Leadership Swami

By George Albert

 The “Tao” is too terrible to be described by the name “Tao”.

If it could be named so straightforwardly, it would not be the eternal Tao.

Heaven and Earth began from the unknown (Tao),

but the multitudes of things around us were created by names.

We craving to know the world by giving names to the things we see,

but these things are only the effects of something subtle.

as we catch sight of beyond the need to use names,

we can sense the mysterious cause of these effects.

The cause and the effects are aspects of the same, one thing.

They are both mysterious and insightful.

At their most mysterious and profound point lies the “Gate of the Great Truth”.

2 -Making things ugly

as people witness beauty, they think, “that’s beautiful”.

Thinking of something as beautiful makes you think other things are revolting.

Calling something “good” forces you to call certain other things “evil.”

The thoughts “tough” and “uncomplicated” support every other.

“Extensive” and “petite” define each other.

“High” creates “low”

“Tone” creates “noise”

“Before” creates “after”

“Have” creates “don’t have”

This is why the Clever acts without effort and teaches without words.

New things are created and the Sage barely accepts them.

Things fade away and the Sage accepts that also.

A Sage can have things without feeling they “own” them.

The Sage does things without putting an emotional stake into the outcome.

The task is accomplished, but the Sage doesn’t seek credit or take pride in the achievement.

Because the Sage is not attached to the achievement, the accomplishment lasts everlastingly.

3 - Making thieves

when you praise precious people, you make other people envious and quarrelsome.

as you value rare things highly, you turn honest people into thieves.

If you show people exciting things, you will make them desirous and greedy.

The wise rule by keeping the peoples’ hearts empty (of aspiration) and their bellies jam-packed.

Making their bones strong and their ambitions pathetic.

Since the people are free of materialism and craving,

even the most cunning grifter has no opportunity to corrupt them.

By using the “act without action” principle,

everything barely falls into place.

4 - Dull the sharp edges

The Tao is so empty,

So hollow.

Yet somehow its usefulness is inexhaustible

It is so very deep

So very profound.

Similar to the source of all.

It blunts the sharpest edges

Unties the knots

Softens the glare

It is so very deep

So tranquil

It seems to immediately exist at all.

Its origin is anonymous

It preceded the Gods themselves.

5 - Talk is tiring

Heaven and Earth don’t play favourites

They treat everything with equivalent detachment.

Sages don’t play favourites

They treat good people and bad with one and the same detachment.

Heaven and earth are like a set of bellows.

even if empty, they are endlessly productive.

The more you work them, the more they produce.

The mouth, on the other hand, becomes exhausted if you talk as well much.

Better to keep your thoughts inside you.

About The Author:

George Albert invites you to go to these discerning pages on the subject of spiritual growth and spiritual workshop. Whilst you’ve been there, also check out the information on spiritual courses as well.

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What to Bear in Mind When Truth and Facts Vary

By Paul Graden

 Living the spiritual life presents loads of exciting moments. It also provides us with faith crisies, as the facts we grasp don’t always line up with the truth we live through. To affectively maneuver through these hard crisies, we must comprehend the difference between truth and facts, as well as how they have an affect on each other.

Definitions:

Facts

Facts are what we discern in the physical dominion.

At the nuptials at Cana, Jesus watched the servants pour water into half a dozen stone water jars (John 2). The fact in the natural was that water was what existed at that time.

Another day, Jesus visited Bethany to call on friends. He was confronted with a very grave fact, his friend Lazarus was deceased (John 11)!

Moses was faced with the fact that he had led the People out into the wasteland and they had no water to drink (Exodus 15). After 3 days, they located some water, but it was bitter and could not be used. The people were complaining. The facts were very real and precarious!

Isaac was going through one of the most terrible famines of his lifetime (Genesis 26). Yet, the fact was that his family needed food. He geared up to transport his family to Egypt, where he could resettle and sow crops.

One day, Peter and John were travelling to the Temple. As they went through the gate named “Beautiful”, they were faced by a man who had been unable to walk since birth - about forty years (Acts 3)!

In 1 Kings 17, Elijah is led by God to take a trip. He had no food or water. As he obeyed God’s command he encountered a brook, where he was able to drink. Still, he had no food, a fact he could not dispense with…

Truth:

Truth is best defined by the Bible itself:

John 17:17: “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth”.

Psalm 119:160: “The sum of Your word is truth”

Truth is found in God’s Word, the Bible. Whatever God proclaims is truth, even when it disagrees with well-known facts. In God’s order, truth is superior to facts.

Let’s look back at the experiences listed above and how the truth affected the facts:

The marriage at Cana was captivated as the water in the stone jugs was changed to wine. The fact was that water was placed in the jugs. Nevertheless, as the servants followed Jesus’ command and dipped into the water, they poured out wine! The facts had to fall into line with the truth of Jesus’ directions!

At Bethany, Jesus called Lazarus from his grave. The fact, Lazarus was deceased, surrendered to the truth of God’s command and Lazarus lived!

As Moses inquired about no water after three days, God showed him a tree and told Moses to throw it into the poisonous water. As that tree landed in the water, the water became purified and the Israelites were able to consume it. Once more, the facts were transformed by the truth!

God instructed Isaac not to go to Egypt, in the face of the famine. Isaac followed God’s Word and planted crops during a famine! As the truth overrode the facts, Isaac received a one hundred fold return from those seeds.

Peter and John knew some truth. They were intimate with that by the stripes of Jesus we are healed (1 Peter 2:24). With that statement from God in mind, they told the paralysed man to get up and walk. As the truth overcame the facts, the man walked away, carrying his bed, for the first time in his life.

Elijah was dealing with the fact that he had no food. Still, he had acted upon God’s Word. Soon, ravens started feeding him! This continued day by day until the brook he was drinking from dried up. Subsequently God led him to a widow for food. The fact was that she and her son had no food, save for a tiny amount of flour for bread and they reconciled themselves to the fact that they would shortly expire from hunger. Elijah told her God’s command - give him some of the bread! She and her son were to consume some as well. Elijah went on to inform her that God’s Word was that the flour would not come to an end until the drought was completed. As a consequence that’s precisely what happened as the truth transformed the facts.

The truth always overrides the facts. Nevertheless, there is a connection between the two that is important to comprehend: faith.

While presented with a serious fact, we must decide to trust God’s Word instead. Find God’s promises and opt to have faith in them over the facts. That is the instigation of the conduit of faith. The subsequently part is to act upon the truth!

The servants at the marriage at Cana chose to act upon Jesus’ words. Their very lives might have been at risk had they given water to their master. In spite of that, they still chose to obey…

Lazarus may have been completely contented in Paradise. Yet, he chose to follow Jesus and start out of that burial place. By the way, the men who pushed away the stone from the burial place also chose to trust the truth and obey Jesus’ command.

Moses acted by slinging the tree into the poisonous water and instructing the people to drink. Did he look foolish hurling a tree into the water? What would have happened if somebody drank afterward and became sick or died? Nonetheless, regardless of the risk, he chose to listen to the truth.

Isaac believed the truth to the point that he placed his own life, and his family’s, at risk by staying in Israel for the duration of a famine. He also acted upon the truth by planting a crop during a famine.

The lame man, who had never walked beforehand, had to get up and walk. He could have looked at his limp legs and made excuses not to, however he chose to listen to God’s Word.

Elijah accepted God’s Word and headed to the stream. He also acted upon God’s Word by taking a major serving of the bread that the widow had prepared to feed himself.

I’m reminded of God’s command to Joshua in Joshua, chapter 1. He tells Joshua to be brave in obeying the truth of God’s Word. This bravery marked Joshua’s life and brought him accomplishment, as the truth of God’s Word changed the facts he was confronted with.

Sadly, the Church is packed of non-acting believers. They declare that they believe God’s Word, but are too scared to act. Thus, the facts linger unaffected. The staggering thing is that they blame God for this! Still, the mistake is not with God. It is with the lack of action.

As James declared, “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). The Greek word translated “works” here is more fittingly translated “corresponding action”.

In other words, if you will not perform what you exclaim you trust, the entire process that God established (truth overcoming facts) is derailed and the facts remain.

My question then is, what will you do when confronted with your next terrible fact? If you desire to believe God and act upon His Word, a miracle awaits you.

The creator, Dr. Paul Graden, is the initiator of The Joseph Gate. The Joseph Gate is a free web site with intensive guidance in Biblical insights to find out the meanings of dreams.

Powers of Astral perception in addition to The Mystical

By George Albert

 The student of occultism as a rule is fairly widespread with the crass character who assumes the cheap cynical feelings in the direction of occult matters, which feelings he expresses appearing in his would-be “smart” remark that he “believes merely within what his senses perceive.” He seems toward think that his cheap wit has finally disposed of the matter, the implication creature that the occultist is a credulous, “easy” being who believes appearing in the existence of things contrary toward the evidence of the senses.

While the point of view or views of persons of this class are, of course, beneath the serious concern of any true student of occultism, nevertheless the mental attitude of such persons are worthy of our passing consideration, inasmuch as it serves en route for give us an object lesson regarding the childlike viewpoint of the average so-called “practical” persons regarding the matter of the evidence of the senses.

These so-called realistic persons encompass much to say regarding their senses. They are fond of speaking of “the evidence of my senses.” They also contain much toward say about the possession of “good sense” on their part; of having “sound common sense”; and often they make the extraordinary contain that they include “horse sense,” seeming en route for consider this a great possession. Alas, for the pretensions of this class of persons. They are typically found somewhat credulous regarding matters beyond their daily field of work and thought, and agree to without question the most ridiculous teachings and dogmas reaching them from the voice of some claimed authority, while they sneer at some advanced teaching which their minds are incapable of comprehending. Anything which seems abnormal toward them is deemed “flighty,” and lacking appearing in appeal en route for their much prized “horse sense.” But, it is not my intention en route for spend time appearing in discussing these insignificant half-penny intellects. I comprise just alluded to them participating in order in the direction of bring en route for your mind the fact that toward many persons the idea of “sense” and that of “senses” is very closely allied. They consider all knowledge and wisdom as “sense;” and all such impression as entity derived directly from their common five senses. They ignore almost completely the intuitional phases of the mind, and are unaware of many of the higher processes of reasoning.

Such persons understand as undoubted anything that their senses report en route for them. They consider it heresy en route for question a report of the senses. One of their favorite remarks is that “it almost makes me doubt my senses.” They fail toward perceive that their senses, at the best, are very imperfect instruments, and that the mind is constantly employed within correcting the mistaken report of the ordinary five senses.

Not to speak of the common phenomenon of color-blindness, appearing in which one color seems toward be another, our senses are far from creature exact. We may, by suggestion, be made toward imagine that we smell or taste certain things which do not exist, and hypnotic subjects may be caused toward see things that cover no existence save participating in the imagination of the person. The general experiment of the being crossing his first two fingers, and placing them on a small object, such as a pea or the top of a lead-pencil, shows us how “mixed” the sense of feeling becomes at times. The many ordinary instances of optical delusions show us that even our sharp eyes may deceive us–every conjuror knows how easy it is to deceive the eye by suggestion and false movements.

possibly the most common example of mistaken sense-reports is that of the movement of the earth. The senses of every individual report in the direction of him that the earth is a fixed, immovable body, and that the sun, moon, planets, and stars move around the earth every twenty-four hours. It is merely when one accepts the reports of the reasoning faculties, that he knows that the earth not just whirls around on its axis every twenty-four hours, but that it circles around the sun every three hundred and sixty-five days; and that even the sun itself, carrying with it the earth and the other planets, truly moves along appearing in space, moving en route for or around some unknown point far distant from it. If there is any one particular report of the senses which would seem toward be beyond doubt or question, it absolutely would be this elementary impression report of the fixedness of the earth beneath our feet, and the movements of the heavenly bodies around it–and yet we know that this is simply an illusion, and that the facts of the case are totally different. Again, how few persons in fact realize that the eye perceives things up-side-down, and that the mind merely gradually acquires the trick of adjusting the impression?

About The Author:

George Albert invites you to visit these insightful pages concerning spiritual growth and courses on spiritual development. After you’ve been there, also check out the information on spiritual course as well.

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