Welcome to my Blog

Name: Sophia

Likes to: Walk in Nature, explore life, meditate, read and drink tea :-)

Favourite Music: Andean, Classical, Celtic Woman, Enya and world music

Favourite Movie: Baraka

Favourite Book: Flight of Feathered Serpent

I'm someone who is interested in the spiritual aspect of life and would like to share what I have discovered with others. When I came across these things myself, I noticed I had so many set beliefs about the world and what is possible and what is not. Everything was challanged and I learned how naive I had been. It is interesting how much we take for granted as true without ever questioning what we think we know and further more how much we think we can't know but is actually possible to explore...

I think it is important to constantly try to find new and different perspectives of the world and of one's own life...

Experience the Astral

My first clear out of body experience happened one morning when I had got up really early to practice astral projection. I had been practicing the night before for two hours and wanted to give it an other go. I had set my morning alarm at five o´clock and I forced myself out of bed and did a walk around my room so I would wake up. I laid down on the bed again on my back and tried to concentrate on my astral exercise but I was too tired. I just kept falling asleep unconsciously and waking up again so I decided to give up and rolled over to my side. But as soon as I was on my side, I felt like a strong eletrical current going through my whole body. It started with my feet and travelled upwards to the head. Next thing that happened was that my feet started to swing sideways and the swing accelerated and until my feet and legs fell down on the ground next to the bed and the rest of my body fallowed. So there I was sitting on the floor outside my own physical body in a completely different dimension. I was so happy!!! I walked around in the apartment for a bit and everything looked normal. I glimpsed into my mom's bedroom and I saw her in her lying in her bed, but I did not go into her. Instead I went into the living room where I saw the sunshine coming in through the window and from there I took off in the air...



When I woke up later I went into the living room and the sunshine was coming in through the window exactly the way that I had seen it in the astral. I was so amazed!!! This event was so important because I had just proven from direct experience that we also exist in higher dimensions and there is so much more to this world to discover! You might wonder if I was afraid when the seperation was taking place with all those strange things happening. No, but I was prepared for it. I knew I did not have anything to be afraid of. I hope that you all also get amazing experiences and will be able to discover this other dimension for yourself instead of just taking my word for it.

How to induce an Out of Body Experience

Some people are born with this ability and do it effortlessly, but most people have to practice to acquire it as an ability. Some might succeed on the first go and others after a year. It took me a month before I had my first OBE. I practiced a lot though, because I was so keen to find out if it was possible. I went to bed at eight o'clock almost every night and practiced to ten, eleven, but it gave results. And before I had my first OBE, I had experiences like seeing through my eyelids (which was bit of a shock) and feeling my feet stretch and move up and down.

Relaxation

Lie down in a comfortable chair or on a bed, preferably on your back. If you lie on your side you might fall asleep too fast. Put your hands on your sides and start relaxing the body. Go from top to toe and relax each muscle and start over again (I find it helpful to use my breath). This is very important to get right, because if you don't relax properly you won't be able to project out of your body. Try to let go of any thought that might come up and stay concentrated on the relaxation. Relaxation is the base of most meditation practices and is quite essential.

Concentration on the heart beat

You can start concentrating on your heart beat, when you are fully relaxed. Take three deep breaths if you can't hear the beat. Concentration is also extremely important at this stage and throughout the whole practice. The better concentration we have, the more likely we are to project. Now you may experience strange sensations in the body but it's important that you don't get caught up in them, but keep concentrating on the heart beat.

You will split from your body if you manage to fall asleep while staying concentrated.

OBEs, as they are called in short, happen when the body is asleep or dead (known as near death experiences). We leave our body every night without being aware of it, because usually when we go to sleep we submerge within thoughts which become real to us in forms of dreams. Falling asleep this way, we are not aware of the process of sleep that occurs. But if we were to stay concentrated on one thing as we go to sleep and not let ourselves be taken away by thoughts, we would experience the different stages of sleep and hopefully reach the level that is needed for us to split from the body. It may sound a bit contradicting that we can be awake when the body sleeps, but it is possible. Fears

Common fears regarding this subject, may be "what if it is dangerous?" and "what if I can not get back to my body?" Well, we leave our body unconsciously every night and we wake up the next morning and nothing has happen to us. We always come back to our body. The difficult part is staying out.

What can we do there?

We can verify things for ourselves. We can travel anywhere we like at a super speed. We can fly, walk through walls and even find out the big questions in life; why are we here? what happens when we die? and are there angels or spiritual beings? There is so much to discover.

Gnosis

Gnosis is a type of knowledge, which cannot be acquired from reading books. What we read and hear from others is information. Knowledge must be directly experienced and so it is essentially not a belief system but practical spirituality. It is about gaining your own knowledge about yourself and spiritual matters by direct experience.There are different techniques taught to gain this kind of knowledge and also how we can develop to more truly spiritual people.
According to the gnostic teachings there is a hidden spiritual path which transforms man into an angel. This path is does not belong to a specific group or time. It's universal and timeless. You can find references to this path in most religions. Mankind seems to have been searching for this path to liberation throughout time and it is here today. There are so many things to discover and uncover, the mystery of life and death, our own psyche and what a wonderful thing it is to be alive! Do we know what true happiness and freedom is? We fight for these words all the time but do we really know? We are often so submerged in this modern world where everything is kept mundane, that we often do not take the time to think or ponder on these matters. We live our lives following the mainstream hoping it will one day bring us the everlasting happiness that we yearn for so much, but it never does. It's all an illusion. No matter how hard we fight for better circumstances (a nicer and bigger home, a good career, a new car etc), there will always be something that is causing us sufferings, troubles and worries. So why not try to fight for an internal change instead? Then the world can throw whatever on us and our happiness will still stay the same, because we are no longer victims of external circumstances.



I came across Gnosticism from reading a book by Paulo Coehlo (Veronica decides to die). In his book he explained about out of body experiences and this caught my interest straight away but I did not know what to believe - if it was fiction or if leaving the body was actually possible. I made an internet research on the topic and found many good techniques on a Gnostic website. I don't want to refer anybody to a specific group, find one that is most suitable for you.
However be aware and take this advice. If there is anybody who claims to have reached mastery, do not just believe them - no matter how wise they may seem and sound. It is too dangerous! Just use the tools you are given and pursue your own inner guidance rather than fallowing somebody's elses. Remember to always keep an open mind about things you may or may not believe otherwise you can eaisly be deceived.

Natural Awareness

Awareness is a very useful tool for well being. It activates the consciousness within us and it is a different way of being. To be aware is to be conscious of all your five senses and not letting any thought or emotion take you away. We spend most our time submerged within our mind and feelings. Almost everything we do in life we do it without being focused on it. We tend to think about other things, except when learning a new skill, studying or trying to solve a problem of some sort. We eat, get dressed, brush our teeth, walk, sit on the bus, drive our car, work and so on, thinking of something else completely unrelated. Living like this we become very scattered, our life becomes scattered with a lot of chaos. It is shocking how little time we actually spend in being in the present moment. Why do we not want to be where our life is taking place? We could be sitting in a beautiful park or walking through a rainforest and be completely caught up in our minds and not noticing the beauty and the peace of the plants, the trees and the birds or smelling the different aromas. What worth does the beauty of the external world have to us then? No wonder we are exploiting the earth's resources, polluting the air and the seas, because there is a lack of care within all of us.



However we can change if we only wish to. To become aware you start to observe everything around you and inside of you, you become aware of how your body feels, how your clothes feel on your body, what you can hear, smell, taste and see. Often when we look at things we don't really pay attention to what we are actually looking at and so try to look at things in detail. If any thought or emotion comes up you just let them go. Trying to stop ourselves from thinking is not an easy thing to do, because sometimes we feel compelled to think or we have an emotion that just won't leave. What can help is to relax your body as much as possible and just watch what is happening within you as though you are separate from it, because you are, and try then to clear yourself. It is important that you don't go along with the thoughts and emotions because then you will only make them stronger. Every emotion and thought have some sort of a pleasure to it, even unpleasant ones like anger and jealousy in a weird sort of way. They are all ego centered and that is why they are called ”egos” or ”Is” in gnosis. When we go along feeding those pleasures of the egos, we will end up feeling the opposite eventually, which is negativity, depression and sadness. No one likes to be in those states and that is why we go looking to feed even more pleasure. This is how we easily can get stuck in a vicious psychological circle, and people end up committing suicide because there seems to be no way out of the misery, but it is only an illusion of the ego.



The forces of nature work like a clock pendulum – at one end you have pleasure and at the other pain, at one end you have birth and and at the other death, growth and decay fallow the same law and also civilizations and many other things. Nothing can keep on growing forever. The pendulum will swing back to the opposite side sooner or later. However, we are not in the swing of the pendulum psychologically when we are in awareness. We are just in centered in the middle and that is the beginning to experience happiness, peace and love, which are qualities of the conciousness. When we are aware we feed the consciousness, the true us, instead of the subconcious. The essence also have latent psychic faculities such as clairvoyance, clairaudiance, intuition, telepathy and memories of past lives. It is possible to tune into these faculties if the consciousness is developed, and everyone has the ability to do it. In every moment we can make that decision whether we want to feed the light inside of us or the darkness.



Our scattered mind has also a direct impact on our dreams. When we spend our time during the day daydreaming and not being aware of where we are and what we are doing, at night those thoughts will be become images and real to us. They are however only projections of our subconscious. We could investigate a whole different dimension when our physical body is asleep and travel to distant places of the universe and get spiritual teachings, if only we would learn to be more alert and focused. We need however to start somewhere and the starting point to awareness is here and now.

Powerful connections

In the last years I have met a few people who have experienced at least one strong connection with an other person, which was of a spiritual kind. I would like to share my story.

I was in my early teens when I met this one person who completely turned my life upside down and who made a great impression on me from first day I met them. I perceived this person to have some sort of light around them and when they looked into your eyes, they did not look at you but right into your soul and it was extremely intense. I was completely dazzled by this person and I did not understand what was going on with me.

At age of fifteen I had a strong premonition in a dream about this person. The dream was crystal clear as everyday life and I could remember almost every detail. I had the same dream three nights in a row. I was shocked when I woke up and I did not want to believe what I had been shown. I could tell that it wasn't a normal dream because usually my dreams ware very hazy. I was even more shocked, when it all started to come true. This was also my first spiritual experience and I had no understanding of what was happening. I was sure that I didn't have any psychic faculties because it had never happened before, so I thought it must be under this person's influence. Around the same time I had other smaller experiences too that I could not explain. Once when I was in the city in a rather messy clothing store, I saw this piece of clothing that stood out to me from everything else. I just felt very attracted to it even though it wasn't anything that I would be able to wear. Guess what this person was wearing a week later? I was stunned over and over again. Every psychic experience I had around that time involved that person. I never told them anything. Actually, I left a lot unsaid to this person, which was a terrible thing to do. I thought at the time that no words could ever fix or heal the situation, but I have never been more wrong. Anyway, it will always remain a mystery to me whether they had felt the connection too. However, I don't think they did.

A few days ago I had a quite interesting conversation with a man that I had met once before. We started talking about spiritual things and he asked me what my first spiritual experience was and I told him briefly about my premonition without going into much detail. He then asked me if the person in my dream was spiritual too? My first reply was ”I don't know” but then I remembered that this person once told me and some other people that they had a clairovoyant grandmother. I also remembered them speaking about seeing a place in a dream once, which they later visited in the physical. He then told me that spiritual people are often attracted to each other (not in a sexual sense) and sometimes the connection can be very intense. He also said to me; it is interesting that it happend to you at that stage in your life, because when we go through our teens that is when we discover who we are.

Thoughts & Insights

Psychological slave

I am slave to my thoughts, to my feelings, to my own and others volitions and behaviour. I am an automatic program, a sheep, a prisioner, a sleepwalker in my own mind. So I pray for strength to overcome the evil within me. I pray my psychological song will to stop hear and now. Please give me a stick to put in the wheel! I pray for mercy for my wickedness. I pray that I will make eyes to see and ears to hear. I pray for uneasiness and a stronger desire to know myself, my neighbour, the universe and the Gods, and I pray that love, joy and peace will rule over me.

Knowing How to Listen

When you get the sense that something is wrong. That is all that is needed. You then don't need to weigh it up if it is wrong or not. The mind likes to come up with excuses and reasons to make it right, but it is only putting you in a trap. And you will then suffer the consequenses of that action. Listning to your being, your consciousness, can sometimes be like taking orders from a child. As long as one belives that one knows better, one will not learn how to listen nor how to be obedient and humble.


Worry

It is hard to believe that worry is completely unecessary, but it definitely is. We are more likely to cause more harm to the situation by giving into worry, but we think we are doing good. We need to learn to not be taken away with this state, to be patient and wait for the solution to come to us rather than we trying to patch one up. This has been proven to me over and over again and I still haven't learned.

Self-rememberance

If you want to change, change now and not tomorrow. Only what is in the moment is real and true and everything else, future, past, is an illusion.

So, if you don't make the effort to remember yourself today, nor will you make it tomorrow. It can be very hard to retreat from our daily dreamstate we find ourselves in most moments, but it is possible to wake up!

The source of suffering

It is only in our own reaction that causes us misery and unhappiness, not the event itself.

Service

Every moment spent in a daydream or a thought is devouted to selfishness, because their main concern is one self. But the time spent in the here and now in infinte inner silence is devouted to God, the inner Being. Now who are we serving?

Judas

The Flight of the Feathered Serpent, written by Armando Cosani, is an extraordinary book that reveals the purpose of the act of Judas long before the gospel of Judas was discovered. It was first published in Spanish as "El Vuelo de la Serpiente Emplumada" 1953. It is not your every day novel and the reason I have chosen to write about it is to let other people discover its depth in spiritual matters.

It is divided into different parts and in the first part A. Cosani tells his story to portray his friend, who asked him to publish these writings. The other two parts are written by his friend, who actually appears to be Judas himself.

In traditional christianity it is believed that Judas betrayed his master. However this does not seem to be true at all. Jesus knew what Judas had to do and and asked him to do it in Gospel of Judas just like in The Flight of Feathered Serpent:

"But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man who bears me."
From: Gospel of Judas, Jesus speaks of the Baptized, and of Judas's Act of Turning Him In (55,21-57,20)


In the Gospel of Judas it is not quite explained why Judas must turn Jesus in, however this is elaborated more in The Flight of the Feathered Serpent.

From my lips emerged a reflection of light which was there and I answered: "Blessed be you my Rabbi, Son of God, for you are the yes, there, where I will be the no f or man. Here I see you like the light that dispels darkness, and I will be your reflection in that very darkness so that man know which path to follow, which to avoid, in the soul by the light of your love, from the flames of fire, my jealousy sprouts."
My Rabbi looked at me and said to me: "In virtue of your jealousy many will understand that I am the path, the Truth and Life, and will not reject me."
Again his grace illumenated my understanding and I added: "But I am the desert, illusion and the death, and many will come to me."

From: Flight of the Feathered Serpent, Third Book, Chapter 9

I cannot possibly give this book justice by just writing about it, only by showing. This is a quote from A. Cosani's friend, talking about the immortality of the soul, from the first book. I have chosen this text to give an understanding about the coming text that I am going to to put up, describing the diagram below.

"You are blinded by your own ideas, and as long as you stay in that condition you cannot understand anything. Observe a fact: if the soul was something that we naturally have secured, religious writings wouldn't insist so much that we need to make an effort to save it. There wouldn't be a need for philosophy or religion. We would know it naturally and no one would fear death as they do. Listen to me: we form the soul in this life based on what animates us. If the motives, ideas and ambitions of our life are transitory, they are things of the immediate moment then our soul will also be transitory, impermanent, subject to what we want."

The Feathered Serpent must fly. When you know what the flight of feathered Serpent is, you will know what to do. Until then... make it clear that the Message of the Immortals vibrates throughout the centuries.

WAKE UP! KNOW YOURSELF!

The mysterious impulse which focuses your attention upon these scriptures is nothing but the echo of the cry which has awakened the immortal essence of your own blood. And by evoking the glorious forces of Life, simultaneously you have evoked the sinister forces of Death.

The former and the latter are yourself, so do not fear.

Confront them, know them, subdue them.

Your destiny is to be Master of both.

And even though you often believe that you have lost The Path which takes you to the awakening, you will never be alone. And your losing the way is nothing but a testing ground with which you alert intelligence attempts shy steps along all tracks, shaking off the lethargy of everything that is mortal.

It is necassary that you obtain experience.

Never ask anybody "What do I have to do?" because that is the most fatal question of all. If you ask a fool, one who is asleep, you will be inviting him to drag you into a dream and with it you will fall into double foolishness and it will twice as difficult to wake up again. And if you ask a wise one, an awakened one, you will perceive how useless it is, because an awakened one will always answer:

"Do what you feel is best. If you put your heart in it, always acting in a state of alertness, you will gain a great experience."

In the end you will make out of Solitude and Silence your most precious companions, immersing with them into the depths of yourself. You will gradually be astounded at all the horror of your Dream, which is your human slavery. And, by the same token, your strength to fight back for your freedom will increase.

Not everyone chooses this path which takes you to the very heart of things.

If you have evoked your friends, you have also put your worst enemy on guard. The one and the other will appear within you and outside of you, and infront of you, in a thousand different forms, and you will often confuse them during your first steps. Your friends will not always be the most charming or pleasant because they will deprive you from everything you regard as stable. Then your jealous enemies, smirking, will display in front of your inner vision thousands of possibilities to elevate you to your actual condition. If you give in and bite the poisned fruit which they offer, you will become tied up with triple chain of illusion and of sleep that always takes over those who are naive and do not know the value of experience and opposition.

Soon, however, you will know your friends in the infinite silence that you will throw yourself into, longing and thirsting for words of truth. It will be then that you will feel that "something" flowing, rough or smooth, depending on the circumstances, and the mere fact of feeling it will show you that you are on The Path to the complete awakening.

Because the word, that "something", is you yourself, the Master, the Creator.

***

Study this drawing attentively. With it you will learn to use all your faculties to awaken.

Each link in the Chain of the Immortals contributes one grain more in order to alleviate the load of the one who is coming behind, but each soul who adventures in this single task is an original experiment of Life in order to make of this planet Earth a World of Devine Vigilance as well.

Each man who aspires to this vigilance must make his own track and walk alone, attentive solely on the step of instance, without being preoccupied neither with triumpth nor defeat, nor uneasy about this earthly end.

This is to live in the Eternal Now.

Otherwise the experience of Man upon Planet Earth would be worthless.

***

The Path starts in the physical body with the five senses.

To awaken is to use them, and not confuse them with you.

Until now you have thought that the five senses inform you about the external world. This is not the case. There is no such external world, nor any internal world. Those are illusory concepts that cannot penetrate any further than forms. But what is real is that you are not a form, and that being Life, you are everything that there IS.

Observe that bow and arrows do not point in one sole direction, but upon two simultaneously. To understand and live this simultaneous way, soon you will realise that you are not a body, but that which live in your body, that which animates your body, and, lacking any better expression, I will call it you Devine Being, the Hidden one.

***

Watch with your five senses, attributes of the ego form, it is not given to you to penetrate further than the surface of froms. When you are conscious that it is your Devine Being who uses your five senses, it will be given to you to penetrate into the meaning, the essence, the spirit of all things, that are also the Devine Being.

Latent in the Brain, impregnated in the brain, is that which is called the Mind - that with which you can perceive what your five senses capture and Who captures it for them. Going deeper, I have drawn the heart at the centre of your whole life. From this center, extending to the Mind, will arise your individual Being, the essence of your soul, longing for life in the spirit and to worship truly.

Observe that Thought and Feeling connect also your personal Being with your individual Being and I have placed them in the middle of the illuminated half of the Vital Circle, the Awakened Consciousness, because they can be the light which reflects the truth of yourself in the darkness of your personality.

And because they are the senses of the true vigilance, they are the ones which, uniting with what is called the Holy Spirit, establish a vigilant contact with the Devine Being within you, and the Divine Being outsife of you, on God but the Father God, with whom you can share communion, helped by Christ, the Lord.

***

If in your heart an intense uneasiness does not burn to the point of embracing you to the consummation of your body, you cannot invoke neither God nor the Holy Spirit. And you do not know how to ask, and that is why your heart has not yet reached you.

***

"Watch and pray" was the heritage left by Christ for the courageous.

Watch is to do everything awakened; pray is a feeling of aradent yearning to be one with the Being.

However, he who prays and watches, even though they do it in an imperfect way, will receive generous help and he will learn to receive generously as well...

The help is in the Here and it is Now.

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