Invoking Change/Being the Center of Your Universe, the Benevolent God

We all have a capability to change those around us, and in ways that are usually for the better. What I mean is everybody is thirsty, but only some people know how to get water.  If you happen to figure out a way of getting water, and you notice how nice life is when you aren't constantly thirsty, the last thing you want to do is slap a patent and your name on the "water-collecting method" you have come up with. People don't want to have to thank you for something that should be innate knowledge, or acknowledge you every time they go to fulfill a basic necessity(which nearly every thing you hold on to in life is, after long enough). Claiming to have invented a form of meditation or some esoteric breathing/grounding technique is the same as claiming to invent peeing or standing up straight: be honest with yourself and everyone, you just discovered it! If the system was there beforehand, and just needed to be moved a certain way to work, that is discovery within the self, and should be treated as such.
There are many different things to thirst after in life, and many more ways of going about quenching them. When you discover a new awesome thing, the first thing you may want to do afterwards is to tell every single person you know about it! Go to them and tell them what you did and try to get them to do it as well! Now, to somebody who is suffering from a lack of whatever it is that you now have, going to them and telling them that you now have it and how great it feels to have it doesn't always come across on the other end as an awesome thing. More often than not, it invokes envy or just anger depending on what the thing is, because that is what deficiencies create space for in the self. We all want to help everyone we can, but preaching is not the answer to solve everybody's problems, especially if they don't even know the cause themselves. Pointing out the cause is not your job in their life. They need to find the cause on their own, or they will never be able to find the strength to live the solution. They will get there the same way you got there, and we know this through reincarnation and multidimensionality. We know this because of the transience of information and the permanence of memories, and we know this because we are all connected. Any amount of outward egotism simply pushes others away, whether it is pointing out to somebody that they have an unhealthy habit, or even thinking that their life would be better if they would just listen to you about X or Y. Ultimately the only thing you can do for them is shine a little brighter and do the one thing you do best: live. Your life, if what you claim is true, should stand as an example on its own, and you don't need to say anything about it, and you don't even need to think about it, because if it is true, it simply is.
In the same way disease is contagious, so is health. By living a positive, healthy lifestyle, you shed healthy energy on everybody around you, You live by example, you don't push others, you do not judge, and you are rewarded energy. You cycle this energy everywhere you go, and share energy with every individual you encounter. Judgement and unhealthy practice, sin as it were, strips you of this energy, you share less, shine dimmer, make less impact. Of course, you can always build yourself up again, but pay mention to when you notice yourself slipping, falling into bad habit, embracing that which is 'not it', because it will affect everybody around you. Keep your head up, keep on trying, and remember to smile always :) Hold yourself to the highest standard, in every endeavor, and every challenge, so that you can always grow, and carry the world with you.
Love and Light, hope I wasn't too preachy today, Namaste!

What Do You Mean By That?

A perfectly reasonable question, that any sensible and worthwhile person would answer when asked respectfully. Language, written or spoken, is simply an abstraction used to convey deeper meaning behind it. The definitions of words, if strictly taken, would never be able to convey the meanings of every subjective experience, and thus if our words had strict "this means this and only this" definitions, we would require several million times the number of words we have currently, since the strict definitions would eventually have to specify the exact complete context they are being used in. It's a good thing that this isn't the case, with English, and really any modern language that I know of.
The words that we use are very flexible in their definition. While we may think of something like  "plane" as describing the giant metal people-carriers with the huge turbine engines, the term "plane" could also be used to describe things that move through the air with wings. Or really things that have controlled movement through the air in general. The only thing that stops the abstraction of it's definition is the fact that there are other words to describe different kinds of "planes" with different attributes. We wouldn't call a helicopter a "plane" because we know that a helicopter uses vertical fan-like structures to lift and move itself, and thus the definition of the word "plane" was truncated, and the abstraction used to define something that flies using fan-like blades was rededicated to the term "copter", or something like that. We created all-purpose abstractions for concepts first, and broke them down later into more specific use-cases to describe more complex ideas, like iterations of detail into a fractal of information. You only need to go so far before the objective thing you are referring to is conveyed and the information the two parties are focusing on synchronizes.
I am writing this about abstract concepts that are very important to my understanding of the world, and the words I use to convey them. Somehow, specific groups have "claimed" the meanings of words to their own degree of abstraction, when in truth the word is of a much higher and broader abstraction than what they use it for. One example of this is "ecstasy". The word "ecstasy" refers to a feeling, which can only be described by the word used to define it. It is sort of a joyful contentness, a feeling of interconnectedness with all things, a loving warmth, all wrapped up into one. Now, ecstasy as an experience can be achieved in many ways: deep meditation, MDMA, tantric sex, ecstatic dancing, or simply high-awareness moment to moment living. However, at some point, the word "Ecstasy" was misused to describe a more detailed construct, like MDMA, and the meaning was lowered to simply describe 'the feeling of being on MDMA', instead of the proper connection, which is that the feeling of being on MDMA is described as "ecstasy". Unfortunately, since the only exposure most people have to the word "ecstasy" is when describing the drug with the street name "ecstasy", it became a bit of a 'bad word' somewhere along the line. This is just one example of how lowering the abstraction of a word can cause definition to be lost, and eventually cause certain feelings to become unconveyable by the words of a language. It happens all the time, and as someone who sees the more abstract meanings, it is our job to use words in all of their proper contexts without the fear that we would be misinterpreted as describing the lower uses. Another such example of this is "heaven", but everybody needs to find the true definitions of this word on their own. It's much more subjective than it's made out to be, more of a feeling or "vibe" than a place or goal, but that is all I will say about it here, since "heaven" you need to define for yourself.
A few terms I would like to personally 'raise' the meanings of here and now are reincarnation, multi-dimensionality, and consciousness.
Consciousness, a term to describe anything that is conscious, anything that makes decisions, interacts with the world around it on its own accord. I would take it a step further to say anything that can stop interacting with the world around it. The concept is much more widely applicable than anything that could be described logically, since consciousness means entities of life, beings of subjective experience, but should never be bound to single iterations of such things. Humans have consciousness, animals have consciousness, plants have consciousness, minerals and crystals have consciousness, organs and tissues have consciousness, cells have consciousness, molecules have consciousness, atoms have consciousness, planets have consciousness, stars have consciousness, star systems and galaxies have consciousness, and ultimately universes have consciousness. Interacting your consciousness with theirs is an entirely different story, but the definition should hold.
Multi-dimensionality should refer to how consciousness interact with others. A multi-dimensional construct should map, from the present moment, all possible dimensions(decisions) that consciousness can take from the given point, using one of the parameters as a constant. Even in mathematics, graphing of a function shows how from one point(consciousness) in time(the constant dimension being iterated through), the point really only has the decision to move forward or backward, and since it is a fixed function, it has already been to one of them to get to where it is(otherwise it would be a singularity(only exists in one moment of time and none other) or a constant(constant function) and therefore be independent of time, making the graphing process a bit futile). Abstracting this(shakily defined) definition for any consciousness, from the point, the present moment, the multiverse is every possible universe accessible from the point where consciousness currently exists(consider a universe to be a screenshot of all matter and energy in existence in any moment), where time is only the abstraction used to define previous universes passed through to get to the current one, and the universes one wishes to pass through next, usually to achieve some kind of state of being or feeling. Multi-dimensionality defines this construct of subjective existence. Of course, the explanation of it gets a little hairy since the concept exists just on the brink between duality and unity, where time becomes more of an abstraction than a real dimension, and the present moment is the only moment, but other moments were known to exist previously and more moments are known to come, so it too is something that the definition needs to be understood on your own to find it in its greatest and most powerful abstraction, I just hope this helped.
Finally, reincarnation. Every group that has defined reincarnation would likely agree that meaning comes from within, and so should the meaning for this. Reincarnation is how universal consciousness, when it creates lesser entities, splits itself and interacts with itself in real time. Subjectively, a single consciousness may experience one lifetime as one creature, and the next as a totally different one, and the order of what is experienced is determined by other laws and such, but the fact itself, the term reincarnation, is the observation that this is what happens at death: life. One life ends, another begins. Perhaps in a different place, a different time, a different creature, a different planet, a different dimension, all of these things are unimportant to the observation that somehow, seamlessly, life takes a new form, and consciousness inhabits that form, and takes on its parameters, and understands its walls, and in doing so, must forget its own universal nature. Reincarnation refers to nothing more than the connection of the end of one life to the beginning of another, like a point on a circle, or a cross-section of a mobius strip. Attempting to define it by any of the laws by which life  goes about this cycle takes away from the richness of the definition.
These are terms that are used in many contexts in spiritual practice, feel free to use them whenever they feel right, as that is how the words want to be used. As long as the meanings and concepts get across, words are happy to be used in any way they can be.

Flip It, Call It, Science Face Up

The world has a new religion, and it's been in development for quite a while. Unlike religions of the past, this one is built off of numbers and figures, it obeys all laws of logic and more, and despite our limited grasp and capability of understanding all things that are, ultimately this religion can develop to understand exactly half of it(which is a LOT). We call this religion science. It is a religion since religions are simply guides on how to understand and deal with the world around you, and also on a higher level, to guide the organization of people in a productive way, as all religions do. It also has many counterarguments based within its own findings that refute and "disprove" all other religions, as all religions do. It is a wonderful thing, but is also probably the most volatile religion the world has ever suffered through, since those who follow it(and it's hard NOT to follow at least some part of it, since its explanations are so all-encompassing) historically persecute those who don't(albeit in a slightly different manner than other religions have).
Science as a religions is based on nature,  and natural patterns and abstractions such as numbers(ultimately just a placeholder abstraction for difference) and many, many, many observable laws of nature can be understood and reasoned with and even applied in new contexts through this numeric understanding of reality. Of course, I use the term "Science" abstractly by its primal definition to be all things definable and understood by logic. By applying the laws of logic and interactions and relations between numbers, you can learn a law, calculate it to a semi-concrete value, and use this value to apply the law to new concepts and ideas(such as using gravity and momentum equations to figure out how much fuel a vehicle would need to burn in order to achieve escape velocity from a larger body). All fields of science have their own natural patterns they are built upon: physics has numbers, chemistry has elements(also a concept based upon numeric relations and patterns, like the periodic table for arranging relations between different electrically charged particles and how their interactions correlate to changing the number of sub-particles the particles in question consist of), etc. All of the fields of science are bullet proof within themselves because they are based on these numeric relations and laws, and thus they all support one-another and patterns in one field can be applied in other fields( such as our rough equations for gravitic force between two bodies and the electric force between charged particles, which is more or less the same equation/relation in a different dimension(/scale maybe? Dim. Isn't really the right word) with a different constant, and shows a parallel between how different kinds of forces occur), and since all of these things are based on logic, they don't logically interfere with one another. Thus, it is a field that one uses to understand the world around them and relate to it in a meaningful, accurate, and applicable way.
Science also conflicts with other religions, as anybody who knows the story of Galileo would be quite aware of. When other religions dominated society, scientific study was, you could say, frowned upon, because it provided a means of understanding the world in a different way(think Roman Catholic Church and the Dark Ages, when so much information was lost, we may still be behind informationally speaking what was known before it occurred, but have since convinced ourselves otherwise due to advances in technology and harnessing industrial power). Now, in those days, heretics were shamed by the masses, persecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and often killed for their blasphemy against the commonly agreed upon "lens" for reality. In short, the dominant religion sought to preserve itself, so it constantly persecuted those who worshipped otherwise, to maintain a "louder voice" in the world, so to speak. The way science slipped through was by somehow denoting itself as something that was not religious at all, and it was especially simple because of how much the church deviated over thousands of years from its natural roots into a means of control through its own web of self-supporting concepts, which in those days was as creditable as logic is today. Due to this deviation, a general idea that religion and nature no longer had reconciliation allowed science to take the placeholder as it's own self-defined field of understanding the world, and able to gather followers from other religions without heavily conflicting enough concepts that would require the converted to keep their old religion along with the new one. (This also has to do with religions as we know them defining spirituality, which science has yet to sufficiently explain, and instead refutes since spirituality does not follow the laws of logic, but is still based in its own set of natural observable laws regardless, which is why I consider it the other half of reality that science cannot really touch, at least not yet). This way, religion was maintained and science was established and spread throughout the world. It even had it's own means of persecution, which target the individual from within rather than from without.
We have a way of 'quantifying' ones grasp of science, and it is a very powerful thing. Our society has developed to where the masses of people identify themselves ultimately and in some cases totally by this idea, and it causes just as many drawbacks and hindrances in terms of human development and grasp of information as a whole as previous methods of developmental interference between religions, and we call this value intelligence. Intelligence, especially judgements of one's own intelligence against others, is only a drawback, since it keeps self-esteem for those who have been deemed as non-intellectuals at an all-time low, and prevents the creation and flow of ideas from occurring from as much as 90% of the race as a whole(I made that figure up, but imagine how many books have been written by gas-station clerks and you can see what I'm getting at). Of course, the devout are still rewarded, as they always have been, and a lot of the time, the most intelligent are also the most wealthy or privileged in a given society( some exceptions to this, as there always are, remembering how much murder, war, and famine happened at the hands of popes should indicate that this margin of exception is nothing new ). Now, since we place one's value to society in intelligence, and we tell some people their intelligence is quite low( as it may be, we don't exactly know quantum physics from birth ), a general idea that those with low intelligence are not useful developed, damaging self-esteem,  and creating a caste system in the modern day, which still propogates since science has convinced people that it's 50% is actually the whole pie, and those who can't understand any part of the 50% cannot grow or develop and thus become stuck in their growth and kinda "grow up dumb", often admitting to this as if it is something they cannot change. Now, to understand what I mean by this halt of development, consider someone learning multiplication, such as multiplication by hand between two three-digit numbers.(this is the entire next paragraph, and is somewhat lengthy and exhaustive, so if you would like to skip it, I will summarize it at the beginning of the next, but the explanation is as follows)
The "scientific-linear" way of approaching this 123x321, is to add 123 to itself 321 times, which yields the answer 39483 after 321 additions. Since single-digit multiplication is rather simple to perform, someone attempting to calculate this could use a sort of "scientific-quadratic" approach, by multiplying the first digit of the second number across the digits of the first number, saving that value somewhere, adding a place value 0, and doing the same for the next digit of the second number, and upon completing all digits, adding the final list of saved values to itself, giving you your result of 39483 exponentially faster than the "linear" approach( these have been named by the way they define the concepts applied. Linear meaning it uses multiplication which is defined as a long string of additions. Quadratic meaning it uses long-multiplication, which is multiple multiplications followed by a much shorter string of additions ). To somebody who doesn't know what I'm talking about, these may sound incredibly complicated and partially meaningless due to the exhaustive definition, but of course I am defining the vertical method of multiplication I (and probably you as well) was taught in elementary arithmetic. However, this explanation is difficult and getting hung up on details of this process makes this process very difficult for some people to learn, especially those who are less "math-minded" and logically ground. Yet this is the method we are taught, and thus it is gospel, and those who don't understand the gospel are held back. Now, there is another form of multiplication, which I will call "visual multiplication" that isn't "Science", as it has been defined per-say. In this method, you simple draw groupings of diagonal lines for each digit value, with the first number going diagonally right and the second numbers' lines going diagonally left, so that all lines of one value cross all the lines from the other value, and you simply count the number of times they cross, grouping these intersections vertically, and the number of intersections going from left to right is your solution 39483(carrying for values larger than 9 of course). In a simpler example, such as 12x13, you would have three lines going diagonally to the right, grouped 1 then 2 top to bottom, and four lines going diagonally to the left, grouped 1 then 3 bottom to top(or from left to right if that helps, I'll try to include a picture, for reasons I will explain shortly). By grouping the intersections vertically, you end up with, from left to right, 1, 5(3+2), and 6, with 156 being your answer. 

This visual approach isn't as logical as the others and is much more difficult to explain concretely using just words, and thus is a more irrational(as in rational vs irrational numbers)than the others. I could literally go on forever with this wordy explanation and potentially not reach a point where the concept I am describing makes concrete sense with closed logic. It is not gospel, as far as I know, it is not taught in schools, and those who fail to grasp the quadratic approach of delinearizing the problem are held back and ultimately labelled as less intelligent than their peers for not grasping multiplication. Despite them being able to multiply the two numbers completely using the visual method, their intelligence would be graded upon their grasp of the "vertical method" and they would be deemed "incapable of long multiplication", for not "showing their work" the way it is outlined in gospel. Of course, this is an anecdote of my life in Elementary school(where I was luckily not held back) and I pray they have corrected their standards of intellect and grasp in the last 15 years, but from the to-be teachers I know, it hasn't changed much, and the visually minded continue to be labelled as unintelligent and their ideas continue to be scrutinized and defeated in an infantile form for not obeying the exact same logic as Sciences initially. Ideas born of another doctrine are defeated, more than often using explanations based in the closed logic of the more wide-spread religion, as religions do. Now, this was a childishly simple example, but I hope the meaning got across: science refuses to acknowledge or have any respect whatsoever for anything that is not-science. This is a problem. This problem brings us to the not-science, the speculation, the grains of salt:

There are many things innate to us that cannot be defined by science or broken down and quantified, and thus in the modern day they are devalued and often denied to exist at all. A simple example of this is love: innate connection to all things, acts of selflessness that defy economic reason. Love is too innate to us to be defeated by science, but it still cannot be explained and en masse is simply ignored as an important force of creation, to the extent that some doubt it's existence at all. Another thing science can define yet cannot quantify is feeling and sensation, which is just as important to life and survival as thought, and yet is highly marginalized to the point that people doubt their own feelings and instead follow the thoughts of others, more often than not to sadness and their own oblivion( that statement is also an exaggeration but I hope the point got across ). Finally, something science could never EVER explain, by definition, the miracle. Miracles are defined by their lack of imminent possibility and logical orthodoxy, and thus as things that deft science. Those who deny the existence of miracles also defy their possibility, and as a result will never experience one since their life-path will only ever walk within the 50% of the pie that is Science, where miracles simply do not happen, for reason of predictability, and the reproducability of the status quo. Imagination, creativity, dreaming, "interdimensional" travel and out-of-body experience are all things that cannot be explained or brought about by science(lack of reproducability, etc), and thus are often denied entirely from existence. Those who go against science nowadays are persecuted heavily by those devout and somewhat blinded by it. They are labelled as either unintelligent or crazy and this is the true spectrum of their grasp of the other half of reality, yet the science-mind convinces them to be ashamed of it. A faction of science in a highly incomplete field has convinced people that they carry something with them from birth that is eternal to all their life and everything they attach to it is something that cannot be changed. Intelligence, happiness-depression, body weight, mental conditions, and even economic standing(aka relation to scarcity) have all been defined as part of our eternal "genetics" and the general idea about genetics is that it cannot be changed. They find a gene that correlates to unintelligence, they tell you about it, you are convinced that intellectuality isn't for you 'by your nature', and thus you end up not pursuing education, thus you do not learn the sciences, thus you are by definition unintelligent, and you end up in the corresponding economic class. Your genes are passed on to your offspring, he is convinced of the same thing, and perhaps motivated by your lack of success, he could end up one income bracket above or below you, and this is how the cycle goes( with exceptions of course, but consider the number of people with no collegiate relatives, who will likely never see a six-figure salary in their lives ). Thus the underlying caste system of Science reveals itself, a self-fulfilling prophecy based on an incomplete or incorrectly communicates understanding of the branch dealing with the self. I am not sure if genetics as a field has discovered anything about whether genes change over a lifetime, but it is cited in so many control schemes that define people's lives, those things that many sceptics stand against now and will for all time, regardless of how much scientific evidence is produced in the contrary. Something about it is highly incomplete, and it isn't until science reconciles with spirituality that further understanding of the self and the universe can continue. But, they control the information, they control the people, they control the world. The RCC would never let science by at the peak of its power,  and likewise, the Sciences of the world follow the exact same scheme by denying possibilities they do not immediately understand. I would like to see it happen within my lifetime, the not-science enriches possibility and makes the struggles of life worthwhile. It grants hope to those who needs cannot be met by the material. It gives faith to those who believe in beautiful days every day. It gives meaning to the divine. It gives dimension to experience, life to life.