Amazing things not seen very often today and my thoughts on them

Examples of amazing things in the Bible: (I'll get back to the past lives posts soon)

Jesus took the loaves and fishes in a basket from a small boy’s lunch and fed thousands of people.  Jesus met a woman, and with no previous experience, he knew exactly how many times she had been married before.  Jesus encouraged the practice of washing feet.  Jesus turned water into wine.  Jesus healed people from leprosy.  Jesus healed blind people.  Jesus healed people who could not walk.  Jesus brought people back to life from the dead.  Jesus predicted his own future.  Jesus commanded the wind and waves and they obeyed him.  Jesus spent 40 days alone in the desert.  Jesus refused to use his power just to prove to people who didn’t believe in him that it existed.  Jesus could read people’s character.  Jesus prayed alone in the mountains.  Jesus could feel when someone touched him and power went out from him.  Jesus did not work an everyday job but his needs were provided for completely every day.  Jesus said that if certain events did not happen that even the stones would cry out.  Jesus spent a lot of time alone in a garden communicating with his Father.

                Now here are some examples from the disciples and followers of Jesus shortly after his work of teaching was complete.  Peter healed people.  The disciples shook dust off of their feet after they were not accepted by people.  Paul and Silas sang in prison and their shackles were removed and an earthquake broke them out of prison.  Paul brought someone back from the dead. 

                Here are some other examples. Job – he was incredibly wealthy, had it all taken away, and then had even more than his previous possessions restored to him.

                Abraham, he was led by God, became increasingly wealthy, and was rewarded for his actions.

                Moses, he struck a rock and it created water, he walked into the sea and it parted.  He held up his hands and his armies won. He was seen along with Elijah at Christ’s assention.

                Aaron, he created plagues, frogs, his rod turned into a snake and back to a rod. (Made from a specific type of wood - almond.)

                Elijah, he struck down people with fire from heaven.  He called on the rain and made it rain.  He predicted the future (lions in the road, etc.).

                Elisha, the story of the 7 lepers and the flour sold for a certain price.

Shift in my perspective:

Okay, so previously in my experience, these stories were amazing stories of how God acted in behalf of poor helpless whoever was involved in the story, but the more I’ve experienced I have changed my perception to believe that it was God acting through the person, and these are all things that God can do through any human who, to put it in its simplest form, believes it is possible. 

Feeling the presence of God within.  I experienced several times of not feeling the presence of God within.  This was usually accompanied by not observing the presence of God without as well.  I realized once that I had not watched the fall colors changed in four years.  Where did that time go?  What could I have possibly been so consumed with that I could not enjoy the beauty around me and the beauty within me? 

My close friend Amber once pointed out that one reason people enjoy getting something new is because at the time a person gets something new they suddenly pay attention to how they are feeling within and without.  They feel the new sweater against their skin, the tingling, the softness, they breathe in the smell in a deep breath and feel the scent in their face, the air in their lungs.  How many times other than when they attained the new sweater did the person pay attention to how something felt against their skin or how the air felt in their lungs?  The sense of enjoyment is then attached to getting a new item, and one form of materialism is born. 

One analogy of changing one’s beliefs or expounding to personal growth or even learning how to believe seems to me to be the carving of a statue or the chipping away and peeling of a coconut.  It seems that one chips away, machete strike after machete strike causing little pieces of the shell to fly off, until a large piece of the shell breaks away and a huge progress has been made all at once, but that did not make each strike less important than the one where the huge piece broke off.

How to feel the power of God within you

                I learned a profound concept just by feeling.  Deepak Chopra suggests that one cannot be hurt by another, but is simply hurt by themselves, and hurts themselves as a result of what others do.  Getting one’s feelings hurt is a great example of this.  Lets experiment with this idea.  Pull up a memory of a time when someone hurt your feelings.  Usually that’s pretty easy to do.  Now, with the memory, vivid and fresh, there in your mind, freeze.  Where does it hurt? One pang in your elbow, a spot in your chest maybe, and you find your jaw clenched too?  Besides hurt, where do you feel tight?  Maybe your stomach is tightened up also?  Okay, so you do not like these feelings, but who made the spot in your elbow hurt, the pang in your chest, who caused your stomach to tighten up and your jaw to clench? It is your body.  Logically, it was you who caused yourself to hurt, and if it was not you and it was them, then it was only because you allowed the person into your energy, because without you inviting the experience, nobody can cause your brain to send a pang of pain into your elbow, it is your brain!  But, these small observances of exactly where you are hurt when someone “hurts” you and exactly who it was that hurt you goes unnoticed and you tend to just feel “pissed off” about a situation and it festers, indefinitely.  Eventually, rather than releasing the problem and “forgiving” the person, one will close off the feeling about it, and it is a sealed part of the life rather than a fresh and growing part of their life.  Sealing off that section of feeling causes stunted growth in the area as well as deformities in the future psychological and energy growth of the person as a whole.   – the consequences of this sealing off sections of feeling could include obesity from not being aware of feelings in the stomach area and then overeating, or obesity from holding energy in the form of fat stores.  Other results from energy blockages from held-in feelings could include cancer and atrophy of glands.

Past Lives Part Two

Past lives part two

When I had completed my list of unique things to which I felt attracted, as well as things that bothered me, I sat down at the kitchen table, held my breath, and Googled my name.  I didn’t find much, so I started searching starting by Googling my name followed by the first item on the list – the country of Norway.  I decided to search images instead of text to see if I recognized anything I saw, and somehow found myself researching a Danish author Karen Blixen http://www.karenblixen.com/ whose work I had never heard of before.  She had my same first and middle names, and her maiden name was similar to mine. 

I headed over to Books-A-Million http://www.booksamillion.com/?&ad=BNGBAMM and ordered two of her books.  I was intrigued, because I remember from my trip to Norway that I had a much easier time understanding the Danish than I did Norwegian, and reading Danish came naturally for me as well even though I struggled with reading Norwegian.  Reading the details of her life drew out the most intense sorrow I have ever felt, and I couldn’t put into words exactly why.  I had to quit reading about her for awhile, but her books still came in from where I ordered them.

Curiosity finally overcame awkwardness, so I started reading more about Karen Blixen.  This was very uncomfortable for several reasons, the first being that my logical mind tells me that the likelihood of being someone semi-famous in a past life has to be statistically very low.   Of the over six billion people alive in the world, how many were really that famous in this life or in a past life or ever? “Used to be famous” is not a likely statistic, that’s for sure, so I kept my guard up really high.  I decided that I would feel most comfortable if I could prove that I was not her in a past life, so I comforted myself with that goal.

This past-life research occurred during the same time period where I was also seeking other types of personal growth and had begun using Holosync meditations which I ordered online from Centerpointe at http://www.centerpointe.com/holosync/?gclid=CPiO1PnZ2qQCFRBL2godxkj4rg .  The personal growth methods encouraged by Centerpointe Research Institute and its mastermind Bill Harris (also a co-author in Rhonda Byrne’s the Secret http://www.thesecret.tv/ ) include being okay with whatever happens and approaching issues with curiosity; these were the mind-frames I attempted to keep during my research.  It didn’t take long for my studies to become very interesting. 

Past Lives Part One

Here is my story:

Past Lives Part One
I have several friends and family members who I’ve felt strong connections with over the years. Sometimes we would jokingly say, “We must have been related in a past life,” but it has always been more of a passing comment rather than an intentional statement of fact. I found myself curious about past lives though, and continually wondering if there was anything to the past lives phenomenon. I was raised strict Seventh-Day-Adventist, so the possibility that there was anything to the theory of reincarnation felt strictly taboo. It was forbidden, not necessarily false.
One day my husband showed me a video online about a lady who had past-life memories as Anne Frank. Here is the link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6323600618966598174# . I was very interested, because if she had actual memories then I was sure that there was a way for me to access actual past life memories as well.
We found another interesting story about a little boy with past life memories from world war two. Here is the link to that article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1209795/Reincarnated-Our-son-World-War-II-pilot-come-life.html . This story made me very curious about whether some of my interests, dreams, and night-mares had links to past-life experiences, as well as wondering how to find out more. I used the concept about names from both stories to conclude that my name was likely Karen in a past life – I never felt that I should be called by a different name as the lady who had past life memories as Anne Frank felt, and in the other story the little boy had past life memories with the same name as he currently has.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the idea, so I made up a list of things that I felt unexplainably attracted to. I then made a list of things that I was afraid of. I was thinking these might help me find a lead to myself in a past life. I had not yet heard of past life regression at the time, and I would probably not have tried it if I did hear about it because I wanted hard evidence.