If you ever wonder if doing attunements or meditation has any value, you’ll be interested in the letter we received from a Study Group member in Kentucky. He wrote:
“I attended an Edgar Cayce Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) retreat at Wildacres in North Carolina this past weekend. I volunteered for an EEG, administered by Judith Pennington, who was our speaker, and who has been recording EEGs of meditators for several years. Judith is a beautiful person-a healer, writer, singer, and musician-and was trained by Anna Wise, author of Awakening the Mind: A Guide to Mastering the Power of Your Brain Waves.
“She led me through a guided meditation while the results of my EEG were being displayed on a large screen for about 80 attendees. She was quite impressed with the brain wave patterns and especially the delta wave amplitude, which indicates intuition in awake states, psychic knowledge, empathy and healing. She asked what technique I used and I told her and the audience about the Christ Force attunements, which they could learn for themselves in Ron’s book, The Mystery of the Christ Force.”
So, if you want to increase your intuition, get out your copy of The Mystery of the Christ Force, turn to page 225, and practice your attunements.

By the way, our annual Retreat, “The Cosmic Door” will be focusing on contemplation, meditation and spiritual experience.

May the holiday lights remind you of the Divine Light that lives within you and within the hearts of all mankind.

With Love,

Susan and Ron

QUESTION: “Often, people will vow that, after their death, they will contact and ‘never leave’ their loved one after they die. However, more often than not, the surviving person does not feel the presence of the deceased loved one. Why is this?”

ANSWER: It is because of perception within the human who is still living. If they could rise up to the perspective of the one who made that promise before death, they would see that the one who died has not left them. That one is still with them. But, the humans who are still alive are limited in their perceptions, therefore, they do not perceive the one who has died with their physical senses.

Since the one who has died no longer has a physical form that can be perceived by the living one, the living one understandably believes, “My loved one has gone. They have vanished. They are not present.” However, they are present, but in a different form that is not perceived through the physical senses-seeing a physical body, feeling a touch or hearing words spoken through a vocal mechanism of a physical body.

Another challenge is that the souls do not speak in words of any human language. So, when the deceased one is present to the living one and is communicating, that communication is not in words spoken aloud, or in words placed into the mind of the living one. That communication is done through quite extraordinary spiritual “energies” that you might call intuitive feelings.

If the living one could live through the disappointment of not perceiving the deceased one in the tangible way that they are used to, then they could practice silent periods of aligning with the soul of the deceased one. In time, they would be able to feel the presence of the soul of the deceased one as an inner movement of what you might call love, or a spiritual presence, or the sense of a loving being existing beside them. This would be extremely comforting and inspiring.

No matter what a living human would promise to do after their death, most living humans are not enlightened in a way that they will have a complete perception of what will occur to their consciousness after the death of their physical body. They do not realize that they will become an eternal soul, unlimited by time or distance, who will stand beside the living loved ones and communicate with them in essentially invisible ways. So, while alive, they make their promise with good intentions, with what they know in a limited awareness, saying, “I will manifest to you after my death and you will know that I am present.” Both living ones believe that that means a normal manifestation to the human senses that will be similar to what they are used to in the physical world.

To be truly accurate, an enlightened living person making such a promise to a loved one before their death would say, “After my death, I will be even closer to you and more real, in the deepest sense. But, you will need to break through the human limitations of perception in order to experience me in that deeper, truer way.”

This scenario repeated itself for two days, and we made eight calls to Direct TV. The people who answered were in various places-Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, and it sounded like India. They even scheduled an exact time that the Case Manager would call us. Still, no call. I was getting louder and more insistent each time I called. Even calm Ron was getting agitated. After all, we were long-time clients of DirectTV, and we pay for their “protection insurance.” How could they treat us like this? What kind of an outfit is this? They don’t care about their customers. They don’t care about me! We had every bad opinion about this company that was possible.

Two days passed and they still hadn’t called. And they wouldn’t let us get to this mysterious Case Manager. I was imagining a room full of 20-year-olds cracking jokes and goofing off. To vent my outrage, I wrote complaints about DirectTV on various sites on the internet. Ron even called a competitor to see about signing up with them. After all, an important Angel’s baseball game was coming up and it simply cannot be watched without being able to fast forward through the commercials.

Finally, I had had enough. I called the billing department of DirectTV to cancel our service with them. As I was on the phone with the billing department, our other phone rang. It was the CASE MANAGER from DirectTV! He told me, “We have been trying to call you for days but we haven’t been able to get through.” He said patiently, “This is what we hear when we call,” and he let me hear a recorded message. It was a pleasant female voice saying, “Sorry, your call has been blocked.” Well, we have a phone system that has a community “blacklist,” which if you turn it on, it blocks telemarketing type calls. Apparently, it read the DirectTV number as a telemarketer and blocked the calls from the Case Manager all the while that we were complaining that he didn’t call. Fortunately, the Case Manager found our other telephone number through diligent research on his part and was finally able to reach us. The very next day, we had a new video recorder, sent by overnight mail.

I was mortified and, with my tail between my legs, I went back on the internet and issued written apologies for dissing DirectTV. But, the moral of this story is-don’t assume that you know what’s going on until you have all the facts! How quickly we rushed to judgment, because the situation fed right into our biased prejudice that corporations are out to get us, and are the faceless enemy. How often have we assumed someone is upset with us because of their demeanor, when they actually are just having a bad day. We adopt the belief that we have done something wrong or that they don’t like us because it feeds our own self-diminishing feelings. The Guides address this so eloquently in this month’s Study Group Reading.

It has been said that to assume makes an ass of u and me. Couldn’t have said it better myself!

At first, we felt violated, vulnerable and powerless. But, once we got into gear and took action-made a police report, changed bank accounts with passwords this time, talked to “Life-Lock” which I had had the impulse to sign up with in January, our demeanor changed. We felt in control again.

The electronic age has made us more vulnerable to crimes than ever before. My son told me there are sweat shops where they buy and sell stolen information. It is big business. The bank manager told us she had seen a report on CNN that only 2.4% of the people in the world are completely honest. My son retorted facetiously, “And how do you know the 2.4% aren’t lying?” The Guides are more hopeful as you’ll read in the answer to Question One of the July Study Group Reading. The Guides ask us to say, “These human ones who are perpetuating negative events on earth are the same as me. They are wonderful human beings with talents and abilities, and also many fears.” It seems to me that thieves are simply trying to gain a sense of power and control in their lives just as I was. They just choose a different path from most of us, one that happens to hurt other people.

Question One of the July Study Group Reading asks: “Is the level of good behavior increasing over time or lessening? Are our efforts of being kind, compassionate, and loving helping to raise the consciousness of the planet?” Sometimes it can feel like our efforts to be “good” are useless. What difference does it make, you might ask, if so many are just trying to get what they can from life, regardless of others? The Guides respond:
“Those humans who commit themselves, to the best of their ability, to kindness, compassion, and love, and then try to integrate that into their words and behaviors, are the only hope for humanity. For, the souls will not force humans to stop being frightened and stop creating negativity. Only humans can touch the negative-doers through the expression of kindness and understanding, which will help them heal their fear.”

So, having regained our inner center of stability, we continue on, living life “defensively,” and loving life passionately, because at least it means that we are alive in the midst of the most creative, intense time in the history of this amazing earth adventure!

peace and beauty in Albion, CA

LIVING LIFE PEACEFULLY: On a more serene note, we spent ten days in Napa and Mendocino, staying with dear friends and giving Readings. This photo is the view of the Pacific Ocean from the back yard of our friends Jeannette and Robert in Albion, California.

Faith….the word seems benign, soft, soothing, implying trust and comfort. What this article seems to point out is that some faith is about clinging to life at all costs, as if this is all there is.  I guess If I believed  that  after I died I would be in heaven sitting, playing a harp for eternity, or perhaps burning in hell while my loved ones are in heaven, I would cling to life at all costs too. Scary!

The Guides teach that we as beings never die. We are souls temporarily living a human life. We have lived many human lives, and are always a soul. We simply change form. But there is no loss, there is no fear, there is only experience gained in love. We are all connected to one another by the force of goodness that some call God, cosmic consciousness, All-that-is, and so forth.

So is your faith fear based or love based? That is the question to ponder.

Read more about the Guides’ perspective here: A Thumbnail Sketch of Life and Death

In the US today, the simple pleasures have long disappeared. The cost of living in our society with all of its “pleasures” is so high that we are constantly under the stress of maintaining our lifestyles…enter credit…and the rest is history.

Joy is a state of being. Pursuing happiness is like a donkey chasing a carrot on a stick. Always slightly out of reach.

1. Fear - First and foremost, address the fears. What are your worst fears? As the Guides say, wallow in them, talk about them, and then release them.
2. Facts - Assess the truth of your life. What is your current situation factually? Do you have a job? Do you need a job? Do you have resources? Can you continue to work beyond retirement if you want to? Separate the fears from the facts.
3. Focus - Plan your next steps. If you need help, reach out to your friends and allies. What will you do today, tomorrow? What can you do to enhance what you already do? Where can you cut back? How can you be creative? If you do not need to make any changes to your own financial situation, where and how could you help someone else in need?
4. Faith - Here is where you use the spiritual tools at your disposal and tell yourself the higher truths. Use whatever affirmative statements inspire you, such as: “I am an eternal soul, temporarily living a human life. Nothing can damage my being.” Another one I like is: “God is my source and my supply.” Turn your attention to the beauty of nature, or to people you love to soothe your heart.
5. Future - Begin to envision what you want to see in your own personal life and in the world. This is a time of reassessing what true wealth means. Refuse to participate in the mass “negative hypnosis” that the Guides speak about in the Study Group answer. Develop a feeling of expansiveness rather than contraction. Spend from your boundless inner wealth, sharing your love and yourself with others.

And always remember to put one foot in front of the other and take the practical action steps that are needed to manage and maintain your life in the physical world.

If you are not a member of the Study Group, the Readings are a great source of inspiration, delivered each month digitally, or as a CD or printed transcript. If you would like to become a subscriber, I will include the February Reading with any new subscription. Follow the link to learn more. You can read the questions that were asked this month here.

I am encouraged that our new President is teaching respect and effective communication through his example. A friend of ours who works in government has told us that it’s as if a dark cloud had lifted in Washington.

I learned about the power of listening the hard way in my younger days. When I was approached with a problem by my mate or a child, my immediate response was to find an “answer,” thinking I knew what was right. Their eyes would glaze over and they would often wander off if they didn’t get into an argument with me. One day my daughter said, “Mom, I wish you would just listen to me.”

Even our relationship with God or the Divine could benefit from this approach. This is not a new concept. “Be still and know that I am God,” Psalm 46:10. The Guides, through Ron Scolastico, are often encouraging us to be receptive in meditation, attunement or prayer to the divine.

So before you jump to conclusions and think you know someone, or what a solution is, be still and listen. You never know what you might hear that is fresh and new!

What stood out for me is the following paragraph from Obama’s speech,

“I believe that our future is our choice and that if we could just recognize ourselves in one another and bring everyone together - Democrats, Republicans and independents, north, south, east and west, black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American, gay and straight, disabled and not - then not only would we restore hope and opportunity in places that yearned for both, but maybe, just maybe, we might perfect our union in the process.”

That, my friends, in a nutshell, is the crux of what I consider to be true spirituality–if we could just recognize ourselves in one another and bring everyone together. This is the Golden Rule stated without shoving religion down our throats. This was the true teaching of Jesus, Confucius and other great teachers. If it were practiced fully, we would not only perfect our union, we would manifest the divine into human reality and perfect our world.

And so, we are hopeful once again, that the words and deeds of a great leader will touch the hearts of humanity and propel us to a new beginning of kindness, compassion and love toward one another. Say Amen somebody!

By the way, Obama has designated MLK day as a day of service and a day to recommit to making this world a better place. Here is a site to find places to be of service in your area. Here is another suggestion for action: Born Again American. Please feel free to suggest other sites that you consider worthy.