When you were little, were you afraid of the dark? Most of us were. And I doubt we ever thought to question this fear. We were almost naturally taught to be afraid of the dark, because the dark is full of unknown things that might hurt us.

But what usually happened when you turned the light on? You learned the unknown things were not so scary. And they were not so unknown. They were just part of the environment.

We learned to associate darkness with scary and unknown, and we learned it’s better not to speak with our dark thoughts and emotions. Turning the light on our emotional shadow is a lot more challenging than flicking a physical light switch on. So we avoid it. Superficiality is easier. But this darkness of our soul has a life of its own which thrives, whether or not we choose to acknowledge it.  It’s there, and it’s powerful.

Understanding Darkness

This fear of our emotional complexity grew as we grew, and with time became our shadow. It’s a hidden part in us that influences our choices more often than we are aware.

In truth, much effort goes into repressing and hiding it from ourselves and others. It’s our dark side. The parts we are ashamed and afraid to show. But through denial, we fail to see that in the obscurity of darkness also lay our strengths.

For reasons originating in the past, we have decided to negate and hide this dark side without exploring it further. And so in return it keeps us distant from truly expressing ourselves. Continue reading →

This article was originally written and posted at Collective-Evolution.com. Posted here with their permission

Why is it that extrasensory perception, like human telepathy, remote viewing, psychokinesis and more are commonly shunned by a large portion of the mainstream scientific community? The answer is simple, it’s our inability to understand or develop a sound scientific theory to explain phenomena that, so far, is completely unexplainable, but real.

Despite the fact that they are unexplainable, these occurrences (telepathy, remote viewing, psychokinesis, etc..) have been observed in laboratory settings by scientists all over the world for decades. It’s a troublesome thought that experiments, showing repeatedly significant results, continue to be ignored by the mainstream just because we can’t explain them. Again, It’s important to remember that just because we cannot explain them, or figure out (in modern day scientific terms) how they are happening, does not mean that they are not happening.

“Some materialistically inclined scientists and philosophers refuse to acknowledge these phenomena because they are not consistent with their exclusive conception of the world. Rejection of post-materialist investigation of nature or refusal to publish strong science findings supporting a post-materialist framework are antithetical to the true spirit of scientific inquiry, which is that empirical data must always be adequately dealt with. Data which do not fit favoured theories and beliefs cannot be dismissed a priori. Such dismissal is the realm of ideology, not science.” – Dr. Gary Schwartz, PhD., professor at the University of Arizona (source) Continue reading →

Originally written and posted by Collective-Evolution.com. Posted here with their permission.

Spirituality in the West has been severely distorted; being a marketplace of trinkets, self-help gurus, healers, a huge variety of spiritual practices, substances and so on.

Somehow this culture has taken something very pure and simple and turned it in to something commercial, something competitive and into that which it is not. Our western mind is moulded into wanting to attain something and some people on the spiritual path have spent their entire lives trying to attain, only to be as stuck and bound as they ever were.

It’s this very desire to attain something, this wanting to reach a ‘higher state of consciousness’, which is what keeps people bound and seeking. By definition, to be a seeker, you have not yet sought, and therefore those who are always seeking do not find. One of the great Tibetan Buddhists Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche who played a crucial role in bringing Buddhist teachings to the West during the Chinese occupation has this summary to say about awakening/meditation/enlightenment in Meditation in Action:

“Meditation is based on three fundamental factors: first, not centralising inward; second, not having any longing to become higher; and third, becoming completely identified with here and now.”

So in context with the rest of the chapter this is in, he is referring to our ego, or our idea of who we are, the “me”, the “I”, has no solidity to it, and not to uphold the belief that it exists.

Continue reading →

This article was originally posted at at Collective-Evolution.com. Posted here with their permission.

The five senses provide information in a way that allows the majority of people to understand the world around them. Some people, however, are certain they’re able to receive information beyond what they see, taste, smell, hear, and touch. If information is actually received beyond what the everyday physical world reveals, how can we be sure we’re able to recognize, receive, and understand that information?

One of the first signs is that a major life-changing event normally precipitates the ability to know something that cannot be explained with the five senses alone. These life changing events can be in the form of Near-Death-Experiences (NDE), Out-of-Body Experiences (OBE), trauma, catastrophic illness, or any other life event that causes one’s world view to change dramatically.  Continue reading →

Article originally written and posted by Collective-Evolution.com. Posted here with their permission.

Milk seems to be making its way through various stages of truth, especially within the past couple of years. Like many other examples, what we once thought to be healthy for us to consume is turning out to be the exact opposite.

A large study coming from researchers at the Uppsala University in Sweden found that drinking milk led to an increased mortality rate and actually made bones more prone to fracturing, not less.(1)

The study was recently published in the peer reviewed British Medical Journal, and was specifically conducted to examine whether high milk consumption is associated with mortality and fractures in both men and women.

The study took place across three different counties in Sweden, and used data from two large Swedish cohorts, one with 61,433 women aged approximately 39-74 years old and one with 45, 339 men aged approximately 45-79 years old. They were all administered food frequency questionnaires. The study used “multivariable survival models” that were “applied to determine the association between milk consumption and time to mortality and fracture.

The results were as follows:

“During a mean follow-up of 20.1 years, 15?541 women died and 17?252 had a fracture, of whom 4259 had a hip fracture. In the male cohort with a mean follow-up of 11.2 years, 10?112 men died and 5066 had a fracture, with 1166 hip fracture cases. In women the adjusted mortality hazard ratio for three or more glasses of milk a day compared with less than one glass a day was 1.93 (95% confidence interval 1.80 to 2.06). For every glass of milk, the adjusted hazard ratio of all cause mortality was 1.15 (1.13 to 1.17) in women and 1.03 (1.01 to 1.04) in men. Continue reading →

This article was originally written and posted by/at Collective-Evolution.com. Posted here with their permission.

Scientific knowledge is expanding every day at an exponential rate, and the implications of new developments, particularly those that challenge the current framework regarding the true nature of reality, are far-reaching indeed. One area that continues to become a focal point of study for many physicians and neuroscientists is the relationship between mind, brain, and consciousness.

Is the brain a receiver of consciousness, or is consciousness a product of the brain? Although science has not yet shown with absolute certainty that consciousness exists separately from our physical organs, there is a lot of evidence (both anecdotal and scientific) which indicates that consciousness is something completely separate – that it continues on even after we have deceased, that it is and can be a separate “thing” from the brain. There seems to be a lot of consistency when it comes to studies that have examined this issue. New findings within this field are rapidly changing how we perceive and relate to the physical world.

Below is a video of Dr. Bruce Greyson speaking at a conference that was held by the United Nations. He is considered to be one of the “fathers” of near death studies. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Science at the University of Virginia.

In the video he describes documented cases of individuals who were clinically dead (showing no brain activity), but observing everything that was happening to them on the medical table below at the same time. He describes how there have been many instances of this – where individuals are able to describe things that should have been impossible to describe. Continue reading →