Susan Plunket's Blog, page 2

Choose Your Thoughts to Control Pain

Yesterday I had a another procedure on my eyes. One eye at a time, my fully dilated eyes were clamped open in order to have the new light adjustable lenses behind my cornea locked in place at the desired prescription using a very strong laser. This was the second lock-in so I knew it would be painful and I would be unable to move or close my eyes. I hadn't been prepared for the first lock-in since other laser treatments hadn't been painful. All the doctor had said was this will be a lot stronger than regular laser adjustments. The pain was weird and inescapable and pretty unbearable, but not long. After that first lock-in laser treatment I wished I hadn't even gotten the light adjustable lenses. But I was so far down the road with the eye surgeries and previous laser treatments I wanted to finish. And my eyesight was now really good. Before the new lenses I couldn't tell if at the end of the block there was person walking a dog or a person with a suitcase on wheels. It mattered because I was usually walking with my Labrador Retriever.

So for the second treatment I made a plan to cope with the pain. Because I know from my out of body experiences that my consciousness is not dependent on my physical body or even located in my body or brain, but exists as part of the infinite field of consciousness which we all share, I decided to focus my awareness, my consciousness, somewhere else far from my body and away from the pain. So I planned the thoughts I would think during the treatment and rehearsed them. I chose several pleasant memories to think about and enlarge upon, and focused my consciousness on them.

As the doctor clamped my fully dilated eyes open wide, I focused on the scene I chose and the thoughts I had planned. I took my conscious awareness was far from my head, eyes, or brain. When they turned on the laser machine I was already gone. Occasionally I strayed back but quickly refocused. I made it through the right eye. The left eye was harder. Still I repeatedly focused my consciousness on the thoughts I had planned. I made it through. At any moment we can choose a new thought that feels better.

What is the Nature of Reality?

This is not an original question. Humans have been asking it forever, along with: Where did we come from? Where are we going? What happens when we die? I've been wondering about these questions since I asked my first grade teacher: Why are we here?

Hindus have a beautiful way of answering. We're here to awaken and realize we are infinite, eternal beings and it is this human life which is unreal. When someone's body dies they often say something like: "Lead us from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light, from death to eternal life." I love this. If waking reality is unreal, a simulation, an experience in consciousness, then what is real must be consciousness itself, awareness itself.

We know from out of body experiences that our consciousness isn't in our body or even attached to it. Anyone who has had an out of body experience and seen their body lying there, apart from them, can attest to this. So what is our consciousness then? And where does it come from?

In the Bhagavad Vita Krishna explains to Arjuna that it is the one, eternal, infinite, imperishable, formless, timeless, spaceless, indestructible Presence and we are all it. We are all One in a field of awareness, one quantum conscious field. We're all entangled in this infinite field whether we are manifest in a body or not.

If true reality is consciousness, then what is death? Deepak Chopra offers an answer to this question about death: "What happens when we die? Nothing happens because we never left home." When we no longer have a physical body our awareness shifts away from the world of form. We're no longer focusing there. One could say physical death is a shift in awareness from the world of form to the formless realm. But always there is consciousness. Everything is happening in consciousness.

Perhaps this is what Noble Prize winning physicist Erwin Schroedinger meant when he said, "The number of minds in the universe is One." Everything is happening in this One mind, this Consciousness, which is nowhere and everywhere. It is spaceless, timeless, formless, imperishable and infinite.

So then. Where did we come from? Maybe we didn't come from anywhere. Maybe we've always been in the One field and our experience of a physical existence is an activity in Consciousness. We're evolving in consciousness using our free will. Vedanta tells us that the nature of the One Consciousness is compassion, love. We are creators in the field, creating what we perceive. And we can create majestic or terrifying worlds as we mind travel in Infinite Consciousness.

Needing to be Right is a Prison

Why do we insist on being right? It's so small-minded. It's a prison our ego constructs for us with the bricks of our fear.

I say to myself, "You're right, you're right, but you have no state." Only occasionally do I listen and let go and let whatever it is just be. When I am able to give up the need to be right I become agreeable and it feels so good. I suspect the struggle is even harder for very intelligent people because they so often are right and also they have pride of being right. It must be harder for them to give up the slavery of having to be right.

I try go through an entire day without hearing my own opinion about something. Really, it's usually my ego's opinion that does the talking while my inner Self, that spark of the divine that we each have, cringes inside, wishing to break free of the ego's prison. I suspect my ego keeps talking out of fear. Fear of what?

Freud and Jung agreed that all fear at its heart is fear of death, fear of non-existence. Jung said we need not fear this, because the greater part of us goes on after the death of the body. Therefore, if we have a spiritual practice which acknowledges our greater self, our inner being, our spark of the Divine, we can know ourselves as eternal and our ego will be less afraid of not existing. If the ego is less fearful and controlling we won't need to insist on being right so much. The prison walls will come down and we can open more to the experience of love.

What is Enlightenment?

This is a question many of us ask ourselves. Some of us wonder if we need to withdraw from society and live in a cave or monastery to meditate all day in order to become enlightened. It wouldn't be possible if everyone on Earth chose to do that. And some would argue that the real test is to be an enlightened person while living in society with others, not off somewhere isolated where there are fewer challenges to our peace of mind.

My current thinking about what it means to be enlightened is to understand, to know, that we are each a divine creator. Inside each of us is a spark of the Divine. We create our lives and all of our experiences with our thoughts and emotions. And together, below the level of consciousness, we create the world in which we live. Taking responsibility for what we create and understanding our power as creators is enlightenment. Becoming aware of the Divine in every atom of our being is enlightenment. As Jesus told the people of his time: "You are Gods." (John 10:34).

When I know that within every atom, every cell of my being resides the Divine, then I will be enlightened. When each of us knows this there will be paradise on Earth, a new Golden Age.

A Hero and a Goddess Capture the Heart and Imagination of the World

Olena Zelensky, First Lady of Ukraine, is living with a price on her head - and on her husband's. With her stalwart heart, her faith and courage she wears the face of a goddess as she becomes the physical embodiment of the Slavic Goddess Berehynia for the Ukrainian people.

President Zelensky fighting in the trenches for democracy and freedom embodies the archetype of a living hero capturing the hearts and imaginations of humans around the world with his bravery. He is not hiding in the Urals, raging and sending unknowing young conscripted Russian boys to their death while he sits in safety with his body guards.

Inspired by Zelensky's courage the Ukrainian people line up for guns to defend their freedom. Watching this the hearts of common men everywhere, as well as world leaders, are inspired with a remembrance of their ideals and a new commitment to them. From Biden, who humbly and masterfully created a coalition, to Macron to Kishida to Scholz, to the brave Russian anti-war demonstrators, faith in freedom and democracy is being restored.

There are times when a human is called to embody a big archetype like Goddess or Hero or Anti-Christ. This is such a time. Humanity is engaged in a mythic battle between freedom and oppression, light and dark, democracy and dictatorship. We each have our part to play, whether we demonstrate, donate money, clothes, food or simply let the ideal of the freedom of all men be reborn in our hearts.

Until all humans are free none of us is free. This past week the Ukrainians have fired up the flame of freedom to remind us all of this truth.

Rising Above Our Differences on Vaccines

From our earliest days we're all part of numerous reference groups : our family, our classmates, our school, our team, our neighborhood. As we grow up we affiliate on the basis of our interests and values and careers. The reference groups we identify with can bring pleasure, but they can also amplify our differences and create separation from, and judgment of, others who are not in our reference group. Whether we identify as Americans or global citizens, liberals or conservatives, vaxers or anti-vaxers, or any number of other social, political, national, racial or religious groups, our alliances and identifications can set up a condition where we're dividing the world into "us" and "them." We treat "us" differently than we treat "them." Generally there is acceptance of group members with whom we share values, while there can be a lack of tolerance toward those who are not "us" and are seen as "them." Only when our reference group includes all of humanity is there no separation into "us" and "them." Only then are we all part of one large reference group, the human kingdom, where there is no "them." But how do we reach and sustain a consciousness where we are all one? Where is the doorway to this consciousness?

One doorway is inside, it opens into the depth of our spirit, our soul. When we resonate with a deeper place in ourselves we also resonate with a deeper place inside others, a place beyond external affiliations, appearances, jobs, social position etc. When we identify with our own soul we look deeper into others as well. We see beyond their externals. When we shift our focus and go through this doorway we join a community of Souls, a spiritual community, where we recognize members by their attention to their inner life, through their writing or the look in their eyes or how they speak about the soul. Our spiritual community members may not even be living on Earth now, but we still know them as part of our spiritual community. For me, Emerson, Jung, Jesus, Krishna, Ra and Rumi, are a few members of my community who are disincarnate. But they are as much a part of my community as the incarnate friends I walk and talk with. My community is unbound by time and space, a community where external things like job, wealth, race, and age and vaccines are not the focus. Being part of this community helps me navigate many divides including vaxer/anti-vaxer. I am vaccinated. Many in my community are vaccinated and some are not. We are not focused on one another's choice regarding vaccinations because we are bound by deeper concerns - love for our planet and for the Divine within all beings.

How Energy Healers Heal

Energy healing is becoming more mainstream because it works and it's simpler than you might think. Whether the healer is using light, sound, color or something else to facilitate the healing, it is always bringing the person back into alignment with the Divine which heals. The healer connects with her own spirit and moves into resonance with the vibration of Divine energy. She can then send that energy in and through the person, plant or animal to bring them back into alignment with their own Divinity. Once in alignment they are restored to their original blueprint and healed.

The Theta wave with a hertz frequency of 7.81 is considered the threshold or doorway at which healers work. Shamans and some healers use the frequency of Gamma which is between 32 and 200 hertz to perform miracles.

We regular humans can achieve a healing frequency too by bringing ourselves into resonance with our own spirit through meditation or any practice that connects us to the Divine with in us. The Divine resides in each of us as us. This is the ancient teaching of the Christ consciousness, Sufis, the Buddha and many others. Some healers believe that an actual physical cell of the Divine is in the center of the Absolute light in our heart chakra and that we can use this cell to heal ourselves.

The body is the creature of the mind. It believes what the mind tells it. Each thought you think creates a frequency in your body. Watch what you tell yourself, because your body is listening and responding to the frequency which your thoughts are creating. You can lift your frequency with your own thoughts.

The Thoughts You Think Become the House You Live In

In the 14th Century Hafiz wrote: "The words you speak become the house you live in." Born in 1315 in Iran, Hafiz was a Persian Sufi mystic and poet. He knew that we create our reality with our words. He understood the power of words to manifest even physical reality. But it isn't only our words which create our experience and our very world. It is also our thoughts and our beliefs. Many of our beliefs aren't even true. They are merely habits of thinking or stuff our parents or teachers told us. And they can hurt us and limit our lives. True, some beliefs are helpful, like for instance: "I'm lovable," or "I'm good at making money." But some are self-limiting: like, "I'm not smart," or "Things never work out for me." Burn your self-limiting beliefs - root and branch.

You have a choice. Either you allow your thoughts to run your life by creating your reality willy-nilly, or you consciously decide what to think about because you understand that your thoughts are actually what is creating your reality. It does take effort. It's also what meditation is about - learning to control the mind to keep it from jumping around like a monkey to every branch it sees, never finding peace. But you don't have to meditate, though it does have many benefits, to change your life. You only have to create your thoughts consciously. There's a lot more to the adage - "the power is in positive thinking," - than most of us realize. Try it for a day. Tell yourself: "Everything is always working out for me." Really, try it.

Do Our Thoughts Create Our Reality ?

Are we living in a virtual reality created by our thoughts? Is what we perceive as material reality a camouflage which we're all hallucinating?

We experience reality through our external senses, believing what we see and hear and touch and smell. That peony in the garden is real to the eye and the touch and it smells divine. The snow capped

mountain seen through a doorway is massive and beautiful and we can climb it and feel it under our feet. In this sense our third dimensional reality is very real to us when we're focused on it, which we mostly are. But this isn't reality in its totality. Ask anyone who's ever taken plant medicine or had a stroke, been hypnotized, reached a state of bliss in meditation or experienced lucid dreaming.

There exist other realities alongside the one we focus on with our external senses. And as virtual reality games show us, our senses can be manipulated. Even without virtual reality headsets other levels of reality are available to us - when we use our inner senses. Our inner selves are naturally clairvoyant and telepathic and can introduce us to other equally real realities. We have the amazing gift of a mobile consciousness which we can focus like a beam of light into various realities. We all create form by what we focus on. All material reality begins as consciousness. We use our consciousness and our beliefs to create our reality both individually and as a group.

Most of us have no idea how powerful our creative ability is. We are literally creating our reality in every moment. This is a powerful gift. If you want to know why your reality is as it is examine your beliefs about yourself, about existence and about what's possible for you. Much more is possible than most of us ever imagine. Spend time imagining. Use your imagination to create the reality you want to live. Literally.

Dream Reality

Is dream reality real? And if it is, what is it? Our dreams could be glimpses into our other selves, the other lives we're simultaneously living in this dimension and in other dimensions - even on other planets. Our Spirit encompasses our many selves, not reincarnated through time but all being lived at once. Physicists tell us that time doesn't exist. There is only the eternal now. We only agree to the idea of linear time in the third dimension so that our heads don't explode when everything manifests at once. To know more of your greater self observe your dreams to see what you're doing in your other simultaneous lives. You may wake up some mornings and not remember your name in this dimension because you have been visiting yourself in your other lives where you have a different name. Don't worry your name will come back to you.