By Karen Tate

My gateway into Goddess Spirituality was via the teachings of Dianic women immersed in Women's Mysteries and Goddess herstory.  I owe them a debt of gratitude for introducing me to Goddess but this relationship wasn’t without many challenges. Like a “cafeteria catholic” moving down the food line of spiritual beliefs, choosing what ideas resonated with me, I put some of their ideas on my tray of life and rejected others leaving them to dry out on the sterno.

I was interested in a Feminine Face of God and not a male God so much. Christianity and patriarchy turned me off to institutional  man-made dogma, religion and Jesus for a long time. For me, the male God could be a consort of Goddess, perhaps her equal, provided she maintained her full autonomy and authority. Think of the Super Couple of Isis and Osiris for example. The feminist aspects of Dianics also appealed to me. Coming from a lower-middle-class family, growing up without a lot, I understood the importance of feminism to lift us all up to achieve equality. So the female empowerment aspect, the primary deity as female, feminism and herstory were really attractive concepts of Dianic Spirituality.

Erhard Seminars Training

 

The Way To The Center Meditation

Meditation! 
Start with breathing exercises and close your eyes. Visualize that you are standing at the top of a staircase in a dark so complete you can´t see your hand in front of your face. Picture your body as it is standing on top of that staircase. Surround yourself with the colour red. Your whole body is enveloped in the colour red as you step down on step. Remember to breathe. On the next step you are surrounded by orange feel the colour orange and than step down one more step. Feel your body relax and while you step down, let the colour orange change into a warming yellow. Suffuse your aura with that yellow glow remembering to breath deeply and evenly. Take another step down slowly the yellow changes into a rich green light. Your muscles are relaxing more and more as your mind becomes clearer.

Spiritual Energy

I never liked Styrofoam cups, plastic bags, or aerosol cans. I always knew that they were bad for the environment. Now, I am an advocate of the green initiative. I understand that everything that we humans do affects our eco-system, including our spiritual development.

I have experienced two wars in my lifetime. Countries normally go to war for one reason, to get more resources. There are many who believe that the wars in the Middle East were all about oil. Oil is a limited resource and it is becoming scarcer with each passing day. We are inundated with commercials about Congress wanting to drill in the most obscure places. Some have predicted that the world is going to run completely out of oil in the near future.

Psychodrama

What is psychodrama? 

Jacob L Moreno (1889-1974) created this technique for gaining insight into relationships that are buried in the unconscious. A New York psychiatrist, social scientist and polymath, his very early interest in theatre in Vienna led to psychodrama as a form of therapy around 1910 and it became very popular in the 1960s and 70s amongst the personal growth movement. Moreno was a pioneer and early psychotherapist. His work is profoundly interesting and reveals many aspects of the way we relate to others, especially family members. His writing is of great interest to those who follow his innovative understanding of interpersonal relationships and is well worth further study. 

Dr Iain McGilchrist

Recorded at St James's Church, Piccadilly, the Blake Society Lecture features Dr Iain McGilchrist who is the leading expert on left brain/right brain research. We hear so much in the New Age 'I am analytical, I must be 'left' brain' or 'I am artistic, I must be right brain'. Watch this video, simply put, it is far more complex than that - we use different areas of our brain all the time! Even more complex than presented - a left handed person has their hemispheres reversed! 

Thomas Traherne

Who was Thomas Traherne?

Living from 1636 - 1674, Traherne was an English writer, mystic and religious teacher. His still popular book 'Centuries of Meditations' provides sincere moments of life to nourish and inspire. His biography is appreciated by many around the world. The attainment of a state of bliss was to experience being in the moment, to love all that is good and beautiful, and to seek and love the truth. His work influenced the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, C S Lewis, and others. 

NLP - Part 1

In my experience there are several factors that can prevent people from getting what they want in their lives, whether in business or in other areas:

- Lack of clear goal & evidence
- Not addressing the benefits of the current situation (aka. secondary gain)
- Familiarity of the current situation (a particularly sneaky benefit)
- Lack of belief and/or limiting beliefs

In Robert Anton Wilson's book Prometheus Rising , he models the mind as having two main parts; a thinker and a prover. The thinker is extremely flexible, and can think any number of things. The thinker can think the earth is flat; the thinker can think the earth is spherical. It can think all men are poison; it can think all men are essentially good. The thinker can think that women are intuitive and men are rational; it can think the opposite. It can think that there isn't enough to go round; it can think we live in a world of unlimited abundance. The thinker can think pretty much anything. The prover is much more predictable: what the thinker thinks, the prover proves.

Chris Street asks ‘Is London the City of Revelation?’

There have been several attempts to re-build London as ‘The New Jerusalem’. The first was by the Knights Templar who, in 1185, modelled their Temple Church in Holborn on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and sited the building exactly the same distance from St. Pauls Cathedral as the Holy Sepulchre is sited from the Dome of the Rock. Clearly they saw a connection, or wanted to create one. Approx 500 years later, following the Great Fire of London, Sir Christopher Wren conceived his own plan to re-build London as the New Jerusalem, whilst his rival, John Evelyn, devised a design for the city based upon the cabbalistic tree of life.

Barbara Marx Hubbard

                                                                                                                        An excerpt from the book 'Conscious Evolution' by Barbara Marx Hubbard:

 

The world is ready for the advent of a new stage of human consciousness and action. It is time for a “planetary birth experience,” a collective awakening, an experience of shared empathy, love, and creativity. Just as we once evolved from Neanderthal to Homo sapiens through a mysterious set of circumstances, not fully understood, so now we are emerging as Homo universalis, a species capable of conscious evolution on Earth and beyond.

What are signs of the emergence of a new era of evolution? Ken Carey wrote in The Third Millennium:

Friedrich Glasl

 

Servant Leadership

The Ambiguity Effect

The Bandwagon Effect

 

The Dunning Kruger Effect

 

The Framing Effect

 

 

The Gamblers Fallacy

 

Zeigarnik Effect

Transactional Analysis & Gestalt

Dr Eric Byrne, a psychiatric therapist, developed in the early 1950s a theory about personality and personality development which is closely tied to a theory about communication. Known as transactional analysis (TA) it was popularised through the books, ‘Games People Play’, and ‘I’m OK, You’re OK’. These explain ego states, and divide them into Parent, Adult and Child. 

Children are likely to think that however they feel, others must feel the same. Take for instance, a child is cold and thinks others must be cold too or feels unhappy and thinks others are unhappy too. Adults who are unaware, or who have not reflected on themselves in relation to others, all tend to think that those outside themselves are mirror images. Because they have no money, they think that others are also broke, or if they are rich, they think others have no money problems. As we become more mature, we can question more, deal more with complexities, and understand that we are independent and autonomous beings. 

Gigi Azmy

 “In the beginning of a romantic connection; the masculine’s priority of provision for the feminine; needs to be safety, safety and more safety.” Not money or status!

And if that is what she is looking for in the beginning - to move in quickly and for you to take care of her, you are most likely going to regret it. That I can guarantee.

Safety of her body, heart, mind and soul. Not snide comments. Not tearing her down with sarcasm. Not hurting her so she feels less than. Not withholding love. Not withholding attention and affection. Not being so wrapped up in your process that she is constantly emotionally or physically caring for you. Not being afraid of her big feelings and emotions. Not asking her to be patient. Not asking her to accept your excuses to play less than. Not trading gifts or experiences for love. Not money. Not a home. Instead: Safety of her entire being in your presence.

She should NEVER feel afraid around you. She should NEVER feel small around you, unless it’s her own inadequate feelings coming up. She should NEVER feel confused by you. She might feel lonely with you sometimes, she might be discontented, she might be cranky, but she should never feel afraid, small or confused by you.