|
The following presents more answers to
questions asked in Dr. Ron Scolastico's
Study Group Readings or from personal readings,
retreats or workshops that have
been previously published on the
"Timely Wisdom" web page. Dr. Scolastico answers the question from a
deep state of consciousness, drawing upon a source of universal wisdom,
often referred to as
"The Guides." The first set of Questions and Answers
(#1-6) can be read
here.
The second set #7-15) here.
16. Capitalism vs. Democracy
17. The Mystical Pathway of Joy
18. Jesus and the Christ Force
19. Steps to nurturing oneself (particularly for
service workers)
20. Knowing God as our "beloved."
The following was taken from the August, 2002
Study Group Reading.
QUESTION:
Capitalism seems to have been a structure that has
supported a great deal of wealth creation in recent human history, yet
there continues to be a number of areas where people are able to abuse
this structure. Would you comment on some areas where you see that our economic
structures need to evolve in order to provide greater abundance and
balance for humans?
ANSWER: If you
look closely you can see, in your society, and in most of what you would
call the “Democratic” societies, the constant push and pull between
idealism and selfishness. There is this same push and pull
within each individual. There are no countries, there are no
societies, there are only humans grouping together and acting.
Then, you name a society, or you name a country, or you name a way
of carrying out commerce. In this case, you call it “Capitalism.”
Around these namings, you make certain
rules, but the rules exist only in the minds and actions of humans. So,
you must always know that all groupings are simply a collection of
individuals. There is no grouping. There are only individuals. This can
help you gain clarity about any system, politically, economically, or in
terms of religion.
Any system is nothing more than a group of humans. Therefore, to understand the system,
you need, in a sense, to “average out” the choices of the humans
within the system. In the constant push and pull between idealism and
selfishness, if most humans in a grouping, or a nation, act selfishly, no
matter what you call the system or the country, it will be negative.
In Capitalism, most humans do act
negatively, selfishly. All humans are striving for more money, at least
most of the humans. The consequence is negative. Now, to you, it is positive if you have
enough money. If you are poor, it is not positive. So, the assessment of a
Capitalistic system is totally subjective. You decide whether it is
good or bad for you, no matter what others say. You ones see certain goodnesses in your
United States of America society. We suggest that those do not derive from
Capitalism, which is primarily selfish. They derive from
Democracy, which is primarily idealistic.
Many humans in the United States value
a sense of freedom. Most of them, when they are not pressed or challenged,
value other humans. They value society. They value humanity. They value
harmony and order. This individual valuing, multiplied manifold in
your society through many years, creates much of the goodness that exists
in your society. The illusion that Capitalism creates
goodness is widespread. But, Capitalism, primarily, but not for every
human in every moment, is simply greed. It is not Capitalism that
brings the goodness, it is Democracy, idealism. If you ones individually can somehow
manage to infuse into your own financial needs a sense of idealism, a
greater sense of caring about every human, then you will see that if there
is one person in poverty, it is your challenge. If everyone feels
that, there will be no poverty.
When there is the individual
awakening and infusion of more idealism—remembering that there are no
groups, there are no corporations, those are structures that you
ones create, there are only individuals—when individuals are having
the courage to be kind, and generous, and idealistic toward all humans,
then naturally policies of the groups that you call corporations
will change. The motivation of greed will not be entirely eliminated, but
it will become secondary to the motivation of idealism, honesty, and
honor. Then, you will have corporate change.
Until then, most of you realize that since there are humans who are
motivated by greed and they do not care if they cause financial loss to
other humans, then, if you ones do not wish to see loss in the financial
areas, you will need, you might say, “inhibitors.” You will need control,
you will need laws, you will need punishment. For until humans can
motivate themselves through idealism, if you wish to control the entity
that you call the financial institutions, or the entity that you call your
society—even though there are no such entities, there are only individuals
acting in groups—you will need your restrictions. If you cannot attain the
results through idealism, you will need to temporarily attain them through
prohibition and force until humans grow more.
top
(© 2003 Ron Scolastico, Ph.D.)
The following was Excerpted from:
The Healing Power of Joy and Laughter
The 17th Annual, 2001 Spiritual Retreat
With Ron and Susan Scolastico & "The Guides"
The Mystical Pathway of Joy
We would
suggest that there is a certain pricelessness in the present
moment. As the moment passes, the opportunity to receive the treasure
of that moment shifts to the next moment. There are eternal forces that
are always perfect that can be received in every moment. But, in
the future moment, you will be different. So, you might say that
this is the last moment to experience the divine in this particular form
or shape, for in the next moment you have aged slightly. You have had
certain different experiences that you did not previously have. And, as
you see this expanding, moment by moment, day by day, through the years,
even though you can feel within you, “I am always me,” in certain ways,
you are not the same “me.”
For example,
you cannot experience your present life from the point of view of being
twelve years old, for that has passed. Soon, ten more years will pass and
you will have the “old” you receding into the distance of the past.
All of these
areas are the multiple interplay of the illusionary nature of
subjective experience within time. All of it is the “game” that you
are playing at the present moment.If you do not
train yourself to savor each stage of the game, there will be a certain
sense of lack in the future. After your death, the perfect vision
of you-as-a-soul will take note of a kind of insufficient
experiencing that you created by not fully engaging the moment during your
human life. This would be as though you are sent to a university by your
father to learn Astronomy and you sleep through half of the classes. When
you are tested, it is clear that you did not learn fully. So, you are sent
back to school.
However, it is
not so much that you ones are sent into human form to learn. You are sent
to rejoice. But, since you have not fully awakened to the majesty
of human life on earth, you are still learning. You are learning to
awaken. Until you do awaken, you are in school. When you learn and awaken,
you will be in play.
It is very
difficult for most of you to understand that the only reason for coming
into human life on earth is to experience joy. It seems at times
that joy is so far from your experience. It seems to you, at times, that
the purpose of life is to struggle.
Even knowing
that the purpose of life is to learn is a certain kind of
distortion. The intention of the souls was not for you ones to learn, for
you already knew in earlier stages of human expression. But, you
might say that you ones forgot the truth. As a result, the “downturn” of
human societies was initiated. Thus, in very complex ways, you ones have
been reengaging the study of being human, lifetime after lifetime. And,
still, you have not fully learned. So, human life is still a chore
at times. There are still lessons. When you fully learn, it will not be
lessons. It will be play, and celebration, and pure joy.
When you have
long moments, long periods of moments strung together, in which you feel
inadequate, unworthy, unfulfilled, lonely, frustrated, frightened, or
angry, you create new lessons. Then, you must learn those lessons. And, in
learning those, you create new lessons. Then, you must learn those. On and
on this goes through many lifetimes.
All of this
could be stopped in an instant by grasping the eternal perfection of
you in this moment. If you do not grasp that perfection in this moment
as the present self of you, at your present age or present stature, that
opportunity is gone forever. In the next moment, you have a new
opportunity, but you are one moment older, and you are slightly different.
A year later you will have a new opportunity, but you will be a year older
and you will be quite different.
Gradually, the
human life leaks away and most of the moments slip past without you
seizing upon the majesty of life in earth. From that, there is gradually
built, once more, just as you ones have built in many lifetimes, the
belief that life on earth is difficult, challenging, and frightening. You
do not always feel that, but that is a very strong pattern that each of
you has created in the past, a pattern that you are trying to heal in the
present.
The key is
always the present moment. There is always the possibility, no
matter what you are doing in any moment, of awakening to the truth.
The truth is: there is only goodness in all realms of existence. If
you perceive a badness, that is your creation, made in
alignment with other humans who are confused.
Day after day,
the creation of joy is not simply to make you feel better about life and
to eliminate experiences that do not please you. Seizing upon joy is
the key to awakening to eternal truth. The same could be said for
seizing upon love, seizing upon experiences of perfection.
In the simplest way of looking, you could say that joy, love,
perfection—all of the experiences that you would call positive—are
perceptions of the truth. All experiences that you would call negative
are perceptions of human distortion.
What this
means is that the more you capture joy—as with love and perfection and the
other areas—the more you are moving toward truth. So, it is not simply a
self-indulgent desire to have more pleasant experiences that launches you
into a search for love, harmony, perfection, and joy. It is the impulse to
grasp the underlying perfection of life, to become aware of it in the
human moment in which you are living, and thereby transform your
experience. Then, this begins to add to the transformation of the human
distortion that has made human life seem difficult, frightening, or
painful.
You are
playing a part in a very large drama that involves every living human. As
you can observe, many living humans play a rather negative part. They
bring resentment, anger, blaming, condemning, many negative areas. And,
they propagate that for long periods. That continues the illusion that
there is badness in the human world. Others constantly strive for
the love, kindness, compassion, and perfection. That stimulates movement,
or energies, toward truth. Of course, you will fluctuate between the two.
You need to
realize that the pursuit of joy, of goodness, is not simply a selfish
pathway that makes you feel better. It is a contribution to the
transformation of distorted human creations in the physical world. So, you
might say that joy has a very large purpose. It is a very high “calling,”
so to speak. It is very beneficial for you and for humanity at large.
These areas
are difficult to see when you feel that you are simply one small
individual amongst so many, that your life has so little impact when there
are so many other lives. But, those feelings are also temporary
distortions that come about because you do not perceive the way that you
touch into and feed every living human. You cannot perceive the way that
you are joined to every soul. Even though there is a cosmic drama playing
out within you and around you, you ones see mostly your own smaller life,
and often do not see the connection between the two.
You might say
that joy is a crusade. It is a purpose. It is a project.
It is a pathway that not only can enliven you, making your
existence on this earth more fulfilling, but it is a contribution to
trying to awaken in human life an awareness of divine perfection. So, it
is certainly a noble cause, and one that extends far beyond what you often
perceive as your small individual world. It is one that, if you take it as
a goal, along with a passion for truth and a desire for love, can
accelerate what you accomplish in this lifetime, magnifying it, extending
it, radiating it out far beyond your subjective experience.
These are very
important layers of truth. These suggestions can point you in a beneficial
direction. Then, it is up to you to extend your thoughts and feelings
along these lines until you learn to perceive these deeper truths for
yourself.
(back to top)
The following was taken from the December, 2002
Study Group Reading.
QUESTION: From a metaphysical
viewpoint, how can we relate the birth of Jesus to the birthing of the
Christ Force within each of us during this holiday season?
Answer: First of all, begin
with this thought: the words, Christ Force, are intended to
represent the highest goodness that you as a human can imagine. You
might say that it could be interchangeable with the word, God.
Any thought, or feeling, or concept that to you represents the most
goodness that you can imagine, assume that this is what we are pointing
to when we speak of the Christ Force.
There is a reality
that is different from physical reality, and physical human selves and
bodies, that has to do with a complex orchestration of what you could
call “divine energies.” You ones have no words for these areas, so we
will need to describe this as a marshalling of the God forces of
creation into a coherent stream of energies.
This stream of
energies is absolute perfection and love. This stream of energies has
infused humanity from the beginning in a way that the unmanifest
God forces could not. This stream of energy is what we are calling the
Christ Force.
This Christ Force was
recognized by certain human beings in a number of lifetimes before the
birth of the Jesus person. Some of those human beings were projections
from the soul that projected the human Jesus into the human world. You
could say that, in several lifetimes, the human manifestations of the
soul of the Jesus person, by their will, sought out the underlying
perfection in life that we are calling the Christ Force.
In each of those
lifetimes, that human understood that force in a different way, and
sought it out in a different way. But, usually, it involved rigid,
strict training, and separation from the human physical world. It
involved retreating into an isolated grouping.
In the lifetime just
prior to the Jesus lifetime, the human who was expressing from the Jesus
soul, in a certain extraordinary moment of illumination that is
difficult to put into words—but you might imagine it as an immediate,
sudden, complete, “panoramic” vision of human existence on this earth
that showed the ebb and flow of humanity throughout the ages with its
many complexities, its many challenges, pain, and suffering—realized
that discovering the underlying perfection of life—the Christ Force, the
God Force—by retreating from human society can bring extraordinary
experiences for the retreating individual, but, it leaves other
humans in darkness.
In this lifetime
before the Jesus person, there was such pain in the heart of that one as
he witnessed the pain of humanity, the sadness, the despair, the
anguish, that he made a total commitment to bring forth a way of human
living that reveals the underlying perfection of the Christ Force, the
God Force, to humans who are in darkness. He committed to showing humans
a way to the light and the love.
Then, after the death
of the one who was the predecessor of the Jesus life, there came about,
through the choices made by the human one in that predecessor life,
certain extraordinary adjustments to the human energies that he created.
You might say that those human energies were able to be “taken up” by
the souls who orchestrate human life. As a result, in the Christ
Force—that had always, and does always, penetrate reality, but which in
a sense was hidden behind the physical reality—the Christ Force which
was sought out and consciously aligned with by the Jesus
predecessor one—in that force, there were certain extraordinary
manipulations of energies by the souls. From those manipulations, the
human being who became the Jesus person was able to be infused with
energies that never before had been possible to bring into the physical
reality—the physical world, physical matter.
Yet, in the growth of
the Jesus person, there was not the luxury of retreating from society to
gain the conscious awareness of the Christ Force. There was great
sadness and pain as the child engaged human life and witnessed human
cruelty, selfishness. There was the same despair that all humans have
known. There were the same challenges on the physical earth.
So, there needed to
be the human choice in this physical Jesus body—a body that was
quite unusual, quite different. You might say that the Jesus body was
linked to the Christ Force in an extraordinary way, a way in which no
human body had ever been linked to that force in the physical world.
All of that existed
as a potential jewel within the human body of the Jesus person.
Yet, the human being of the Jesus person struggled, questioned,
suffered, lived through the darkness that humans had created through the
ages.
By his will,
by a choice made within his human self, the Jesus person once
again took up the quest of searching for the divine force of perfection
in life, the Christ Force, the God Force. And, he so gave himself into
this without retreating from other humans that, you might say, it
“stamped” indelibly upon the human race the pattern of liberation,
enlightenment, and freedom from the darkness. That pattern, put in human
words, is quite simple. It is kindness, compassion, and
love.
There are many, many
deep aspects to this. For clarity, you can say:
"Because of the
choices made by the Jesus person, it became possible for me as a human
in this lifetime to be born into a physical body that is infused in the
tangible sense by the Christ Force. The Christ Force lives in my
body. It lives in my human self. But, it is up to me to give birth to it
consciously by my choices in this lifetime.”
The choice of
kindness, compassion, and love is the key to walking the brilliant path
laid out and walked by the brother Jesus.
When you see it this
way you can say:
"Each day, by my
choice, there can be the birth of the Christ love in my conscious
experience as a human. All that is needed is to choose kindness,
compassion, and love to the best of my ability.”
Of course, you have
your “cross” to bear, so to speak. You have your fears, your doubts,
your challenges in the physical world. The Christ Force will not make
those vanish. They are your challenges. You must transform
them. But, if you have the base of the daily birth of the Christ love in
your heart, and the commitment to not retreat from other humans, to
bring as much kindness, compassion, and love toward them as you can,
then, you have the key to all of life.
(back to top)
STEPS
TO NURTURING ONESELF
Although giving to
others can be the greatest gift to oneself as well, many who are on a
spiritual path or work in areas of service, can occasionally feel
drained or bereft of nurturing for themselves. We are often taught to be
humble and self effacing which can lead to a feeling that our own needs
are not important and that we lack value.
The
following answer by the Guides, through Ron Scolastico, Ph.D., to her question
about how to receive and experience more
nurturing for oneself at those times when we feel that the balance of
giving and receiving in our lives is askew, was contributed by Ann Barham, M.F.T., a family
therapist and past life regression expert in California.
www.pastlives.org
We can show you 7 focal points to study, keep
in mind and act upon. The first is a greater assimilation, you might call
it. Let us say you are eating the most delicious food in the world,
your favorite food. And as you eat you are thinking about a plan for a
new way to teach or help others. Now your body receives the nutrients,
but your self is not rejoicing, for you are distracted. You are not
fully savoring, you are not enjoying fully. So, whenever any other
human is speaking to you, particularly if they are being kind, they are
appreciating you, or if it is a loved one who is loving you, try to
clear your mind of everything, even the thought “I must receive more
love.” And say, “This is a moment that can bless me. I am eating a
delicious meal of warmth and friendship, and I will simply notice that
as much as I can and invite myself to feel it deeply.” Without pushing
or striving – it is more of a relaxation, a taking in.
Second focus:
the establishment of specific goals with specific individuals in each day
with whom you are certain to come in contact. And you would write for
yourself, very specifically, “How can I increase receiving from each of
these persons I will encounter?” For a mating one you would write, “I
will ask the one to hold me for a moment, for I am feeling sad and
tired.” For a one you are serving, you might devise very small,
appropriate communications that will elicit appreciation from them. So
you might say, “How have you benefited from our last time of working
together?” It could be an extremely small thing. The key is to
identify it and do it. So you establish a habit of doing for yourself.
The third focus is, of
course, is you doing goodness for you, which you are becoming more
willing to do, but you need to be more specific. You need a more
complete list of things you can do for yourself to help yourself feel
loved, appreciated, valued, important. They can be very simple or they
can be elaborate. You might plan a very elaborate party for yourself,
or you might simply sit in a moment of silence and write out “I have
helped so many humans in this lifetime. I am a wonderful human being.
I rejoice in me.”
The fourth focus is
the establishment of new rhythms in which you notice when you are not
receiving consciously, and you notice how much time that involves. Then
you notice how much time you do spend receiving. So let us say you
spend 12 waking hours pouring out or doing or thinking or occupied with
your life, and five moments to paying attention to receiving. Then you
have a rhythm. And you might say, “It is not a beneficial one for
receiving, so let me take note of ways to adjust that rhythm.”
Then the fifth focal
point is coming forth into the forces of God more easily, more relaxed,
more trusting, in an attunement in which the only purpose is to feel
that you
are being loved. You have made inroads into this area, but it can be
very beneficial – not that you need so much more time, but you simply
need a deeper sense of importance and more trust that the love will pour
into you.
Next focus is a physical
manifestation of a gift to you in every day. You must integrate this
with your many needs, but you might purchase a small stone as a gift.
The next day you might purchase an expensive jewelry, if that pleases
you. The next day you might purchase a small flower for yourself.
Integrate it with financial and other practicalities, but if nothing else
purchase a small flower. Purchase a pencil. Something that symbolizes
to you, that you are tangibly offering a gift to this beautiful female who is
you in this lifetime.
|
