[Gnosis5]

Originally Posted by greybeard

Its a question of what resonates with you and is it in alignment with any goals you may have.
The spiritual teachings are full of paradoxes.
On the one hand I seem to be the doer on the other hand nothing happens without the enviroment being helpful to what I want to achieve.
Jesus said " Of myself I do nothing it is the Father within who is the doer" yet he extolled us to make every effort to avoid wolves in sheeps clothing.

Looking back it seems that I had to make every effort to make spiritual progress and yet because I became willing to learn about the spiritual the path was made easy by the right books the right teachers appearing at the right time, events I just couldent have arranged.
Having breakfast with Eckhart just happened. Same as walking round a corner and theres a friend I havent seen in years. We have all had experiences where we think of some one and the phone rings and there they are.

I take one step towards God and He takes a hundred towards me. L

It now appears that if I just "let go, let God " then life flows beautifully, I have aligned my will to what is.

Anyway another coffee is required.
Bye for now.
With Love
Chris

Yes, the first thing I noticed when I made a commitment to myself when I made a financial commitment to pay for the time of a spiritual coach -- the first thing I noticed is that money flowed to me and rather easily. For example, I got invited out of the blue to a couple of fun focus groups and was paid $300 plus a $75 gift certificate, plus all the free food I could eat during the group meeting, plus meeting some nice people :-) Plus I got to notice things about myself in my interaction with these people.

I started to really take my spiritual rehabilitation "seriously" with focused intention, just as I do when I am lifting weights towards a known goal.

As with yourself, I got what I put into it and there is some other component, call it God, that co-contributes.

The New Testament also has some pithy and rather scathing words for those who are what the common translation calls "lukewarm", although I would not take the whole NT as unadulterated highest level of truths.

How I relate to Jesus saying it is the Father within him is the few times I have been in the viewpoint of the "All-that-is" and operated through that viewpoint. From that viewpoint, all things are possible. And guess what?!? It is a viewpoint that can be trained in and everyone can train themselves to operate from that viewpoint.

I just happen to pragmatically and practically see that it has to be a twin-up or group support set up -- regularly scheduled meeting times that one can fit into life's other demands. That way, if one is slow, the rest of the group, or his twin, can help him.

That may be a solely feminine perspective, but it could also be an antidote for a solely left-brained self sabotaging setup.

Yes, at first there can be a lot of effort involved. As the need or compulsion for effort gets cleared out, one rises above the need to "effort". But I see effort as divorced from pure intention. Effort probably also has its higher and lower harmonics, and we go up the scale on the chord of "effort".

As a real-life example, today I got together with my personal spiritual coach and we processed the common emotion of love, i.e., admiration + sympathy. When the process was finished (not without being peppered with some grief) I had moved up to something more akin to admiration + compassion. Thus I ended session knowing that I did not have to knee-jerk response to, let's say, an abandoned puppy, with the lower type of "love".

Small sure steps, all part of the enlightenment process.

And, yes, I am a voracious reader/self-educator too. That contributes immensely.

I have journalled parts of my spiritual growth over at the Freezone_Earth Yahoo Group

Not only did the NT warn us to avoid wolves in sheep's clothing, but were we not also extolled to put on our spiritual armor? And did not the early Christians gather together and work their spiritual practices/tools together? What were their "tools" to help them gain equal footing with their brother Jesus?