Messages

First of all Allanon, I want to thank you for the quality of your recent posts.  I can relate mcuh better to what you are saying and thinking this way and I sincerely appreciate your effort.

I absolutely agree with you that God will in the end absolutely have his way.  I believe God uses all things, even evil, to produce the greatest possible good in the long term.  So far it sounds like we are in complete agreement.

Where I begin to see different possibilites is that I do not believe the existance of an "infallable Bible" is necessary in order for God's will to be done.  Perhaps (and this is only my belief I am not saying it is "fact") it is possible that God would allow the Bible to be corrupted by man because he created another "tool" through which people can learn the truth about him: personal direct relationship with God.  Maybe it is possible that God wants us to learn that we don't need to rely on anything that was touched by other men in any way shape or form in order to enter into a relationship with God?

You might be thinking that without some direct infallible teachings that show what the word of God is (your perception of the Bible), it is too easy to be deceived by Satan and unlikely a person will be able to see the truth.  I suggest that God has the power to use even what we consider to be "evil" to his own glory, and that if he truly wanted to, he could communicate with each one of us in a personally meaningful way without needing a written book.  

The Bible clearly does not believe in reincarnation, so one question to ask is what happens to the people who lived their entire lives without ever even being able to see a version of the Bible they can understand?  What about a person who  was raised to be so afraid of Christians (because of some of the horrible attrocities that were falsely committed in their name) that they were too afraid to "open their hearts" to Jesus?  I may be right or wrong, but it seems likely to ME that the loving God I havecome to know would offer a way that everyone would have an equal chance to get to know him without having to rely on other men.  Again, just my opinion...

--Soulfire

quote:Originally posted by goingslow

yes! this is exactly what I was hoping for.  Yet another opportunity for allanon to post one of his long winded BS posts.  I personally couldnt care less about his experiences.

but please.. I haven't heard enough from you on this forum this week.. give me more.

goingslow,

I have seen some of your posts which were very thoughtful and interesting.  Is it really useful or necessary to make a public statement when its only purpose is to judge, insult, and state that you don't care about another forum member?  You might argue that you think Allanon is sometimes "guilty" of judging or insulting, but none of that was present in THIS thread yet until you brought it here.  How likely do you think it is that a post of this nature will encourage Allanon or anyone else to share anything of value?  Please think about it?

Also, you might want to try and understand his perspective on this the same way we ask him to try and understand ours:

If he believes that any AP or other similar experience when you are not first "grounded" by fully accepting and believing in Jesus, is merely a deception by Satan (whether YOU agree with this or not), then you cannot reasonably expect him to "learn" anything from those experiences any more than he can reasonably expect you to learn something exclusively because "the Bible sais so".

--Soulfire

quote:Originally posted by Allanon

As far as Jesus and His sacrificial death are concerned I dont see how you cant figure out why that is. The OT is full of atonement of sin via the sacrafice of various animals or the blood. It is pretty obvious to me that the Jews were the chosen people of God and were blessed by God above all other nations due to Abraham and his faith. They failed to recognize the True Messiah and this is what gives us Gentiles access to the New Covenant in Christ and His PERFECT blood which can atone for not just one but ALL sin. It is the central theme in the Bible and it comes with constant study of scripture and inquiries.

I understand all about the "symbolism" of the ritual, but I cannot understand how an all-powerful loving God could be bound by the need to have such a ritual.

The Bible talks about how God loves all men equally, but then it sais that Isreal was his "chosen" people and the only reason everybody else is allowed into heaven is because the Jewish people screwed up?  In the old testament they say God tells you to take "eye for an eye" retribution for every wrong done to you, but Jesus taught to forgive and love everybody - especially your enemy.  There are so many examples of where the Bible paints a picture of God that makes him sound like a petty dictator: "I am a jealous God, etc."  Jealousy is not possible with true abiding love, and God IS love...so how could he be jealous?

Understand that I am NOT bashing God here...I just feel that man's understanding of God is deeply flawed and that some those human flaws seem to have found their way into the Bible.  I think God is much much MORE than the Bible gives "him" credit for.  []

--Soulfire

Hi,

I do not consider myself a die hard skeptic, but neither do I think it is necessarily wise to accept everything you read on a forum to be truth to live for either.  I do not mean to be rude or disrespectful, but please understand from an outside perspective, this whole thing can sound like an amateur version of the X-files.

Normally my intuition about things like this serves me well: either it feels true or it feels false.  Reading this, I get no sense of truth or falsehood.  IF all of this is true, I would like to learn more about it and even offer to help.  If these beings desire to communicate with and assist humanity, is it reasonable to guess that they will expect some reasonable skepticism and perhaps be willing to meet with us personally?

The root of my question is: What does your guide tell you about my desire to have a personal experience with them myself?  If this is acceptable, what do I do on my part to help make this happen?

--Soulfire

quote:Originally posted by Allanon

 God calls those to Him that are willing to HEAR HIS WORD. It is not prejudice as you say. If you will not hear the Word of God than you will not be able to test His will and know what he wants. ANYONE can be Chosen that decides to put His Word ahead of man made doctrines and ideologies. Read the verse below for more.

Ok, if this is true, then how do you explain MY history?  If you bothered to read my posts about my history with Christianity, you already know what I am talking about, but I will summarize:

I spent 11 years trying to be a born again Christian.  I studied the bible, I prayed, I prayed for the Holy Spirit to live through me, I prayed for forgiveness, I prayed for understanding and wisdom.  I opened my heart and asked God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit to take my life and my will and make it his.  

A lot of Christianity made sense to me, but no matter what I did or how hard a tried or how much I studied or prayed, I could not come to accept and worship Jesus as God or understand how his ritualistic murder somehow saved me.  I could never honestly accept Jesus as my "savior" because I view God as my savior.  I don't want to babble on about this, and if you want to get a deeper sense of what I experienced and felt please readon one of my earlier posts where I already explained it all.

The bottom line is I cannot conceive of any way I could have been more willing or more open to understand or receive this one central teaching that supposedly decides if you are saved or not, but it never really felt "true" to me no matter how badly I WANTED it to be true.

It wasn't that I was not willing to accept God.  It was that for whatever reason I was incapable of understanding that one supposed truth (the ritual sacrifice and worship of Jesus as God), and that despite my desire and prayer God would apparently not help me to understand it.

I can see no other possibilities other than that either:

1) God outright rejected me. -OR-
2) Maybe God does not truly require of you what the Bible and church insist determines wether or not you are "saved" (again the ritual sacrifice and worship of Jesus as God).  Maybe I really am a child of God just as much as you, even though I do not fit the requirements of popularly accepted Christian dogma.

--Soulfire

["GREAT Intellect had to exist FIRST – before any Life in the Universe came to existence."]

Hi,

I am having trouble accepting some of the preliminary statements of this book, and am hoping to open some discussion on these things so that I can understand better.  I appreciate any opinions...

Before I go into these, I would like to say thanks for the link and also to the Author for making this book available.  It DOES stimulate interesting thoughts.

Questions I have about "GREAT Intellect had to exist FIRST – before any Life in the Universe came to existence."

1) Doesn't this assume that time exists as a binding restriction on all consciousness? In order for anything to appear to happen before something else, the perception of the witnessing consciousness has to be bound and restricted by time.  This would seem to dictate that time existed BEFORE consciousness.  This would also seem to imply that the founding consciousness that created (or became) all-that-is is neither infinite nor omniscient?

2) This also seems to assume that "life" and "intellect" (which to me also implies consciousness as a pre-requisite) are completely different and seperate from each other.  Isn't all consciousness also "life"?

Questions I have about "It is MUCH easier to make a house than create Life."

1) Does "difficulty" truly exist or is it just an illusion created by limited beliefs?  I don't know about you, but to me something only seems "difficult" when I am ignorant of how to do it properly and/or mentally resist the act of doing it by focusing on the final product of that action instead of the action itself.    When you flow with life, nothing seems difficult.

2) If the concept of "infinity" is valid in this context: say there is an infinte amount of energy and that our potential is truly not limited in any way whatsoever, than any amount of energy it takes to accomplish anything would feel the same as anything else.  When you have infinite energy, doing something that transforms (I say transform because physics teach us that energy is never destroyed but only changes form) say 10 units of energy would not feel any different than something that transforms 10 trillian units of energy, because both quantities of energy would be so small as to seem insignificant.  Which brings me to my last question...

3) If energy truly only changes form and is never destroyed, the feeling/perception of "expending" energy would only be experienced by a being that has lost its conscious connection with all-that-is.  If a bieng has a conscious connection with all-that-is, then any "expenditure" of energy would feel like they just moved energy to a different part of themself where it was needed, not like it was expended.

I am usually guilty of making my posts way too long and thus nobody reads them, so I will stop here even though I have more to say.  The book said that unless I could accept the "truth" of those early foundations, that reading the rest of the book would be pointless so I have temporarily stopped reading.  I'd really love to hear what you guys think...

--Soulfire

quote:Originally posted by Allanon

Anyone who has ears let him hear that the Lord is coming soon to call His elect and Chosen from the principalities of the world.

Here is an example of why I question some of the elements of "truth" in the Bible:

Think of the language here and what it means: his "elect" and his "chosen".  If this is an accurate perception of the mindset of God, it implies that God chose which of us will be his, correct?  If this is true, then God also chose which of us would be left to rot in Hell.  We never had any choice...it was God's choice.  If that is true, then the teaching of a fair "judgement" by God when you die must be false, because if God had ALREADY decided whether or not each person was going to be "his" or not, then there is nothing left of "us" as individuals to "judge".  It would be more accurate to say that we were PRE-judged...prejudice.

Do you believe God would be guilty of prejuduce?  That is a HUMAN fault...and one of the worst ones at that.  So you almost have to conclude that either that passage of the Bible is not "accurate" or that God is a tyrant.  If that passage of the Bible is "true", then all the other passages about being responsible for our "choices" must be inaccurate, because apparently God made all our choices for us.  What about the passages that talk about how we were created to choose to love God of our own "free will"?  Where is free will if God chose for us which of us would come to love him?

I would be sincerely interested in hearing your thoughts on this.  I don't want to "argue" with you, but I want your honest feelings about it.  There are many MANY similar examples...

--Soulfire

Everything Fallnangel just said is absolutely true in my experience.  If you fear or expect being attacked, you might well create that experience.  

Keep in mind that dreaming, lucid dreaming, and APing are all (according to my experience and belief) very similar, if not the same.  The only difference I see is how much of your consciousness is active in the Astral body and how you induced the state.  If you are not always attacked in your dreams or lucid dreams, then unless your conscious thoughts do something to change that, you are not any more likely to be attacked APing.

I have been attacked during spontaneous OBEs as a child.  I have read of other people who were attacked at one time or another.  Other than feeling intense fear and having that fear send them back to their body safe and sound, I have never heard of anybody being in any way actually "hurt" by any of these perceived attacks.

I hope this helps...

--Soulfire

Allanon,

Using that one example of someone who thought he was Christ as "evidence" that other religions and spiritual teachers are essentially the SAME is not logical.

That would be like me saying that some crazy guy who murders people because he believs Jesus told him to is representative of all Christians.

You cannot look at any one person and generalize your perceptions of that person fairly to anybody else.  You can, but it will not be accurate.

--Soulfire

Hi,

I also do not have any friends in RL who are open to the same kind of spiritual ideas that I believe in.  These forums are the only outlet that I have right now to discuss things of this nature.

--Soulfire

I honestly can only speculate on this because I have never attempted anything like this yet personally.

I suspect that if both people know how to do it and time their travels together, they might be able to help at least energetically.  I have heard reports of people saying they felt pulled out of their bodies, but it's hard to say if that is actually what happened or just how their brain interpreted something totally unfamiliar to them.

As for showing a friend who has no idea what it is all about, I would guess that would be very difficult at best.  I believe you would probably have to at least be able to get yourself to deeply feeling the energy sensations that occur during projection or maybe even waking paralysis before anybody could have much chance of helping you.

Again I am only making an educated guess here, so hopefully somebody with actual experience on this aspect will give you a more authoritative answer.

--Soulfire

Hi,

I believe ANYTHING is possible, but I cannot even begin to see any practical way of doing this.  You can see people in their dreams (I believe normal dreams happen in the Astral planes too but just lack consciousness), but unless they remember the dream they will not remember having seen you.  Unless they believe in Astral travel, even if they DO remember the dream, they will usually just think they dreamed about you and not consider that you were actually "there" with them consciously.

I do believe that it is possible to help someone who is attempting a conscious projection of their own free will by feeding them energy, as I feel I was "helped" in sone of my earliest attempts.  I think entities who do this are typically non-physical in nature and have more conscious knowledge of the finer points of astral techniques than most physically incarnate people are likely to have access to.  It might also be possible to wake someone who is dreaming into lucidness, but that is very unlikely unless they have learned to awaken their critical faculties and check for "reality" in their dreams.  Even then, the odds of getting "through" to them so that they realize they are dreaming and become conscious are probably not very favorable to say the least.

--Soulfire

Hi,

In my mind and heart I worship only God.  I perceive God as the sum total of everything and the creative force of everything.  Every man, tree, rock, thought, or wave of energy.  To me everything that exists is of God and is used by God to create the highest good.  If a man does something "evil", then ultimately I believe that God uses the pain that is created by that evil and ultimately transforms it into love and wisdom.  To me, God is unconditional love.

Where I "fail" to be a Christian is that I do not believe or understand how Jesus being symbolically murdered on the cross redeems me.  I greatly respect that he died for what he knew to be right, I love him for trying to teach the world more about the nature of God and how to live a life of love, but I do not believe God the father would condemn me to eternity in hell...essentially throwing me away, just because I tried and failed to understand and accept that one ceremonial act.

I also believe that each of us has the potential to manifest the love of God the same way Jesus did.  Even Jesus was quoted as saying that each of us, with enough faith, could do EVERYTHING he did.  I don't believe I am God, but rather that I am like a single cell in God's body.  The Bible sais we were created in God's own image.  Just like every single strand of DNA supposedly contains everything that makes up the entire human body, but yet is only one small part of that body at the same time, so I believe we are in the Body of God.  

Instead of believing that God loved us so much that he gave his only son to somehow die for my sins...I believe that God loves us so much that he allows us to learn and manifest all the love of his spirit and even make mistakes along the way.  I believe that he is powerful enough to do this without me adhering to any particular ritualistic or symbolic belief.

I tried with all my heart to understand and believe in that ritual, but it never truly deeply made sense to me.  You said in one of your posts that we DO KNOW THE TRUTH WHEN WE HEAR IT, but when I hear about that ritual sacrifice, I do not FEEL any sense of truth whatsoever.  I asked God to show me because apparently I was not wise enough to understand.  I asked learned professors of theology, ministers, "good Christians", and God himself to help show me.  I opened my heart.  It never happened.  

Eventually I got tired of being treated like an outcast for saying honestly that it really did not ring true to me.  Eventually I started to LIE and say I did understand.  I did not lie out of any meanness of spirit, but prayed that if I said it enough and wanted to believe hard enough, that eventually I truly would.  After close to 10 years of this, it still never happened and I gave up.  Mostly I gave up because I was finding it more difficult to ACT a truly loving Christlike lifestyle.  My "fruits"  were not getting better, they were getting worse.  I was now judging people instead of loving them.  I was filled with fear instead of love.  Instead of loving the life that God gave to me as a gift, I was waiting for the day when that life could be over and I would be in Heaven instead of Earth, and at the same time I was terrified that I was going to Hell because I could not understand the ritual sacrifice.  Deep inside I felt dirty and worthless.  I do not believe that is why God gave us our lives here on Earth.  I do not believe God made me feel that way.  I believe it was man who twisted and perverted the truth and who try to make everyone believe their lies, and that I would not live like that anymore.  They way I see it, God loved me enough to show me another way to get to know him and let his love into my life and share that love with other people.

Because I cannot understand how Jesus being murdered somehow ritualistically redeems me, I supposedly failed as a Christian.  I tried everything, I failed miserably, I lost faith in myself and everyting else, so eventually I tried just living the love of Christ in my day to day life and not worrying about the technicality of the ritual sacrifice.

Honestly Allanon, what would you have had me do?  I'm reasonably certain that anything you can possibly say I had already done many times.  Now I feel love more strongly than ever before in my life.  I have transformed many of my weaknesses and fears into love.  In every possible way in terms of my thoughts and ACTIONS, I am a better "Christian" than I ever was when I fit the church's definition of a Christian.  And I don't have to lie anymore about what I believe or be constantly "judged" and treated with (let me be very honest here) disrespect and sometimes outright disdain by many of my "brothers and sisters" in Christ.

So I worship God and God alone just like you do.  But I do not WORSHIP Jesus - I merely love him.  If that REALLY means I am going to Hell, then I guess I never really had any choice...

--Soulfire

I don't think anybody here hates Christ.  In fact many people have said just the opposite.  A lot of people DO dislike a lot of what the church sais or does.  Many many of the most horrible attrocities in history were committed in the NAME of Christ by people calling themselves Christians that read the Bible, but knew nothing of the true teachings of Jesus.  Most people know Jesus had NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT.  It was MAN who twisted the word of God to make it say what he wanted to.  That is what people find repugnant.  Sometimes people DO blame that on ALL Christians or even Christ (unfairly), but that hatred is almost always based on the HUMANS that interpret and twist the Bible to suit their own nefarious purposes - not the true Jesus or what he stands for.

By all means share the love of God and Jesus.  That's why I urge you to tell YOUR STORY of how you experience God's love.  Show them the fruits of Christ as they have manifested in your life experience.  Get to know them and let them get to know the real you., and thus they get to Know Christ THROUGH you.  If you want to make a difference, if you want to reach anybody with your truth, they need to be able to understand it in terms they can relate to.  If you alienate them, if you judge them, if you make them not want to be like you, then you alienate them further to Christ as well.  Reverse evangelism.

I don't know how to say any of this any more clearly than I have already tried to do.  Either you will listen or you will not.  Either way I sincerely wish you well...

Your Friend,

--Soulfire

Hi,

Your experiences don't matter?  I believe you undervalue yourself.  And you are also ignoring a fundamental truth of the human condition:

Humans learn best from experience.

Why do you not touch a red hot stove?  Is it just because somebody told you not to, or because through some EXPERIENCE you came to UNDERSTAND that you will get burnt and it will hurt!?  You might have burnt yourself or seen somebody else get burnt, but if you dont have either direct or indirect EXPERIENCE, most people will try to touch the stove eventually.  Look at Adam and Eve.  []

Look closely at the Bible and the stories of Jesus and the Apostles.  They ALWAYS used their personal experiences to SHOW people what they wanted to teach in ways that would be meaningful to the LISTENERS - not just the speaker.  When they did quote scriptire, it was because they knew that the people they were speaking to already believed in those scriptures.  Jesus himself most often used Parables, which are stories of personal experiences that people can relate to.  The stories make LOGICAL sense to the listener.  That's how Jesus did it.  Think about it...  []

--Soulfire

Allanon,

Please just give me ONE MINUTE of your time to actually read what I took the time to write?  

Assume for the moment (whether you agree with it or not) that most of the people here do not have faith in the Bible.  I know YOU do, but the people you are trying to reach do not.  So quoting from something they do not consider as having any authority (their opinion not yours) is not likely to motivate them.

What you are doing is the same as me trying to use examples from my astral experiences to convince you that Jesus is not the only way.  Since my experiences are "nothing but Satan's lies" to you, using them to try and prove anything to you is pointless.  Well in a similar way, to many of us the Bible is tainted by some of the worst of human nature and has little or no authority that we recognize.  

Even if you are "right" and we are all "wrong", quoting the Bible will not help anyone unless they already BELIEVE the Bible has authority.  If they already believe the Bible has authority, then odds are they also already believe everything else you are trying to prove, so you don't NEED to convince them.  Does that make any sense?

Effective communication has to be meaningful to the speaker AND the listener.  And it really needs to be a two way street.  In all your posts, I have not seen you say anything to indicate to anyone that you even tried to listen to or understand what anybody is saying or feeling.  You don't have to AGREE with them, but you need to at least understand WHY they feel the way they do.

Several people have asked you to share some of YOUR experiences with us, but you have thus far not done that.  Tell us how Christ has changed YOUR life...how you have experienced his love PERSONALLY.  This at least has the possibility of reaching people.  In order to convince anybody of anything, you have to make them want what you already have.  Rigidly quoting the bible, not listening to people, calling them Satanists...none of us wants to be a person who would do that to other human beings, so none of us is very likely to take the actions that apparently make YOU act like that (In this case accepting Christ and reading the Bible, etc.).  Lead by personal EXAMPLE, in LOVE and UNDERSTANDING.  Ask yourself WWJD (What Would Jesus Do)?

--Soulfire

quote:Originally posted by pmlonline

OK, I have no problems with using vibs as a guide to finding something. But Karma will be one's middle name if they judge someone based on any amount of vib. That is, if they're not truly in communion with their higher self.

I don't think Karma works like some kind of hell/retribution system to punish a person who makes mistakes.  If you judge somebody for ANY reason (vibe or otherwise), I would suggest that your karma debt is probably paid just by losing the opportunity to have that person become part of your life.  Also I have come to believe any time you judge anything, you are probably judging yourself on some similar level and thus paying a "price" that way as well - although you may not be conscious of it.  

Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe many karma issues are minor and are worked out "gently" in a way that is likely to help you learn something rather than "punish" you.  I don't think Karma tallies up every little mistake you make and saves them all up to hit you over the head with in another life.  At least not unless you have MAJOR issues and that is the only way you will learn.  As with many other things though, BELIEVING it works that way just might make it so.  Just my opinion...

--Soulfire

Hi,

My dad used to listen to Art Bell, and once in a while he would call me in to listen to something because he knew I liked watching the X-files.

The few experiences I had to listen, I got the distinct feeling that he was an outright fraud looking to cash in on sensationalism.  One guest in particular sticks out who called in and sounded terrified, his voice quivered with fear, talked about how he "knew things" and somebody was after him, etc.  I don't know how else to explain it other than to say it felt like two people were voice acting a really bad play together.  His fear and voice tremors started and stopped with illogical timing, the language style of what they were saying sounded like they were both written by one person instead of the spontaneous thoughts of two different people, the sentence structures were too complex and used no contractions when the person was supposedly scared and talking very fast, etc.  Underneath all that however, my instinct just SCREAMED "staged deliberate fraud!" (for both of them, not just the caller).

All this is just my opinion and based on limited exposure, but I just can't take the guy seriously.

--Soulfire

Hi,

1) Sometimes I will have a finger or toe twitch a little, but I don't personally recall ever having a whole limb jerk.

2) If you are feeling energy sensations, I'd say you are probably on the right track.  My biggest challenge doing conscious exit APs is letting my mind "drift" enough to allow it to happen, while still maintaining just enough awareness to KNOW it happened.  It is a very fine line for me and my success ratio is probably only about 10%.

3) I've never bothered with the sword and armor as I have never needed it.  The only negative astral experiences I remember having were as a child.  Those were during spontaneous OBEs and I was too terrified to take any controlled action at the time.  I suspect that just like in real life, there are probably usually better options available than fighting.  For instance just deciding to move to a holy place might prevent many things from following you.  The only way I would ever consider fighting was if I had recurring problems with Negs or if I needed to get to a specific place in the Astral and I also had an intuitive sense that "facing" some kind of negative entity was part of what I "needed to do".  You can experience pretty much anything you want in the Astral though, so if holographic Dungeons and Dragons is your cup of tea, battle away I guess.  []

4) I have at times conjured torches in dark places and they worked great.  My limited experience has led me to believe pretty much anything you create will behave similarly (but not always exactly) to the way you want it to...provided you believe it will.  Limited belief produces limited results but usually just trying is enough to produce "something" in line with what you desired.  If not, multiple attempts where you focus more usually work.  

5) As per #3, I am unqualified to answer this.

I hope this helps...  []

--Soulfire

Hi,

I will give it a try, thanks.  Right now my conscious exit attempts only succeed about 1 time in 10 and I would love to "get out" more.  Thanks again for the idea.  

--Soulfire

Hi,

I was a dual major (Psychology / Christian Education) in college.  In the simplest terms, I was taught that you only "medicate" (or in more severe cases institutionalize) someone who you believe is a reasonably credible danger to society or themselves.  If a patient ASKS for help alleviating some problem that you feel medication would help, that is a discretionary call.

As you can see, there is a lot of room for subjective opinion in this.  Accordingly, you will find vast differences between psych professionals according to their personal beliefs.

Keep in mind I was only a college student, and at least one person here is apparently an actual psychologist, so maybe he can offer a more authoritative answer?

--Soulfire

Hi,

It is very common for me to have limited or no control in an OBE.  This is particularly true of lucid dreams and only to a much lesser degree with conscious exit APs.  The best way to characterize MY experience with this is that oftentimes I feel as though I am in an environment with much higher gravity than I am used to and feel very heavy.  Sometimes when I become lucid in a dream, it is so strong that I collapse crushed to the ground and can barely move.

The solution for me is always very easy though.  I think I got it from one of Buhlman's books: I consciously decide I want a higher degree of consciousness and control (and sometimes light if it is too dark) and say in a loud clear voice, "I want CONSCIOUSNESS now! I want CLARITY now!" and expect to get it.  Sometimes improvement comes all at once and sometimes only incrementally, requiring me to do this two or more times until I can function exactly the way I want to.

The "Real Time Zone" is always dark and shadowy to me at night (but not so dark that I cannot see as if by the equivalent of dim candle light) and I have never been able to make the RTZ totally light by this method.  So far none of the higher non-physical realms have that problem for me at all.

To summarize, I have found the saying "Ask and ye shall receive" to be almost magically true in the Astral - as long as you at least partially expect to really get that you ask for.

--Soulfire

Hi,

I've never had any success getting a person alive in the physical world to notice me at all when I am in the astral, but I suppose anything is possible.

--Soulfire

Hi,

This is not something I have developed yet personally, but Robert Bruce has a free e-book on achieving this.  I have read the book and have a very good feeling about it, but I am spending all of my development time right now doing energy work and improving my AP.

Like most things that are worthwhile, this sounds like something you will need to put consistent work and effort into the excercises to achieve any results, not just something you "read" how to do and then you can do it.

http://www.astralpulse.com/guides/guides.htm

Good luck!  I'd love to hear how it works for you if you try it and don't mind dropping me a line to let me know?

--Soulfire

Farewell Allanon,

I sincerely hope that you find a more fulfilling way to try and help people.  I urge you to re-read Tisha's post, because she said something very vaulable better than any of us:  

If you sincerely want to share God with other people, live your life quietly with the love of Christ in your heart.  Be ever loving and never judging.  People WILL see that in you and ask you questions with an open heart.  THEN share your love of the gospel with them.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I hope you do not just "give up", but maybe try sharing your love of the Gospel through personal example instead of just words...it will be much more fruitful.  May God bless your journey...  []

--Soulfire