Have you ever wondered if what we perceive as reality might be more like The Matrix than we realize? In this episode of Musings from the Mount, Joseph and Michael explore the fascinating concept of the Astral Plane - a realm where thoughts become reality and emotions shape our perception of truth.
Drawing from the timeless wisdom of Alice Bailey's "Ponder on This," they navigate through complex esoteric concepts with refreshing modern parallels, from Instagram's influence on reality to video games' virtual worlds. This isn't just another spiritual discussion - it's a practical guide to understanding how our thoughts and emotions literally shape the world we experience.
Whether you're a seasoned spiritual seeker or simply curious about the nature of reality, this episode offers profound insights into consciousness, emotional intelligence, and the path to authentic awareness. Michael and Joseph break down complex metaphysical concepts into digestible, relevant examples that resonate with our 2024 experience.
Join us for an enlightening conversation that bridges ancient wisdom with modern understanding, offering practical tools for navigating our increasingly complex world. Discover why gratitude might be your most powerful tool for transformation, and learn how to see through the fog of illusion to glimpse what lies beyond.
Meditation Mount and HeartLight Productions are pleased to present Musings from the Mount – a weekly podcast with host Joseph Carenza and guests in conversation exploring a range of topics drawn from the Ageless Wisdom teachings. New episodes every Monday.
If you enjoy this podcast, please consider donating at MeditationMount.org
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
What if reality as we know it is more like a shared dream shaped by our collective thoughts and emotions?
Today, we're plunging into the concept of the astral plane, that mysterious realm where thought becomes form and emotions create our reality.
Welcome, friends, to the Musings from the Mount podcast.
I'm your host, Joseph Carenza.
(00:22):
Using Alice Bailey's Ponder on this as our guide, we'll discover how ancient wisdom can help us navigate our increasingly digital world.
And we'll explore this fascinating dimension through the lens of modern life, from social media to virtual reality.
So get ready to question everything you think you know about reality, consciousness, and the power of thought.
(00:43):
And if you enjoy this podcast, please consider going to meditationmount.org and donating.
Your donation helps us to bring you this podcast as well as all the other programs the Mount produces, both today and in the future.
We are incredibly grateful and honored by your support.
All right, back to the podcast and get ready to question everything.
(01:11):
In preparation for this episode, we were looking for a way to an in, if you will, into the Alice Bailey text.
And they can be very dense.
Then sometimes the language can be very arcane.
It can be highly technical at times, almost mathematically and touching on.
(01:36):
I mean, sometimes you could go through a paragraph, and if you haven't spent upwards of 10, 15 years studying esoteric traditions, you would spend the rest of the week going to the library looking for rep.
Like, what does this phrase even mean?
So I was thinking of a way of like.
(01:57):
And this was a way in for me as well, was the book Ponder on this.
And so you literally, I mean, the title's Genius Ponder on this.
I would just, you open up to any page, randomly pick a section, and it has texts that come from the very.
It's like a compilation, and it's organized around ideas.
(02:17):
And we thought, well, you know, what if we started a little series and, you know, every couple weeks or so, we'll come back to it and we'll pick a different subject or two, and we'll kind of talk about it and help bridge the gap between what this esoteric tradition is, how that manifests in today.
You know, something important for me is that we look at it through the lens of 2024.
(02:40):
That's where we're at right now.
That's where we're recording.
How does that land for people now?
But it's also important, I think, for us to, you know, share this wonderful gift.
You know, this tradition is this beautiful gift of knowledge and not just data.
But the more you read Alice Bailey and who is transmitting the messages from DK is.
(03:04):
It's a.
It's a way of thinking.
It's a way of looking at the world.
It's a way of being that I think is highly important and highly relevant today.
You know, so.
And that being said, all that preamble, we're going to start at the beginning and with the letter A.
We're not going to go letter section by section, but we just happen to be starting on A in the astral plane.
(03:29):
Yeah.
And of course, you know, that's.
That's my favorite to talk about because it brings up, obviously, the Matrix.
It brings up anyone that's ever played a video game, anyone that's ever used a computer knows that there is this space that's created that is virtual, but yet we interact with it as if it's real.
(03:49):
It engages us on levels that feel real.
Anyone that has their phone and is looking at social media, it's only a matter of.
I mean, seconds before you're immersed.
You know, you.
The outside world just takes.
Just becomes like, so what is real?
And what does it mean to transcend to a higher state of consciousness, to transcend this world of illusion?
(04:13):
So we're gonna get.
We're gonna jump right into it.
Yeah.
And just to let people know, we don't set ourselves up as experts on this.
We are seekers, we are ponderers.
And I just like to say a couple of words about why we are focusing on this particular stream of teaching.
It's a wisdom teaching, because the Alice Bailey books published by the Lucis Trust, transmitted by the Master dk, are part of our lineage and our founder here at Meditation Mount in Ojai.
(04:50):
Florence Garrigue was a good friend of Alice Bailey, worked with her over the years.
So there was that connection.
And the other connection is Roberto Assagioli, the spiritual teacher and founder of Psychosynthesis.
(05:10):
He was a student of the Master dk, and he's referred to in Discipleship in a New Age by Alice Bailey.
The letters to him are quoted there.
So it's part of our lineage.
But we're not talking about this as the Bible.
And we have to convert people to this.
What we're doing is because it resonates in my heart.
(05:33):
I've been studying these books and working with these books since, well, 1969, and still unraveling, unpacking, unfolding all the stuff that's in there.
And it's as though it's a time capture and it releases new wisdom as I grow into a new awareness.
(05:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, you and I talked about this.
We go back and read one of the books that we may have read a year ago, and we go, I didn't see that.
Yeah, I don't remember that paragraph.
That's exactly like with Ponder on this in particular.
I put a little pencil mark next to any section I read and like.
And then I'll go back and read it like, wow, I feel like I'm reading this for the first time again.
(06:20):
Or I feel like I'm.
This takes on a completely different meaning because it does change the way you view the world, and then it generates a new perspective.
And the idea with the teachings is so that we have an understanding of the big picture, an understanding of where we fit in, and we have to apply the wisdom.
(06:43):
So it's applied wisdom.
That's what.
Following a path of discipleship, following a path of services.
It's applied wisdom.
So, as you quite rightly said, what does it mean in 2024?
So let's take a deep breath and begin pondering together, Joey.
(07:04):
Yes, let's do that very thing.
When I think of the manifested worlds now, I'm going big picture, just for a moment.
When I think of manifestation.
Manifestation exists on a continuum from the very dense to the very refined.
It's like a spectrum of colors.
Infrared, ultraviolet, and they vibrate at different frequencies.
(07:33):
And we find ourselves living in that part of the spectrum that corresponds to the frequency of our consciousness.
Like attracts like.
Right?
Yeah.
That's how you create resonance and consonants.
You sound a note and you attract whatever that note calls to you or a note calls something inside of you to it.
(08:01):
So it said that the human species, in its evolution of consciousness, for the most part, resides.
And by resides, I mean not just physically lives, but in its consciousness resides in that part of the spectrum which is way down in the denser area that is called the physical.
(08:29):
Etheric, physical, astral and lower mental.
These are not bad things.
It just means it's dense there.
The light hasn't penetrated and the light hasn't been released from it, so it's harder to see.
So just to say that this is where we find ourselves, and we've talked before about part of the destiny of the Earth is to liberate the light inside the darkness, to liberate the light that's imprisoned inside of our dense incarnated vehicle.
(09:04):
And so we are actors.
You name the Matrix and you name video games, and those of us who have seen the Matrix understand that people live inside that world and believe it to Be true.
We live inside a particular world that has been generated by us as well as by the Creator, and we believe it to be true.
(09:31):
And what we have to do is to liberate ourselves from the illusion and see clearly.
If you go back to the.
One of the most ancient prayers on the planet, the Gayatri, lead us from darkness into light, from the unreal to the real, from death to immortality.
(09:58):
I mean, that's the journey, Joey.
That's the journey.
So let's say that we live in this particular frequency band that has a certain level of substance or density to it.
And we know, as we've mentioned so many times on these podcasts, energy follows thought.
(10:21):
Now, because we as human beings have the power of thinking, we don't always realize the effect of thinking.
So every think, everything we think, creates something in the ethers.
And then when it's magnetized and comes to a point of precipitation, it becomes either a belief, it becomes something in our emotional field.
(10:52):
It can even show up in our life as something we've called forth through the power of thought.
The problem is that the astral plane, its substance, its plasma, conforms in, responds to all our thoughts.
And therefore it's like this shifting kaleidoscope of images that we live inside, which is not the real world.
(11:19):
It's the world that we have created, and yet it feels real because it resembles our own inner feelings.
And I'd like to get into this in more depth, but as you suggested, let's start off by using the words that Alice Bailey wrote down, because she was given this text by the Master dk, and I think it's good to say that she didn't channel it.
(11:46):
She wasn't some sort of channel that was taken over by a being.
At the time of the writing, the Master TK was living in Tibet, and he had the power to transmit through telepathic radiation, thoughts.
Alice Bailey had the power and the capacity to receive.
(12:07):
She was taking dictation over distance.
I think I want to make that clear because some people say, oh, channeled writings.
How can you trust those?
Well, this is like some sort of facts exchange between two beings, both of them incarnate.
So let's read a paragraph and then sort of go into it more.
(12:32):
So this is how it starts.
One of the most vital things every aspirant has to do is to learn to understand the astral plane, to comprehend its nature, and to learn both to stand free from it and then to work on it.
(12:53):
Now, this is key, to stand free from it, and then to work on it.
So we have to see what it is, see it for what it is, and then say, okay, how do I then bring the light of truth, the light of my soul, into this part of the.
(13:14):
Of my inner world that is still in the darkness?
And it is still constructed and created by the images generated by my feelings.
And most of those images are generated by feelings that have to do with some sense of incompletion or pain or suffering.
(13:39):
Not always, but for the most part, it's a dystopian view that we can live in, or we can live at the other end of the spectrum, where we live in sort of some fantasy world, some pie in the sky.
But the thing is, at some point, we have to enter into it and bring the light of day into it.
(14:01):
We have to dispel the fog.
So it says, the moment a man can see.
And here we go again.
This was written at a time when it was always the male pronoun, so we apologize for using it in 2024.
And yet, to be true to how it was written, we're going to use the original text just so that it doesn't break the flow.
(14:28):
The moment a man can see, quote unquote, on the astral plane and can achieve equilibrium and hold steady in the midst of its vibrating forces, that moment he is ready for initiation.
It simply means that we can't pass through the next door, the next threshold, until we have made our way through the twists and turns of the path that leads through the astral plane.
(15:02):
And then, just to complete this first sentence or first paragraph, the appearance of the astral plane, when first definitely seen by the opened eye of the aspirant, is one of dense fog, confusion, changing forms, interpenetrating and intermingling colors, and is of such a kaleidoscopic appearance that the hopelessness of the Enterprise seems overwhelming.
(15:29):
It is not light or starry clear.
It is apparently impenetrable disorder, for it is the meeting ground of forces.
I think it'd be good just to see how we interpret that, Joey.
Yeah, let's unpack that.
And this is what I was saying before.
(15:51):
I know.
We've used this example in a podcast last year, and also with the Matrix.
We can go back to the Matrix.
One of the powerful things about the Matrix is all the computer generated images.
So you believed it was real, what you were looking at, Right?
I believe that we have that equivalent capacity inside of us.
(16:17):
And I call it elmgi, not cgi Computer Generated Images.
And the ELM stands for emotional, Lower Mental, and Then generated images.
So the astral world is populated by emotional lower mental generated images.
(16:40):
That's not a judgment, that's just a fact that says what we see is what we projected on the walls.
And I think that if you even take a moment to contemplate that everyone can relate to some sense where they've noticed their emotions influence the way they see a person, a thing or an idea.
(17:00):
I mean we don't have to go very far.
We're approaching a election very soon in this country.
So we know how much an emotion can influence the way you look at a certain person, a certain party, a certain idea.
So that seems like a pretty easy thing to relate to.
Right.
You could say the astral plane is like living inside the movie that we have created ourselves collectively, but individually.
(17:29):
Yeah, it's.
And the thing is that it looks real.
The people locked in the Matrix believed it was real.
That's right.
You had to break free from the Matrix.
You had to unplug yourself.
Yeah.
(17:50):
And it's the unplugging of oneself that is the journey through the astral plane.
Yeah, that's the big, that's the big I guess hurdle or you know, it's the.
Because you wonder are you ever fully unplugged and is.
(18:13):
You know, let's get back to the idea of like a Buddha type consciousness realizing in that but then still coming back to help.
There is a point where you're unplugged.
That is the point of enlightenment.
That is the point where a Buddha realizes that his non attachment is totally self realized.
And it isn't lower self realized.
(18:38):
What we are seeing and realizing is something generated often by our own fears and inadequacies and therefore they become magnified.
Yeah, it's like we're.
It's like we're learning.
You're almost like surrounded by.
Imagine like you're in like a bubble of kind of like a slime, you know, and it reacts to how you react.
(19:02):
So if you panic you're in a sink and if you hold still, you'll hold still.
So it's really.
We're learning self control.
You know, it's a.
Basically it's a feedback mechanism.
But we don't understand it.
Right.
We believe it to be true rather than it's a feedback, hey, this is what you're currently putting out.
This is what it's looks like.
But we don't have the objective perspective to say, oh, this is me looking at how I'm currently trapped.
(19:26):
When you're trapped, it's very Difficult to understand.
You're trapped.
Yeah.
It's also akin to, in terms of anger management and these kinds of things.
Once you go down this path of saying, okay, so anger is not an option.
I'm going to learn how a new skill set, a new set of tools so that I can deal with situations.
And then when you take that off the table, it's like this whole new spectrum of color opens up.
(19:50):
Oh, there's all these different options that I could take that before were walled off to me because I was stuck in anger or stuck in fear.
Anger is like a hammer and everything you meet is a nail.
Exactly.
And then you have to whack it.
Yeah, yeah.
So in that sense it's just like if you're trying to understand the.
So what does the astral plane mean for me?
Like what is that?
(20:10):
You know, you start to realize, oh, I'm limiting myself.
It's a limiting belief.
So let's continue with some of the text.
The astral plane is the plane of illusion, of glamour and of a distorted presentation of reality.
The reason for this is that every individual in the world is busy working in astral matter.
(20:35):
And the potency of human desire and of world desire produces that constant out picturing and form building which leads to the most concrete effects of astral matter.
That's what we've just been talking about.
I mean that's.
Yeah, we are creating this as we speak, as we think.
(21:00):
And that's why there's times when you go silent and you attach yourself and you allow the inner light to break through the clouds.
And that is the time of enlightenment.
But at the moment we're learning the lessons of what it means to be an aspect of the one life by being a resident of this realm.
(21:27):
So we talked about the computer generated images and the emotional and lower mental generated images.
If you think about the state of the world when you look at the environment, why is it polluted?
(21:48):
Why don't we get that our task is to keep a clean house?
Individually, nationally, globally.
What is it that we haven't learnt about life that doesn't allow us to keep a clean house?
Well, we've mentioned before that every time you and I put out a thought that is negative, it may be one of hatred or irritation or anger.
(22:20):
It actually not only does it have a thought form and it has an energy, but it has a chemical attached to it.
Therefore the negative thoughts that we have built and are building our astral world with are toxic.
(22:40):
And when we spew out hatred into the world, we're creating an acid rain cloud of the human psyche.
It's very corrosive.
It eats away at the social fabric.
So when we talk about cleaning up pollution, the first place we have to start is the first place of emission, which is the mind.
(23:11):
What are we putting out?
Now you look at some of these industrial cities and you see chimneys with stuff pouring out of them, polluting the atmosphere.
Yeah, but we need it because this is how we get the jobs, this is how we have employment.
It's some sort of Faustian bargain with life somehow.
But when you really look at where you have to start the cleanup, it is, as you say, anger is not an option.
(23:40):
And then you take away that source of pollution and toxicity.
Not only does it pollute and poison the atmosphere for others, it poisons yourself.
And therefore we have on the outside a precipitation of what is built up on the inside.
(24:04):
The same with the extreme weather we're seeing now.
We can say it's a result of global warming, of the climate change.
It's also a result of the extreme points of view that we hold.
The extreme thinking, the extreme emotion, the extreme everything that.
Because energy follows thought, when we as humans put out into the ethers these extreme positions, they have to show up in a dense form.
(24:40):
And we're always talking about, well, somebody's controlling the weather, it's us, somebody's controlling us.
And I'm saying, yeah, absolutely, we control the weather, for God's sake, don't you understand?
Understand?
You're always blaming.
Why, it's the government, it's got these.
Controlling the weather.
No, we make the weather different from it normally would be if it was naturally circulating.
(25:06):
Because with a self organizing system like a planet, you have the circulation of the Gulf Stream and the other currents, ocean currents, you have the circulation of winds, you have the monsoons, you have the natural rhythm of the elements.
But when we come into the picture and start polluting the atmosphere with our thoughts and with our feelings, it reaches a point where we break the ability of the weather to maintain its natural rhythm.
(25:45):
And so we've got a rise in ocean temperature and 1 degree rise in ocean temperature is a 7% increase in the capacity of a cloud to hold water.
We've had incredible flooding through these two hurricanes that have really recently hit the south and then up into the Carolinas, et cetera.
(26:11):
Are we going to blame it purely on global warming?
Just on natural cycles?
I believe we have to add this other factor in.
We are a contributing factor to the weather by how we behave.
Not everyone may agree with this, but that's my sense.
(26:34):
Well, we're all in.
If nothing else, we're all contained within a system on this planet Earth.
So we're all in the same aquarium.
So.
Yeah.
You know, so even if you, even if you don't want to take a strong position on any of those things, you can say that, you know, like when you throw a pebble into a pond, it makes ripples, you know, and we've, we've seen the power.
(26:55):
You can actually document the power of thought.
You know, it's all like, it's all waves.
So there is an interaction between thought and action.
And, you know, some people are more powerful than others.
Some people are more psychically powerful than others.
You know that some people put out a lot of microwaves, you know.
Well, that's a really good point because a lot of people are weak willed, which means that when they put out thoughts, they're like soap bubbles, they'll burst.
(27:26):
Yeah.
Other people, they're fully charged and it's going to reach where it was sent and it's going to explode.
Yeah.
And that's it.
So we have psychic warfare, we have psychic bombs, we have psychic missiles, and then we have the physical missiles that we still keep sending to each other.
(27:55):
Yeah.
So something hasn't dawned on us yet about the interdependency of life and the responsibility that comes with power, because we haven't understood the power of thought.
Right.
If you really understood the power of thought, you'd understand that.
(28:15):
Yeah.
Don't play with fire.
We work with fire.
We don't play with fire.
Yeah.
And in some sense, it seems like that's the whole point of the exercise, is to learn, is to go through these things and learn them and see them and experience them and realize that that is how that is transcending.
Yeah.
And in the paragraph we just read, it talks about the astral plane is where illusion and glamour reign.
(28:43):
And DK also says that glamour is a distortion of the emotions.
Illusion is a distortion of the lower mental of the mind.
That's a distinct difference, I think.
So you're in glamour, where there is a distortion, either a magnific or a reduction of the reality around your emotions, and illusion is a distortion of what you hold to be true inside your mind.
(29:17):
I mean, I almost feel like you can relate that directly to Instagram because there's kind of a mental health push now to remind people that Instagram is not real life.
But at the same time, there is this weird cycle that happens between the, the Logical mind and the emotional mind.
And that when something appears on Instagram, you know, it's not real life, but then it influences real life, and real life changes to look more like that.
(29:40):
And then it's a cycle that goes around and around.
Well, guess what?
It characterizes the astral plane.
Yeah, exactly.
That.
That's why I was thinking that.
I mean, it's like it's such a.
It becomes what you put out, you know, and then what you put out influences what you are.
Well, I just go back to when I was a child.
I think I was about 9 or 10.
(30:01):
And my bedroom was.
There was a tree outside my bedroom window.
And then when the light was shining through the tree on my bedroom window with the curtains drawn and there was a wind blowing and the tree and the leaves were dancing, I'd have all these moving shadows, and suddenly I'd see all these ghosts, all these phantasms or all these.
(30:26):
These monsters, and I'd be terrified.
What was it that was triggered by these moving patterns?
It wasn't Joy.
And.
Oh, yes, it reminds me.
It was all the unresolved aspects.
It may be the things I brought in, into this incarnation with me, some unresolved fears and things I had to.
(30:51):
They were triggered.
And so what happens in the emotional plane?
Things are triggered and projected, and then it's this reinforcing loop.
So how do you break the loop?
Groundhog Day.
Right?
I mean, talk about astral plane and Groundhog Day.
(31:12):
We could do a whole episode on that.
Yeah.
That is.
I mean, you.
I mean, the Groundhog Day is kind of an encapsulation of this eternal reincarnation until you've learned the lesson you're supposed to learn.
You know, it's a pretty interesting and modern take on some kind of older concepts.
(31:37):
I mean, I love it.
It's a great Bob Dylan.
Is there no way out of here?
Yeah.
Well, yes, there is.
Yeah.
Through.
The only way out is through.
Through.
And this is where.
What burns the fog?
What lifts the mists?
It's heat.
(31:58):
And the heat is not generated by the lower fires.
It's the heat and light of the soul.
It's when the sun breaks through and dispels the mists here at Meditation Mount, we're at 1400ft at the east end of the Ojai Valley.
And many mornings when I look out across the valley, there is a marine layer.
(32:24):
The clouds have rolled in from the coast, which is about half an hour's drive away.
And sometimes it just stays at the bottom of the valley.
Other Times it comes right up and touches the foot of meditation mount.
So we're like on an island.
And then the sun comes up, gets stronger and the mists disperse.
(32:47):
And that for me is always a gentle reminder of.
That's the work.
Yeah.
To dispel the fog, to dispel the clouds by allowing the warmth and light of the soul.
And it isn't as though we have to sort of invoke it and do these sort of magic rituals.
(33:11):
One way to invoke the light and warmth of the soul is to be grateful, to be joyful.
There are certain behaviors that actually create light.
Yeah, I'm always a fan of gratitude.
Yeah, I mean I think that's one of, I mean we're, we're learning that through various means.
(33:35):
It pops up on your social media feed.
But it is the most powerful tool that I have in my toolbox to change almost immediately my chemical state, my emotional state, my psychological state is to drop into gratitude.
And it's just so powerful.
(33:56):
Well, it's a relief as well.
The weight drops.
I mean it can get really heavy.
It does get really heavy.
It does.
And if you are a person who is on a spiritual path and you think that you're going to be lightening your load, that's not actually the case.
(34:18):
You tend to, as you move further and further into this path, you realize, oh, you actually take on a bunch of weight and you have to learn to process that and to carry that and to, and to elevate through that.
And yeah.
One of the most powerful tools I have in my toolbox is for me, it's the root of everything.
(34:38):
It gives me my space for mindfulness.
It gives me my capacity for service.
Gratitude is the foundational tool in my life.
I agree.
It's the same for me.
Gratitude reconnects me and it creates what I call a space for grace, for something new to enter.
(35:07):
If we take the last sentence that we quoted.
The potency of human desire and of world desire produces that constant out picturing and form building which leads to the most concrete effects of astral matter.
And that was where we said, yeah, we've created our own reality here.
Then it carries on.
(35:27):
Add to these forms that persistent and steadily growing scenario we call the Akashic Records, which concern the emotional history of the past.
Add the activities of the discarnate lives which are passing through the astral plane, either out of it or towards it as they incarnate.
(35:50):
Add the potent desire purified and intelligence of all superhuman lives, including the occult planetary hierarchy.
The Masters.
And the sum total of forces present is stupendous.
He's basically saying that there are so many things pouring in.
(36:13):
It's like the biggest live action role playing video game.
It's the big show.
It's the cosmic giant show.
But it's where liberation is gained.
Yeah, this is it.
This is the.
I know Alan Watso is always Tony.
This is the big show.
This is where you hone yourself, where metal sharpens metal.
(36:36):
This is where you learn.
This is the big university, you know.
This is Carnegie Hall.
And how'd you get to Carnegie hall, you fracky.
Practice, practice, practice, practice.
It's so easy to repeat oneself.
(36:57):
Like energy follows thought.
We've created this.
How do we get out of it?
Well, we think differently, we behave differently, et cetera.
But then we have to realize that what we are part of is the evolution of life itself.
So it isn't just Michael's trapped and Michael has to liberate himself.
(37:20):
We are part of the evolution of consciousness.
And it's passing through a particular landscape which is mis.
Shrouded, which is foggy.
And it said that other realms of nature don't have the same problem.
The lower realms don't have a consciousness that knows that it knows.
(37:46):
Therefore they don't have a mind or a mental faculty that creates anything external or creates another reality.
Almost like they don't create to that point.
They don't actually create an internal vision of the world.
Therefore, they participate in what is right now on the other end of the spectrum.
(38:08):
Those realms that have made it through are no longer attached, they're enlightened.
And therefore this world doesn't exist anymore.
The illusory world, the astral plane, exists as a frequency band, but they don't live there anymore.
Right.
Yeah.
That's a fantastic way of thinking about it.
(38:29):
And that just like lit my brain up.
Yeah.
Cause that was.
That's exactly.
I was just thinking when you were talking about it.
I was just thinking about our dog Sunny.
When she sees herself in the mirror, she's so.
She's so surprised that she looks like that one because she doesn't like dogs, you know, And I think so.
She's always shocked to see a dog in the mirror because she doesn't like them.
(38:50):
And you see this?
Her head turns and she has to remember, okay, wait, that's me.
But I don't like those things that look like that.
And then it's just interesting to see.
And then you relate to this consciousness that is no longer needed, that doesn't even need this form anymore.
It's evolved, and then it must look at us just like.
(39:11):
They must just look at us like, oh, one day they'll get it, maybe.
Well, because we're lost in the fog.
Yeah.
I go back to those days when Meditation Mountains is in early morning sunlight, and my friends living down in the valley, they're under several feet of cloud.
(39:33):
Yeah, it's quite beautiful, actually.
For anyone who can make it out here when it's foggy, it does feel like you're on an island in the sky, kind of, you know.
So this whole thing of this is where we currently live.
We've talked about if the astral plane is a wave band, a frequency inside this great spectrum.
(40:02):
And because our consciousness is at such a frequency that this is where we found ourselves, this is where we are, it becomes our home.
We take up residence in its original state.
This part of the frequency band is pure.
It hasn't been contaminated.
(40:23):
What we've done, I believe, and this is my projection, we've occupied the house of humanity that's built on the astral plane, and we have trashed it, we have polluted it, and the garden outside, we have polluted.
(40:43):
And it's as though we don't understand that we are responsible for keeping the house clean, because the house we live in is really a temple.
We've done a couple of podcasts on the temple builders.
The idea is that our incarnated personality, once it's refined, is the temple that can house the sacred spirit of who we are.
(41:15):
So we look upon it as some sort of squat, some sort of.
We've occupied it, but it's not our temple where we reside.
We not only take care of it and ourselves, but we realize that we have to keep refining the matter out of which our temple is built, because we, in our essential nature, are highly refined.
(41:45):
But what we are currently living in is a very crude representation of that refined reality.
Hmm.
Right.
It makes me think of the Platonic ideal, and we're just.
We're trying to rebuild that.
(42:06):
Like, we.
It's like we, you know, they tell you to write what you know.
We tend to build what we know deep in our.
Like, even if we don't know it consciously.
These things come through us.
And so, you know, we.
If you've known and touched these different planes, you see the beauty in them.
But if you haven't, then maybe you don't see the beauty that's right in front of you.
(42:31):
Well, thank you for naming Plato.
Okay, Plato's Cave.
What do you Think the shadows dancing on the wall are.
Yeah, I also think I think about Plato's Cave a lot.
There's a meme that goes around on social media that how many times a day do you think about the Roman Empire?
(42:51):
And so it's always fascinating because women are in general completely baffled by the fact that men think about the Roman Empire almost daily in some states.
Like, you ask a random guy, do you think about the Roman Empire a lot?
And they'll be like, yeah, every day.
Which I was guilty of.
I didn't realize it, but I do think about the Roman Empire almost every day, if not multiple times a day.
(43:14):
But in that sense.
So I always think about Plato's Cave and, like, how it is when you.
When you learn something new.
Right.
And you're excited to learn about it and you try to tell someone else about it, and you, you think it's something agnostic, it doesn't matter what it is.
And you bump up against someone's.
(43:34):
Like, they're so ensconced in this belief or this thought pattern about this thing that they can't.
Like, they almost have a emotional, almost defensive reaction to it.
You're like, wow, that is Plato's Cave being played out all day every day, you know?
And you end up shadow boxing.
(43:54):
Exactly.
It's so true.
And you realize, oh, you realize, wow, how much frustrating it must be to have been the Buddha, you know, to reach a stage of enlightenment or anyone that reaches a.
A certain plane of understanding.
And for me, it's really inspiring when you, when you.
(44:18):
Because I know there are those people that are alive and walking on the planet today, and the ones who, instead of, like, preaching down from a place of expertise, they're trying to teach and enlighten and to put the hand up instead of pushing you down.
Well, you name the Buddha.
The Buddha is an embodiment of compassion.
(44:39):
Compassion is love, caring, patience, all rolling to one because he knows the tough journey.
Yeah.
There is absolute empathy, compassion.
But I want to go back to Plato's case.
So how do you dispel the shadows on the wall in Plato's Cave?
(45:07):
Well, I mean, you turn the fire up.
You turn the fire up, but you also create a hole in the roof of the cave.
Yeah.
To let the light in.
That's what we're doing.
Dispel the darkness and the confusion.
(45:30):
And the myths.
The myths, the myth of life, which is the mist.
It's by allowing the light, the greater light, to come in.
And suddenly night is turned to day.
How many times have you woken up from a nightmare, absolutely seized by, oh, my God, it's horrendous.
(45:55):
It's like you've gone to hell and back again.
And then after a minute, you go, oh.
And you look outside, the sun shining and the birds are singing.
You go, oh, man, that felt so real.
At the moment, we don't have that ability to say, wow, finally out of that.
(46:21):
That felt so real.
Yeah.
This whole life.
This whole life feels so real.
So back to the Gayatri.
Lead us from lightness, from darkness to light, from the unreal to the real.
And the real is that which issues force from the Creator undistorted.
It's not a form, because otherwise you get into, well, no, this form is more truthful than the other.
(46:46):
This belief is more right than the other.
And then we get into comparison of forms as a way of establishing what is true.
What is true is an alignment to a frequency, a higher note.
And being true, as we know, means to be just.
Justice comes from following the law.
(47:10):
The law means to be in alignment with truth.
Truth is a deep reality.
And when we are living far from the truth of who we are, I am living in distortion.
And that, at the moment is I'm living out my fantasies inside this house that is built on the sands of the emotional plane.
(47:37):
Don't build your house on shifting sands.
Another biblical reference that comes to mind now, Joey, is there shall be no more seas, which means at some point the waters of the emotional plane will dry up and you won't have to drown.
You won't be in that aquarium.
(47:57):
Yeah, the age of Pisces is over, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
No more fishes.
That has a different.
I mean, the concept of there's no more seas.
I mean, you have to put yourself in the position of someone who was on this planet during the.
(48:19):
Either the writing or the recording of that notion.
The sea was terrifying.
It was the giver and taker of life.
That's kind of a very powerful idea to think about that, especially going back to what you were saying earlier about once you have transcended this spiritual, that this emotional and physical plane, I mean, you.
(48:44):
You wouldn't have those Cs anymore.
You wouldn't have those turbulent emotions.
It's like there's a difference between emotions and feelings.
When I have emotions, it usually means I get waterlogged by some feelings.
Yeah.
When I am no longer emotionally compromised.
(49:05):
Yeah.
When I still have feelings, that means I'm still sensitive to life.
And that's one of the things in the Agni Yoga Teachings.
It says the masters, the beings who have transcended the human realm still have feelings.
It's what gives color and richness to all their relationships throughout time.
(49:29):
But they don't have emotional hangups.
Right.
We're talking about the difference between emotional hangups and sensitivity and feeling.
Well, I think that actually lands back into my idea of trying to make this relatable to this time and day because there is so much around, and rightly so.
(49:49):
This evolution of consciousness, this evolution of emotional language, even the concept of emotional intelligence is a fairly new concept.
And it's important for us to understand that is another step up.
But you don't stop.
(50:09):
So it's like the idea of, okay, so you get this diagnosis, maybe you find out that you are on the autism spectrum.
That's not the end of the road.
Now this is just your.
It's now your chance to navigate the world with this and learn how to understand it, learn how to transcend it.
You know, the idea of not being your diagnosis, you know, so I just think of it as like, you know, like if you're, you know, I'm just thinking of Kelly.
(50:40):
She's laughing at me because I'm going to make a car reference, but the car that you're driving is going to handle a curve differently.
So the curve's not different, it's the car that you're driving is different.
So if you were driving a different vehicle.
If I was driving Michael, Michael's driving me, he's going to handle this bump in the road differently.
Yeah.
And once you realize that, that is more the issue.
(51:02):
That is what you're experiencing more than the bump.
It's your reaction to it.
You're in learning that self control, learning that mindfulness.
Why it goes back to the classic statement, life is not about what happens to you, but how you respond to what happens to you.
Right.
Which comes back to.
Brings it all back to the idea of the astral plane is moving with you and against you, or depending on the energy that you put or observe, put out or absorb.
(51:27):
You know, so there's much more written by DK on the astral plane, but let's just finish with one paragraph and then we can add some things to this.
It says, no glamour, no illusion can long hold the man who has set himself the task of treading the razor edge path which leads through the wilderness, through the thick set forest, through the deep waters of sorrow and distress, through the valley of sacrifice and over the mountains of vision to the gates of deliverance.
(52:03):
He may travel Sometimes in the dark and in parenthesis.
And the illusion of darkness is very real.
He may travel sometimes in a light so dazzling and bewildering.
He can scarcely see the way ahead.
He may know what it is to falter on the path.
And to drop under the fatigue of service and of strife.
(52:26):
He may be temporarily sidetracked.
And wander down the bypass of ambition, of self interest and of material enchantment.
But the lapse will be brief.
So once we say, I'm going for it.
(52:49):
No, anger is not an option.
What it is, we just say, hey, I'm gonna turn the light on in my life.
Yeah, it doesn't happen overnight.
You still gotta.
Now you have a light by which to navigate.
It doesn't magically transport you from where you are in the landscape to somewhere else.
Right.
It just gives you a light to light your way.
(53:10):
It's like, now you've got that North Star.
Sometimes you're not gonna be able.
Sometimes you're not gonna be able to see it.
Cause it's gonna be cloudy, but you still keep moving in that general direction.
Well, yeah, I mean, I've used this example before of.
There was a time in my life where I had ups and downs.
And I said to myself, well, how do we navigate this?
This is back in the early 70s.
(53:31):
And one time I was feeling really good.
And, oh, this is a great time to write a note to self.
So I wrote a note to self.
Dear Michael, this note is for those times when you are feeling disheartened.
This is just to let you know that all is fine.
You know, there is light at the end of the tunnel, et cetera, et cetera.
And I sort of carried this note with me.
(53:52):
I was in a funk about two years later.
And I thought, all right, didn't I write a letter or something?
Okay.
I read the letter and I went, what a load of beer.
And I ripped it up.
I've done this.
I've done that same thing, the same thing so many times.
It's like.
(54:12):
So when you're in the funk, it's a Grand Funk.
Yeah, it's a Grand Funk.
Grand Funk Railroad.
Yeah.
But, yeah, if you're on the tracks, you just keep going.
And you come out to the side of the fog or other side of the tunnel.
So I guess what we're saying is that we're not being punished by being in the astral.
(54:33):
We are where we are because this is the level of our consciousness.
We are part of the evolution of consciousness on a cosmic level.
And our task Is to navigate to the next level of consciousness.
To make our way through to the next band frequency band.
And we've been given this task of navigating through the astral plane through the emotional layers and the layers of the lower mental.
(55:06):
And when we've done that, our head pops out into the clear light of day.
And then when the sun shines and when our head is above the clouds and above the water, not only do we see the beauty of life, we see the goodness in each other and we see the joy that is the one life.
(55:28):
But up until then, we're caught in the polarities.
We're caught into the projections.
We become the projector, the projectionist of our own movie.
And we project it on the screen of the collective psyche.
And when everybody is projecting their own movies, their own home movies on this giant collective screen, my God, what a mess we have.
(55:55):
In order to sort that out, we have to go back to our own source of projection and start to create the movie inside of us that is more light filled, that is not distorted, that is as clear as possible.
And that's the task each of us has.
(56:17):
Nobody else can do it for us.
And then together, we have to create out of our power of thinking and out of our heart.
We have to create images of a world that is better at the moment.
The emotional and lower mental provide us with images of what is still unredeemed.
(56:40):
And some of the dystopian fears that we have.
And here at meditation mount with creative meditation.
Our work is to create the memes of the future based on the light of the soul.
So that these contain the promise of the future.
And the promise of the future as a seed can only be planted in the soil that is free from illusion, free from the darkness.
(57:09):
Not the darkness that is the embrace of the mother of the world, but the darkness of ignorance.
And so the dispelling of the mists of the ashen plane is a prerequisite for sowing the seeds of the future and bringing about a new reality.
(57:33):
Lead us from the unreal to the real.
That's the journey.
So, Joey, I wonder what closing thoughts do you have?
Because there's been a lot of rambling.
And that's what you do.
You ramble inside the astral plane.
We don't have.
Didn't have a list of.
Well, we're going to talk about this, this and this.
We sort of meandered through the.
And I often think that when I meander, I become Michael the meanderthal.
(58:00):
I enjoy the wandering.
So.
And that was a beautiful encapsulation.
And for me, I just.
I think this is a great way to wrap up this episode.
But I think that meandering nature is also the beauty of.
Ponder on this.
I think you would not read it from front to back.
(58:20):
It would not make any sense.
It is not written that way.
You meander through it much as you do the exploration of the spiritual journey, because it is good to see that sometimes you need to get lost before you can be found.
It is a little cliche, but you find new ideas, new perspectives.
(58:42):
And I think that's one of the beautiful things about writing a song or painting a picture or doing a podcast is what we're trying to do is get you said, we're not trying to preach a gospel, but we're trying to hopefully give a little spark.
And hopefully it brings something to you and you can relate to it.
And whether or not you agree with it or not, or maybe it sparks you to write a book or to be nice to someone in your family that has been annoying you or just.
(59:10):
It doesn't matter.
Just.
Just.
It brings a sense of mindfulness, that maybe this isn't what you think it is.
Well, it's like the Matrix.
You needed to have some people who already were liberated to sort of knock on the door of other people and say, do you realize that you are locked inside this world?
(59:32):
Yeah.
And that's what we do for each other.
We open the doors, we.
We shed some light.
But what.
We do it as a gift.
Yeah.
That's the important part.
It's a gift.
And you're not a gatekeeper.
That's the big.
(59:53):
That's the big thing.
If you're, you know, given to whole predatory religion and all that sort of thing.
Just if you are coming up against gatekeepers instead of someone that is offering you a gift, you know, then it should be an indication that, well, it's.
The gift of life and we are agents of life, and therefore we pass on.
(01:00:17):
It's not like being a religious sect and you go knock on doors because you've been given that mission.
Right.
As we said before, we do have a mission here at Meditation Mount, but we are not missionaries.
Absolutely.
The pilgrims on the path.
That's right.
And we're happy to have you along with us.
(01:00:39):
Yes.
All right.
Thank you, Joe.
I appreciate that.
I really appreciate it.
This is a great episode.
I loved it.
And I'll see you next time.
Okay.
What if reality as we know it is more like a shared dream shaped by our collective thoughts and emotions?
Today, we're plunging into the concept of the astral plane, that mysterious realm where thought becomes form and emotions create our reality.
Welcome, friends, to the Musings from the Mount podcast.
I'm your host, Joseph Carenza.
(00:22):
Using Alice Bailey's Ponder on this as our guide, we'll discover how ancient wisdom can help us navigate our increasingly digital world.
And we'll explore this fascinating dimension through the lens of modern life, from social media to virtual reality.
So get ready to question everything you think you know about reality, consciousness, and the power of thought.
(00:43):
And if you enjoy this podcast, please consider going to meditationmount.org and donating.
Your donation helps us to bring you this podcast as well as all the other programs the Mount produces, both today and in the future.
We are incredibly grateful and honored by your support.
All right, back to the podcast and get ready to question everything.
(01:11):
In preparation for this episode, we were looking for a way to an in, if you will, into the Alice Bailey text.
And they can be very dense.
Then sometimes the language can be very arcane.
It can be highly technical at times, almost mathematically and touching on.
(01:36):
I mean, sometimes you could go through a paragraph, and if you haven't spent upwards of 10, 15 years studying esoteric traditions, you would spend the rest of the week going to the library looking for rep.
Like, what does this phrase even mean?
So I was thinking of a way of like.
(01:57):
And this was a way in for me as well, was the book Ponder on this.
And so you literally, I mean, the title's Genius Ponder on this.
I would just, you open up to any page, randomly pick a section, and it has texts that come from the very.
It's like a compilation, and it's organized around ideas.
(02:17):
And we thought, well, you know, what if we started a little series and, you know, every couple weeks or so, we'll come back to it and we'll pick a different subject or two, and we'll kind of talk about it and help bridge the gap between what this esoteric tradition is, how that manifests in today.
You know, something important for me is that we look at it through the lens of 2024.
(02:40):
That's where we're at right now.
That's where we're recording.
How does that land for people now?
But it's also important, I think, for us to, you know, share this wonderful gift.
You know, this tradition is this beautiful gift of knowledge and not just data.
But the more you read Alice Bailey and who is transmitting the messages from DK is.
(03:04):
It's a.
It's a way of thinking.
It's a way of looking at the world.
It's a way of being that I think is highly important and highly relevant today.
You know, so.
And that being said, all that preamble, we're going to start at the beginning and with the letter A.
We're not going to go letter section by section, but we just happen to be starting on A in the astral plane.
(03:29):
Yeah.
And of course, you know, that's.
That's my favorite to talk about because it brings up, obviously, the Matrix.
It brings up anyone that's ever played a video game, anyone that's ever used a computer knows that there is this space that's created that is virtual, but yet we interact with it as if it's real.
(03:49):
It engages us on levels that feel real.
Anyone that has their phone and is looking at social media, it's only a matter of.
I mean, seconds before you're immersed.
You know, you.
The outside world just takes.
Just becomes like, so what is real?
And what does it mean to transcend to a higher state of consciousness, to transcend this world of illusion?
(04:13):
So we're gonna get.
We're gonna jump right into it.
Yeah.
And just to let people know, we don't set ourselves up as experts on this.
We are seekers, we are ponderers.
And I just like to say a couple of words about why we are focusing on this particular stream of teaching.
It's a wisdom teaching, because the Alice Bailey books published by the Lucis Trust, transmitted by the Master dk, are part of our lineage and our founder here at Meditation Mount in Ojai.
(04:50):
Florence Garrigue was a good friend of Alice Bailey, worked with her over the years.
So there was that connection.
And the other connection is Roberto Assagioli, the spiritual teacher and founder of Psychosynthesis.
(05:10):
He was a student of the Master dk, and he's referred to in Discipleship in a New Age by Alice Bailey.
The letters to him are quoted there.
So it's part of our lineage.
But we're not talking about this as the Bible.
And we have to convert people to this.
What we're doing is because it resonates in my heart.
(05:33):
I've been studying these books and working with these books since, well, 1969, and still unraveling, unpacking, unfolding all the stuff that's in there.
And it's as though it's a time capture and it releases new wisdom as I grow into a new awareness.
(05:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, you and I talked about this.
We go back and read one of the books that we may have read a year ago, and we go, I didn't see that.
Yeah, I don't remember that paragraph.
That's exactly like with Ponder on this in particular.
I put a little pencil mark next to any section I read and like.
And then I'll go back and read it like, wow, I feel like I'm reading this for the first time again.
(06:20):
Or I feel like I'm.
This takes on a completely different meaning because it does change the way you view the world, and then it generates a new perspective.
And the idea with the teachings is so that we have an understanding of the big picture, an understanding of where we fit in, and we have to apply the wisdom.
(06:43):
So it's applied wisdom.
That's what.
Following a path of discipleship, following a path of services.
It's applied wisdom.
So, as you quite rightly said, what does it mean in 2024?
So let's take a deep breath and begin pondering together, Joey.
(07:04):
Yes, let's do that very thing.
When I think of the manifested worlds now, I'm going big picture, just for a moment.
When I think of manifestation.
Manifestation exists on a continuum from the very dense to the very refined.
It's like a spectrum of colors.
Infrared, ultraviolet, and they vibrate at different frequencies.
(07:33):
And we find ourselves living in that part of the spectrum that corresponds to the frequency of our consciousness.
Like attracts like.
Right?
Yeah.
That's how you create resonance and consonants.
You sound a note and you attract whatever that note calls to you or a note calls something inside of you to it.
(08:01):
So it said that the human species, in its evolution of consciousness, for the most part, resides.
And by resides, I mean not just physically lives, but in its consciousness resides in that part of the spectrum which is way down in the denser area that is called the physical.
(08:29):
Etheric, physical, astral and lower mental.
These are not bad things.
It just means it's dense there.
The light hasn't penetrated and the light hasn't been released from it, so it's harder to see.
So just to say that this is where we find ourselves, and we've talked before about part of the destiny of the Earth is to liberate the light inside the darkness, to liberate the light that's imprisoned inside of our dense incarnated vehicle.
(09:04):
And so we are actors.
You name the Matrix and you name video games, and those of us who have seen the Matrix understand that people live inside that world and believe it to Be true.
We live inside a particular world that has been generated by us as well as by the Creator, and we believe it to be true.
(09:31):
And what we have to do is to liberate ourselves from the illusion and see clearly.
If you go back to the.
One of the most ancient prayers on the planet, the Gayatri, lead us from darkness into light, from the unreal to the real, from death to immortality.
(09:58):
I mean, that's the journey, Joey.
That's the journey.
So let's say that we live in this particular frequency band that has a certain level of substance or density to it.
And we know, as we've mentioned so many times on these podcasts, energy follows thought.
(10:21):
Now, because we as human beings have the power of thinking, we don't always realize the effect of thinking.
So every think, everything we think, creates something in the ethers.
And then when it's magnetized and comes to a point of precipitation, it becomes either a belief, it becomes something in our emotional field.
(10:52):
It can even show up in our life as something we've called forth through the power of thought.
The problem is that the astral plane, its substance, its plasma, conforms in, responds to all our thoughts.
And therefore it's like this shifting kaleidoscope of images that we live inside, which is not the real world.
(11:19):
It's the world that we have created, and yet it feels real because it resembles our own inner feelings.
And I'd like to get into this in more depth, but as you suggested, let's start off by using the words that Alice Bailey wrote down, because she was given this text by the Master dk, and I think it's good to say that she didn't channel it.
(11:46):
She wasn't some sort of channel that was taken over by a being.
At the time of the writing, the Master TK was living in Tibet, and he had the power to transmit through telepathic radiation, thoughts.
Alice Bailey had the power and the capacity to receive.
(12:07):
She was taking dictation over distance.
I think I want to make that clear because some people say, oh, channeled writings.
How can you trust those?
Well, this is like some sort of facts exchange between two beings, both of them incarnate.
So let's read a paragraph and then sort of go into it more.
(12:32):
So this is how it starts.
One of the most vital things every aspirant has to do is to learn to understand the astral plane, to comprehend its nature, and to learn both to stand free from it and then to work on it.
(12:53):
Now, this is key, to stand free from it, and then to work on it.
So we have to see what it is, see it for what it is, and then say, okay, how do I then bring the light of truth, the light of my soul, into this part of the.
(13:14):
Of my inner world that is still in the darkness?
And it is still constructed and created by the images generated by my feelings.
And most of those images are generated by feelings that have to do with some sense of incompletion or pain or suffering.
(13:39):
Not always, but for the most part, it's a dystopian view that we can live in, or we can live at the other end of the spectrum, where we live in sort of some fantasy world, some pie in the sky.
But the thing is, at some point, we have to enter into it and bring the light of day into it.
(14:01):
We have to dispel the fog.
So it says, the moment a man can see.
And here we go again.
This was written at a time when it was always the male pronoun, so we apologize for using it in 2024.
And yet, to be true to how it was written, we're going to use the original text just so that it doesn't break the flow.
(14:28):
The moment a man can see, quote unquote, on the astral plane and can achieve equilibrium and hold steady in the midst of its vibrating forces, that moment he is ready for initiation.
It simply means that we can't pass through the next door, the next threshold, until we have made our way through the twists and turns of the path that leads through the astral plane.
(15:02):
And then, just to complete this first sentence or first paragraph, the appearance of the astral plane, when first definitely seen by the opened eye of the aspirant, is one of dense fog, confusion, changing forms, interpenetrating and intermingling colors, and is of such a kaleidoscopic appearance that the hopelessness of the Enterprise seems overwhelming.
(15:29):
It is not light or starry clear.
It is apparently impenetrable disorder, for it is the meeting ground of forces.
I think it'd be good just to see how we interpret that, Joey.
Yeah, let's unpack that.
And this is what I was saying before.
(15:51):
I know.
We've used this example in a podcast last year, and also with the Matrix.
We can go back to the Matrix.
One of the powerful things about the Matrix is all the computer generated images.
So you believed it was real, what you were looking at, Right?
I believe that we have that equivalent capacity inside of us.
(16:17):
And I call it elmgi, not cgi Computer Generated Images.
And the ELM stands for emotional, Lower Mental, and Then generated images.
So the astral world is populated by emotional lower mental generated images.
(16:40):
That's not a judgment, that's just a fact that says what we see is what we projected on the walls.
And I think that if you even take a moment to contemplate that everyone can relate to some sense where they've noticed their emotions influence the way they see a person, a thing or an idea.
(17:00):
I mean we don't have to go very far.
We're approaching a election very soon in this country.
So we know how much an emotion can influence the way you look at a certain person, a certain party, a certain idea.
So that seems like a pretty easy thing to relate to.
Right.
You could say the astral plane is like living inside the movie that we have created ourselves collectively, but individually.
(17:29):
Yeah, it's.
And the thing is that it looks real.
The people locked in the Matrix believed it was real.
That's right.
You had to break free from the Matrix.
You had to unplug yourself.
Yeah.
(17:50):
And it's the unplugging of oneself that is the journey through the astral plane.
Yeah, that's the big, that's the big I guess hurdle or you know, it's the.
Because you wonder are you ever fully unplugged and is.
(18:13):
You know, let's get back to the idea of like a Buddha type consciousness realizing in that but then still coming back to help.
There is a point where you're unplugged.
That is the point of enlightenment.
That is the point where a Buddha realizes that his non attachment is totally self realized.
And it isn't lower self realized.
(18:38):
What we are seeing and realizing is something generated often by our own fears and inadequacies and therefore they become magnified.
Yeah, it's like we're.
It's like we're learning.
You're almost like surrounded by.
Imagine like you're in like a bubble of kind of like a slime, you know, and it reacts to how you react.
(19:02):
So if you panic you're in a sink and if you hold still, you'll hold still.
So it's really.
We're learning self control.
You know, it's a.
Basically it's a feedback mechanism.
But we don't understand it.
Right.
We believe it to be true rather than it's a feedback, hey, this is what you're currently putting out.
This is what it's looks like.
But we don't have the objective perspective to say, oh, this is me looking at how I'm currently trapped.
(19:26):
When you're trapped, it's very Difficult to understand.
You're trapped.
Yeah.
It's also akin to, in terms of anger management and these kinds of things.
Once you go down this path of saying, okay, so anger is not an option.
I'm going to learn how a new skill set, a new set of tools so that I can deal with situations.
And then when you take that off the table, it's like this whole new spectrum of color opens up.
(19:50):
Oh, there's all these different options that I could take that before were walled off to me because I was stuck in anger or stuck in fear.
Anger is like a hammer and everything you meet is a nail.
Exactly.
And then you have to whack it.
Yeah, yeah.
So in that sense it's just like if you're trying to understand the.
So what does the astral plane mean for me?
Like what is that?
(20:10):
You know, you start to realize, oh, I'm limiting myself.
It's a limiting belief.
So let's continue with some of the text.
The astral plane is the plane of illusion, of glamour and of a distorted presentation of reality.
The reason for this is that every individual in the world is busy working in astral matter.
(20:35):
And the potency of human desire and of world desire produces that constant out picturing and form building which leads to the most concrete effects of astral matter.
That's what we've just been talking about.
I mean that's.
Yeah, we are creating this as we speak, as we think.
(21:00):
And that's why there's times when you go silent and you attach yourself and you allow the inner light to break through the clouds.
And that is the time of enlightenment.
But at the moment we're learning the lessons of what it means to be an aspect of the one life by being a resident of this realm.
(21:27):
So we talked about the computer generated images and the emotional and lower mental generated images.
If you think about the state of the world when you look at the environment, why is it polluted?
(21:48):
Why don't we get that our task is to keep a clean house?
Individually, nationally, globally.
What is it that we haven't learnt about life that doesn't allow us to keep a clean house?
Well, we've mentioned before that every time you and I put out a thought that is negative, it may be one of hatred or irritation or anger.
(22:20):
It actually not only does it have a thought form and it has an energy, but it has a chemical attached to it.
Therefore the negative thoughts that we have built and are building our astral world with are toxic.
(22:40):
And when we spew out hatred into the world, we're creating an acid rain cloud of the human psyche.
It's very corrosive.
It eats away at the social fabric.
So when we talk about cleaning up pollution, the first place we have to start is the first place of emission, which is the mind.
(23:11):
What are we putting out?
Now you look at some of these industrial cities and you see chimneys with stuff pouring out of them, polluting the atmosphere.
Yeah, but we need it because this is how we get the jobs, this is how we have employment.
It's some sort of Faustian bargain with life somehow.
But when you really look at where you have to start the cleanup, it is, as you say, anger is not an option.
(23:40):
And then you take away that source of pollution and toxicity.
Not only does it pollute and poison the atmosphere for others, it poisons yourself.
And therefore we have on the outside a precipitation of what is built up on the inside.
(24:04):
The same with the extreme weather we're seeing now.
We can say it's a result of global warming, of the climate change.
It's also a result of the extreme points of view that we hold.
The extreme thinking, the extreme emotion, the extreme everything that.
Because energy follows thought, when we as humans put out into the ethers these extreme positions, they have to show up in a dense form.
(24:40):
And we're always talking about, well, somebody's controlling the weather, it's us, somebody's controlling us.
And I'm saying, yeah, absolutely, we control the weather, for God's sake, don't you understand?
Understand?
You're always blaming.
Why, it's the government, it's got these.
Controlling the weather.
No, we make the weather different from it normally would be if it was naturally circulating.
(25:06):
Because with a self organizing system like a planet, you have the circulation of the Gulf Stream and the other currents, ocean currents, you have the circulation of winds, you have the monsoons, you have the natural rhythm of the elements.
But when we come into the picture and start polluting the atmosphere with our thoughts and with our feelings, it reaches a point where we break the ability of the weather to maintain its natural rhythm.
(25:45):
And so we've got a rise in ocean temperature and 1 degree rise in ocean temperature is a 7% increase in the capacity of a cloud to hold water.
We've had incredible flooding through these two hurricanes that have really recently hit the south and then up into the Carolinas, et cetera.
(26:11):
Are we going to blame it purely on global warming?
Just on natural cycles?
I believe we have to add this other factor in.
We are a contributing factor to the weather by how we behave.
Not everyone may agree with this, but that's my sense.
(26:34):
Well, we're all in.
If nothing else, we're all contained within a system on this planet Earth.
So we're all in the same aquarium.
So.
Yeah.
You know, so even if you, even if you don't want to take a strong position on any of those things, you can say that, you know, like when you throw a pebble into a pond, it makes ripples, you know, and we've, we've seen the power.
(26:55):
You can actually document the power of thought.
You know, it's all like, it's all waves.
So there is an interaction between thought and action.
And, you know, some people are more powerful than others.
Some people are more psychically powerful than others.
You know that some people put out a lot of microwaves, you know.
Well, that's a really good point because a lot of people are weak willed, which means that when they put out thoughts, they're like soap bubbles, they'll burst.
(27:26):
Yeah.
Other people, they're fully charged and it's going to reach where it was sent and it's going to explode.
Yeah.
And that's it.
So we have psychic warfare, we have psychic bombs, we have psychic missiles, and then we have the physical missiles that we still keep sending to each other.
(27:55):
Yeah.
So something hasn't dawned on us yet about the interdependency of life and the responsibility that comes with power, because we haven't understood the power of thought.
Right.
If you really understood the power of thought, you'd understand that.
(28:15):
Yeah.
Don't play with fire.
We work with fire.
We don't play with fire.
Yeah.
And in some sense, it seems like that's the whole point of the exercise, is to learn, is to go through these things and learn them and see them and experience them and realize that that is how that is transcending.
Yeah.
And in the paragraph we just read, it talks about the astral plane is where illusion and glamour reign.
(28:43):
And DK also says that glamour is a distortion of the emotions.
Illusion is a distortion of the lower mental of the mind.
That's a distinct difference, I think.
So you're in glamour, where there is a distortion, either a magnific or a reduction of the reality around your emotions, and illusion is a distortion of what you hold to be true inside your mind.
(29:17):
I mean, I almost feel like you can relate that directly to Instagram because there's kind of a mental health push now to remind people that Instagram is not real life.
But at the same time, there is this weird cycle that happens between the, the Logical mind and the emotional mind.
And that when something appears on Instagram, you know, it's not real life, but then it influences real life, and real life changes to look more like that.
(29:40):
And then it's a cycle that goes around and around.
Well, guess what?
It characterizes the astral plane.
Yeah, exactly.
That.
That's why I was thinking that.
I mean, it's like it's such a.
It becomes what you put out, you know, and then what you put out influences what you are.
Well, I just go back to when I was a child.
I think I was about 9 or 10.
(30:01):
And my bedroom was.
There was a tree outside my bedroom window.
And then when the light was shining through the tree on my bedroom window with the curtains drawn and there was a wind blowing and the tree and the leaves were dancing, I'd have all these moving shadows, and suddenly I'd see all these ghosts, all these phantasms or all these.
(30:26):
These monsters, and I'd be terrified.
What was it that was triggered by these moving patterns?
It wasn't Joy.
And.
Oh, yes, it reminds me.
It was all the unresolved aspects.
It may be the things I brought in, into this incarnation with me, some unresolved fears and things I had to.
(30:51):
They were triggered.
And so what happens in the emotional plane?
Things are triggered and projected, and then it's this reinforcing loop.
So how do you break the loop?
Groundhog Day.
Right?
I mean, talk about astral plane and Groundhog Day.
(31:12):
We could do a whole episode on that.
Yeah.
That is.
I mean, you.
I mean, the Groundhog Day is kind of an encapsulation of this eternal reincarnation until you've learned the lesson you're supposed to learn.
You know, it's a pretty interesting and modern take on some kind of older concepts.
(31:37):
I mean, I love it.
It's a great Bob Dylan.
Is there no way out of here?
Yeah.
Well, yes, there is.
Yeah.
Through.
The only way out is through.
Through.
And this is where.
What burns the fog?
What lifts the mists?
It's heat.
(31:58):
And the heat is not generated by the lower fires.
It's the heat and light of the soul.
It's when the sun breaks through and dispels the mists here at Meditation Mount, we're at 1400ft at the east end of the Ojai Valley.
And many mornings when I look out across the valley, there is a marine layer.
(32:24):
The clouds have rolled in from the coast, which is about half an hour's drive away.
And sometimes it just stays at the bottom of the valley.
Other Times it comes right up and touches the foot of meditation mount.
So we're like on an island.
And then the sun comes up, gets stronger and the mists disperse.
(32:47):
And that for me is always a gentle reminder of.
That's the work.
Yeah.
To dispel the fog, to dispel the clouds by allowing the warmth and light of the soul.
And it isn't as though we have to sort of invoke it and do these sort of magic rituals.
(33:11):
One way to invoke the light and warmth of the soul is to be grateful, to be joyful.
There are certain behaviors that actually create light.
Yeah, I'm always a fan of gratitude.
Yeah, I mean I think that's one of, I mean we're, we're learning that through various means.
(33:35):
It pops up on your social media feed.
But it is the most powerful tool that I have in my toolbox to change almost immediately my chemical state, my emotional state, my psychological state is to drop into gratitude.
And it's just so powerful.
(33:56):
Well, it's a relief as well.
The weight drops.
I mean it can get really heavy.
It does get really heavy.
It does.
And if you are a person who is on a spiritual path and you think that you're going to be lightening your load, that's not actually the case.
(34:18):
You tend to, as you move further and further into this path, you realize, oh, you actually take on a bunch of weight and you have to learn to process that and to carry that and to, and to elevate through that.
And yeah.
One of the most powerful tools I have in my toolbox is for me, it's the root of everything.
(34:38):
It gives me my space for mindfulness.
It gives me my capacity for service.
Gratitude is the foundational tool in my life.
I agree.
It's the same for me.
Gratitude reconnects me and it creates what I call a space for grace, for something new to enter.
(35:07):
If we take the last sentence that we quoted.
The potency of human desire and of world desire produces that constant out picturing and form building which leads to the most concrete effects of astral matter.
And that was where we said, yeah, we've created our own reality here.
Then it carries on.
(35:27):
Add to these forms that persistent and steadily growing scenario we call the Akashic Records, which concern the emotional history of the past.
Add the activities of the discarnate lives which are passing through the astral plane, either out of it or towards it as they incarnate.
(35:50):
Add the potent desire purified and intelligence of all superhuman lives, including the occult planetary hierarchy.
The Masters.
And the sum total of forces present is stupendous.
He's basically saying that there are so many things pouring in.
(36:13):
It's like the biggest live action role playing video game.
It's the big show.
It's the cosmic giant show.
But it's where liberation is gained.
Yeah, this is it.
This is the.
I know Alan Watso is always Tony.
This is the big show.
This is where you hone yourself, where metal sharpens metal.
(36:36):
This is where you learn.
This is the big university, you know.
This is Carnegie Hall.
And how'd you get to Carnegie hall, you fracky.
Practice, practice, practice, practice.
It's so easy to repeat oneself.
(36:57):
Like energy follows thought.
We've created this.
How do we get out of it?
Well, we think differently, we behave differently, et cetera.
But then we have to realize that what we are part of is the evolution of life itself.
So it isn't just Michael's trapped and Michael has to liberate himself.
(37:20):
We are part of the evolution of consciousness.
And it's passing through a particular landscape which is mis.
Shrouded, which is foggy.
And it said that other realms of nature don't have the same problem.
The lower realms don't have a consciousness that knows that it knows.
(37:46):
Therefore they don't have a mind or a mental faculty that creates anything external or creates another reality.
Almost like they don't create to that point.
They don't actually create an internal vision of the world.
Therefore, they participate in what is right now on the other end of the spectrum.
(38:08):
Those realms that have made it through are no longer attached, they're enlightened.
And therefore this world doesn't exist anymore.
The illusory world, the astral plane, exists as a frequency band, but they don't live there anymore.
Right.
Yeah.
That's a fantastic way of thinking about it.
(38:29):
And that just like lit my brain up.
Yeah.
Cause that was.
That's exactly.
I was just thinking when you were talking about it.
I was just thinking about our dog Sunny.
When she sees herself in the mirror, she's so.
She's so surprised that she looks like that one because she doesn't like dogs, you know, And I think so.
She's always shocked to see a dog in the mirror because she doesn't like them.
(38:50):
And you see this?
Her head turns and she has to remember, okay, wait, that's me.
But I don't like those things that look like that.
And then it's just interesting to see.
And then you relate to this consciousness that is no longer needed, that doesn't even need this form anymore.
It's evolved, and then it must look at us just like.
(39:11):
They must just look at us like, oh, one day they'll get it, maybe.
Well, because we're lost in the fog.
Yeah.
I go back to those days when Meditation Mountains is in early morning sunlight, and my friends living down in the valley, they're under several feet of cloud.
(39:33):
Yeah, it's quite beautiful, actually.
For anyone who can make it out here when it's foggy, it does feel like you're on an island in the sky, kind of, you know.
So this whole thing of this is where we currently live.
We've talked about if the astral plane is a wave band, a frequency inside this great spectrum.
(40:02):
And because our consciousness is at such a frequency that this is where we found ourselves, this is where we are, it becomes our home.
We take up residence in its original state.
This part of the frequency band is pure.
It hasn't been contaminated.
(40:23):
What we've done, I believe, and this is my projection, we've occupied the house of humanity that's built on the astral plane, and we have trashed it, we have polluted it, and the garden outside, we have polluted.
(40:43):
And it's as though we don't understand that we are responsible for keeping the house clean, because the house we live in is really a temple.
We've done a couple of podcasts on the temple builders.
The idea is that our incarnated personality, once it's refined, is the temple that can house the sacred spirit of who we are.
(41:15):
So we look upon it as some sort of squat, some sort of.
We've occupied it, but it's not our temple where we reside.
We not only take care of it and ourselves, but we realize that we have to keep refining the matter out of which our temple is built, because we, in our essential nature, are highly refined.
(41:45):
But what we are currently living in is a very crude representation of that refined reality.
Hmm.
Right.
It makes me think of the Platonic ideal, and we're just.
We're trying to rebuild that.
(42:06):
Like, we.
It's like we, you know, they tell you to write what you know.
We tend to build what we know deep in our.
Like, even if we don't know it consciously.
These things come through us.
And so, you know, we.
If you've known and touched these different planes, you see the beauty in them.
But if you haven't, then maybe you don't see the beauty that's right in front of you.
(42:31):
Well, thank you for naming Plato.
Okay, Plato's Cave.
What do you Think the shadows dancing on the wall are.
Yeah, I also think I think about Plato's Cave a lot.
There's a meme that goes around on social media that how many times a day do you think about the Roman Empire?
(42:51):
And so it's always fascinating because women are in general completely baffled by the fact that men think about the Roman Empire almost daily in some states.
Like, you ask a random guy, do you think about the Roman Empire a lot?
And they'll be like, yeah, every day.
Which I was guilty of.
I didn't realize it, but I do think about the Roman Empire almost every day, if not multiple times a day.
(43:14):
But in that sense.
So I always think about Plato's Cave and, like, how it is when you.
When you learn something new.
Right.
And you're excited to learn about it and you try to tell someone else about it, and you, you think it's something agnostic, it doesn't matter what it is.
And you bump up against someone's.
(43:34):
Like, they're so ensconced in this belief or this thought pattern about this thing that they can't.
Like, they almost have a emotional, almost defensive reaction to it.
You're like, wow, that is Plato's Cave being played out all day every day, you know?
And you end up shadow boxing.
(43:54):
Exactly.
It's so true.
And you realize, oh, you realize, wow, how much frustrating it must be to have been the Buddha, you know, to reach a stage of enlightenment or anyone that reaches a.
A certain plane of understanding.
And for me, it's really inspiring when you, when you.
(44:18):
Because I know there are those people that are alive and walking on the planet today, and the ones who, instead of, like, preaching down from a place of expertise, they're trying to teach and enlighten and to put the hand up instead of pushing you down.
Well, you name the Buddha.
The Buddha is an embodiment of compassion.
(44:39):
Compassion is love, caring, patience, all rolling to one because he knows the tough journey.
Yeah.
There is absolute empathy, compassion.
But I want to go back to Plato's case.
So how do you dispel the shadows on the wall in Plato's Cave?
(45:07):
Well, I mean, you turn the fire up.
You turn the fire up, but you also create a hole in the roof of the cave.
Yeah.
To let the light in.
That's what we're doing.
Dispel the darkness and the confusion.
(45:30):
And the myths.
The myths, the myth of life, which is the mist.
It's by allowing the light, the greater light, to come in.
And suddenly night is turned to day.
How many times have you woken up from a nightmare, absolutely seized by, oh, my God, it's horrendous.
(45:55):
It's like you've gone to hell and back again.
And then after a minute, you go, oh.
And you look outside, the sun shining and the birds are singing.
You go, oh, man, that felt so real.
At the moment, we don't have that ability to say, wow, finally out of that.
(46:21):
That felt so real.
Yeah.
This whole life.
This whole life feels so real.
So back to the Gayatri.
Lead us from lightness, from darkness to light, from the unreal to the real.
And the real is that which issues force from the Creator undistorted.
It's not a form, because otherwise you get into, well, no, this form is more truthful than the other.
(46:46):
This belief is more right than the other.
And then we get into comparison of forms as a way of establishing what is true.
What is true is an alignment to a frequency, a higher note.
And being true, as we know, means to be just.
Justice comes from following the law.
(47:10):
The law means to be in alignment with truth.
Truth is a deep reality.
And when we are living far from the truth of who we are, I am living in distortion.
And that, at the moment is I'm living out my fantasies inside this house that is built on the sands of the emotional plane.
(47:37):
Don't build your house on shifting sands.
Another biblical reference that comes to mind now, Joey, is there shall be no more seas, which means at some point the waters of the emotional plane will dry up and you won't have to drown.
You won't be in that aquarium.
(47:57):
Yeah, the age of Pisces is over, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
No more fishes.
That has a different.
I mean, the concept of there's no more seas.
I mean, you have to put yourself in the position of someone who was on this planet during the.
(48:19):
Either the writing or the recording of that notion.
The sea was terrifying.
It was the giver and taker of life.
That's kind of a very powerful idea to think about that, especially going back to what you were saying earlier about once you have transcended this spiritual, that this emotional and physical plane, I mean, you.
(48:44):
You wouldn't have those Cs anymore.
You wouldn't have those turbulent emotions.
It's like there's a difference between emotions and feelings.
When I have emotions, it usually means I get waterlogged by some feelings.
Yeah.
When I am no longer emotionally compromised.
(49:05):
Yeah.
When I still have feelings, that means I'm still sensitive to life.
And that's one of the things in the Agni Yoga Teachings.
It says the masters, the beings who have transcended the human realm still have feelings.
It's what gives color and richness to all their relationships throughout time.
(49:29):
But they don't have emotional hangups.
Right.
We're talking about the difference between emotional hangups and sensitivity and feeling.
Well, I think that actually lands back into my idea of trying to make this relatable to this time and day because there is so much around, and rightly so.
(49:49):
This evolution of consciousness, this evolution of emotional language, even the concept of emotional intelligence is a fairly new concept.
And it's important for us to understand that is another step up.
But you don't stop.
(50:09):
So it's like the idea of, okay, so you get this diagnosis, maybe you find out that you are on the autism spectrum.
That's not the end of the road.
Now this is just your.
It's now your chance to navigate the world with this and learn how to understand it, learn how to transcend it.
You know, the idea of not being your diagnosis, you know, so I just think of it as like, you know, like if you're, you know, I'm just thinking of Kelly.
(50:40):
She's laughing at me because I'm going to make a car reference, but the car that you're driving is going to handle a curve differently.
So the curve's not different, it's the car that you're driving is different.
So if you were driving a different vehicle.
If I was driving Michael, Michael's driving me, he's going to handle this bump in the road differently.
Yeah.
And once you realize that, that is more the issue.
(51:02):
That is what you're experiencing more than the bump.
It's your reaction to it.
You're in learning that self control, learning that mindfulness.
Why it goes back to the classic statement, life is not about what happens to you, but how you respond to what happens to you.
Right.
Which comes back to.
Brings it all back to the idea of the astral plane is moving with you and against you, or depending on the energy that you put or observe, put out or absorb.
(51:27):
You know, so there's much more written by DK on the astral plane, but let's just finish with one paragraph and then we can add some things to this.
It says, no glamour, no illusion can long hold the man who has set himself the task of treading the razor edge path which leads through the wilderness, through the thick set forest, through the deep waters of sorrow and distress, through the valley of sacrifice and over the mountains of vision to the gates of deliverance.
(52:03):
He may travel Sometimes in the dark and in parenthesis.
And the illusion of darkness is very real.
He may travel sometimes in a light so dazzling and bewildering.
He can scarcely see the way ahead.
He may know what it is to falter on the path.
And to drop under the fatigue of service and of strife.
(52:26):
He may be temporarily sidetracked.
And wander down the bypass of ambition, of self interest and of material enchantment.
But the lapse will be brief.
So once we say, I'm going for it.
(52:49):
No, anger is not an option.
What it is, we just say, hey, I'm gonna turn the light on in my life.
Yeah, it doesn't happen overnight.
You still gotta.
Now you have a light by which to navigate.
It doesn't magically transport you from where you are in the landscape to somewhere else.
Right.
It just gives you a light to light your way.
(53:10):
It's like, now you've got that North Star.
Sometimes you're not gonna be able.
Sometimes you're not gonna be able to see it.
Cause it's gonna be cloudy, but you still keep moving in that general direction.
Well, yeah, I mean, I've used this example before of.
There was a time in my life where I had ups and downs.
And I said to myself, well, how do we navigate this?
This is back in the early 70s.
(53:31):
And one time I was feeling really good.
And, oh, this is a great time to write a note to self.
So I wrote a note to self.
Dear Michael, this note is for those times when you are feeling disheartened.
This is just to let you know that all is fine.
You know, there is light at the end of the tunnel, et cetera, et cetera.
And I sort of carried this note with me.
(53:52):
I was in a funk about two years later.
And I thought, all right, didn't I write a letter or something?
Okay.
I read the letter and I went, what a load of beer.
And I ripped it up.
I've done this.
I've done that same thing, the same thing so many times.
It's like.
(54:12):
So when you're in the funk, it's a Grand Funk.
Yeah, it's a Grand Funk.
Grand Funk Railroad.
Yeah.
But, yeah, if you're on the tracks, you just keep going.
And you come out to the side of the fog or other side of the tunnel.
So I guess what we're saying is that we're not being punished by being in the astral.
(54:33):
We are where we are because this is the level of our consciousness.
We are part of the evolution of consciousness on a cosmic level.
And our task Is to navigate to the next level of consciousness.
To make our way through to the next band frequency band.
And we've been given this task of navigating through the astral plane through the emotional layers and the layers of the lower mental.
(55:06):
And when we've done that, our head pops out into the clear light of day.
And then when the sun shines and when our head is above the clouds and above the water, not only do we see the beauty of life, we see the goodness in each other and we see the joy that is the one life.
(55:28):
But up until then, we're caught in the polarities.
We're caught into the projections.
We become the projector, the projectionist of our own movie.
And we project it on the screen of the collective psyche.
And when everybody is projecting their own movies, their own home movies on this giant collective screen, my God, what a mess we have.
(55:55):
In order to sort that out, we have to go back to our own source of projection and start to create the movie inside of us that is more light filled, that is not distorted, that is as clear as possible.
And that's the task each of us has.
(56:17):
Nobody else can do it for us.
And then together, we have to create out of our power of thinking and out of our heart.
We have to create images of a world that is better at the moment.
The emotional and lower mental provide us with images of what is still unredeemed.
(56:40):
And some of the dystopian fears that we have.
And here at meditation mount with creative meditation.
Our work is to create the memes of the future based on the light of the soul.
So that these contain the promise of the future.
And the promise of the future as a seed can only be planted in the soil that is free from illusion, free from the darkness.
(57:09):
Not the darkness that is the embrace of the mother of the world, but the darkness of ignorance.
And so the dispelling of the mists of the ashen plane is a prerequisite for sowing the seeds of the future and bringing about a new reality.
(57:33):
Lead us from the unreal to the real.
That's the journey.
So, Joey, I wonder what closing thoughts do you have?
Because there's been a lot of rambling.
And that's what you do.
You ramble inside the astral plane.
We don't have.
Didn't have a list of.
Well, we're going to talk about this, this and this.
We sort of meandered through the.
And I often think that when I meander, I become Michael the meanderthal.
(58:00):
I enjoy the wandering.
So.
And that was a beautiful encapsulation.
And for me, I just.
I think this is a great way to wrap up this episode.
But I think that meandering nature is also the beauty of.
Ponder on this.
I think you would not read it from front to back.
(58:20):
It would not make any sense.
It is not written that way.
You meander through it much as you do the exploration of the spiritual journey, because it is good to see that sometimes you need to get lost before you can be found.
It is a little cliche, but you find new ideas, new perspectives.
(58:42):
And I think that's one of the beautiful things about writing a song or painting a picture or doing a podcast is what we're trying to do is get you said, we're not trying to preach a gospel, but we're trying to hopefully give a little spark.
And hopefully it brings something to you and you can relate to it.
And whether or not you agree with it or not, or maybe it sparks you to write a book or to be nice to someone in your family that has been annoying you or just.
(59:10):
It doesn't matter.
Just.
Just.
It brings a sense of mindfulness, that maybe this isn't what you think it is.
Well, it's like the Matrix.
You needed to have some people who already were liberated to sort of knock on the door of other people and say, do you realize that you are locked inside this world?
(59:32):
Yeah.
And that's what we do for each other.
We open the doors, we.
We shed some light.
But what.
We do it as a gift.
Yeah.
That's the important part.
It's a gift.
And you're not a gatekeeper.
That's the big.
(59:53):
That's the big thing.
If you're, you know, given to whole predatory religion and all that sort of thing.
Just if you are coming up against gatekeepers instead of someone that is offering you a gift, you know, then it should be an indication that, well, it's.
The gift of life and we are agents of life, and therefore we pass on.
(01:00:17):
It's not like being a religious sect and you go knock on doors because you've been given that mission.
Right.
As we said before, we do have a mission here at Meditation Mount, but we are not missionaries.
Absolutely.
The pilgrims on the path.
That's right.
And we're happy to have you along with us.
(01:00:39):
Yes.
All right.
Thank you, Joe.
I appreciate that.
I really appreciate it.
This is a great episode.
I loved it.
And I'll see you next time.
Okay.
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