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Actually, most of the religion based war was started by one religion. It started in the Arabian desert and spilled out in a sweeping, continuous LAND GRAB. Just because the first victims of the slaughter were Jews and Christians does not make it a Jewish or Christian War. The Crusades were a simple act of self defense in response to the invasion of Spain and France, Sicily and Italy, Greece and Macedonia, Eastern Europe ... etc. etc. etc.

Do you know how all of those countries got to be Christian in the first place? It was a wonderful bouquet of inquisitions, torture, genocides, a bunch of wars on the side. Did I mention multiple genocides? Somewhere between one third and one half of the entire population of southern France is estimated to have been killed during a single war, the Albiginsian Crusade. They were all killed because they believed in a different kind of Christianity where Jesus was just a teacher, eating meat was bad and reincarnation was real. That was just one war. The Saxons also had a genocide committed against them by Charlemagne, in the name of Christianity, acting as the Holy Roman Emperor. Then there were the Native Americans...

I'm just providing the other side of the coin here. Christianity has a lot of politics baked into its doctrines and historical roots in pagan sun-worship, but that's another subject we could talk about if you like.

Is there any spiritual virtue in the hot trend of religion bashing?

If you can get something out of it there is. I've gotten a fair amount out of studying the Abrahamic faiths, Christianity in particular, though I wouldn't characterize it as "religion bashing," anymore than saying that if I acknowledge the fact that the US sponsored the deaths of thousands of Native Americans in the 1800's then I'm "America bashing."

Are religions not simply organized collective spiritual practice?

No, they're not. They're often also political tools and a host of other things besides. They are transmitters of culture and language and history. They're an excuse for exemptions from various laws in various countries, and yes, they are even still today often the cause of warfare. Some people have life-changing experiences and attribute them to their religion.

And doesn't this very website fit the definition of a religion, with the likes of you as priest?

It's all in how you want to interpret it, though I'm not sure why you'd want to interpret me as a priest. :p

In my 2-liner post above all I did was point out that a certain three Abrahamic religions have been the cause of endless conflict in the western hemisphere.

The "religion is bad because it has caused wars" rhetoric is parroted propaganda.

I actually never said that but now I'm beginning to understand why you got so riled up. My post was 2 lines man. You have written a book into it apparently, of things that I never said. I forgive you though and I think you might have a sore spot on that subject.

are there any limitations and do you find some things you want to achieve harder than say walking? or do you find everything just as easy?

If I am feeling "stuck" in waking life, I can have dreams where I try to run but appear to be tangled up and can't go anywhere. If I become lucid in a dream like this, even though I am now lucid and theoretically all-powerful, I still suffer residual effects from this type of thing. I think emotions, mood, the chemical balance in the brain and all that can affect this.

Also I once extended my hand in a dream, palm facing downwards, and tried to melt a lot of snow that was on the ground. I didn't know how/where to apply conscious force and I never invented a trick for this.

I had difficulty in my first lucid dream throwing a heavy object all the way to the horizon. The first time I tried to throw the object, it went about only as far as it would in waking reality. This is when I realized that my own subconscious is putting limitations on what is possible in my dreams. But the trick I developed for this is just throwing the heavy object while already "feeling" the other end of its trajectory to which it was made to travel, which happened to be on the horizon. Problem solved.

In my mind if you have complete domination over your environment in this realm then i can just transport myself to the other side of the universe, change into a bird, ant or experience what it would be like viewing the world from the size of an atom. All these things i want to do but just flying like a superman at will as normally as i can walk would be the most massive achievement. What are your thoughts.

Be careful how you feel about flying. If you feel it is something that will take a long time and a lot of effort to accomplish then it probably will. If you intend to develop a shortcut and do it quickly and easily then you will probably do that. These are all mind tricks. There is no real "hard work" that ever has to be done. You only have to discover how to flip that switch. It's a very subtle and trippy thing, and it's all in your head. Just feel and experiment.

So, my question would be... Is it really that easy? To fill oursleves, the people besides us, the people we care about, the ones comming for help, the ones in need of help, to be helped with simple, heartfelt transparent deeds of everyday life? Not that it is the most powerful way to express love to others, but a good way nontheless?

I would say no, it's not that simple, but it's still possible to receive what you put out "tenfold" anyway.

It has not so much to do with being "good" (which varies from person to person, culture to culture, dare I say species to species), but reprogramming your subconscious.  People have deeply-rooted beliefs in their subconscious, that they are literally not conscious of (thus "unconscious" or "subconscious") and these take up far more of your brain's activity than your conscious thoughts.

You can have whatever conscious intentions and thoughts that you want, but if the unconscious substrate your thoughts are occurring on is working against you, then whatever you're trying is probably not going to happen how you want it. The most powerful methods for finding and replacing subconscious content is neuro-linguistic programming as taught by Richard Bandler.

Your subconscious regulates other parts of your body and thus your over-all energetic field and all the rest, so the subconscious content seems to me the quickest way to the heart of the problem, if there is anything you want to change. Maybe you are already deeply convinced that you will be recompensated tenfold, and you are okay with that, in which case that is okay and there is nothing to change.  

What i want to know is what words do you use to make things happen? I know the more experienced travelers will say just do it but there are many goals i want to achieve while in the astral. Things i do require great effort and don't always work, such as flying as i can only ever get about 6 feet off the ground even though i tell myself that there is no gravity.

Your imagination is your only limitation. Most of the tools I use in lucid dreams aren't words but actual objects, like something like a jet pack I use to fly. Of course these are all just "tricks" to make our subconscious create what we want it to, but they can work beautifully.

I love the discussion topic.

A farmer's horse ran away. His neighbors gathered upon hearing the news and said sympathetically, "That's such bad luck."

"Maybe," the farmer replied.

The horse returned on his own the next morning, and brought seven wild horses with it. "Look how many more horses you have now," the neighbors exclaimed. "How lucky!"

"Maybe," the farmer replied.

The next day, the farmer's son attempted to ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. "How awful," the neighbors said. "It looks like your luck has turned for the worse again."

The farmer simply replied, "Maybe."

The following day, military officers came to town to conscript young men into the service. Seeing the son's broken leg, they rejected him. The neighbors gathered round the farmer to tell him how fortunate he was.

"Maybe," said the farmer.

Also...

Life is what you make of it. If you don't like something take responsibility for it and change it.

(Re)Welcome to the board, AH.

Don't worry... I think people don't go overboard here often enough.  

If magic(k)  (we must have some Crowley fans here to be adding the 'k' huh?) is limitless then you guys can finally teach me how to figure this one out: How can you create a boulder so heavy that you can't lift it?  ...And then lift it?

Adapted from the old paradoxical question about God. :p

Sounds like something related to a past emotional trauma to me.  It could have been something as minor as an insensitive passing comment from a loved one, or could be as bad as a period of long-term abuse to your self-esteem.  Maybe I am off but the fixation upon a certain feeling like this reminds me of what Jung called a complex, as in a complex grouping of thoughts and feelings that has been learned and may not necessarily be the most helpful for you.

There are lots of ways to release this kind of thing.  But it will have to be emotionally engaging, because just thinking about it intellectually will not impact the "circuits" of your body the same way (to borrow a metaphor from Robert Anton Wilson).  Forgiveness for yourself, forgiveness for others, acceptance and thankfulness,  these are all powerful things.

Ho'oponopono healing mantra, for yourself and everyone and everything else:

I'm sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you
I love you


The ego is a natural part of modern society. We couldn't function in society without ego but we have to watch it and can't let it supersede the real being inside of us.  You seem very conscious of your ego as indicated by the thread title.  I think you already pay attention to your ego.  So again I think this may be some emotional baggage you have picked up somewhere in your life that has become an unresolved subconscious complex.  We all have subconscious complexes that have to be resolved.

[but]

Drug use tends to make you go the opposite direction from awakening. Psilisoben can cause permenent brain damage and the need for life long medications and or institutionalization.

Psilocybin is actually non-toxic.  It doesn't cause damage to your body and you have to eat an insane amount to actually overdose on them in a physiological sense.

Psychologically, you can "overdose" easily if you aren't prepared for the trip.  Like I said, these mushrooms are medically non-toxic, they can't hurt you in that way any more than eating shiitake mushrooms, but the guy being talked about in the OP sounds like he has a form of psychosis now.

So I don't personally think the guy is suffering from "premature awakening," I think he's suffering from a form of clinical psychosis and he probably needs to talk to somebody.  Psychologists today are not supposed to just label you a nut and lock you up.  They really try to talk with people and see if how they are living is really what they want, if they think they are seeing the world in a healthy way, and that sort of thing.  Then again some just try to give you pills to basically make you brain dead so maybe some homework is in order.  But I feel sorry for the guy because I know lots of people with some form of psychosis, or predisposition toward it, and it really is a frustrating thing.  It takes somebody who really knows what they're doing to help people like that.

Also I don't want to sound like I'm beating up on the guy because he believes he's seeing demons.  I believe in some "crazy" stuff myself, so that's not the issue for me.  The problem is whether or not this guy is able to live a functional adult life with responsibilities and all of that, just like anybody else.  If this demon stuff is interfering with that, then that's not a healthy way of seeing the world and he needs a tune-up of sorts.

I think it depends on how it's executed.  I've seen great layouts that were both light and dark.

You going to take a picture?

I know that the targets that I've hit in the past were not places that I went to or the person who set the target went to either.  The Farsight Institute works the same way, and so did the military, because you can't always visit the places you want to gather intelligence about. The subconscious is doing all of this and all it needs is to feel like it has a rational explanation that this is possible, or a "permission slip" as some might say, and then it's just a matter of the ego not disturbing the surface of the pond with too many ripples, so to speak.

Staying with the basic shapes, textures and things like that is probably better anyway, since when we start trying to "figure out" what it is we can misconstrue what we get.  If anybody wants to set up a second set of targets, I can try them too.

The second target has been set, randomly assigned the "coordinates" 4071115.

Nice to meet you serge.  I'm glad you joined the forum.

View target #1 at this link:

http://s23.postimg.org/w83vlc6mz/Target_01_799.jpg

Remote viewing is pretty similar.  Have you ever tried that?  I just started a thread not long ago with practice targets.

I still don't know what to make of them.   

Great idea. The next time I suddenly phase out of my body and find myself in an unknown, seemingly random location, I'll make sure to have a card hidden there beforehand.

You might be phasing into a lucid dream.  In that case you might still be able to find your card somewhere where it was never placed to begin with, and maybe even still accurately identify it.  Your subconscious is very powerful.   

It's been years since I read Robert Bruce's stuff about projecting into what he calls the "real time zone" but from what I remember, it was pretty much standard to be right next to your body when you project in that case.  So that you're not appearing just outside of your body when you project might already be a sign that you're projecting yourself to somewhere that's not necessarily a representation of any real physical place.  I'm just throwing ideas out because I'd like more "scientific" exploration to be done along these lines, of what we are actually doing.

I think this question is an incredibly complex and profound one and it's one that if we could answer fully, it would have immediate ramifications on just about everything we know about anything.

"Are we all connected to the same astral world?" can quickly become "Do we all experience the same physical universe?" and even "Is there really any such thing as 'objective reality', and if so, who determines what that is?", and these are the kinds of questions that philosophers have been arguing about for probably at least 2000 years that we know of.  I agree with Xanth that everything is ultimately consciousness.  But beyond that I don't think we have yet to come up with a satisfying explanation of how we can resolve our ideas about "subjective" and "objective" realities and who is creating these experiences we have in the first place.  Do we each create our own reality from the inside out, or is there something like a God out there who sets everything up from birth to death and we're only along for a ride we have no control over?  If it's somewhere in between then what exactly is the interplay, and where are the hard limits drawn?

I guess the short answer from me is that I think your question leads to incredibly complex philosophical issues and that there's no satisfactory answer to things like that yet.

There are threads and posts still here going all the way back to the creation of the forum in 2002.  I don't know of any major data losses but there were some technical issues at some point and some of the really old threads do not have their posts in chronological order, but everything should still be here.

One of the coolest things about this forum is how it's like a big disorganized encyclopedia of astral projection and related discussions.  Check out this page (page #254) of the OBE forum: http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_out_of_body_experiences-b14.10120/

Just in that one section there are 253 more pages spanning about 14 years of threads. 

I know there are lots of different methods and techniques and people can try whichever they want.  The final result is what's going to either be a hit or not, or somewhere in between.  The first time I tried RV'ing was probably about 10 years ago on a website that just had links to random images and told you to set a time for clicking a given link (say, 7:00 PM), dedicate yourself to clicking to see what it is at exactly that time, and then just sit, meditate and clear your mind with the intention set that your subconscious will show you what you are going to see at 7:00 PM.  So this is a very simple method and I got a strong hit on the third try, with a circus tent, which is random enough.  My first two attempts I only got something I'd just seen on TV and a childhood memory, respectively, so they were pretty obviously mental noise but I sketched them out anyway as my first attempts.  I was lucky to get such an uncanny hit on the 3rd try but all of these different techniques are just ways of busying the mind and trying to convince the subconscious that this is legitimate and really going to happen.

I will try to post a picture of this first target on Monday, and then set the second target for anyone following along.

Yes, just prior to typing this I have been looking intently at this target and imagining myself there.  I have also associated with my username mentally and even dragged the image over my username in this thread as if I could drag and drop it.  So hopefully some connections made there will give you something better to connect to.

For those of you following along with remote viewing resources (I'm a big fan of the Farsight Institute on that -- look up their videos on YouTube), I'm going to be setting practice targets.

If you want to RV the target and then post what you get here, or just keep it to yourself and see how you do, this is for you.    But if you are getting good results, please don't keep them to yourself.  I'd like to be involved with a group of viewers who will ultimately be tasked with viewing mysterious historical sites and problems.


The first target (target #1) is assigned, and if you need a randomly-assigned number to latch onto (if you use a technique that requires one), it's 7993-475.