Your donations are our thanks
.
We appreciate you!
Horizons Magazine
JANUARY 2002
I attracted a great new website designer; Instant Messaging; taking initiative;
giving fair value; reaching critical mass; what does it matter who gets the credit;
what's to argue about?
Hello and welcome to the January 2002 issue of Horizons Magazine. Happy
New Millenium! Or was that last year? Well, depending on who you're listening to,
this may be the start of the New Millenium, rather than January 2001. To that,
I say? *whatever* Maybe we should stop trying to label it and just get on with it *hehe*
I'm starting this year off with lotsa new changes, not the least of which is a new website at http://horizonsmagazine.com! I've got links to all kindsa metaphysical sites, as well as monthly horoscopes and an archive of past editorials. In March 2001, I began looking for a web site designer and sent out an all-points-bulletin to everyone on my email list, asking for referrals. I got response almost immediately, and received about a dozen referrals. I emailed the web designers, telling them what I wanted, which was an update to my existing website. I asked them for a fee quote for design and maintenance. Within the next 5 months, most of them responded, mostly in general terms and quoting me only their hourly rate. I'd gone to other websites they'd created and all seemed equally creative. But even knowing basically what I wanted to reproduce, no one would even estimate what it might cost for the entire project. And few were interested enough to follow up and find out if I wanted to hire them. Some followed up by email and instant messaging.
I love the internet Instant Message feature. If you're online on the internet and your friend is online as well, you can type each other little messages back and forth. So last month, I was instant messaging with a friend and commented that I really wanted to update my website. He said he'd have his daughter look at it, that she was good at that stuff. I didn't think anything else about it, until a couple of days later when his daughter emailed me.
She said she'd looked over my website and took the liberty of duplicating my site, making some design changes, making some suggestions and if I'd like to see it, go to a temporary site she created for me. She said she liked my magazine and had fun working on the website. She sounded delightful and full of enthusiasm. She was certainly ambitious. She'd worked on - with no guarantee of ever being paid for it - 37 pages, as well as updating a long list of links I have on my website. She did the work because she liked having new projects to work on, and she was having fun making design changes based on what she thought my personality was, from what she knew of me in the magazine. She did the work on speculation, speculating that I might like it and might want to hire her based on what she did. Which is exactly what happened.
If April had emailed me her hourly rate and a link to the websites she's done, I'd have filed it with all the others. The fact that she was so into her work that she'd take time to work on 3 dozen pages just to see if I'd like it blew me away and earned her my business.
Like April, I believe in being generous when it comes to determining "fair value." Whether I'm doing readings or healing work, I believe in giving above and beyond every time. This is because I've learned the lesson of "I get back what I give out." Maybe not learned it fully, but I definitely have a clue now, whereas in years past I didn't grasp the truth of it. If we give in a stingy fashion, we'll be given to in a stingy fashion. As long as we have a hard time parting with a dollar, we'll have a hard time coaxing new dollars from their present owners. As long as we believe we hafta fight for what we get because we're living in a competitive world and there's only so much to go around, then that will be how our world will appear to us.
ON REACHING CRITICAL MASS
In talking to some writer friends of mine last week, the topic of the discussion was that what lots of us were talking about and teaching 20-30 years ago has finally come into full view of the mainstream media and packaged to make it appear "new." "This was cutting edge information when I began teaching it in 1968," one said. Another lamented, "We did all the footwork years ago and now the new age marketeers are touting thoughts are things, and you create your own reality, as if they came up with the idea." "Ten years ago," another writer remarked, "John Gray (Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus) and Barbara deAngelis (Secrets About Men Every Woman Show Know) were only authors buying infomercial time to sell their book. Now they're referred to as experts in their field."
WHAT'S ALL THE ARGUING ABOUT?
It tickled me to hear their complaints, and I said so. Not only were those concepts NOT new information when WE heard them in the 60's and 70's, they were written prolifically about over the past 200 years and more. Of course, not everyone who reads spiritual or philosophical literature finds their way to the esoteric writings of, say, the theosophical writers. Or if they come across the material, it holds no interest for them or they consider it too mental, too verbose or too complex. The serious seekers, however, find their way to it and through it to the manna beyond.
WHO GETS THE CREDIT?
Anyway, I pointed out that the past 30 years have been a great barometer of just how quickly critical mass is being reached on the topic of "thoughts are things" and "we create our own reality." Aren't we all striving for critical mass? Or are we just saying we are? Is the point not that the world is becoming more compassionate, more loving, more united, but that what matters is who gets the credit for it happening? Deepak Chopra says "It's amazing what get accomplished when it doesn't matter who gets the credit."
WHAT'S ALL THE BUZZ?
So I think the good news is that I'm reading more and more about visualizing your desired outcome in order to achieve it; about focusing on what you want rather than what you don't want; about making all decisions as if the money didn't matter. I like hearing folks ask each other, "What kind of work would you do if the money didn't matter? What would you spend your days doing, just for the fun of it." It's when dialogue like this begins to seep into our everyday, mainstream life that change begins to take place on a gigantic scale. When we hear those around us continually in dialogue about a particular topic, we're curious as to what all the interest is about. We want to know more about it. We want to hear the details.
BECOME AN AGENT FOR CHANGE
If we're serious about wanting to change our world for the better, we can be the ones to bring up the topics for discussion. We can be the ones to get others interested in the topic, by our enthusiasm for learning that we are capable of lots more emotional fulfillment once we take control of the reins of our minds and tongues and begin to steer consciously in a direction we'd like to go. Everyone you know wants more emotional fulfillment. Everyone has a little bit of an empty space in their heart waiting to be filled with more happiness and contentment. You can be the agent for that change to take place. You can be the instrument by which they stop in their tracks and consciously make the decision to move in a new direction.
LIKE WILDFIRE ON LOCOWEED
You can begin a neverending circle of joy and clarity, and watch it spread like wildfire. If you get credit for it, fine. If you don't get credit for it, who cares. The point is that we're in the midst of evidence of critical mass consciousness being reached on the topic of how powerful we are as human beings. How connected we are to each other, and to all others, all over the planet. How powerful our everyday thoughts and words are. That we are indeed the creators of our own reality.
ASTRAL PROJECTION AND REMOTE VIEWING
A friend emailed the other day after reading my November editorial, where I talked about astral projection. She mentioned she wanted to develop the skill to do conscious astral projection and remote viewing, and asked what my suggestions would be. I'll share with you my email response to her:
"I'll probably say some things you already know here, but since I don't know what you know, I'll say it all. Regarding astral projection and remote viewing, that's two processes and they're both easier to do than you might think. It just takes practice; mostly practice being conscious in a meditative state. If you practice meditation regularly, you're halfway there. Otherwise, you could begin by sitting for 20 minutes twice a day just focusing on your breath. I began with TM - Transcendental Meditation, and actually you can find this exact process in Herbert Benson's book The Relaxation Response, where he substitutes the word "one" for the TM mantra.
Another great practice is to remind yourself during the day that "I'm breathing and brushing my teeth," "I'm breathing and cooking breakfast, "I'm breathing and driving, "I'm breathing and typing." This helps train you to be in the present moment with each breath. It's a very powerful practice and you can do it all day long. I have little notes all over the house that say, "breathe."
Why it helps to know how to meditate before you begin is so that when you're conscious on the astral plane, you can focus and direct where you go. You can remember where you are. When you're dreaming, all you're doing is allowing your thoughts free reign as you're on the astral plane - you're following your thoughts where ever they want to take you. In astral projection, as in life, it's more fun and effective to have at least a preliminary destination in mind and stay focused on it long enough to be well on your way there. Then when another distraction comes along, and it will, you can consciously choose whether to follow it or stay on your plotted course.
There are psychics and others who don't meditate and haven't trained their mind so they can focus, and sure, they can travel in and out of the various planes all the time and "see" on these planes, but very seldom do they have conscious control over these states, and even less seldom do they understand what they're seeing. Very seldom do they recognize what is a projection of their own mind and what is information from another source.
That's one reason it cracks me up when someone puts a lot of faith in a psychic just because the psychic was able to tell them things they had no way of knowing otherwise. Just because they can see the past, doesn't mean they can see the present or the future. Just because they pick up on what your own mind - conscious and subconscious - is projecting, and thus tell you what's happening in your life right now, doesn't mean they have good guidance for you. They may 'see" various probable futures for you, but that doesn't mean they know how to aim you toward getting there.
I just mean to emphasize that some people will say you don't need to know how to meditate before embarking upon astral projection and remote viewing. To me, doing so is like sending an untrained child up in a rocket ship to the moon and then asking him to explain what he experienced while there. I'd rather hear from someone who's been trained to recognize and explain what he's found and experienced. Someone who has the vocabulary to help me understand what he found and what it means. So, correct, you don't need to know how to meditate first, but it gives you a deeper level of understanding for everything you'll see and experience. Every moment of every day for the rest of your life :)
It also helps if you've done some lucid dreamwork, or if you've practiced breath meditation and what the yogis call "chitta nidra," which is a conscious sleep process. Basically what you do is stay conscious and aware of your breath as you allow yourself to fall asleep. When a thought comes, and it will, acknowledge the presence of the thought and do not follow the thought where it wants to take you. That is, as soon as the thought appears, think "I'm breathing that thought away" and release it with your breath. Don't fret when it happens a lot in the beginning, that's just another thought :) That's another reason to have a regular meditation practice, it's a pressure valve to keep your thoughts to a minimum so when you do your consciousness exercises, you don't hafta wade thru 30 minutes of thoughts before you begin.
After you feel confident you've "trained" enough, relax and go into a meditative state and then visualize being where you want to be. Pretend it, imagine it in as much detail as you can. I used to go through the process of lifting myself out of my body, out of my house through the roof, and then travelled my body across the land miles to get where I wanted to be. Now I just get up and out, then suddenly appear myself over where I want to be. I like having the higher view over the rooftop and then peering down and seeing through the roof to wherever I want to be. As I'm up there looking down, I may ask myself, "what's going on in there right now?" Whatever you ask is what you'll end up finding out.
There's a fine line between being consciously on the astral plane, observing - and drifting into a dream state, where you may think you're conscious but you're not, you're only dreaming you're conscious. So if you go in there with a troubled, unfocused mind, you're likely to not have a fun or "valid" experience. This just means you fell asleep and the projections of your own mind took over.
It also helps to have a 'default" thought to fall back on, a nice "replacement" thought or tape to run that will take you to a nicer place emotionally and psychologically. My default thought is always, "time to wake up." I used to have nice scenarios as my default thoughts, but when I knew I could control them anytime I wanted, I got lazy, Now I do what maximizes my time :)"
Enjoy our offering this month. Happy New Millenium. Happy New YOU. Hari Om.