The first relationship you must master is the relationship with yourself. -Paul Lenda

All too often, people look for happiness outside themselves. They search for someone or something to fill the void they feel they have within their being. Some fill it with money and physical possessions. Others fill it with friends and lovers. What such individuals should realize is that the place they should look in order to feel a sense of purpose and hope in life is within themselves. Being one’s own best friend and knowing everything and anything about oneself is pertinent to a successful and healthy future for oneself.

Acknowledging and facing any fears, inhibitions, dispositions, and ego-centric thoughts that one may have, he or she will be able to fully understand the mechanisms behind such forces and realize their effect on themself. There may be some hesitation or fear at first, and this is perhaps why many people do not form a healthy relationship with their own selves. This fear has to be melted away because if not, very little success can be achieved in a person’s goals of self-actualization and Self-realization. A realization of one’s true self can be made. That Self is the semi-hidden ‘I’ that exists as the reality that the ego pretends it is.

Once a relationship is mastered with one’s own self, then strong and healthy relationships with others are able to be made in a healthy manner and an understanding position of awareness. Without such mastery, relationships can crumble just as fast as they were built. As the hermetic adage goes, “Man, know thyself.”

The above was an excerpt from the book The Creation of a Consciousness Shift by Paul Lenda

Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, the authors of Tangible Kingdom, have poured their heart into ministry for many years.  They have experienced the highs and the lows that come from real ministry. Some authors started a church straight out of seminary and became a huge success story and wrote books for everyone to learn how to be like them. This is not one of those books, and for that I am glad.

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6 ESV). Job laments that “The tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure, who bring their god in their hand” (Job 12:6). Malachi also struggled with this lamenting that “we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape” (Malachi 3:15). Jonah was disobedient and saw a massive revival under his preaching, while poor faithful Jeremiah was told ” So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you” (Jeremiah 7:27 ESV).

The failure stories in Tangible Kingdom are a breath of fresh air to the vast majority of pastors whose heart identifies with Jeremiah’s plight. While the authors have experiences real failure, they did not become completely jaded and abandon the church as so many have. They saw many things that could be improved, and they have once again poured themselves into the church, into ministry. They confess as much on p xx saying, “our heart is for the church, both existing and emerging.”

Early on they tip their hand to emergent leaning.  It is hard to know just what “emerging” means from one person to another, all you can do read and learn. It’s not long before some of root reasons for the emerging church surface. “We’re not measuring success by huge leaps in attendance or a shiny new building. . . . Our goal isn’t to attract Christian people to our way of worship service but to be the faithful church in small pockets throughout our city.” I readily identify with these sentiments.

Some music has the intention of stirring up higher emotional states in us on a purely sensational level (being appealing to the basic senses). Other music however, wants to stimulate our minds and higher states of awareness within this existential Reality where we are being and becoming. Loop Guru chooses to do the latter. The worldbeat music artists that make up Loop Guru have an incredible way of telling a story that is so deep, so vast, and so intricately beautiful in the form of musical harmonies. It is both fascinating and hypnotizing.

When listening to The Third Chamber close your eyes, turn off the lights, and prepare to be taken on a journey into a reality where the term organic reality takes on a full sense of actuality. Personally, when I hear this incredible musical masterpiece, I am reminded of The Wingmakers and specifically The Third Chamber that is one of several chambers from which incredibly philosophical and spiritual guidance and wisdom comes from that is shrouded in incredible mystery and wonderment that is something worth exploring.

Let yourself be taken where the music leads you to and through. Stream into your consciousness the tranquility, serenity, and peace that wishes to flow inwards, filling you with a mystical wisdom encoded within musical harmonies. To quote the Third Chamber transmissions directly, “Throughout the cosmos there is life — the expression of First Source in individuated form. These are the divine fragments that are always in the process of separating to experience individual expression of self, and congealing to experience universal expression of First Source. We are born from the very womb of the cosmos, and it is here that all will return in time. It matters not when or how. It only matters why. “

You are what you’ve been looking for. The answer is always in you alone. There is nothing in the external world. For the external world is an emanation of your own mind, your own thinking and your own imagination. You created this world.

Robert Adams

My wife and I home-school our children. Michelle does all of the heavy lifting of course, but I played the leading role in choosing the philosophy of education and consequently the curriculum we would go with. I make no claim of expertise, but having thought through a few things on my own, I thought I’d share some about my philosophy of education for whoever may benefit from or improve upon my thoughts.

There is quite a lot I have thought through in terms of learning styles and various models (Charlotte Mason, Mastery, Classical, etc), but I want to focus my attention elsewhere in this post. One of the main criticisms from the public of home-schooling is that the kids will be socially backwards. For the most part I think this criticisms miss the mark. If socialism is the ability to interact on various levels with relative ease, then locking a 7 year old in a room with 30 other 7 year olds is hardly going to promote good social skills. This aside, I think that the kids will be as adjusted as their parents care to make them. Certainly there are parents who completely shelter their children and therefore their kids may not know very well how to engage strangers. But when I was home-schooled, my parents had me involved in boy scouts, 4-H, home-school co-ops, etc. I got plenty of interaction. In fact I was a very shy and introverted kid until after the time I was home-schooled. I don’t know if home-school remedied my poor social skills, but there was an interesting correlation.

Related to the question of socialism is how the parents attend the education of their kids more properly speaking. Again, there are many people who home school just because they don’t want their kids to learn about evolution and homosexuality and other such ‘forbidden” subjects. These people tend to shelter their kids intellectually just as others may shelter them socially. That is not why my wife and I decided to homeschool. We did it because we thought we could provide a superior education that way.

I don’t want to shelter my children from the world, I want to equip them for it. I can do my best to provide for them a solid creation based science education and never expose them to that evil Darwin, but I think I would be doing them a dis-service that way. Once they leave the house and maybe go to college, they will come face to face with some intelligent, articulate, winsome atheistic evolutionist (among many other philosophies and worldviews). If they have never been exposed, it may rock their world. They may have been told that evolutionists are the most incompetent numb-skulls on the planet, but when they meet an intelligent one it could rock their world. I don’t want to shelter my kids I want to equip them.

I want my kids to know evolution better than most public schooled kids. I want them reading the best of what the world has to offer. I want them to read Hume, and Freud, and Nietzsche, and Darwin. I want them reading these classics (and more) and I want them reading their modern stalwarts and popularizers. . . but I want them to do it under my watch. I want to interact on all of that material. I don’t want my kids to see a caricature. I want them to see the best that the world has to offer and why I think the Christian worldview is superior. I want them to see God’s common grace working in unbelievers. They need to recognize the insights that God has given to unbelieving mathematicians, artists, scientists, etc. I also want them to see where they err. I want them to benefit from the meat and spit out the bones. I believe in a liberal education. See here (sorry for the goofy formatting, just scroll down and squint.) http://gracemccook.org/blog/?p=270

I take a similar approach in my philosophy of education in the church. I want my people reading good books. I recommend them. I plug them. I review them. I make them available. But I also know that my people do not live in the church. They will go into the world. They will see other books (and may even read them). Friends, family, co-workers, or peers in general may give them books to read. I know that they will be exposed to less than desirable books outside of the church gathered, so I want to equip them. I want to teach them good theology and solid thoughts. But just like at home, I don’t want to merely teach them what to think, I want to teach them how to think. We need to be able to read a book charitably and benefit from the meat. We also need to be able to read critically and spit out the bones. The books that are a “mixed bag” are ones I want us to work through as a group so people can see how to spot the good and the bad.

I’m sure there are better methods and things I may have missed, but that is part of the beauty of community (even an electronic one like this). As iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. I’d be interested in hearing from you. Soli Deo Gloria!

Out in the beautiful landscapes of California there is a festival that brings together positive intention and musical revelry in a harmonic balance and calls it Lightning in a Bottle. Many who are attracted to conscious evolution, meditation, yoga, EDM, and harmonic living are attracted to this amazing life-changing festival. LIB has so much to offer in so many different ways and keeping with the theme of Peace and Loveism we’re going to look at what it has to offer in spiritual living and social transformation.

Lightning in a Bottle is a celebration of Art, Music, Performance, Sustainability, and Life. It takes place annually on May 24th-28th at the Oak Canyon Ranch in Silverado, CA. It is produced by The Do LaB who specialize in interactive environments, event production and creative lighting design. These elements collectively shape The Do LaB’s mission: creating experience as an art form while bringing communities together. Taking an organic approach to designs, The Do LaB brings imaginative visions to life with natural materials, recycled objects and sustainable resources. When producing events and festivals or building an installation for an international tour, The Do LaB is committed to the highest levels of art, production and aesthetics. Its work has been showcased at Coachella, Virgin Music Festival, Global Gathering, Boom and many more. For more information about The Do LaB, visit them here, or follow The Do LaB on Facebook and Twitter.

The 7^th annual Lightning in a Bottle International Music and Arts Festival presents the lineup for Lucent Temple of Consciousness, a sanctuary for all participants to enrich the soul and inspire the spirit. The 2012 schedule inside the Lucent Temple, built out of recycled and found objects by Brent ‘Shrine’ Spears, will include over 300 different experiences in yoga, workshops, speakers and exotic world music. The temple will be a sanctuary for all participants to energize and balance the mind and body through spirituality, meditation, yoga and the art of natural healing.

The Lucent Temple of Consciousness workshops will teach a variety of sustainability practices and life skills for participants to bring home and share with their community.

Urban permaculture workshops will teach participants how to create an ecological, sustainable garden and human settlement.

Grow your own spirulina, microalgae that are taken as a supplement or whole food.

Workshops about herbal tonics will show how they can help restore, tone and invigorate the body and promote health and well-being.

Amazon Myco-Renewal Project builds partnerships with local people to remediate their lands using mycelium while growing edible and medicinal mushrooms for consumption and income generation.

For more than 30 more workshops with fun and educational activities, visit http://lightninginabottle.org/workshops

Inspiring speakers will share their stories and guidance throughout the four-day weekend event. These include:

Reverend Michael Beckwith is a humanitarian, co-founder of the Association for Global Thought, an organization dedicated to planetary healing and transformation, and founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center. He’s the author of Inspirations of the Heart, Forty Day Mind Fast Soul Feast, and A Manifesto of Peace. He has participated on international panels with Dr. T. Ariyarante of Sri Lanka and Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas K. Gandhi. He is the originator of the Life Visioning Process and facilitates retreats, workshops and seminars around the world.

Barbara Marx Hubbard is the author of Becoming a Universal Species, a visionary, social innovator, evolutionary thinker and educator, producer, narrator, co-producer and co-founder and chairperson of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution.

Mirabai Devi is a spiritual teacher and healer who has led numerous humanitarian projects in Africa.

Also More than 30 more world renowned teachers, adventures, and givers of enlightening information will participate. See http://lightninginabottle.org/speakers for a full lineup.

There’s also plenty of invigorating yoga classes that will help you create balance and harmony to an awakened spirit.

Los Angeles-based Micheline Berry is the founder of Liquid Asana vinyasa yoga, founder of Zen Dancing^® and creative director and co-founder of Red Musette and Shaman’s Dream.

Ashley Turner’s vinyasa yoga integrates wisdom from the roots of Yoga Psychology. She co-wrote Aroma Yoga®: A Guide to Using Essential Oils in Your Practice and Your Life with Tracy Griffiths and is an adjunct faculty member at Kripalu and Loyola Marymount University’s Yoga Philosophy program.

Mark Whitwell’s yoga is based on the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya and his son TKV Desikachar. He is the editor and contributor to TKV Desikachar’s book The Heart of Yoga and author of Yoga of Heart: The Healing Power of Intimate Connection and Hridayasutra.

Jo Tastula teaches vinyasa flow style who specializes in seasonal sequencing and breath work. She integrates her own inspirational connection to spirit and the creative sacred forces of the divine feminine.

Anusara teacher Tony Guiliano and soulful singer and prana teacher Steve Gold will bring love, light and inner peace.

For more than 20 more yoga and movement classes in a variety of styles and difficulty levels, visit http://lightninginabottle.org/yoga for a full lineup.

World Temple Music will be performed between classes and speakers, encompassing indigenous sounds from cultures around the world. For a complete Temple music lineup, visit http://lightninginabottle.org/temple-music/. For a complete list of speakers, yogis, workshops and world music artists, visit http://lightninginabottle.org/mind-body/.

For more information about Lightning in a Bottle and the music lineup, visit http://lightninginabottle.org. To view the official 2011 Lightning in a Bottle video, visit http://vimeo.com/34799577. Tickets are available at http://lightninginabottle.org/buy-tickets.

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.

Swami Vivekananda

In order to be able to find solutions to some of the present day’s most difficult problems and crises, there has to be a positive shift in consciousness within the human race. Our collective consciousness must make the transition from being egodominated and boundary-enforcing to selfless-natured and empathy-oriented. Although there is significant progress being made by humanity, there is still much room for positive transformation and improvement. One can see that the self-centered egoistic mode of existence and operation is still programmed and operating within many people. The results of this egoistic consciousness position can be seen everywhere from the declarations of war to the disharmonious attitude towards the environment.

Thanks to the present and continuous evolution of consciousness, this old autonomous ego-centered mentality is losing its power and giving way to the interconnected transpersonal mindset. It is as if people are realizing that the old way of doing things simply is not working. There seems to be a search and intense yearning for the discovery of something different and of something brighter. Many refreshing positions of awareness are being experienced by people all over the world, young and old, male and female.

There is a move towards seeking to live in harmony with nature, as was once the case, and not to treat the natural world as an enemy or something to be exploited. There is a shift to an integrated, holistic, interconnected, and transpersonal way of living, and away from the individualistic mentality that stems from a belief in separateness. There is transformation from the self-centered and ego-dominant individual to the selfless and unity-oriented being. There is a shift from the competition-based mode of operating in society to the cooperative-minded means of operation. All these shifts are occurring right now and will continue to occur if consciousness continues down its current path of positive progression into the higher echelons of beingness.

Humanity is at a defining point in its history and it has the choice to shift its collective consciousness away from the egocentric ways of old towards the unifying and selfless ways of the possible future. If such a definitive shift does not occur, we may not be able to reverse the presently occurring problems within the environment, global economies, and world cultures. If humanity chooses to collectively come together to work cooperatively so that these problems are averted and rectified, the future will indeed be a bright one. There is not much time left to make the choice that will define whether we survive and thrive, or degrade and disappear.

The choice is a serious one, but a lighthearted approach can be taken towards it. Staying positive overall is the main aspect of this shift that should be remembered. With an overall positive outlook on life and reality, this positivity will be magnified and radiated throughout the collective transpersonal consciousness of humanity in a butterfly effect of epic proportions. This shift is for the benefit not only of the individual localized field of consciousness of each person on the planet, but of the collective and unified whole of humanity.

It is worth mentioning that our overall level of consciousness, as experienced on a day-to-day basis, is a significant factor in how we perceive reality. A person whose overall consciousness state is that of anger may view the world as a terrible and dangerous place and the people in it as deceptive and malicious, whereas someone who experiences the consciousness state of love on a daily basis may see the world and all that it encompasses as being beautiful, caring, and good.

Whatever the objective reality may be, each person focusses on certain aspects of reality and chooses to interpret experiences, occurrences, and data as defined by his or her own position of awareness. The higher the level of consciousness a person experiences, the more positive everything within one’s awareness becomes. Through this positivity, positive change can occur in the world, thanks to the elevated level of consciousness now being experienced.

There may be a perception by some that in order to have a massive consciousness shift to the point where a person becomes
Self-realized, there has to be a great deal of knowledge and information concerning concepts and ideas of higher levels of reality.
Fortunately, this is not the case and attaining higher states of consciousness permanently involves only a few basic things that a person has to do. These include the open-minded awareness of infinite possibilities, the kind treatment of oneself and others,
and the expression and experiencing of love, happiness, compassion, will, determination, and peace.

With this mental framework in place, the doors to Self-realization and even the enlightenment experience are able to be opened. If one were to read and study for hours on end each and every day, one may begin to feel a sense of pride that one knows something or understands more than someone else, and in doing so, the ego would emerge to become a dominant force within that person’s life. This is not to say that learning various subjects and matters is detrimental or something not to be done, but rather, this is stated to illustrate how knowledge does not bring about a consciousness shift; embodying the qualities of love and empathy do.

As consciousness shifts into higher and higher states, the world and the reality around us become viewed in more macroscopic terms, where the specifics simply do not matter as much as the over-arching central aspects. It is as if a person is taking away all the various components of reality and reaching into the core mechanisms that operate within it. This is the natural direction of shifts into higher states of consciousness, since specifics are seen as muddling reality and usually just creating more strife and opposition amongst people.

Concepts, ideas and thought forms that are universally understood to be real are focussed on within one’s awareness. If we are
confronted with an aspect of reality that is of a specific nature, such as the verbal legitimacy of a certain political official, it does
not even come into one’s mind to attempt to confront the other person concerning such a relatively trivial matter. A consciousness shift begins when you allow for the possibility of such an occurrence. The will and determination has to exist before such an achievement takes place. It is my hope that you will be able to expedite your own personal consciousness shift so that not only will you benefit from it, but so will the collective consciousness of the human race.

Experience the shift from fear to love. Experience the shift from anxiety to serenity. Experience these shifts and others like them, and become convinced that such a change on a global level is indeed possible.

This is an excerpt from The Creation of a Consciousness Shift by self-realization coach & author Paul Lenda out now and available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers.

This track may sound much more like what you probably expect to hear when someone says “meditation music” and yes, it’s probably created with a greater thought of it being used as part of a meditation than some of the other music we’ve written about on here, so we decided to focus on what this kind of meditation music can invoke within someone and how it can enrich your life and experience of existence.

True to its name, Yantra acts as if it was an audio version of visual yantra, an incredible image made out of shapes and patterns that looks like a more sacred geometric version of a mandala.The pulsating vibrations of low frequency sounds from a singing bowl permeate within the atmosphere around you. Meditating while Yantra is in the background is as if you were in a meditation and wellness center yourself with these being done by Buddhist monks. A meditation with this as a supplement will be able to take you incredibly deep, out into the infinite unknowing, as I call it in my book The Creation of a Consciousness Shift. Experience what it means to have pure awareness, or being aware of you being aware of being aware, in an ever-expanding field of awareness. This can be very powerful if listened to on repeat during a very long meditation.

The American Captivity of the Church

This is tagged as a book review, but really it is just a collection of quotes that I found particularly striking.

The focus still seems to be on us and our activity rather than on God and his work in Jesus Christ. In all these approaches there is the tendency to make God the supporting character in our own life movie rather than to be written as new characters in God’s drama of redemption. Assimilating the disruptive, surprising and disorienting power of the gospel to the felt needs, moral cries, and socio-economic headlise of our passing age we end up saying so little that the world would not hear from Dr. Laura, Dr. Phil and Oprah.18

“Lacking the confidence in our story to effect that of which it speaks, to evoke a new people out of nothing, our communication looses its nerve. Nothing is said that could not be heard elsewhere. . . In conservative contexts, gospel speach is traded for dogmatic assertion and moralism, for self-help psychologies and narcotic mantra. In more liberal speech, talk tiptoes around the outrage of Christian discourse and ends up as an innocuous, though urbane affirmation of the ruling order. Unable to preach Christ and him crucified we preach humanity and it improved. – William Willamon (p25)

Reacting against a legalistic and self-righteous tendency in their childhood, many Americans have abandoned the church altogether. Those who return often do so on their own terms. The message must be light and affirming; the form in which it is presented must be entertaining and inspirational. They are ready for something useful and helpful but not something jarring and disturbing. – 34

Growing churches and growing business follows the same standard procedures of pragmatic efficiency. Not only evangelism, but the Christian life can be accommodated to  modern secularization and routinization. There are standard procedures that work whether producing conversions and moral improvement or producing the greatest number of widgets for the least amount of expenditure. Of course no one has to explicitly deny any article of the Christian creed in order to shift the focus from the public truth content of Christianity to the subjective pragmatic and therapeutic categories of how to religion. Christ may still be called Savior but we really save ourselves by following the steps of the new birth and victorious living. 54

Similarly today, the preaching of the law in all of its gripping judgment and the preaching of the  gospel in all of its surprising sweetness merge into a confused message of gentle exhortation to a more fulfilling life. Consequently we neither know how to mourn nor how to throw a real party. – 63

When pastors are expected to be coaches sending in the plays and their parisoners are expected to be all-stars to take Jesus’ team to victory in the culture wars, the focus must necessarily fall on what we do rather than on what God has done, on our stories and strategies rather than God’s. – 106

Find me on my best day, especially if you have access to my hidden thoughts and motives and attitudes – and I will always provide fodder for the hypocrisy charge and will let down those who would become Christians because they think that I and my fellow Christians are the gospel. – 117

After a month of Sundays with exhortation without Good News, one might ask, “But what about the part of God persevering in spite of human sin and over coming it for us at the cross?”"Well of course, but everybody here already believes that. Now we just need to get on with living it out.” – 120

Our default setting is law rather than gospel, imperatives (things to do or feel) rather than indicatives (things to believe). It is the law, not the gospel that is a “Well of course but…” – 131

This means that the church is not a club for those with similar cultural tastes, political views, ethnic backgrounds, and moral leanings. They do not meet because they share a hobby called spirituality or because they have the same vision for transforming culture. . . Unlike voluntary associations (book clubs, political parties, or fans of the opera or garage bands), the church is not made up of people I choose to be my friends. -