind during the ride. My goal was to stay present and to simply observe everything around me including myself and my own thoughts and emotions without becoming attached to any of it. It was a riding meditation.

Several thoughts ran through my mind as I rode. I thought to myself: “Why aren’t people talking to one another?”, “Why aren’t they acknowledging each others existence?”, “Where are these people going in such a hurry?”, “What will they do once they get there?”, and “What happens after they do whatever it is that had them in such a hurry?”. Maybe they will start the entire cycle over again? It all seemed so surreal to me when I was in the now. The roar of the cars seemed be more like chaos and I could actually feel the insanity of the peoples uncontrolled thoughts dragging me into unconsciousness.

When I arrived back home I turned my analytical mind back on to process what I had experienced on a physical level. People in general didn’t seem to be aware of the present, anymore more so than when they are sleeping. They seemed to be walking and driving around in a sleep state. Consciousness manifested for the experience but the experience never happening because their minds were focused on the nonexistent future and past.

I thought back to my childhood for the specific purpose of trying to understand this unconscious state they were in. Before I started school, time meant nothing to me. I didn’t think about the past or the future, only the present. I still learned new things and functioned in society much like I do now only I was closer to the source of life as a child, the root consciousness that I feel we all come from and are still connected too. I rarely see a child that’s stressed out or on blood pressure medicines. Children are generally joyful and compassionate for others and live in the moment. What a wonderful idea.

This brings me to me new year’s resolution. Starting now I resolve to be more like a child and to live more in the present, only drawing from the past and the future when absolutely necessary while living this physical life that is trapped in time and space.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually dont use it at all. It uses you. — Eckhart Tolle

David Mathis Books & Media, Meditation, Miscellaneous Consciousness, Eckhart Tolle, Life, Now, The Power of Now, Thought Provoking, Thoughts, Time

Today I visited Auditorium Shores here in Austin so that my daughter could play in  the orchestrated water fountains that they have there out by the pond. I had been thinking about existence after responding to Dean’s intro post on here earlier and found myself thinking about the past.

When I lived out in the country in Georgia I would often sit outside on the porch at night and stare off into the night sky and I could literally see the Milky Way galaxy spanning from horizon to horizon.  Back then I always sensed that the stars were aware of me and I them and that we shared a connection to each other.  When I looked at the clouds today I got that same feeling of being connected to the sky. It was as if the clouds were speaking to me on some fundamental level that really can’t be communicated at this time.

This used to puzzle and confuse me but as I have gotten older I have realized that things are not what they seem and that perhaps consciousness is not isolated to living animate objects only. It’s only been very recent that I actually considered the possibility that I am both locally conscious and universally conscious at the same time which would explain the connection I felt with the stars at night.

I hope you find the photograph that I took above to be as breathtaking as I did. It’s  a shame I didn’t have equipment to capture those starry nights that provoked so many deep thoughts.

David Mathis Miscellaneous Awakening, Consciousness, Life, Thought Provoking, Thoughts

I really don’t search for these things, they just show up most of the time. The same friend that subtly mentioned astral projection to me over a ten year span suggested that I watch a movie called Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.

The movie is about the progress of the soul as depicted through the art work and narration of an artist by the name of Alex Grey who I had remarkably never heard of.

He starts out by reviewing the human anatomy and then moves on to energy systems and how they merge together with the physical. He explores first incarnation, birth, life, spiritual enlightenment, death, the place after we die before we are reborn and then reincarnation.

Below I have selected a painting from the later part of the movie. His painting here describes a point in our progress where we see past our constricted egos and consider not only our collective consciousness on this planet but our cosmic consciousness and interconnectedness with the vast galactic web.

This movie is a great example of how the universe can speak through the physical when a person has a passion for what they do and they open their mind to their inner self. The artwork is breathtaking, inspiring and insightful. This is another movie that I highly recommend.

You will find a link to the DVD under my recommended products or the movie can be watched on google by clicking here.

David Mathis Books & Media Art, Astral Projection, Awakening, Belief, Belief System, Belief Systems, Belief Systems, Chakra, Consciousness, death, Evolution, Life, Past Life, Reincarnation, Religion, Soul, Thought Provoking

This will be a short post inspired by a three hour philisophical discussion, in which a man of strong religious beliefs who I have great respect for tried to sway me into his belief system. We discussed “The Ultimate Truth”, and how religions or the lack of religion fit into the search for it. I will not disclose which religion or who I discussed this with, as it is not relevant to this blog entry.

When I was younger, one of my favorite movies was “Hell in the Pacific”, which tells the story of two men, one American and one Japanese, marooned on a small uninhabited island in the Pacific. They survive by accepting their differences and working together, despite the fact that their two countries are at war. At the end of the movie, after calling a truce, a magazine brings their conversation back to religion and war and therefore ending the truce and they begin fighting again. Minutes later a bomb lands on them and blows them to pieces. Last night’s discussion reminded me of this movie.

Our main disagreement stemmed from a hypothetical person who chooses a predefined organized religious path versus one who simply chooses his own path and how this choice will ultimately lead to “The Ultimate Truth”. The one thing that we both agreed on, is that neither of our beliefs or paths made sense to the other.

My current observation is that there may or may not be an “Ultimate Truth”; however, my logical but currently limited human brain tells me that there most likely is. What doesn’t make sense about all of this is when a person expects his religion to make sense to others and tries to force it on them. Based on the information I have collected, no one knows what the “Ultimate Truth” is or even if it exists. There are various religions of various popularity, spread across virtually every culture, all attempting to discover “The Ultimate Truth.”

My personal belief is that Earth and humans are a VERY small part of the overall picture, and confining oneself to one physical world, or even worse, to one religion, will limit one who chooses to do so. Be happy if you have found your path, even if it is a limiting path. It’s fine to share your discoveries with others, but realize that not everyone will be or will want to be on that same path and all paths may “Ultimately” lead to the same truth in one form or another.

It seems that the truth gets lost in interpretation, or perhaps the truth IS the interpretations which exist in religious silos. It’s possible that the “Ultimate Truth” lies in the absence of any interpretation. I think that the key here is to respect others for what they believe even if it doesn’t make sense to you, because it’s very likely that what you believe doesn’t make sense to them either, and that’s ok.

David Mathis Belief Systems, Books & Media Belief, Belief System, Belief Systems, Belief Systems, Hell in the Pacific, Life, Thought Provoking, Truth

When I met my wife 5 years ago I introduced myself as religious and she introduced herself as spiritual. I considered myself a Catholic at the time and I didn’t think very much of it. Then after a few years went by I realized that there is a huge difference between religion and spirituality.

I recently added my blog to a directory in an attempt to share my personal experiences with others and once again I noticed that spirituality was nested under religion. The concept gets tied to a religion and faith on a regular basis and that’s fine, however what we see is that while spirituality can stand completely on it’s own, religion must be tied to spirituality. Interesting! So why do we need religion?

Recently, by reading about the personal experiences of others and through my own personal experience, meditation and astral projection I came to realize that when I let myself fall into belief systems I only create huge chains which limit my spiritual growth. I let these beliefs dissolve and by doing so I completely liberated myself from the spiritual confusion and suffering that came with the religious ties of the past.

There are several differences that I have noticed between religion and spirituality. The biggest difference is that religion takes a firm stance based on the views and opinions of other people and their perception of events that have taken place. When a religion’s participant begins to think outside the box they are considered odd, a sinner or even worse. Spirituality and self discovery “by itself” does none of these things. I find it interesting that in the early days of astronomy the scientific discoveries challenged the views of the church and as a result the church felt threatened. Now in modern times it’s ironic that it’s all been completely reversed and now everyone is caught up in science, and religion must fit into science. I think that it’s time that we open up our minds to new possibilities and focus and how religion and science fit into spirituality and then throw out all of the unnecessary nonsense including the fear and the arguments about things that can’t be proven either way.

While I was throwing out the rules you may have guessed, and the guess would be accurate, that I don’t believe in a deity these days. So if I don’t believe in deity then what do I believe in? I believe in a collective consciousness that consists of love, love possibly being a faint perception of the collective. I have no real religion but I may be a cross between mysticism and esotericism while agreeing with some of the Buddhist philosophies. This brings me to another difference which is religion creates a set of rules to follow while spirituality “by itself” allows one to keep an open mind.

The last difference that I would like to point out is that most religions provide no means of validation. Spirituality “by itself” does. Our awareness in waking life is focused on the physical and during our sleep our awareness detaches from the physical and we face our inner self, our soul. We can train our self to be lucid when we detach from the physical and begin teaching our self to remember. It seems that this will inevitably lead to path of truth and discovery while religion might lead us to an understanding of another person’s viewpoint.

In conclusion, it seems that we as the human civilization think that we are advancing at a rapid pace because of cell phones, fancy SUVs and computers. We cling to these physical things, which include our physical body and the ones we love around us. Worst of all we cling to the writings and beliefs of other people, never opening our mind to all of the possibilities presented to us. This ends up restricting us in our ability to choose our own path towards enlightenment and ultimately, recognition of who we really are. There is absolutely nothing wrong with many religions and belief systems but remember that they are exclusionary and limiting. My current view may change, but it appears that it’s only when we realize that we are all connected and that we are more than a physical body or even a separate soul that our light as a whole will shine brightly and we will be free. We have the tools that we need, all we have to do is look inward.

David Mathis Belief Systems Astral Projection, Lucid Dreams, Religion, Spirituality, Thought Provoking

It’s been over a month now since I began my journey of astral projection.  Then the night before last I was browsing meditation tutorials on youtube and “by chance” came across a preview of the videos offered on saltcube.com for lucid dreaming OBE.

The videos cost $19 dollars so I figured “what the hell” and went ahead and bought them. I watched part one this morning and I must admit, this looks VERY promising. Matt actually presents the entire process scientifically and seemingly removes the guess work from achieving this higher state of consciousness. I am very anxious to try out these new techniques.

He basically suggests that the body speaks to the mind with certain signals throughout the day and night essentially performing checks to make sure that the mind is not asleep. Once we learn what these signals are and to recognize them we can “trick” the body into thinking the mind is asleep and the body will simply shut down while the mind continues to be conscious.

The one thing I found odd about the videos was the fact that Matt seemed (may not be true) to believe that none of this was anything more than just a dream. I thought that this was a bit shallow but then I thought some more. It dawned on me that perhaps it was my definition of dream that was throwing me off. I was not considering the possibility that waking life itself is just a different  state of awareness, just a dream that’s tuned into the physical part of the universe.

The more I research this subject the more I realize that the physical brain itself is fundamentally just energy and nothing more. This means that when we experience an OBE or a lucid dream it’s just a shift in our awareness into a different energy state, the same energy that our physical brain shares but is not aware of. Therefor when we project it is indeed just a dream which is created by our physical brains just like Matt explains, and so is our waking life.

I will try these new techniques that Matt has so clearly explained and I am 99% sure I am going to see an explosion of OBEs.

Good luck everyone and I hope I am able to help you achieve the same goal as mine. I’ve added a link to saltcude. com on the left.

David Mathis Books & Media Astral Projection, Astral Projection Techniques, Dreams, Lucid Dreams, saltcube.com, Techniques, Thought Provoking, Thoughts

Today I met Carrie Laymon over at Pathfinder healing here in Austin.

Laymon is PathFinder, a name derived from the spiritual energy of the Wolf. In some Native American traditions, the wolf is considered the PathFinder. In this lore, wolf medicine represents protection, loyalty, teaching, and leading the way through intuition, spiritual wisdom and universal truth.

Carrie, who has been healing people for 20 years, is a Reiki Master here in Austin. She takes a holistic approach to healing while focusing on the body’s energy (soul) rather that the body’s physical matter for healing.

We live in such a materialistic world these days and we all tend to forget or often need reminders that we are more than our physical body. When I glance out at the world around me I notice a common pattern, and it’s that most people believe in a “soul” of some type, or should I say “life after death”.  Interestingly enough, even though we have these beliefs we disguard  them when we get sick and usually only focus on getting the physical part of us better. It never dawns on us that maybe it’s a spiritual problem (not always) which has simply manifested itself in the physical.

I think a lot of times our spirit tries to tell us things but we get so caught up in things that don’t matter “such as cell phones”, that we don’t hear our inner self speaking to us. This goes on for a while and then the body starts to fall ill, as if our spirit is speaking to us in the only language that we know at the time which is “physical”.

Myself, realizing that maybe all of my physical ailments were just symptoms of something the wasn’t physical at all I started looking for some healing hands. I turned to Google and immediately found Carrie ranked number 1 in the results. I called her and we talked for about an hour about life and such and I felt like we connected.  Without reservations I scheduled a session for Today.

When I arrived at her office at 12:30 I must admit that I was nervous. I was actually quite nervous throughout the entire session, but I was able to relax some. Carrie was very polite and professional and after I filled out two entire pieces of paper I moved to the table and prepared myself for the healing.

Carrie immediately felt that although I was pulling in quite a bit of energy, my energy body was fragmented making it impossible for this energy to be properly received. She quickly began to work on restructuring my energy body.

During the first 10 minutes she did some work around my forehead area and I could feel a pulsating energy right between my eyes. When ever she would move her hands this pulsating energy would move to wherever her hands were. I would like to point out that she was not touching me at this point, her hands were just hovering over me. She continued the head work for about 20 minutes it seemed.

Next, she actually placed her hand on my head and I could actually feel energy moving around in my head. Sometimes I would feel a wave of energy shoot across and down though my body and into the table.

She continued to work on different parts of my body until she was at my feet. When she started working on my feet I had the same feeling that I had in my head expect I could feel energy moving and bouncing around my entire body. It was almost like hundreds of hands moving around inside me. Very strange feeling, similar to the vibrations I feel when projecting.

The session ended and we talked for a while about a few more sessions to completely “connect” my energy body so that I can move on to Kundalini Yoga. We didn’t discover any emotional issues that needed any work, basically restructuring is all I need.

Driving home I felt more alert and calm.  I think that overall, it was a great experience.

David Mathis Energy Healing Energy Healing, Healing, Thought Provoking

I’ve been frequenting the Astral Pulse forums for about 20 days now and I have read at least that many ways for achieving the altered state of consciousness called an OBE.  The techniques are important, but if you look at each technique, it seems that the key to success boils down to one single thing, which is not falling asleep, at least mentally.  This seems very foreign to me and takes extreme focus to pull it off.

I have been asking myself why I require so much intense focus to change the way in which I fall asleep, and the answer is more obvious than you might think. When you consider that it took your entire life to learn how to fall asleep you will then suddenly realize that it may take the entire remainder of your life to change that habit, well maybe not that long, but it will take time.

This is not just restricted to the world of out of body experiences and transformations of consciousness. The reason I noticed this was not OBE related at all. I have recently switched to the Chrome web browser and love it, however I can’t stop clicking on the IE icon. I have spent the last 3 days clicking on the wrong icon and then literally a fraction of a second later kicking myself for clicking it.

That’s why when we want to change old habits, our most important path is being awake to our experience. We need to pay attention to what we are doing and notice every little thing. We must realize that if it takes days to reverse a habit of clicking a simple computer icon, that it may take weeks, months and possibly years to change our sleeping habits. These habits are hard coded and must be rewritten.

The irony here is that when we break these habits we realize that the waking life that we have been experienceing was nothing but dream itself. It’s only through breaking these habits that we can set our spirits free and experience life rather than being stuck in patterns of inertia.

David Mathis Progress Astral Projection, Astral Projection Techniques, Habits, Life, Techniques, Thought Provoking