United In Spirit Connection Edition 2 Vol 1 2009

Welcome to the very first newsletter for the new year!

 

A Message From The Founder

With Christmas over and the festive season coming to an end, many members are beginning to return and float by the sites. It's great to catch up with you all, read your blogs and comments! Hoping you all had a wonderful Christmas period, ate heaps and generally had fun.

With the new year off and running, so is United In Spirit! Several projects are in the pipeline which will effectively not only promote our great community but individual members.

An example of projects in the process at present:

1. Promotional videos using Animoto. They have some awesome transitions and the final product is most professional.

 

 

2. Availability of advertising space on the front page of our Ning site. Members who would like a front page advertisement to promote their business or site are encouraged to contact administration. We want our members to receive as much promotion as possible!

3. Revamping of the group layouts. Many groups have had related rss sources added aswell as new graphics. This is ongoing at present.

4. Combining with Xray Your Soul  to create "The Webmasters Team" a one stop shop for all your website needs from website creation/development,promotion,SEO,viral promotion,widget creation, advertising space to link blasting and the list goes on...quotes available on request.

Please note we only take on 2 clients per month in regards to website creation, this is primarily because all graphics are unique and individually made for each site. We do not use any programs but build sites from the ground up.

 

 

Some of you may already know, but for those that don't, I am taking off to the United States at the beginning of March. During this time I will be plotting and scheming with my right hand administrator and partner, Shade Law, to bring all our members some unique and exciting concepts and projects for 2009!

I am looking forward to the whole process and just being able to share ideas, brainstorm and physically work together instead of purely online will be an awesome experience!

Suggestions for United In Spirit are always most welcome. It is your community and I wish to provide what you want on site. Please feel welcome to make suggestions or volunteer your time in whatever capacity you see fit.

 

 

4 tips to eliminate what does not serve you

 

People dream up all kinds of ideas about who and what they really are.  That does not mean all these visions are necessarily accurate or how you identify yourself always serves you.

Ask yourself how your view of yourself relates to your dreams.  If you choose to take steps to eliminate what you are not, then you will bravely move closer to rediscover who you are;

1) Remove the labels.  You are not your alma mater, your diplomas, your job, your name, your address, your car, your gadgets, your entourage or any external thing you may mistakenly believe defines you.  This is just window-dressing.

2) Step outside your body.  Physical appearances are often deceiving.  Whatever your build, your hair color, your ethnicity, your muscleclature, your gender, your number of limbs and digits, all of this is separate from what abides underneath.

3) Detach from your dependence on the mind.  What used to seem palpable does not exist as you may assume.  The pronouns you use to describe yourself add depth to existence that is otherwise hollow and empty.  If your consciousness is mistaken about what appears to it, then you are brought to confront your predispositions and value judgments.

4) Identify additional misconceptions.  Meditation and other exercises in mental discipline will enable you to counteract and dissolve other ideas about your existence.  As you explore your exaggerated sense of self, you will further dismantle the shaky foundation.  You will discern the difference between your sense of self and conditioned sense of existence through your experience.  It can only be that way.

http://blog.dreambuilders.com.au

 

 

Notes On Detachment

by Torkom Saraydarian

We may think that to detach ourselves means to hate, to ignore, to divide, to separate, to stand aloof or to be cold and rough toward a given object. These are not signs of true detachment. True detachment is a Soul attitude, a function carried out on the Soul plane rather than on the physical, emotional or lower mental planes. Actually, you are not detaching your true Self from anyone or anything. You are detaching your real Self from the inertia of the body, from the glamour of your emotional world and from the glamour's of your mental realm. You are also detaching your real Self from objects with which you were identified through inertia, glamour's and illusions.
With detachment you are dis-identifying yourself, but not separating. You are releasing yourself from the control of identification. When you have achieved detachment, you are no longer conditioned and controlled by the inertia, glamour and illusions of objects. You are free. Detachment means freedom. It means a truly self-determined attitude.
In true detachment your spiritual identification deepens and widens on the spiritual side of an object. At the same time you identify less and less with phenomena, until eventually you are able to see the object as it is, free from your personal, mechanical reactions and free from your imposing, forcing will of the lower self, expressed in many ways. According to your degree of success in detaching from any object, your soul love increases, and your joy deeper. Attachment makes you smaller; detachment makes you greater.
When you are truly detached, the personality factor of the object does not disturb or control you. The inner reality, the core of his being, becomes the important factor to you, and you help to release that beauty by detaching yourself from personality reactions, inertia, glamour's and illusions. In detachment you are not ignoring the Real man; you are ignoring the illusion, the appearance, and you can see more clearly than before because you are not caught in the net of personality reactions. Detachment changes the nature of your relations with the object. Since your relationship is no longer based on your personality reactions nor on the other's personality reactions, you are not mechanical in your behaviour towards him; you are awake and conscious and your approach is a Soul approach.

Detachment eliminates personality conflicts and friction between objects. You recognize and can accept the freedom, the existence of the object. In detachment you cease to use others for your own selfish interests. You recognise each existence as important to the great Plan. In the process of detachment you become aware of the Law of Karma and you see clearly the way in which the Law works. You seek the highest good for the object; you learn not to interfere with the Karma of others. In so doing you help them to increase their inner light and you give them courage to live the best life possible for them.
Detachment lead you to Soul infusion. Eventually you find the path leading to your true Self, and you become one with that Self. Actually the process of detachment is the process of becoming Oneself. Gradually you detach yourself from all that is not the Self. When you reach the stage of becoming your true Self, you are one with creation itself, but without the limitations of its inertia, glamour and illusion. Thus, detachment is the process of at-one-ment. In detachment man leads himself from the transient to the unchangeable, from the unreal to the Real.
When you have learned the process of detachment, you become magnetic. Truly magnetic people are those who are really detached persons. They have not become personality magnetic, but Soul Magnetic. A truly detached person has achieved the ability to do the right thing at the right time and in the right proportion.
The existence in which you live is a part of you. All is one. The process of detachment is the process of realization of this unity.
Only on such a high level of awareness can you free yourself from:

1) Separation
2) The concept of property
3) The illusion of "mine and "yours"
4) Your anxieties and worries

Thus your sense of responsibility grows deeper and higher. Detachment helps you to understand the purpose of the Great Being "in whom we live and move and have our being".
Impersonality is another term for being detached. A detached man is an impersonal man. Impersonality is a state of consciousness which is above the physical, emotional and lower mental levels, and which function upon the Soul levels. A detached man is man who is in the process of becoming himself. Detachment is not a level, but a continuous negation of imprisonment and an urge towards spiritualization or liberation.

 

 

You Are Many-Dimensioned Facets of Yourself
Heavenletters

You are the rolling stone that gathers no moss. There is no moss to gather.
You are a free spirit who runs around in life. Surrounded by a body, you nevertheless leap. You are a soarer. You are soaring to Heaven now. You are soaring in your understanding. You grasp nothing but yourself. You interact with no one but yourself. You play all the parts from Cinderella to the Fairy Godmother to the wicked witch. You are many-dimensioned facets of yourself. You are tall and thin. You are short and not thin. You seem to be the last to know what you are looking for.
You are never alone, and yet you are the only one on the stage of your life. You are in hot pursuit of yourself. You caught up with yourself long ago, yet you continue the charade of the lost and the hunted. It is yourself you seek. There is only you to find. And yet you are the crowd. You are the single one. That is, the Oneness of you and the Oneness of Me united are the whole chase.
All you are looking for has been waiting to be found, waiting for you to open your eyes wide, waiting for you to recognize the truth of yourself. I am telling you where you come from. You come from the totality of Me. You are Myself.
Perhaps you haven't heard well. Perhaps you have been distracted and looked askance. Perhaps you don't know what you are seeing. You don't know how to read between the lines. Perhaps you are the lines you have drawn. Perhaps you are more of a decider than you know.
You are a secret you have kept from yourself and keep from yourself still. No one offends you but yourself. No one pleases you but yourself. You pierce your vein and believe another did it. You remark on someone's ill behavior when it is your own.
By the same token, you are the honorable king or queen.
You are the orphan you take care of.
You are the jailer and the jailed. You are the hunter, and you are the prey.
You are the desert and the oasis. The mountain and the valley. The river and its banks.

I am telling you that you are all that is. You are everything you perceive. You are the story, the storyteller, and the one who listens with bated breath.
You are the marksman and you are the target, and you are the rifle you shoot and are shot with.
This is a fantasy you live in, and you make it up.
Your footfall is sure, and yet your mind wanders. You cannot locate yourself because you are unlocatable. You are everywhere and nowhere.
You are the physician and you are the patient. You are the made-up name of the illness. You are the surgeon, and you cut yourself.
There is nothing that is not you. The one you love is you. The one you dislike is you. Everything is you. All are you. You are the entire skein of yarn, and you unwind in a multitude of ways, and yet you are, nevertheless, the one of Oneness.
There are no calamities, no digressions, no getting to the point, and no getting off it.
You are a blurry picture you have seen in haste and keep forgetting.
You are so much more than you know while you make too much of incidents and events. You call a celebration and then forget to attend.
You understand everything, and you understand nothing. You understand there is nothing to understand. You are a picture being unfolded, and you see drama.
Well, you don't have to understand. That is the dilemma you are in, for you are sure something is happening when nothing is happening, nothing at all.

 

Heart

By author unknown

One day a young man was standing in the middle of the town proclaiming that he had the most beautiful heart in the whole valley. A large crowd gathered and they all admired his heart for it was perfect. There was not a mark or a flaw in it.
Yes, they all agreed it truly was the most beautiful heart they had ever seen. The young man was very proud and boasted more loudly about his beautiful heart.
Suddenly, an old man appeared at the front of the crowd and said,
"Why your heart is not nearly as beautiful as mine." The crowd and the young man looked at the old man's heart. It was beating strongly, but full of scars, it had places where pieces had been removed and other pieces put in, but they didn't fit quite right and there were several jagged edges. In fact, in some places there were deep gouges where whole pieces were missing.
The people stared -- how can he say his heart is more beautiful, they thought? The young man looked at the old man's heart and saw its state and laughed. "You must be joking," he said. "Compare your heart with mine, mine is perfect and yours is a mess of scars and tears.
"
"Yes," said the old man, "yours is perfect looking but I would never trade with you. You see, every scar represents a person to whom I have given my love - I tear out a piece of my heart and give it to them, and often they give me a piece of their heart which fits into the empty place in my heart, but because the pieces aren't exact, I have some rough edges, which I cherish, because they remind me of the love we shared. Sometimes I have given pieces of my heart away, and the other person hasn't returned a piece of his heart to me. These are the empty gouges -- giving love is taking a chance. Although these gouges are painful, they stay open, reminding me of the love I have for these people too, and I hope someday they may return and fill the space I have waiting.
So now do you see what true beauty is?"
The young man stood silently with tears running down his cheeks. He walked up to the old man, reached into his perfect young and beautiful heart, and ripped a piece out. He offered it to the old man with trembling hands. The old man took his offering, placed it in his heart and then took a piece from his old scarred heart and placed it in the wound in the young man's heart. It fit, but not perfectly, as there were some jagged edges. The young man looked at his heart, not perfect anymore but more beautiful than ever, since love from the old man's heart flowed into his.
They embraced and walked away side by side.

 

 

Reply From Heaven

 

Goodbye is never spoken
When love is in your heart
I know that now it pains you so
Us being Far apart

This pain you feel
one day will end

and memories will be
What helps you through those lonely days
When your thought fall back on me

For all you've lost throughout your life
For all the dreams that ended
For all the times you've cried alone
For happiness you pretended

Tomorrow we all need one
Even if today we cannot see
Hold strong and fight dear one believe
In you there’s part of me

Sometimes I know the bad is there
Showing every day it's face
Think of me with fond memories
Let these thoughts take its place

And when you feel like there is no where
Left for you to run
Cry the tears that are inside
I promise you wont be undone

Until the day comes that we meet again
The greatest gift to give
Is to find the courage deep inside
To think of me and live

Goodbye is never spoken
When love is in your heart
Think of me in perfect love
While we are worlds apart.

 

 

Evaluating Inner Progress
by Shane Magee
srichinmoybio. co. uk/blog
________________________________

So, you think you’re enlightened? - One of the big downfalls that often happens on the path of self-improvement is a bloated sense of pride. Certainly, it helps to look back and gain confidence from what we have achieved so far. However sometimes, after a nice experience or a good spell in life, we can even feel that we have somehow figured everything out on life’s journey, and this kind of complacent feeling can easily lead to our downfall.
Where there’s an up, there’s a down - One of the reasons it is important not to be over elated about any progress you make, is that this idea can be very easily shattered by outer circumstances. One common thing that happens is when someone goes to visit some old friends or relatives, and finds themselves repeating the same negative cycles of behaviour that used to happen before they embarked on their self-improvement journey, despite all the progress they thought they made! A friend told me something humorous she read recently from one of Eckhart Tolle’s books: “If you think you’re enlightened, then go and live with your parents for a week.
"
If you attach too much importance to the good times, you’ll attach too much importance to the bad times too, and believe that all your efforts so far were for nought. When it comes to evaluating inner progress, our human mind is a notoriously bad judge. The best thing is just to keep an even keel throughout both good and bad times.
Inner growth and humility go together - Something very interesting happens to people who progress along the road of self-discovery. They may start out by thinking they will obtain these things like ‘inner peace’ or ‘enlightenment’ - however, as they begin to escape from the confines of the limiting mind and live more in the heart, they feel a greater sense of kinship and connection with the world and with their fellow human beings. The focus of everything so slowly changes from a selfish one to one more geared towards making the world a better place - even their pursuit of enlightenment. Hence when the Buddha sat down at the bodhi tree he vowed to obtain enlightenment not for himself, but for all sentient beings. Real inner growth always goes hand in hand with an increased sense of humility and selflessness.
Conversely, an exaggerated sense of pride about one’s achievements tells you quite a lot about the ‘quality’ of those achievements in the first place!
Always have the attitude of a beginner - No matter how far advanced you are along the road of self-discovery, it always pays to have the attitude of a beginner. Every day is a new day, every morning ripe with new possibilities for self-discovery and self-expansion. My own teacher, Sri Chinmoy, meditated for almost seventy years and reached very high levels of meditation, yet he always described himself as ‘the eternal beginner’. No matter what he achieved, every achievement was merely a launchpad for the next step.
“When we start our journey, the first step forward is our goal. As soon as we reach this goal, we achieve perfection. But today’s goal, today’s perfection, is tomorrow’s starting point; and tomorrow’s goal becomes the starting point for the day after tomorrow. Continuous progress is perfection.
" --Sri Chinmoy
Having the attitude of a beginner allows you to live in the moment, and get joy from the adventure of self-discovery, instead of anticipating an end result.

 

 

Healing And Prayer List

 

The healing and prayer list will continue to be an important part of United In Spirit's community and newsletter. Please feel free to send healing and/or prayer support for all those on the list. Your efforts and support is much appreciated as always.

• Gray Wolf
• Jaide
• Cheryll
• Shade Law
• Vonda
• Msamericanpatriot
• Ken Newell
• Mother Earth
• All the earth's animals

 

Quote of the Week

 

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

Mahatma Gandhi

 

Love is always the answer...

No matter what problem you might have!
Today's Positive Thought
If you want more love in your life; give it away.

Today's Positive Affirmation
I go through my day looking for ways to share my love with others.

Today's Positive Visualization

In my mind's eye I see the spiritual force of love bubbling up in me. I imagine this force of love as a light surrounding me and healing the places where I hurt. I remember that the only way to keep this wellspring of love flowing is to give it away. In my mind's eye I see myself giving this love away to everyone I meet. I send loving thoughts to people I pass on the street and to people who come into my mind. I imagine this love flowing back to me in the responses my gift of love generates in other people. I combine these images with the feelings of joy and let them go, knowing that they will create the good things I am visualizing and thinking.
© Creative Living Foundation, INC, all rights reserved.

 

 

Hoping you have all enjoyed our very first newsletter for the new year! After such a tempestuous end to 2008 with the economic crisis being felt world wide, lets all hope and pray for a great 2009!

May God Bless You All..

In Love and Light Always,

Jodie ~Founder of United In Spirit

 

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