Book Review: Understanding the Grand Design

[JoWo]

Hello my friend Kevin,

Lotsa questions!  That's good.  

I grew up Christian. You die, you go to heaven, that is if you're good.

Right, and so it is when you die being in harmony with the rest of the world because you create your own reality through your mindset, here as well as in multi-dimensional reality, which is also known as the spirit world.

I perceive hell as existence on Earth, if you don't do with it what you can to make it not hell. So I've grown up with the hope of being with loved ones in heaven.

Right again.

Now it just plain pisses me off that I chose to be here?

What's wrong with that?  Do you think that it was bad for you go through exams in school?  Or would you rather have chosen not to go to school while everyone else did?

And if so, why don't I realize or understand or remember that I chose to be here?

It's a long story, Kevin, too long for this post.  But you have my book "Understanding the Grand Design".  Read the section "Why the Illusion?" starting on page 169.  This will also answer a number of other points you made in your post.

Am I really the controller of my own destiny since I can't remember why I chose to be here. Perhaps on a spiritual level I did choose to be here, but it just plain pisses me off that we have no recollection of that. Why? Why must things be hidden from us? It's like living a lie.

You must understand, Kevin, that there are different levels of  "You".  Presently you are conscious of only a small part of your real Self and your Soul.  We call that small part our "ego".  The rest of you exists in multi-dimensional reality.  We say that it is in our unconscious.  That greater, total You never forgets its choices, decisions, and experiences, and it guides your "smaller You" without it realizing it.  If you listen to your true inner Self, you'll get the benefits of its superior knowledge.  You worry about the discontinuity created by your forgetfulness, Kevin.  But it is taken care of at a higher, inner level that is unconscious to your ego. It's not like living a lie, it's living in an illusion of limited resources.

I've lived the first 34 years of my life with deep seeded HATE for life and humanity. It's a constant struggle for me, but realizing that we are all one has helped. My main frustration has and is that things are not the way I want them to be in life and I feel stuck. Feeling like there is no way out of the way in which I have created my life.

Undoing the effects of Hate from 34 years will take some time, Kevin.  But rest assured, if from now on you think and act according to the understanding that we are all one, things will clear up.  It takes some time to become aware of all the accumulated destructive habits.  You can speed things up through a regular "belief review process" I e-mailed to you from my book.  Be aware also that your past 34 years are a valuable asset because without experiencing the inevitable fallout, you would not be so motivated now to change course. Based on your experience, you are also much better equipped to help others, as you intend.  You have been there and you know what others are talking about.

Why were you chosen to see what you saw, and it is kept hidden from the rest of us?

I don't know, Kevin.  I can imagine that I made this decision before I was born.  

My best wishes to you, Kevin!

Jo.

[knucklebrain1970]

If you listen to your true inner Self, you'll get the benefits of its superior knowledge.



Jo, I can't understand that. People tell me, listen to your heart, listen to your inner self. What self? I just don't get it. Are you/they talking about decision making, where when you make a decision, you feel good about it if it is the right thing to do, but feel bad, like (knot in stomach) if it is not the right decision? Is that what you are getting at Jo. I realize I make all this stuff more complicated than it need be. I'm trying my best to lose the hate and the anger towards life in this LIMITED body and LIMITED LIFE where everything is hidden from us in this GAME. See, there I go again with my bad attitude, but I've made worlds of progress in the past 2 months. I wish I was on your wavelength Jo, I really really do. My wife and I have looked at the core belief thing over and over, we're both smart people, and we just don't get it. Perhaps the section on it in your book will clarify that a little better. It's basically what I told you before. I'm a very very mixed up individual and I really really don't know what I believe sometimes. Thanks for emailing me back the examples of my frustrations I sent you. I'm going to start the belief modifications with those.

Your friend,
Kevin

[JoWo]

To get in touch with your inner self, Kevin, you must calm your mind and avoid distractions from your physical environment.  Your inner self is multi-dimensional, whereas your ego identifies with the 3-D world.  If your mind is pre-occupied with ego-stuff, then it cannot sense the additional dimensions of your total, inner self.  Sit quietly, where you cannot be disturbed, and breathe slowly and deeply.  This will calm your mind.  Dwell on feelings of love, joy, and peace, because they are the essence of your higher self.  It takes some practice, so do this regularly, at least once a day, preferably at the same time of day.

If you want guidance for a particular decision, imagine one of your possible options as clearly and as vividly as possible.  Let this visualization sink in and sense how it feels deeply inside.  Does it feel harmonious and peaceful?  After you have sensed this feeling well enough to remember it, do the same exercise with another option for your decision.  Take your time and dwell on it.  How does it feel?  Whichever gives you more inner harmony and peace is the correct decision.  In Tom and Linda Carpenter's book, "Dialogue on Awakening", Jesus recommends that, if you want to experience spiritual awakening, always choose whatever gives you more peace.  It is a very useful and powerful rule-of-thumb.

Peace to you, Kevin!

Jo.

[thelou]

Hello everyone, JoWo, it is nice to see you are still here helping people.

Hi Knucklebrain1970,

It has been many months since the last time reading this forum.  My heart reaches out to you, because I truly understand your position and empathize with you.  My back ground and past experience is very similar with yours.  Many years of frustrating questions just like yours haunted my conscious mind.

What I can tell you is that I believe you are on the right path.  Asking the tough questions is the best place to start.  Because as you ask questions your mind will start to meditate on them automatically.  You can task your subconscious mind to find the answers for you.  Sit quietly like JoWo recommends.  Instruct your subconscious mind to reach out to All Entity.  While you are visualizing the different options in front of you, you will "become one" with source.  When that is happening you will have information come to you that you may never have thought of before.

Don't get discouraged if you do not have a grand epiphany right off the bat.  Like many mental exercises you get better at it with practice.  

Thelou

[JoWo]

Hello Thelou

Long time no see   .  Nice to hear from you again, and thank you for your comments.

Jo.

[knucklebrain1970]

it's kind of odd to me how all the different materials I have been reading lately point to this all entity or nirvana experience and T.D. Lingos works (Neal Slade) also point to this same stuff. However according to T.D. Lingo, you must clear yourself of entropy (bad childhood experiences) in order to do this. This is my great difficulty. Meditation is also very difficult for me as I can  
never focus as my mind is like a thinking machine that wont stop. Maybe I should take up LSD ha?  

Kevin

[thelou]

Hi Kevin, ask yourself this.  Is it really that odd that all the different materials you have been reading lately point to the same thing?  The Universe is magnetic, what ever things you are thinking upon will cause your being to vibrate at a certain frequency.  What ever frequency you vibrate will in your own personal parallel Universe will be attracted to you.  Therefore what you are most wondering about is what will find its way into your life.

Have you ever gone to the bookstore just wanting to find more for your own growth?  You stand there and look at all the different books in a section.  They all seem to be the exact same.  You think "God what do I need to read now?"  Then you just happen to notice one book is sticking two inches out over the edge of the shelf, and when you look at it, it is exactly what you needed at that time?

It is the Law of Attraction at work.  As far as clearing yourself from bad childhood, I have just found the most amazing book ever written for that topic.  It is called "keeping the love you find" by Dr. Harville Hendrix.  I have only gone through the first half, but this man has been gifted with the amazing ability to take us back before birth, and help us understand the things that happened to us on a subconscious level that we are not even aware of, so that we may address them now.  I personally had several "epiphanies" about my own issues, and now almost like magic have a better understanding about my own self, and how to move forward in my spiritual growth.

Hope you can get a copy, and benefit from it also.

Question for Jo.  I believe that my realization of my own life and where I fit has come along fairly well thanks to people such as yourself, and the many hundreds of other books that I have read.  But there is still one thing that I cannot seem to understand.  First off I do understand that we all have free will and freedom of choice, but how come we cannot influence others into what we want them to do?  I mean I know they have their freedom of choice, and we cannot make others do anything.  But that seems like an encroachment on my freedom of choice.  For example I should have the freedom of choice to live in a Universe where the person I want to love me does.  But cannot?  

Thanks

Thelou

[JoWo]

Hello Kevin,

Trying to clear yourself of bad childhood experiences can easily become a rather counter-productive undertaking, IMO.  You'll get what your mind focuses on.  If you focus on bad experiences, that's what you'll get: more bad experiences.  Thelou is correct, it's the law of attraction at work.  Looking for bad past experiences can also enhance the false belief that you are the victim of past circumstances, whereas you actually create your own reality.  If you had "bad" childhood experiences", it was YOU who put yourself into that position by choosing this environment before you were born, and you did this for a good reason.  You had a reason why you wanted to cope with this situation in order to grow spiritually.  Therefore, your "bad" experiences may well be "good" from a higher point of view.  

I agree with T.D. Lingo if you use your memory of childhood experiences to revise your beliefs, as I explained to you before, Kevin.  Then you adopt the correct attitude that you are in control of your experiences, not a victim of them, and early childhood experiences tend to be indications of core beliefs, which have a more profound effect on your life.

Concerning your difficulty with meditation, Kevin, volumes have been written about how to do it.  Search Google for "how to meditate" and you'll get more than one million answers.  The first one is a website www.how-to-meditate.org . It's all good advice.  You must use patience and perseverance.  Clearing your mind and defining your priorities via belief-review helps also to reduce your mind chatter.  Some meditation methods use mantras that you repeat in uninterruptedly.  This helps you to screen out undesired thoughts.  You can try to use something as simple as "I am joy, peace, and love."  This is a statement of who you really are, because your true, innermost Self is All-Entity. This is what you want to identify with in your meditation.  Don't say, "I will be joy, peace, and love", because then you imply that you are not now, and that's what you will experience.  

You can do it, Kevin  

Jo.

[JoWo]

Hello Thelou, you wrote:

how come we cannot influence others into what we want them to do? I mean I know they have their freedom of choice, and we cannot make others do anything. But that seems like an encroachment on my freedom of choice.

Excellent question!
We live in a reality of limited dimensions.  Whereas all imaginable situations co-exist simultaneously in multi-dimensional reality, they do not all appear in our specific physical reality.  You select your specific reality based on general parameters that are set by your belief system.  When you make that choice, you are not yet aware of all the detailed consequences.  You are giving it "your best shot", so-to-speak.  Then you spend a lifetime to experience the results of your choice.   When you discover that some experiences didn't pan out, as you would have liked, you may have to go back to the proverbial drawing board and change your original choices.  This may well take another incarnation.  Yes, all possible events already exist in multi-dimensional reality, or in parallel universes (which is another way of saying it).  But our capability to maneuver between the parallel universes is limited by our degree of spiritual maturity. To "get everything right" all at once requires a state of full enlightenment.  That's the purpose of this seemingly cumbersome process of trying to get everything right through successive reincarnations, we are challenged to awaken to full enlightenment, to full union with All-Entity.

Greetings!

Jo.

[knucklebrain1970]

Ok, so we reincarnate to become at one with all entity. Since I have discovered a wanting and a sort of new me to transcend into cosmic consciousness or at-one-ness with all that is or all entity. My question is this. Will I have to come back again if I do not achieve this in this lifetime? What if my conscious (MIND) does not want to come back. However you say that I picked this life. Well that must mean my subconscious or my spirit picked this life. It seems more or less like I am struggling for full transcendence in order to not come back again. If I don't want to come back again why should I have to. This is me saying this, my conscious mind. I don't want to come back. I've always had this inner feeling that I'm not supposed to be here. Is that a lie? Why must there be two of me, this just seems not fair to me. I'm sorry if I'm beating a dead horse, I'm just starting to come to the conclusion that this life is not my time to be blessed with unity with all entity. Tell me I'm wrong. I don't want to come back. Ever.

Kevin

[thelou]

Hi JoWo,

Much thanks for your kind words.  I understand your answer, but perhaps the answer to my question just eluded me, or went over my head.  So my question remains.  

This is possibly the utmost question that we cannot seem to find the answer to.  Why is it that we are unable to manifest in our lives someone else loving us?

In truth everything is happening in the eternal moment of now.  All our past lives, and all of our future lives are being lived out simultaneously in one moment of now in the Grand Illusion of time.

We have been given the right by God to create or manifest anything we desire.  But not someone else's love.

The obvious answer would seem to be this.  You cannot make someone else love you because that would be an infringement on their freedom of choice.

But that is not accurate because they can simply choose to live their own lives in a separate parallel Universe where they do not love us.

So we should be able to decide of our own accord that in this life, this parallel Universe that I live in that "I choose to live where that person loves me."

But that does not work.  Therefore it would appear that there are two contradictory statements that are both correct.

1.   I can choose and manifest anything I desire.
2.   You cannot manifest anything, just most things.

This to me seems contradictory of our freedom to experience anything we desire.

This is really troubling me, and surely other people also.  We would all be very appreciative of an in depth answer.

Thank you so much for your time Jo,

Thelou

[thelou]

Hello Kevin,

If you do not mind, I would like to comment on your post, as that exact topic has been an issue with me for years.  Even seriously thought about suicide oh.. 100 times or so.

Ok, so we reincarnate to become at one with all entity

We do not reincarnate to become one with all entity, we already are one with all entity.  We incarnate to experience first off the ability to not know everything.  (In spirit we have access to all knowledge there ever was or will be).  Second we incarnate to be able to experience ourselves.  Just ourselves without being a part of the collective hole of everything.  (If you have ever watched startrek it is like the Borg, in spirit all minds are connected to each other).  Only by incarnating into physical can we experience things like hot or cold, love or hate.

Yes you will come back.  Not because you have to but because you will want to.  Perhaps not this planet perhaps another one.  But you will want to come back to physical and will do so over and over again.  For two reasons.

1.   Eventually, even if it take hundreds of "years" you will get board being only in spirit form.  Many times my thoughts were how much I disliked being in physical and that I would never come back to this place that has brought me so much negative feelings.  But eventually we will want to come back even for a vacation from non physical.
2.   It is inevitable that from spirit one day you will discover something that intrigues you and you will want to experience it.  For example lets say all of your lives you have been a male.  One day you might be talking with a friend (in the sprit realm) and she tells you how wonderful it is to be a woman, and you might just say to yourself that I think I want to know what that is like, and poof you will be born as a girl.  I know that is a bit extreme but it makes the point.  And we do that.

However you say that I picked this life. Well that must mean my subconscious or my spirit picked this life.

It is not quite as cut and dry as that.  Trust me those thoughts plagued my mind also.  (I personally am a very black or white person, but im working on fixing that).  We do not actually pick our lives in the manner that you are thinking.  More like we pick out a handful of events or circumstances such as our gender, our parents, what part of the world we will be born in, and a handful of experiences that we desire to live through.  Or what many people will call lessons.  

For example you might very well have said before your birth that you need to know what it is like to hate life, because in your last life you loved it very much.

We come here to EXPERIENCE things like that.

This is me saying this, my conscious mind. I don't want to come back. I've always had this inner feeling that I'm not supposed to be here. Is that a lie? Why must there be two of me, this just seems not fair to me.

Your inner feeling that you are not supposed to be here is a wonderful blessing that you are not yet aware of.  You have a feeling that you are a divided being and that part of you resides elsewhere.  That is true you are.  It is a blessing in disguise because you are several steps further along than many people.

You are aware of your "inner being" and that you are a spiritual person, a great many people have not "evolved" to that point yet.

You are supposed to be here, it is your instinct of your "other self" that has you wondering about that.  It comes from confusion, please don't get me wrong, what I am trying to say is that you are looking for information.  That is what we do when we do not understand something.  (And JoWo is great at helping people understand stuff, have you read his excellent book)?

Why must there be two of me

Fantastic question, ready for the answer?  There are more than just two of you.  There are hundreds, thousands.

Your main body is spirit.  Spirit can never leave a place we call "Heaven".  It is spirit, it cannot be physical. That is why God invented the physical realm.  So that God through us can experience what it is like to be physical.  There is a different "part" of you that has branched off so to speak and is living all of your lives at the same time.

But you are only aware of the two of you that is your present body that is Kevin, and your inner being or spirit.  And it will not seem "fair" until you realize that you are a part of it, not the other way around.

Realize what a blessing you have, you are aware that you have an inner being, most are not there yet.  Now the challenge is to learn how to be in harmony with your inner being that resides outside of the physical realm.  That is how/when you will be blessed with unity of All Entity.

Hope that helps,

Thelou

[narfellus]

Thank you thelou and JoWo for this thread. I actually have the book in question in my Amazon queue and am anxiously waiting for its arrival.  Like you, i have read many metaphysical books (not thousands, but a lot, and i'm still fairly young) and then dozens of articles from online. I agree with all of the metaphysical concept proposed above, even if i do not have a full grasp of them all. Often when i read a passage or a theory, i will have a deep understanding of it, but if time passes and i don't refresh that memory, it clouds over, becomes hazy, and the lesson must be repeated. I've tried reading through Alice Bailey, whose work with the Tibetan is wonderful, but it is so deeply abstract at times that it serves to only confuse me. Yet at the same time she touches on many, many topics that JoWo addresses as well. It has been my understanding that we are to seek answers from as many sources as possible, to ask questions, and to take no answer blindly as the truth. We are test, validate, doubt, and only through experience and understanding, come to accept that which is truth for ourself. I still have a ways to go, but i have many people (and spirits) to help me.

[JoWo]

Kevin, my friend, take it easy!  You are the one who is creating the reality that you hate so much!  You draw to yourself whatever you focus on, and you sure appear to be focused on hating this life.  I have news for you, Kevin, you will keep on coming back to physical life until you learn to love it.  Our world here is part of God, part of the harmonious wholeness of All-Entity.  As long as you hate any part of God, you cannot be in harmony with God, and therefore you cannot Awaken to the wholeness of the All.  You'll be stuck in this environment as long as you hate it.  The proper antidote is to practice unconditional Love.

The first step to unconditional Love is to accept what is.  It's a matter of being realistic.  You can't change things unless you first see things as they are, and, believe me, you can't do this if you are consumed by anger.  You appear frustrated because you don't understand the sense of it all, but it is your own resentment that prevents you from understanding it because it takes love to tune into what you want to understand.  

You wrote:

I've always had this inner feeling that I'm not supposed to be here.

Have you ever considered that this could be a long-standing prejudice of yours that you must overcome it by learning to love it here?  It is certainly possible to love this life on Earth, lots of people do.  I can tell you from my own experience, it's much more fun than hating it.

You can do it, Kevin  

Jo.

[JoWo]

Hi Thelou,

Re your Dec. 5 message, let me try an allegory.  Suppose you are going on a cruise with the hope that you'll find the love of your life among the passengers.  Turns out that your particular ship had only seniors on board, beyond your age of interest.  You had total free will to choose any cruise, but you have to live with your choice, even though you might not be entirely happy with it.  We have to live with the consequences of our choices, once we have made them.

By the same token, before you embark on a new life in physical reality, you select conditions aimed at going through certain experiences.  However, you cannot nail down all details in advance and set your life on autopilot.  Then, during your lifetime, you do the best you can, but not everything may turn out as you would like.  Yes, nicer alternatives do exist in "parallel universes" because the multi-dimensional domain contains all conceivable possibilities.  But you are stuck with the choices you had made earlier until they have played out.  You can try to go to a different deck on your cruise liner, but you can't hop from one ship to another before your cruise is over. We do have free will, but we must live by it.

Incidentally, it may well be true that this certain lady loves you in a parallel universe, and the You that you are experiencing now is teaching you how it feels not to be loved in return.  Who knows why you need this experience.

Also, I believe that this limitation is not unique to being loved by someone.  Seth tells us that we have great latitude in creating our own reality, however we cannot grow a new leg that we may have lost in an accident.  We have great freedom of will, but within certain gross limitations that we can accept without feeling deprived.  Hopping freely between parallel universes appears to be one of them, and I assume that it is for a good reason.  Otherwise, we would probably not learn our lessons.

One last thought on this subject, Thelou.  You can be 100% sure that the certain lady loves you in ultimate reality, which is All-Entity, because at that level all parts are united in unconditional Love.

Best wishes to you, Thelou!

Jo.

[thelou]

Thanks Jo,

You always have words of wisdom that give reassurance.

Here is the funny thing.  She also in this life is very much in love with me.  She is just too afraid to allow herself to love fully, so she has retreated so that she does not have to deal with the issues.

Dr. Harville Hendrix in his book "keeping the love you find" explains that each of us have baggage left over from our dysfunctional childhoods that affect us in our adult life.  And I know what hers is as well as mine.

Now that I have a better understanding of what is going on in her present, I am more capable of letting her go with the unconditional love that we all deserve.

Thelou

[thelou]

Hello Narfellus, and welcome to the thread.

If but we knew the power of our thoughts we would guard them more closely.

That quote is familiar, who said it?  Was it Cochease?

[narfellus]

I believe i quoted it from Betty Eadie, but it might easily be from another source as well.

[narfellus]

Dr. Harville Hendrix in his book "keeping the love you find" explains that each of us have baggage left over from our dysfunctional childhoods that affect us in our adult life.

oh lord, isn't that true. I notice this in my life often. A book that was ueful for me (and which i should read again, it has been a long time) was the Toltec book Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz. It explained a lot of the How's and Why's people hurt each other so much, and how to stop it.

[thelou]

Wow, I bought that book, but never read it.  Guess I need to find it and read it.  

Thanks,

Thelou

[JoWo]

Hello Thelou,

Re: Love.  It sounds like you hopped into a closer parallel universe after all! .

Jo.

[thelou]

Yes, I guess you could say that.  It seems that I keep moving from one to the other, then back and forth agin.

If this is all true, sure wish I could learn how to control it better.

Thelou

[JoWo]

sure wish I could learn how to control it better

Don't we all?

Jo.

[beavis]

JoWo

you cannot nail down all details in advance and set your life on autopilot. Then, during your lifetime, you do the best you can, but not everything may turn out as you would like. ... Who knows why you need this experience.

You say we cant accurately plan what will happen during our physical lives, but then say it was meant to be that way. It cant have random elements AND be planned the exact way it turns out.

[Nick]

Update: Joachim Wolff's book, Understanding The Grand Design for anyone interested in reading it, can be obtained from Trafford Publishing. This link should get you there: http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/robots/02-1283.html