Messages

quote:The longer you drift through this mental state and dive further into it, the more these images become stable and realistic.  

Ya, like just yesterday I was seeing one SSI (split-second image) and then another SSI, and generally the visual quality is poor and seems more "mental" than "sensory", but at the tail-end of the session I got a really VIVID SSI of a poster sitting on a floor and leaning against a wall, and the poster said in big, bold type at the top, "Toscanini", and had a bunch of smaller type writing , interspersed with larger type, below it.  (I had thought he was a classical composer, but a search on th' Net reminded me he was a famous syphony conductor).  

quote:You'll start to border the astral realm and experience a three-dimensionalizing of the blackness into which you're looking. If you reach that point, then you're very close to phasing over into the astral.  

That's the part I have trouble getting to.  One problem is time constraints--seems like I have to have at least an hour or so to start getting where I want to get, and then it's time for me to be getting up and getting on to something else in beta-land.  

--Paukki

I'm another one who just wanted to get out and back in.  It's said that if you do it, you'll know it, that there are no doubts about it. Well, I had a "partial" that was vivid and obvious, but the full exit one was bizarre, and it ended up that the first thing I did was invoke light from The One in order to get a horde of astral monkeys to stop storming through the window above my dresser.  Naturally, this little traumatic event snapped me right back to my body.  Without going into details, (because I have to go to work, pronto), there were aspects of this experience that caused me to wonder, also, if it were just a lucid dream.  I know it had my heart beating really fast, that's for sure!
--Paukki

Hey Evan, have you read Robert Bruce's "Astral Dynamics" yet?  Because in that he writes about how he could project easily when he was a young child, but when he wanted to get back into it as an adult, it was not so easy.  In fact, "not so easy" is understatement, when you read what hewent through  when he got his first projection after coming back to it.  Seems to me he mentioned something about pressure in his head, too.  Maybe you're familiar with that, but if not, check it out!
--Paukki

Well put, Douglas.  Or, uh.....well quoted!  http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile_approve.gif" border=0>
--Paukki

Oh, who knows!  Seems like if I decide that the purpose of life is to enjoy life, something happens that sorta turns it around to something like, "The purpose of life is for Life to enjoy you!"  The latest demonstration of this in my own little life is that I had not long become seriously interested in enjoying some serious adventuring in things like meditation and AP and RV, than along came not just one or two, but a variety of inputs that were more along altruistic, or even, , religious lines.  Sometimes it begins to make me grumpy, because I still do not KNOW for myself, (and my APing is proceeding ve-e-e-r-r-ry slowly, thank you.)  I read Paramahansa Yogananda, and he says that it takes an average of a million years of earth-plane lives for a human being to escape the wheel of karma and be done with incarnating here, (but through learning "kriya yoga" and excercising it in a disciplined way, this can be done in..............3 years???!!!!!)   Last February I enrolled in Gerald O'Donnell's "Academy of Remote Viewing and Remote Influencing  Through Time & Space", and the intro to the R.I. course has about 24 pages about matters having to do with, among other things,  "The One", (saying, for instance, that things like reincarnation, astrology, and karma debt, are things of "the dark matrix", and that we all have the key to reaching a higher vibrational state, a "New Matrix", and this all has to do with getting down to the deep theta level and finding our Higher Self, etc., and you don't need a guru for this, it's in yourself, etc.)   But what do I KNOW?  Next to nothing!  So for now the purpose in >my< life, seems to be to keep pounding away at KNOWING, at FINDING OUT, at somehow extricating this mind from the mental enslavement that is par for the course for living in this narrow little existence on planet earth.  I saw a gal on tv who'd been given some "Woman of the Year" award by some magazine, and she talked about how you don't need to sit on a mountain top and meditate, you just need to get out there and love people and do things altruistically, you know, and people swear by this, but then I have a mind adept at counterpoints, and there are many COUNTERpoints out there, including one along the lines of how people will see through you if you take the altruistic approach and your heart is not in it, or you're just doing it to "save your own soul", because what you need to find out for yourself is where your PASSION is, (if you have one left, sometimes I wonder about myself), and go in that direction.  And then maybe you'll enjoy life, and life will enjoy you.  Maybe?
--Paukki the Continually Struggling

Hey James,
When I first started looking into RV and AP within the last year or so, it was mainly for the adventure of it.  The same old routines were getting stale.  It seems to be a pattern in my life, however, that a more serious side to my quests always comes forward somehow, some way.  I was lucky to find a relatively cheap course in RV right away, and this find seemed to be even luckier in that there was a sense of some depth to it that goes beyond the carnival tent.  True, I haven't always felt lucky about this find; sometimes I've grumbled.  But there is a certain assurance that comes with the idea that perhaps there is some truth and maturity at the forefront of one's involvements.  I had hardly joined the small, but growing "Grillflame" forum for people interested in rv (and other things, but rv at the center of it), when a message was posted that assured me I don't want to just "dabble" with the spirit world.  Your own message, James, reminded me of that post, which can be found at the following link:  
http://www.mindsafari.com/The%20Small%20Little%20Voice%20Within.htm
--Paukki

Hi Leyla,
You can find the topic about the star-flies, floating thingies, (whatever it is), at the "spiritual development" forum.  Can't remember the exact label for it, but you'll know it when you see it.  It's been a popular topic for discussion, so it has one of those burning folders icons, (hot stuff!)  When I first started seeing them I was still recovering from something that was either a psychic attack or some kind of chemical implosion in my brain, (or a combination of the two).  But that was many, many, many moons ago, and I can still see them.  I can see them if I stare into this monitor and unfocus my eyes a bit.  I can see them plainly in the clear blue sky.  I've often thought they are life-at-work in the cornea, or clear outter lining of the eyeball.  It's like my glasses get stuff on them and the stuff they get on them is easier to see if I hold the glasses up to a bright light, but when you look at a monitor or a bright sky, your cornea is not glass or plastic, it's a living thing.  I also wondered if it had nothing to do with physical externals, but perhaps with physical internals--just  how does vision work?  Light goes through the cornea and pupil and strikes the rods and cones of the retina and is transmitted to the brain, (I think sight is in the rear of the brain, lower down?), but how does that work?  Some kind of holographic show?  Well, scientists are saying the whole universe might just be a big thought, not a big machine, and that everything is just energy dancing around in different ways.  So....maybe you're seeing part of the dance.
--Paukki

Hey, I'm no scientist, but sometimes I happen to take the time to listen to one or two of them.  What I heard is that there is a growing number of people within the scientific community who are believing that "consciousness is primary", or "first cause".  This hasn't been the case, within science, for a very long time, (going back, evidently, to Descartes and the division he made between mind and body, for the sake of ending the quarreling between church and science).  The general scientific opinion has been that human consciousness is an "epiphenomenon of nature"--you know, that evolution put this molecule and that molecule together, and over some eons of time your brain was built out of all that, and consciousness is a result of it.  But now the talk is that we are not our brains, we are non-local minds, (a buzz-word of the times, "non-local"), and the brain is just like a radio receiving signals from outside of itself.  In The Academy of Remote Viewing, we are told that below the theta level of consciousness, (Delta),  we are non-local MIND, (the "universal mind"); we are One.  (Someone emailed that there is a theoretical "Epsilon", beyond Delta, also.)  The quote that I read about the universe beginning to look more like a great thought than a great machine is attributed to Sir James Jeans, in "The Mysterious Universe", and was quoted in Paramahansa Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi", (copyright, 1946).  Yogananda also quotes from the gospel according to John a couple of times, ("In the beginning was the Word...", etc.)   I believe these things tie together and aren't just a lot of loose associations.  

--Paukki

It's good to see someone discovering our Oneness.  It's good for you; it's good for me; it's good for everybody.  I can't say that I have experienced a full-blown realization of Oneness, but starting in my mid-twenties I started having experiences that startled me at first, (though now I am used to them).  This is the experience of feeling someone else in yourself, coming and going like a brief gust of wind. Usually it's someone I know, (but if it weren't, how would I know it was anyone at all?  If you gather my drift.)  Sometimes I pick it up from just being around someone for a little while.  I have often thought that The One was trying to tell me something, especially when this first started.  Namely:  That we are all One.  Nevertheless, I have spent many years in and out of the abyss of my little egocentric desires, (tends toward forgetfulness about things like Oneness), and only relatively recently have I been drawn back toward the heights of The Great Search.  Last February I became a member of The Academy of Remote Viewing.  I'm a lousy remote viewer, (so far), but the site and the tapes/cd's are full of stuff about, (voila!), The One.  Check out http://www.mindsafari.com/.  There's links on there that are all about The One.  Right now I'm still reading Paramahansa Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi".  Fascinating!  And fun!  (He has a definite sense of humor.)  There's a ton of literature, these days, linking mysticism, (especially eastern mysticism),  with quantum physics.  I had heard Edgar Mitchell, the former Apollo astronaut, talking about the holographic universe, and about how it's being discovered it is more like a big THOUGHT, than about matter.  (You were talking about energy, right?)  And just yesterday I was reading in Yogonanda's book a direct quote about that universe-is-a-thought idea, and that quote is at least 50 or 60 years old, and evidently the concept is an ancient one, as per the mystics of India.  Deepak Chopra's book, "How to Know God" is about 7 stages of "God responses" I believe it was, and the 7th stage is the state of unity, oneness, (although he says we all experience the 7 stages, to some degree, all the time.)  I guess people start feeling that 7th stage when they look at stars at night.  Or when they go outside and get into nature, like you did.  But I gather you really got a big, big RUSH of Oneness!   Far out!  Congratulations!

Hey, gang--you're making my rusty brain-gears move, and it's givin' me a headache, cut it out!  http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile_wink.gif" border=0>  Seriously, (and humbly), though, when it comes to adversity, pain, and things that go bump in the night, the two cents that I have to offer is along the lines of the importance of having a whole mind.  (All your fault, Kakkarot....since you brought up the pain & adversity thing, specifaclly.  http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile_wink.gif" border=0>)   Probably like most of you, I've had my share of physical aches and pains, but they don't compare with the psychological stuff.  Prisoners of war, survivors of the USSR's "gulag archipelago", concentration camp survivors--I'm sure a lot of them would stress the psychological difficulties over the physical ones.  People know this intuitively, if not explicity.  Reminds me, too, of filmakers, (seems like some of your U.K. directors were adept at this), who portray a "bad infinity", wherein the same nightmare keeps repeating itself.  Such is the definition of hell.  And such was the essence of what I would term the worst experiences of my own little anecdotal life.  If, when I was going through mental self-torments, (or whatever it was--neg attacks, whatever), somebody would have told me, "What are you worried about?  It's all in your own head!"  Well.....maybe I would have healed instantly, or laughed insanely all the louder.  It's like hearing the physicist saying the universe is just a big thought.  That's nice.  So, how's your thinking been lately?  Pretty wholesome?  Maybe up at the Focus N++ level?  Have any inclination to go down into "maya soup" and help a few souls stop chasing their own tails, er, tales, er....thoughts?   Maybe you'll find out they don't listen to you very well.   Like they just can't quite see what you're talking about.  So you'll make up all kinds of childrens' games for them, so maybe they can reach thought-control through devices.  Someone with Buddha/Christ-consciousness might even get quoted as being somewhat exasperated by the necessity of all this, but still.  Thought happens.  How?  Why?  Who for?  What for?    (Too bad I already had my midnight snack, or I would've shut up by now.)       http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile_clown.gif" border=0>
--Paukki

When I was about 19 or 20 years old I kept a dream journal.  I stopped keeping it after a relatively short period of time because I did not want to take the time, every day or two, to write down 9, 10, or 11 dreams, some of which could take a lot of ink to adequately record.  A few decades later, I started taking down dreams again, but they seem to elude me, in comparison to long ago, and over and over again I dream about work at the end of my sleep, (and it's the only dream I remember.)  This gets old.  As does the job.  Not long ago I started having long dreams again, but then they stopped, and I suspect I shut it off from myself because of the time it takes, if you can believe that.  What about you?  Is there some semi-conscious, (or deeper), reason that you know of that you might keep things behind the veil from yourself?  Any fears?  Or maybe you like to play hide & seek with yourself?  You wouldn't be averse to spending extra time on a dozen, possibly  weighty & lengthy  dreams every day or so, yes, no?    
--Paukki

I'll be 50 next year and I've worked at the same place for going on 12 years.  It's a hot, dirty, noisy, repetitive job, but in this sparsely populated area, the wages are good and hard to find, elsewhere.  I had to do something different in life, so when my wife saw a special rate for a satellite tv connection, we took it and I started watching "The Wisdom Channel", soon becoming more interested in things like meditation, and it takes off from there.  Mind you, most of my 20's and 30's I spent moving around the country and looking into one thing and another, and I guess the best way I could put it is that I had this deep-down idea that this world doesn't really operate like it appears to operate, and I was drawn toward explanations of what "reality" is about.  It started with born-again Christianity, veered off after different maverick thinkers of one kind or another, and then when I'd spent a decade trying to forget all about that search, along comes satellites and the internet.  Getting into AP was an "adventure", at first, but it has taken on more the aspect of the search for how things really are.  What reality is.  But I still want to have fun, too!   http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile.gif" border=0>
--Paukki

Okay, put me on the list of "seeing stars", too.  A star seems to be pretty much a stationary thing, relative to our perception of time and space when we observe them, so if that's what some of you see, well....what I see I have thought of as "fireflies", which are moving around very quickly and seem to be appearing and disappearing quickly, as well.  Usually I've shrugged it off as something to do with whatever sustains the cornea on one's eyeballs.  Saw a physicist on the "Thinking Allowed" program, lately, talking about how everything is light, so...?  Who knows?  (And what about those who say each person's universe is projected from within?  How would that work?)  Anyway, when I first started experiencing it about 23 years ago, it spooked me a bit.  One night at work at a dishwashing job back in 1979, I got  dizzy from the heat and exertion, and perhaps stood up too fast, and allofasuddenwhoooOOOAAAaaaa!  all those "fireflies" were a broiling, roiling, rock & rolling mass that , for about a second or less, were all becoming a very bright orange color, as I recall, and they were blinding me--totally taking over my vision!  (I actually had this nasty, fleeting thought that I was going to spontaneously combust!  Hehe!)  This happened more than once.   Tonight as I read through all 3 pages of this topic, I tried seeing them, and could see them a bit on the computer monitor.  Sorta like the little dots on a tv or monitor get a life of their own and start moving around, but the movement suggests more than a fast, two-dimensional surface.  Sometimes I watch them in the blue sky, which is easy.  There is a whitness or transparency in some or most or all of it, (haven't really STUDIED it), so I've wondered if the bright orange "fireflies" associated with lightheadedness/oxygen debt, are actually "dying" fireflies, (lack of air).   All speculation.  I'm no scientist.

--Paukki

When being drawn in the direction of attempting OBE, originally, for me, it was to break out of stasis.  You know.  Adventure!  But I can only give an opinion about what OBE's "real" purpose might be, and that would be:  to experience what is real!  (Can you hear the roaring laughter of the skeptic, in the background?)   In that sense, I am one of a growing crowd who, having heard of miraculous things, would like to see for themselves.  To know.  To experience.  Not just to hear from someone else and pin all one's faith on that.  Right now I don't want to give much thought as to how this is going to possibly turn me into a "better person", or some such thing.  I just hear the call of the mountains and I have to go there, because that is my nature.  
--Paukki

quote:For students of this modern-day phasing approach, the key thing to remember is to simply let go of the physical entirely. Merely allow your physical body to go to sleep as normal, rather than in some way trying to make it sleep: which you cannot do, because the more you try and make the body sleep, the more it will remain awake.

Hey, Arie, I'm a "newbie", also.  What baby steps I've taken, I am sure relates to the above quote.  I will use somebody's cd or cassette tape, or a method prescribed in a book, and there I am lying on my back or sitting upright in a chair, but the really interesting occurrences happened when I finally just "gave up" and rolled over, (almost always onto my left side, where I sleep best).  A few times I didn't give up, but I still rolled over onto my left side and just INTENDed to stay aware as long and as deep as I could, because what the various techniques usually have done to me, by then, is to wear my body down to the point where it just wants to be a little more comfortable, that's all.  Last experience I had like this, I simply cultivated the notion of floating over my body, (not much more to it than that), and it wasn't long till I was on my left side again, followed by a brief experience that included what I could best describe as astral monkeys.  Then I lost the images and the sensation of floating over my body, (snapped right back into beta-land),  and found that my heart was racing, (not my heart chakra), but that's another hurdle to get over.

--Paukki

Hi Czm33x,
"Astral Dynamics" has info on stuff like astral noises and astral wildlife.  Seemed to me, when I read that, that it's to be expected.  Then here you are, writing your experience with an astral voice, which was followed by Major Tom's link to the topic on fears relating to projecting, (which I read).  I've noticed within the last 24 hours that a "voice" tried a condescending angle on me when I was attempting to go deep, (and cultivating the idea of projecting).  Perhaps if I listened closer, I'd hear this all the time, but since I've been hearing "voices" in my normal, waking life for going on 24 years, (see topic of "Psychic Self-Defense" and sub-topic of "24 years of voices"), I have learned to pretty much ignore this stuff.  So, when your "spirit" went from a commanding tone to a begging tone, I recognized this.  Over the years, I have called this "big mother".  I would pick it up when I made physical exertions, like hysterically whisper-shouting at me to "Slow down!" my pace on the bicycle.  And I would pick up the pace and nothing would happen, (no sudden accident or anything negative).  My actual mother wasn't like that.  Where does it come from?  I've heard all kinds of things about it.  Sometimes I think that the purpose of life is to break out of the smallness, out of our "fishbowls", but there are all kinds of "programs" in our minds, collective minds, ethnic bodies, you name it, that work against this, all too often.  There are those who further attempt to reduce this dynamic to one of the FEAR-or-LOVE choice.

If I had been in on that topic that Major Tom gave us the link for, I think I would say that, in regard to what most frightens me, or works on that side of me, in regard to things astral, is the idea that something could well-up from my subconscious that was planted there in the past.  I recently had at least a quasi-OBE experience, (it happened so fast, it left doubts), that had astral monkeys clambering through the bedroom window, and I know that I never heard of astral monkeys until I started reading some of these books and websites on astral stuff.  Are they really there?  Or did I conjure them up, like the time I got measles in the Army because one other guy got the measles, (but his turned out NOT to be measles, and mine really was measles!)  See what I'm saying?  Robert Bruce talks about astral travel metaphorically, that it's like swimming in the ocean--relatively safe.  Last August I told my grandaughter there was no problem with sharks on the beaches of northwest Oregon, because, (I thought), sharks don't like the colder water.  Yesterday I found out a man lost his foot to a shark right where we'd been swimming.  Therefore, this sort of "coincidence" automatically starts ruminating in the back of my mind, in terms of astral travel and fears, , and gives power to the voices of Big Mother.  Except that I've been hearing them for so long, it's overkill, for me.  If love really does mean putting fear behind you, then why not keep drivin' on, man?      http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile.gif" border=0>

--Paukki

Just a quick note to thank those of you who have replied already.  Really, there is so much available within this forum in general, it is almost mind-boggling.  Between the books, tapes, cd's, forum posts, emails, ..........yowwwww!  (Anybody ever warn anybody about the inherent difficulties encountered with a cup-running-over?)   http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile_clown.gif" border=0>

--Paukki

[Originally posted by kakkarot:]

quote:Originally posted by kakkarot:
the essence of christianity is Love.

"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" 37 And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets."

in the end, no matter what arguments are concocted or what opinions rule the day, christianity is all about Loving.

~kakkarot

Secret of Secrets
 

Perhaps Judaism is all about loving, also, since in the above quote it was a Jew quoting from Jewish scriptures.
Perhaps the essence of  all existence is Love.
Someone might cry foul! "But look at all the evil in existence! How can a good tree bear so much bad fruit?!"
And the same thing might be said of religions.  Or of  sciences, for that matter.  And so on.
What is the essence of this topic within this forum?
--Paukki

"is it kind of like the voices are speaking the "truth" about what you think of things?"

More like they are myself in a variety of guises, for the most part.  So very much of it seems like a kind of background radiation that reflects my emotional state within any given situation or action, and I can decide for myself if there is anything to learn from what is reflected.

" and sometimes, you hear voices that 'couldn't possibly be your own' because they speak in ways you don't and with knowledge you don't possess?"

Extremely rare.  That's the exciting stuff of prophets, intuitives, etc., not me
.
" like when someone you don't like walks into the room, a voice mutters disgustedly 'That guy is a(n) [explitive]. I hate him',"

Nope.  There was a period, at the start, 24 years ago, when there seemed to be a generic bunch of voices, seemingly female in tone, that would, (as I wrote here or somewhere else, can't remember), talk about somebody being "the moron".  With hindsight I would simply call that a guilt made audibly manifest because of the conflict caused, within, between a religious mindset of the near past, and the actions of the then present.  While I was a security guard at Stanford U. Med. Center in 1981/82,  I had access to a lot of places.  So I looked up "auditory hallucinations" in a doctor's textbook and found that much of what I had "heard" was quite possibly just a reflection of my own lonliness, intensive introspection, and tendency to be entirely too self-judgmental.  A "precipitating stress" can knock a person into hearing "voices", but I think it doesn't have to be something sudden, (like a death in the family, loss of a job, etc.), but can be something built up over time, and then a mere straw can break the back of the camel bearing the burden of an ill-at-ease mind.  (This is a psychological view.  It doesn't bring into play "Negs" and such things.)    

"or when you start thinking of doing something that you believe is 'wrong' and a voice says something like 'You shouldn't do that. It'll come back to bite you later'?"

Nope.  They don't really work like that, (with me).  Maybe there are times I've forgotten about.

" or if you just aren't really thinking of anything (or it might be that you are  focusing completely on one thing) and you hear a voice just up and say 'So and so isn't feeling well' and they name a  person you hadn't even thought about for days,"

Nope.  

" or if this is what you are experiencing, then i think it might be a combination of an undisciplined mind combined with
untrained (and unknown) telepathic reception. this reception might be from other people, or might be from spirits, but it is
often difficult, or completely impossible, to distinguish from your own mental voices, until you learn "know yourself" and
 know what your own mental, or "inner", voice(s) sounds like.   what i described about happened to me for a while. until i started attacking the voices and started trying to feel other   "presences" around me. when i started attacking vile (has anybody noticed that vile and evil are the same except the "e"  is moved from the back to the front of the word?) beings and started sorting through the voices that remained to find out  why they were talking to me, i figured out that most of it was just my mind telling me what i wanted to think unconsciously  but that i consciously didn't want to think. if you understand that. like not wanting to hate people, but still hating them and instead of allowing myself to hate them the voices told me what i didn't want to think."

Maybe a lot of it has just been repititious banalities because some of us need repetition.  A coach might be asked about one of his players and the coach replies, "He has potential, but he needs lots of repetitions."  The latter applies to physical effort combined with mental disciplines.  In the world of everyday life, the repetitions first started getting the point across that I was a very fearful person who could try doing some very simple things to make life easier, if I would just face the fears and take a step in the direction desired.  However, I began to notice as time went along that the repititions led to my wondering if my focus in life was really what I wanted in the first place, or if I had been programmed to think that way by some process of acculturation or the pressure to conform within any given collective.  If you go back a few posts to Kristen's post, what she wrote about that I really liked, among several things, was is idea of getting one's focus turned outward onto something bigger, greater, whatever you want to call it, and then watch what might happen.  Later she wondered about the possible difficulty of removing core images, or of completing exorcising one's self of an "astral shell", which speaks to me of the power of trauma.  The more severe the trauma, isn't it likely the bigger the imprint it leaves?  Well, I'm trying to get at >something<, here, but I'm not sure what it is, so maybe I should just go dig up a snack or something and leave at that.    

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--Paukki

Anybody read Gregg Braden's "The Isaiah Effect"?  ("Decoding the Lost Science of Prayer and Prophecy" is the subtitle.)  In that book, Braden states that the Essenes were formed as collectives, or communities of scholars, going back 500 years before Christ. Evidently they were the first people to openly condemn slavery, and killing animals for food.  If you haven't read this book yet, I'd recommend it, (if you're into that sort of thing).  Years ago I was up late listening to the radio, one night, and a guest speaker was an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It's been a long time since I heard it, but I remember well how this professor talked abut the virulent anti-Roman feelings of the Essenes, and of how they were constantly predicting the violent, God-led downfall of Rome.  The professor said that the book of Revelations, at the end of the New Testament, is a very good example of Essene writing, and added that the Essenes did a lot of writing in "code", to protect themselves.  (Revelations is full of symbolism, or "code".)  Which me reminds of reading in a Bible handbook, long ago, that either Iraneus or Polycarp, (one was the student, the other the teacher), a student of St. John, decoded the number 666 as "Lateinos", or "Latin Kingdom".  And there you have the Essenes virulent anti-Romanism again.  Back to the professor.....his theory was that the undoubtedly highly political, anti-Roman message of the Essenes, of the time of Christ, was "Hellenized" as it spread into Greece and the rest of the Roman world.  Meaning?  Meaning it was made kindler, gentler, and thus enabled to ride along on the great, inflential seas of Pax Romana.  What began as very political and anti-Roman ends up being all about loving one's enemies, forgiveness, etc.  One more note:  Glenn Kimball's books, ("Hidden Stories of the Childhoood of Jesus", and "Hidden Politics of the Crucifixtion", and I think he has at least one more out, now),  have some interesting things to say, including about Essenes, Gnostics, Jesus' ability to write, the burning of all books written by women around the year 200 a.d., the onus of the crucifixtion being transferred from the Romans to the Jews,  and a lot more.  (If you're into that sort of thing.)  His information comes from a lifetime of chasing down and studying old manuscripts.
--Paukki

Hey Kristen, you have come the closest, by far, of anyone with whom I have discussed this subject, to eliciting the inward response of, "She understands!"  Not that I understand what's REALLY going on, but there is a "feel" to your dialogue that feels right.  What I've been going through with this stuff, by far and away, is nothing in the way of classic evil cacklings, not even classic derogatory self-condemnations.  If there is a lesson to be learned from it--and if there is not, then that's an awful thing, that the mind can be caught in a mere machinery of endless tape-loops that mean nothing--perhaps it has to do with, "as within, so without."  I can remember all the way back to when it started, 24 years ago, thinking something like, "My God, am I really that small?"  And hindsight confirms the narrowness of fixations; the heavy chains of needing approval; the lack of quick response to get out of a small world and into a bigger one.  Even so, no one should allow hindsight like that to sit in judgment on his/her self.  To tell the truth, the "voices" hardly bother me anymore.  When they started, sure--I was like a deer caught in traffic, (wide-eyed and full of fear and impulsive movement).  But now.....?   I find myself simply wondering why they are still there, saying largely the same old things.  Is it because, like so many people, I just don't change?  You wrote about--what was it--getting the world to talk back to one along positive lines, along the line of a question of some import.  Perhaps we have begun to do that, right here.  Maybe it's a matter of creation--imagination, emotion, manifestation.  All that fine recipe.  Hearts and minds need to bust out of old shells, but they can't do that unless they get bigger and stronger than the shells themselves.  If that makes any sense.
--Paukki

As to what the voices say, like I said, generally pretty banal, but benign.  One might imagine this reflects one's self, in that much of every day life is that way.  I used to get a lot of "Slow down!" during a time in my life when I was without a car and drove a bicycle back and forth to work.  I hated that.  Ignored it.  Bicycled faster.  It was like having an unwanted "mothering" influence.  Or I'd get "It's about time!" when I finally wrote someone a letter.  (Who wants this kind of thing riding on his/her shoulder all the time?)  If I feel squeamish about mentioning Hollywood actors in this forum, I get a voice saying "[blank] is laughing his butt off!", (which seem to imply my thought of being affected with Negs by associations in the past, is laughable.)  That's a template.  I've had it often.  Other templates include such things as "[blank] is getting the connection," and "[blank] is feeling confused", and "[blank's] situation is critical."  In the early days I used to get a lot of "He's the moron!" which I wasn't sure was directed at me, but at one of the Hollywood guys.  At other times it seemed a derisive reference to myself and the body of Christ.  I think it safe to say that would be overkill, as I'm sure many people would tell you I am not deserving of such self-abuse, but I was for many years a loner, depressed, and with not a little self-hatred.  Only on rare occasions does something break out of the norm--such as when I heard a female friend described as a "coquette" by a voice, and I had to look that up in the dictionary.  Turned out her mother or someone in the family called her that.  But that's unusual.  Generally the voices seem, to me, like a reflective bell has been put around my head, and a medical intuitive said my Higher Self said I used them to punish myself (I think for my days in the Army when I started to get naturally "high" on Jesus and then smoked pot during an angry period and crashed and burned miserably).  A reflective head bell simply reflects, in some way, everything you do, say, think, fart, whatever.  I can largely ignore it.  If my nerves get bad from lack of sleep and too much work, loud machinery will seem to carry hysterical voices, perhaps imitating my sister, (who is a very emotional type of person).  Making sense?  These aren't like 100 decibel voices, not like something that should really give you an earache.  They are carried in the wind and you just pick them up.  They are in the patter of rain, and in a split second you just hear something.  Tires on the highway bemoan something.  Birds squeakily respond to your sudden moment of small realizations by saying, "You see, you see!"  They are in everything.  They are all my projection, in a way.  Perhaps I asked for it, because I wanted to be a Christian mystic and hear the small, still voice of God, and then fell away.  And punished myself.  With endless plural voices.    And then I guess I'd be dealing with some core images to remove, say what?