Category Archives: Realization

Commanding the Universe

Power is found in the ability to control and master all the energies of the universe. The path of the novice begins in controlling the energy of the mind, body and progresses to mastering the energies of the earth, sun, moon and larger universe. As ability extends, so too does the power that is realized. Cycles of ability spiral through a grid of sacred geometry and in time the novice becomes the adept. The forms of power dissolve in on themselves and as deeper mastery is realized internal and external energies lose their form. The consciousness that was once mind, body and spirit becomes one, yet at the same time expands outwards. The ability to control energies in all their forms is realized, yet the separateness, the uniqueness and the finite forms are perceived in even more depth and exquisite detail. This is the mountain peak where all religions, spiritual traditions and Esoteric schools find that their true essence meets.

The ability to command the universe is the ability to command the consciousness in full. What is full is expanded to its outer limit as the portals to further realization are found, expanded once more and illuminated.

There is no longer any separation between the desire to create and the creation, as the space in between has been mastered. There is no longer space between ignorance and Enlightenment because the illusion between these has been bridged.

The training of technique gives way to the understanding of the self and of truth. The understanding of form gives way to the understanding of creation. This understanding is what opens the consciousness to full Enlightenment.

Purification, the Master of Karma – By John Gregor (Guest Teacher)

To really understand purification you need to understand Karma first. Karma is like doing something because we did something else. You can pretty much get to the root of your Karma if you keep asking yourself “why you are doing that?” and following it back. In any case, eventually you will come back to sensation which is where all action, thought and impulse comes from. This is the Karma regenerator – it’s what keeps churning out those programs, reactions and instincts.

Ever wonder why you are having such a good life? Karma. Ever wonder why you are having such a bad life? Karma. Ever wonder why you never think about these things at all? Karma. Ever wonder why you have ethics or values? Karma.

There’s no getting away from it as long as you play its game. The moment you stop playing the game, Karma begins to dissolve. This is what purification is all about. It is essentially taking a consciousness of purity and applying it to all the rest. The two meet and because true purity can’t really be tarnished it purifies everything that it meets. This essence of purity is the esoteric version of the story of the Philosopher’s stone which turned all material substances into gold.

So the key as you see is tapping into that essence of purity. This is the link between all religions, spiritual paths and Esoteric Mystery schools. Sure the details have become a bit askew over the years with arguments over this way of reading it or that way, but the message remains the same – purification leads to “God.”

John Gregor

A Different Mind For Enlightenment – By John Gregor (Guest Teacher)

It was Einstein who said that “you can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it,” and the same principle applies to realizing Enlightenment. Basically all the obstacles that limit your consciousness from experiencing your reality in a different way (which is essentially what Enlightenment is) need to be changed from the inside out. The mind that doesn’t believe in or know about Enlightenment needs to start believing and knowing – big time. This is the belief that gets the engine moving and keeps it moving. Through belief a person can then take the logical steps to seeking knowledge, gaining practice and having real experience of Enlightenment.

Through cultivating a different state of mind, a person will find that the old mind has been left behind. Doubt and self-criticism hold value, but they cease to exist as limiting beliefs in the Enlightened mind. As “light” moves in darkness must change – this is natural law.

All esoteric training has some element of “no-mind” practice and the reason for this is because the mind that is always thinking will always delude itself into believing it has the answers. It will “discover” new knowledge and seemingly understand new perspectives – but all along these perspectives are being seen from the same eyes and mind.

This is the same mind.

The practice of “no-mind” is a shift into a completely different state and it is this state that offers true expansion of consciousness because instead of simply rehashing and re-shuffling old material – it steps out into the new.

And so the old is changed.

Now it does people little good to walk around all day in “no-mind” but the trick is to be the “master” mind. That is to have the ability to stop, move, shift and shuffle at will. It’s not so unlike dancing – and just like the master dancer’s body changes so that even walking and breathing is performed differently, so must the mind to know Enlightenment also change and find a new way.

John Gregor

What and How is A Spiritual Attunement Anyway? – By John Gregor

An attunement is basically a way of making a map in your consciousness. Before the map it’s like searching for the needle in the proverbial haystack – only you may not even be able to see the haystack. The attunement forms the pathways required to feel, see, hear or otherwise perceive certain directions. Keep in mind that this is a very simplified description of a process that can be very complex, but that is the overall meaning of it.

In the past disciples have received attunements without really thinking about the consequences and it is more in recent years, particularly with the internet that information is now getting out about the downside. Basically when we talk about energetic contracts we are talking about an attunement and this can go either way depending on the person doing the attuning.

An attunement creates energetic pathways that help to channel or connect with parts of your consciousness and the dimensions that are accessed through those pathways. Look at it like how a radio tunes into particular frequencies and you have an idea of how a basic attunement may work. The thing to remember though is that you can’t always just turn an attunement off the same way that a radio can be turned off. This is the reason why it is important to have trust with the facilitator doing the attuning.

Trust needs to be there on many levels. Ideally you’d like the facilitator to be a master at what they do. Now these days everyone and their uncle is suddenly a grandmaster of this certification or that system and new religion but it is critical to always remember what mastery really means: It is absolute control over every aspect of what is involved.

A master needs to be able to do the work with absolute precision, but they also need to be able to undo the work.

It’s also important that the facilitator has good intentions and I’ll extend this to also mean that they are not so arrogant as to believe that they are the only ones to understand your spiritual destiny and so take it upon themselves to add all their own beliefs – often limiting into the attunement.

In my opinion, the best attunements are done by facilitators who respect and understand the importance of allowing others to discover their own spiritual destiny. This means that rather than trying to push or pull through adding energies and unnecessary contracts into the attunement, that they simply create a neutral map within the consciousness and allow the choice to remain with the person. This may not seem like the most “exciting” option in the beginning but in the long run the opportunity to drive your own spiritual vehicle will take you far further than any tour bus could ever hope to. Furthermore, it is the freedom to choose and to master your own spiritual destiny that is ultimately important. It’s what the journey is all about!

So choose wisely. Choose facilitators, teachers, guides and knowledge that respect your freedom to understand and choose your own destiny in your own way. These will be the ones that offer tools, systems and guidance but do not require that you conform to their rules or worse still, try to shuffle their rules in through the back door.

John Gregor

Kundalini Rising – By John Gregor (Guest Teacher)

For a long time I believed that the activations of certain energies such as chakras and the Kundalini would lead to Enlightenment. I spent much time building and generating energies in order to facilitate such activations and in time my work paid off. In the early 80’s I experienced a very dramatic Kundalini awakening which brought with it a lot of new awareness as well as the feeling of physical and spiritual power. My chakras felt strong and clear and my meridians felt like rivers of chi.

The ability to manipulate energy is what makes conscious manifestation possible and I had seen a dramatic increase in my ability to manifest both material wealth as well as to create certain effects such as telekinesis and pyrokinesis. For a period of around 5 years I dwelled in this mind state believing that this was simply the beginning of a deeper awakening or Enlightened state. In time however I was to see that I was quite wrong.

Psychic abilities, Kundalini and chakra energies are all tools. They are like the wheels, steering wheel and engine of a car, they will help to fuel a journey, but they are not the journey itself – for the journey to take place a driver is required. It was only after many years of utilizing these energies that I came to see that the various powers that I attained were like circus tricks. They provided no real value beyond the momentary pleasures of the ego being gratified. Even if I were to walk on water, this would have been no closer to true Enlightenment and freedom.

In many ways the achievement of this type of power showed me one of the most important lessons that I could learn: To stop seeking it. This was a similar lesson that I’d been fortunate to learn years earlier regarding money – for having attained large quantities of wealth from my businesses I had learned early in life that it would not bring me the true happiness that I sought.

It was back to the drawing board in many ways for me, but all these years of training were not for nothing. What I was simply realizing was that the purpose that I’d used these tools for was frivolous and that it was time to look further and higher. Just like money can be used for waste or for the good of all, mental powers could be used for seeking the truth of Enlightenment.

In time I began to understand with absolute clarity why Enlightenment had never been about these types of power. I understood then what masters had meant about avoiding the false powers and seeking only the one truth. The real irony is that as the one truth is revealed all the false powers align within the consciousness, mind and body in a way that hold real meaning and so they become aligned with truth and become true powers themselves. Just as importantly the mind and ego no longer craves these things because they are at peace.

John Gregor

The Freedom of Consciousness – By John Gregor (Guest Teacher)

“Purification leads the way to experiencing freedom of consciousness. When the path of truth is clear of all obstacles then the seeing of truth, the hearing of truth and the feeling of truth becomes clear. This is the objective of purification, it is to clear the way for the experience of Enlightenment. So what is Enlightenment? Enlightenment is the true essence of all sentient beings. It is what is left when all illusion has been stripped away.” This is how . explained it to me when I first began to ask these questions. My main concern at the time was that I needed to take on the external and internal appearance of a spiritual man, to say the right things and to think the right things and so on. I slowly started to ‘click’ that it was impossible to find my true self if I kept hiding from the doors that led me to it. These doors so to speak had been popping up my entire life but because I was so attached to them showing up in a certain way I had rejected them for what they actually were.

It was the same with Enlightenment. I had heard so many stories about it that I was bent on making myself into a carbon copy of all these teachers and gurus at the expense of who I actually was. I lived in a monastery for over a decade, meditating and believing that this was what I needed to be and what I needed to do in order to achieve Enlightenment and awakening.

So why had it never come?

In all those years I felt no closer to Enlightenment than the day I asked the question. All I had was more questions. When I first talked to . I can honestly say I wanted to hit him when he said that I was rejecting the very answers I sought as quickly as I could ask the questions! I was angry because I knew that this was the truth and he seemed to see right through me. That night I cried in meditation for the first time in years – because I’d come back to that initial truth. All these years I’d rejected my self in search of a “higher” truth and in doing so I’d rejected that very truth that I’d been seeking from the start. I’d fooled myself into thinking that I’d somehow surpassed the need to heal those fears and hurts at the core of my being.

Over the next few days I practiced in a new and humble way. My whole body would shake at times as deep emotions were released and often I would cry for hours on end as deep pain and sorrow would arise from what seemed to be my very soul. Then on about the 3rd day I entered a deep stillness. I felt my entire body resonate with this stillness down to the smallest cell. Something shattered then and I felt the entire world around me shift into this stillness that I was enveloped in. I opened my eyes and it seemed like time had stopped. I saw a leaf hovering in mid fall as it was caught in this stillness.

A pinpoint of light appeared directly in front of my eyes and began to open up into a larger vortex which eventually encompassed me. This spread into a deeper stillness and with it the most profound peace and I could say happiness that I’ve ever had the pleasure to feel. It was then that I realized that I’d experienced this state because my consciousness had become free. In time I was to know that this was only the beginning of understanding the true state of Enlightenment.

John Gregor

Purification – By John Gregor (Guest Teacher)

Purification has been talked about in spiritual circles since God kicked Adam’s butt for lusting after Eve. Legends have been told of saints and monks facing demons as large as the sun while their very flesh was flayed from their bones while they maintained their oaths to purify their souls.

It all makes for great reading, but what is purification really?

First you need to get the concept of Karma. Karma is like throwing a huge rock at a bull, it’s gonna get an effect. Karma is like smiling at a pretty girl (or a guy!), it’s gonna get an effect. That’s what Karma is – it’s cause and effect.

Karma doesn’t make any promises about what it will deliver – but one thing that it will promise is that something will be delivered!

Now your consciousness is made up of many different levels give or take a few, but you’ve got the big three.

You’ve got the mental side – that part that thinks that it gets it all and knows what is going on.

Then there’s the body – you know the thing that carries your head around. Funnily enough, the head is also part of the body but many people don’t really get below the neck, they just keep all their consciousness bottled up in the head.

There’s also the spirit – and this is where people get all funny, because some people don’t believe in it, others will kill or chastise you for looking at it the wrong way and some think that it’s something that you drink.

So all these levels of consciousness have things that are going on. Day to day procedure – business as usual. In most cases the procedures are happening because of patterns or habits.

Now a habit is made up of 2 parts – cause and effect.

So there again, we have Karma.

This funny little thing keeps us winding up and winding down and we run our lives by it. It creates who we think we are – our personalities, our perception of pain and pleasure, our values, ethics and beliefs.

All of it started because of a rock being thrown in a pond somewhere at sometime…a pond in our consciousness.

So it’s all well and good when things are well…good.

But watch people come running when things go south.

That’s when purification comes in.

Someone once said to me: “All my life I thought that spirituality has a load of horse crap and now all of sudden I’m crazy about it…what happened?”

I said: “You started getting old, knew that grim death was just around the corner point and decided, Hell I better do something before I get there!”

Purification is that investment, but it’s not necessarily about self-flagellation and so forth. It’s about applying the essential ingredient of purity to all the layers of Karma within you.

Then, like a flame burns wood, all your Karma layer by layer is dissolved.

That’s it, you no longer recreate the same patterns that you’ve played out for all these life times.

Your consciousness at the 3 main levels becomes free to do what it wants.

That in a nutshell is purification.

The next question is: what remains when the consciousness becomes free?

John Gregor

The Steps to Enlightenment – By John Gregor (Guest Teacher)

“Everyone has within them the potential to be a master, a spiritual warrior and to know infinite power. The path of Enlightenment is known by few simply because adversity seems too overpowering and so they never break past the initial walls of illusion.” – .

When I first began Metaphysical training there wasn’t a lot of knowledge that was given out freely and in many ways this hasn’t changed. The real keys, the secrets and subtleties are still kept pretty well hidden. The sad thing is that in lieu of real Enlightenment there are teachers going around saying “you don’t need to do anything – you’re already Enlightened.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Real Enlightenment exists and its not about just going around saying “Yeah I’m Enlightened.” It’s about hunting down those damn secrets and using them.

I remember when I had my first encounter with a teacher who was well on his way to Enlightenment and his consciousness was so overpowering that I could feel it transforming my very bones just from being around him. This was back when I didn’t believe that Enlightenment was for us mere mortals…but that first meeting changed my mind completely. Power that you can feel…you don’t meet that everyday.

On to the steps to Enlightenment!

The first rung on the ladder to Enlightenment is developing some degree of self-control and discipline and using this to get a small “foot in the door” connection with the Higher Self. This gets people out of their normal headspace, a place that is not usually so conducive to getting Enlightened and into a kind of super consciousness highway where intelligence, information and understanding can process at an unbelievable rate. Where the normal mind plods along…1, 2, 3 – the super conscious Higher Self is like 1 to infinity in an instant. The knowledge is there, the understanding is there and the path to Enlightenment is all of a sudden a Hell of a lot clearer!

The second rung is developing psychic awareness – now this isn’t the type of psychic showmanship that you see on the back of tabloids – checking out who is cheating who and so forth. What it’s really about is getting a phone line to the universe – tapping into that ripe knowledge and using it to boost up your ascension and Enlightenment. I’ve heard talk that Psychic ability and Enlightenment have nothing in common but to be honest these people just don’t get it. Most of the reason that Enlightenment is seen with such unattainable awe is because people haven’t worked out how to perceive it…and what is Psychic Mastery if not the ability to perceive at an infinite level?

The third rung is what is known as the inner or Esoteric warrior. This is the stuff that you need when the real inner battle begins and believe me, it’s a battle waged on many fronts and from many angles. Learning to fight on this inner level is really important and is one of the most misunderstood things on this whole journey. Let me put it another way: Being a spiritual wet noodle gets you no where when the battle comes to the door of your consciousness. Develop your inner strength and mental fortitude like this was your last day to do it and you’ll conquer whatever comes from within swiftly and decisively.

The 4th rung of Enlightenment is purification, but I’ll leave that for next time.

John Gregor

The Perception of Enlightenment – by Tashi (Guest Teacher)

My perception of Enlightenment had always been that it was to come through the purification of the senses and the mind. This was a very mechanical point of view and in many ways Enlightenment is as mechanical as the learning of any skill, however there was a big piece of information that had been missing. This was the Higher Self connection.

The Higher Self was something that I had heard talked about while I was at the monastery but the direct training of this was never taught. I now believe it to be one of the last and fading secrets of the tradition that I was part of.

The first time that I met my Higher Self was after being attuned to a new meditation practice by a very unorthodox spiritual teacher. I opened my eyes and there before me materialized a person that looked like me yet every aspect of this person radiated perfection. I knew that this person was me and that this me was my Higher Self – it was my essential Buddha self. This being emanated the love and compassion of a saint and when he reached over and touched the crown of my head, my body dissolved into light.

The next thing that I knew I was flying through plains of light. I experienced in one moment all the pain, suffering and striving that I had faced in my life and I felt it all transform as it was engulfed into compassion so intense that it was all encompassing. This occurred through this life and then the life before and the life before that. I experienced pain and suffering that I had no idea existed within me. Lifetimes of pain met with pure love and compassion and was eradicated from my soul in an instant. Piercing through this compassion a deep frequency of peace arose and I knew then that I was looking Enlightenment in the eye.

This experience changed me beyond words. It was not the complete Enlightenment that I had always sought, but it was a very important window that was showing me that I was now heading in the right direction.

Tashi

The Journey to Enlightenment – Part 2 – By Tashi (Guest Teacher)

The city brought up the depth of my illusions. I was surrounded by people who lived in the ups and downs, to whom enlightenment was but a myth – something achieved by Gods and chosen ones. The struggle here was for survival and I looked on in amazement. I could not understand how people could forsake a path of true liberation for one that so obviously led to further suffering and torment – and yet something in this life beckoned to me. There was something here for me.

I decided that if I was to discover what I needed in this way of life then I would need to immerse myself in this way of life. In time, I found work and accommodation and I set myself to observing what it was that intrigued my intuition.

The first thing I noticed was that my mind lost its equilibrium very easily in this place. This surprised me, as holding meditative states was something I thought I had mastered long ago. Others were intrigued by my spiritual knowledge and this was something that brought up parts of my ego that I did not know existed. Mastering these seemed simple at first, but the way of the ego is alluring and in time foundations took hold.

I believed that I had come to this place to teach these people about Enlightenment.

For a time I became a spiritual teacher where others looked up to me and asked me for knowledge. As time passed however I noticed that those that were coming to me were not cultivating Enlightenment. I noticed that among my most fervent students there were those that would talk most heatedly and passionately about it, yet there were few that would practice with sincerity. I saw this and all I saw was my reflection.

I knew then why I had come to this place.

I had come to find my True Self and my path required that I find this Truth by revealing to me my illusions.

I was no teacher. I was simply a student of truth.

That very day I bid the city farewell and I continued on my path.

As I left I felt a deep part of myself awaken – this was a part that had been asleep for many years. It had been asleep when I was a child and it had been asleep when I was a monk. It was the city that rung the bells to awaken this part again.

I had come here to find something that eluded me. That something had been an illusion, yet I needed to find that illusion so that I could overcome it. Now my True Self beckoned me onwards.

I was soon to meet a very unique teacher – one that would irrevocably change my understanding of Enlightenment.

Tashi