[Gnosis5]

Hello Carmen,


Yes I see the bridge between Christianity and other practices.

When I was younger I was a sincere and idealistic Christian and I studied and applied the actual processes contained within the Christian texts, namely fasting, prayer/intending/commanding, meditation, and high praise. Many spiritual experiences as a result.

One day I was not feeling myself for some reason and decided to take a break and praise Jesus for everything I could think of. I reached an ecstatic emotional level and looked up and to my left and saw what in the Bible is described as a "cloud of mosquitos" and they were mouthing very evil things but I also noticed a shield around me and they were quite upset that they could not penetrate this shield.

All this revelation as a teaching to show me the value of high praise, and I don't think anymore that it has to be directed solely to Jesus: I think Jesus, like Maittreya, can be anyone he wants to be.

Now if I had only practiced meditation in my over busy lifestyle it wouldn't have taken me another 25 years to finally get back into a spiritual discipline and routine that, at the ripe age of 56, has brought me to a level of what was anciently called "Nirvana".

The early Christians, I suspect, also had a similar spiritual state, but it got lost to most today, just like most Buddhists have lost the effective path to their Nirvana, but choose to dogmatically fixate on the man Buddha.

Better than nothing I guess :-)

love,
Gnosis

Originally Posted by Carmen

A very useful, wonderful attribute of the soul level of consciousness is that we protected from outside negative influences by the spinning bands that surround us. In Christian traditions it is called 'Putting on the Amour of Christ'. Negative thoughts and influences bounce off the high spiritual consciousness and back to the sender!

Our responsiblilty is to guard against our own negative thoughts and attitudes. We can be brought down by our own negative critical thoughts if we are not watchful. Our habits are difficult to overcome if we are not staying consciously aware at all times. Its after we have trained ourselves to stay in the 'Now' moment, to be consciously 'aware' that we can discipline our run-away thoughts to obey our directions (our soul's directions) The calabre of our thoughts can then be upgraded to God-like quality.

This is where meditation or some sort of focus exercises are effective. Something that brings our minds to 'stillness'.

Love

Carmen