Recently I was in ICU and was told that my chances of making it were slim to none. I was in such pain that I actually begged god to take me so I could stop the pain.

All of a sudden a man with a blue aura appeared to me saying he had been the guardian angel for my family for generations. He told me he had loved me since the day I was born. He then informed me that I had the strength to get through this and he would be with me every minute to assure I would not give up.

Just as he promised he let me know I was not alone and if I could hold on just a little while longer I would be fine.

Well I made it and am on the mend, physically, at least. However I feel as if I am alone once again. I really need to know that everything I witnessed was not due to medications or something I convinced myself was real just to feel someone really cared and was watching out for me.

Is there a way to contact him one more time? If nothing more than to thank him and tell him how much I love him.

I need to know that I am not crazy, and somehow fill this empty space that seems to have been created since this life and death experience.

At the age of 4 my daughter Mackenzie came running out of her bedroom after being tucked into bed…she was yelling, “Mommy, I just heard a sparkling vwooosh and a big feather wing brushed my face”! The next morning she awoke telling me it was her angel.

Over the next few years she would tell me all of the messages the angels would tell her. She spoke of seeing angels of people and animals and why they were coming to her.

Of all of the stories, the one that has stayed with me is a message from an angel. The angel told her that we are all here on earth for a reason. We have a purpose. We can not grow in heaven. That is why some people suffer, it is their job to endure that and find strength within themselves. She went on to tell me that is why some people lose their babies or have cancer.

The most fascinating explanation for me has changed the way I look at passing on(dying). She said no one ever dies, we just pass on to heaven. When those on earth stop grieving for us while we are in heaven, we are allowed to move on to new bodies and start all over again. That is where old souls come from.

Mackenzie is 12 now and occasionally hears a whisper, but since she is so busy learning she is taking a break from her angel connections until her late teen years. That is what she told me.

The words of my child completely changed my spiritual and religious beliefs.

Several years ago , I had a horrible accident. The car was totally wrecked, and to this day I believe that if not for my guardian angels and’ spirit guides I would not be able to write this.

It was a bright sunny day, about 3 pm on a weekday, minding my own business and doing only 43 mph on the turnpike. Suddenly out of nowhere a car from the south collided with my car. As this was occurring I felt a presence holding me back from hitting the windshield while the air bags were going off.. it was as if a hand or hands were holding me back to prevent further injury.

I felt a warm sense of being and there was a bright light shimmering around me as if saying it will be ok.. were here to protect you. I could almost feel someone holding me back and comforting me… to summarize, after we went to the auto pound to take pics of the car, lol and behold with no one around us, or trees, desert like setting at auto pound. 4 angels and a spirit guide appeared on the car hood with no trick photography. I’m not good enough to do that lol.. in fact it was developed at Walgreens.

So I know that day if not for the spirit guides and guardian angels I would not be here telling this story. I’m handicapped today, but thank god for his divine intervention.. with his angels and spirit guides. One worth note in our old house prior to the accident for about a year we had an apparition in our bedroom. I figured if it was evil it would have hurt me right away or tried too. But now I realize the apparition was my guardian angel or spirit guide being by my side for that horrible day the accident happened and after the accident we no longer had the apparition in the old house that i saw every night before the accident for a year floating on the left side of me in the bedroom.

So again I realized it was my guardian angel and or spirit guide watching over me. For that almost fateful day. So as the song says… BE NOT AFRAID.. for one never know s how or when an angel will appear!

Does the Universal Mind Speak to Us?

In his Apology to the Athenians Socrates tells of coming upon a group of poets who do not understand the meaning of their own poems. In his Republic Plato said that all good poets were inspired and possessed when they created. Plato also said that “it is God Himself who addresses us through them” and that God takes away the minds of these poets and uses them as his ministers. Some of the Sufi speak of poetry and prose that comes to them while in an ecstatic state and refer to it as shathiyat. Joseph Campbell spoke of poetry that comes from a transcendent source and how poets can be unaware of what they are talking about.

‘Christian fundamentalists’ view speaking in tongues as the babbling of nonsense non words and syllables. Is it possible that speaking in tongues was and is more along the lines of what Socrates, Plato, Campbell, and the Sufi spoke of? The author of first Corinthians quotes biblical Paul speaking about spiritual gifts and saying that speaking in tongues and the interpretation of tongues were separate gifts. This sounds similar to what Socrates, Plato, and Campbell were talking about. Was tongues a poetic language ‘received’ through a sort of open channeling of the Universal Mind?

Those who have had transformational experiences often attempt to describe their experiences poetically and share some measure of success in communicating to others who have had the same or similar experiences. Is there something beyond that? Is there a higher level of communication that is beyond being descriptive of ones personal mystical experiences and the resulting world view? Does the Universal Mind communicate to us through visionaries and poets at times unbeknownst to them? The poet William Blake said that he often wrote line after line of poetry as if it was dictated to him. In their book Higher Creativity Willis Harman and Howard Rheingold discuss the self and culturally imposed limits that people tend to place on creativity. “All persons are hypnotized from infancy by the culture in which they grow up.” These imposed limits may be what Blake referred to as ” the mind forged manacles” in his poem London. As the saying goes we don’t know what we do not know. Harman and Rheingold call the higher part of the Self “the supraconscious” and say that people are usually not consciously aware of this higher part of the Self.

In the consensus paradigm the idea that a person can receive information from a higher level of reality, that God can speak through people is considered psychotic. It is even considered more psychotic if someone claims to be able to interpret or understand these communications. As Stanislav Grof says in Psychology of the Future many of the concepts and experiences that the founders of the world’s religions spoke of are considered illness when people experience them in our current era. By the use of the word God I must certainly do not mean the ‘fundamentalist’ cosmic boogey man dead beat dad that lives outside of creation, as if that were possible. (The term ‘fundamentalist’ has always struck me as being a misnomer since it is anything but fundamental or basic. Besides its not much fun and its not very mental.)

Are there poems that many of us are familiar with that fit into the category that Socrates, Plato, Campbell, and biblical Paul spoke of? I think that there are. When I first started to discuss this concept with others and gave a couple of examples I saw the raised eyebrows and change of subject from many that indicated lack of interest or the believe that I had gone too far ‘out there’. That was many years ago. It was easy to dismiss a few examples as my reading into things that weren’t there. When I eventually wrote a novel (The Gift of Gabe) that incorporated the concept and gave many examples I began to hear from readers who thought that I was onto something.

Most people are familiar with the music of The Beatles. Some are so familiar with their music that they can play Beatles songs in their head. This was useful because even if it were possible to reprint the lyrics it would take years to obtain the permissions needed to reproduce them. For lack of a better term I call some lyrics conscious lyrics, meaning that the writer is aware of what they are attempting to express. The novel explored some of these by The Beatles and others but what is relevant to the subject of this essay is the songs of Lennon and McCartney that I consider to be from what Campbell called the transcendent realm.

In a 1968 interview with Rolling Stone John Lennon said that he wrote lyrics that he didn’t understand the meaning of until later. He gave as an example the beginning of I am the Walrus as something he wrote without knowing what it meant. I came across an old newspaper article from the early 1980′s about a concert that Paul McCartney had just had. In the article McCartney is quoted talking about a remembrance that he had when playing Hey Jude. McCartney said that when he first wrote it he played it for Lennon and told Lennon that he planned to change a line in the song and Lennon told him not to change it saying that it was the best line in the song. McCartney said that he had asked Lennon what it meant. In the last interview that Lennon and Yoko Ono had together appeared in the January 1981 issue of Playboy. During that interview Ono referred to The Beatles as being like mediums with things coming through them and that they weren’t fully aware of all that was being said. In a book titled The Age of Rock, edited by J. Eisen contains a McCartney interview by Alan Aldridge. McCartney said that The Beatles wrote songs and knew what they meant but then some people could say that they meant something else and he couldn’t deny that they might be right. In an interview with McCartney in the November 2001 issue of Reader’s Digest McCartney talked about how he wrote his songs and his view of inspiration. He used the term magic and mentioned having faith in creativity and a spiritual sense that there is something magical.

Do songs that many of us know fairly well have an alternate meaning in an alternate reality? Is there a way of seeing or hearing that requires a different perspective that is completely different from consensus reality? There appears to be commonalities in the symbolism, meaning, and alternate perspective in many of The Beatles songs. While this alternate perspective is most definitely not limited to Beatles songs they can serve as a helpful example because they are familiar and an alternate interpretation can help us to see that we are not always familiar with the familiar. Consider the song Every Breath You Take, by the Police. I read an interview with Sting many years back when the song was popular and he said that it was about how relationships can be posessive and he was surprised to hear that there were couples who called it their song and saw it as speaking of a positive relationship. The general listener didn’t understand what he was saying. Could it be possible that there could be another understanding different than both? Is it possible that Every Breath You Take is shathiyat? What a room looks like depends upon where one stands in the room or as McCartney said in his interview with Alan Aldridge he couldn’t deny that the people who thought the songs meant something else might be right.

What are some of the Lennon and/or McCartney songs that can be seen as being shathiyat, tongues, poetry from the transcendent realm, an open channeling of the Universal Mind, or call it what you will? I’m Looking Through You, You Won’t See Me, Hey Bulldog, Nowhere Man, Martha My Dear, Hey Jude, Eleanor Rigby, The Fool On the Hill, Your Bird Can Sing, and We Can Work It Out. The George Harrison song Blue Jay Way is another example. The post Beatles Lennon song Whatever Gets You Through the Night is yet another example of what can be seen as poetry from the transcendent realm.

* Brian Joseph writes inspirational short stories and is the author of the novel, The Gift of Gabe.

We all have a path upon which the Universe supports us, and it’s a matter of reading the signs to know whether we are on the right one.

In “Adventures on the Quest,” Richard and Mary-Alice JaFolla offer their ideas as to how we can know whether or not we’re in tune with God’s will. Questions we should ask about the situation:

1. Is it for the greater good of all involved?
2. Are doors continuing to open?
3. Is energy flowing in that direction?

If our instincts make us recoil; if the still, small voice is clamoring No, should we reverse our own objection and travel on that path?

In my opinion, the best answer lies in prayer and meditation. What are we recoiling from? Is it something that will drain our energy and prevent our journey to our own calling?

If that is the case, a reconnoiter is mandatory.

DON’T PROTECT, CORRECT

Delightful Dr. Susan Jeffers states in Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, “Don’t protect, correct!”

If we recognize shortly along one leg of our journey that it’s taking us in the wrong direction, we don’t need to stay the course until we crash on the rocks that we spotted from the distance. We simply turn in another direction and steer to safety, as a good sea captain would.

At times, that course correction is very minor, but at other times, it involves turning the entire ocean liner around. As we all know that can involve monumental effort and energy–faith, patience and trust. And time.

TACK THIS!

Envision a sailboat race, with a regatta of proud boats sporting puffed sails and darting toward their destination. Sailors know that the boats most certainly do not move in a straight line to the finish; they’re constantly tacking back and forth to take advantage of the breezes and currents.

Even so, they arrive at the finish line (God willing) despite having been “off course” approximately 90% of the time! The same holds true with airline flights.

The captain or pilot (our conscious mind) is at the controls to correct the course of the sailboat, aircraft, or our life when we seem to be heading in the wrong direction.

There is no need for self-flagellation or shaming when we get off course. Correction and moving forward are all that’s necessary.

SIMPLE SHIFT

On the path back to the garden of self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-respect and self-love, we need to give ourselves all the support we can get!

Additionally, there’s no reason to make anyone else wrong when we decide to make a shift. It is what it is–simply a shift–and we don’t need to point the finger of blame out there because of a decision that we have made that’s in our best interests.

Dr. Jeffers describes the lighter feeling that we can choose to experience when shifting course: “If you take Path A, you get to taste the strawberries. If you take Path B, you get to taste the blueberries.”

And the obvious corollary: If the berries you’re eating are poisonous, spit them out and go find a path with berries that nourish you instead of making you sick!

TINY LIZARD SCUFFS

Discovering one’s true path sometimes requires some real sleuth work–but it usually does hearken back to remembering what we love or what we love doing.

Famous shoe designer Manolo Blahnik experienced some very limiting careers as a young man. They tapped his creativity, but only peripherally. Eventually he found himself working at Vogue as a clerk. Editor Diana Vreeland spied some of his doodles of handbag designs and encouraged him in that direction, until he got back to his original love, shoe design.

As a child, he’d gotten a great deal of enjoyment by fashioning tiny shoes for the lizards in his garden in the Canary Islands off Spain.

He configured the tiny lizard scuffs out of the foil from his mother’s cigarette packs!

Now those stylin’ shoes for lizards have morphed into high fashion worth several hundred dollars a pair. What tiny pair of high heels for lizards is scampering through your psyche and ready step out on the dance floor?

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Hours before a N.D.E. (Near Death Experience), I was talking with a friend, suddenly, I could not see his face as there was a ball of pure light right in front of me. I had time to tell him to be quiet, then I was pulled, faster and faster through a tunnel, which was rotating. Later, thinking back, I feel it was Angels holding hands as they spun. The light became a pinpoint, then as I approached, it became a beautiful old man who welcomed me to visit. I saw self, and two siblings as innocent children, playing in a golden field and a wise woman told me that the house of God is God himself, that we are but pieces of him and get to rejoin at the end of our journey on earth, and I was told that God deals in love/mercy, not vengeance. Not Fear. It was a wonderful happening, so fast!!! I came back and have had Peace in my heart since! It was at least 12 hours later that I had a major heart attack and was declared dead for a few moments, and I could see/hear all the Dr.’s/nurses from above the hospital room. I have heard of this kind of thing,but to my knowledge,it does not usually happen so many hours before an event. Would like feedback if possible.

Of course, had flying dreams until in my 30′s and remember often playing with flying objects of light, which I thought was people.

It was early in the morning as I was driving into work. The fog was so thick you could barely see one car length in front of you. There was snow on the ground so I was travelling slowly down the road. I knew there was a stop sign ahead and I was straining my eyes to see the warning sign that would tell me to slow down. I never saw it. Instead I came up on the stop sign faster than expected. Only the snow under my car was a sheet of ice and I was unable to stop at the T intersection.

Having been suicidal for much of my life and at the time being on the fence, not wanting to die, but not really wanting to live either, I was surprised to hear my own voice scream out “No!” as I saw the telephone poll come out of the fog. I realized at that moment that for the first time in my life, I wanted to live. Of course, there was no stopping the crash. But I did survive.

I sat in the car in total shock as a man came up to me to see if I was ok. He suggested I call 911, but I couldn’t dial the phone. He took care of it for me. He told me it was a good thing my air bag went off. I hadn’t even realized it was there in my lap. It had wiped out my short term memory. The man had to leave, but he assured me help would arrive soon.

I saw and heard him get in his car and drive away and then through the fog came a woman. She knelt down in front of me as I sat in my car and asked if I was ok. I couldn’t speak. She looked in my eyes and took my hand as I started to cry. The police arrived. She stayed in front of me holding my hand. The police needed to ask me questions. Although I could see the policeman’s face behind her, it was as if he was speaking a foreign language. She repeated his questions for me then passed my answers to the police. All the while she would reassure me that I was going to be fine.

After a while the ambulance arrived. She told me they had to put me on the stretcher even though I felt I could stand on my own. After they got me strapped into the stretcher she gave my hand a final squeeze saying she had to leave and that they would take good care of me. She then disappeared back into the fog.

I never saw her again. That was 12 years ago and to this day I still remember the angel that came at that major transition point of my life. It still brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. But I now feel angels guiding me as I drive and I wonder if she was always there and simply materialized temporarily when I needed it most.

An Essay From the book – The Joys of Live Alchemy by Michael Levy

When we arrive into this world, we enter as a ship that navigates by the forces of nature and propelled by the power in the invisible auras of Spirit. It takes a few years for us to launch our ship with a self-propelled man made motor. During this process, we are taken to many shipyards for a refit to our intellect’s knowingness. We are trained by man-made ideologies and our natural awareness starts to go down deep inside the “Davy Jones locker” within us. We are taught to accept a new identity that will become the captain of our ship. We have to pass many tests of approval by our Admiralty of mis-guided intellects. Once we believe we are qualified to be our own pilot and navigator, we set out to chart our voyage of a lifetime.

As we sail along on the sea of life’s journey, we stop at many ports of call to pick up passengers and cargo. Some of these passengers become permanent guests in our lives. Some come for a short trip as they were sent to us to fill a need. Our thoughts advertised we were in need of advice and guidance so they came along for that part of our journey, for they knew the waters we were sailing. They steered us clear of dangers and helped us weather passing storms. Then they went on their way. Some died of a sickness or old age, but their souls stay with us for guidance, as long as we know where they are located in our inner sanctuary. They are the angels that we asked to help steer our course. We still have our trusted physical crew all around our ship, and we have to be aware that we need to treat them with love and respect or else we may encounter a mutiny.

We should always be on guard, for there are dangerous sharks and pirates in these waters. Many are after our cargo of money and treasures, whilst a few wish to take the joy out of our lives. The stock market is a vast ocean of scurvy forces that lie in wait to ambush us when we have lost our direction. There are many other unknown, hazardous ships, we will encounter on our travels and many fly the flag of friendship from a distance, but when we get up close, they hoist the skull and crossbones. Our lookouts fell asleep and we were attacked because impostors penetrated our vigilance. Enemies posing as friendly sailing vessels, in the seas turbulent cross currents of information. And so, we battle the storm and survive, but each battle leaves its scars on our vessel.

Once we journey beyond our half way mark, we suddenly get the feeling we might be heading in the wrong direction. We start to understand the real enemy is within our own ship, and the pilot we have so much faith in is an impostor. It is the same type of impostor that we have been battling in the other pirate ships, only this foe was planted in our thoughts for many years and has grown in stature and strength. So much so it thinks it can control the ship in heavy raging seas, even when it knows the ship is aging and does not have the power it once had. When it realizes it does not have any real power, it wants to abandon the ship as it begins to sink. It wants to forsake the vessel and allow it to crash on the rocks of worry and anxiety.

The captain of our ship is a wimp. A false-hearted scalawag, with no care for anything, except its own importance. It is a stowaway, which dresses up in a captain’s uniform recognized by society’s elite and panders to their whims. That is why we believed it to be so real, for we have all been flying the wrong flags, because our captains are nothing but sophisticated, adulterated, decoys. The real captain named Soul is still onboard but held captive in the deep recesses of our vessel.

Captain Ego needs to retire and become a quiet member of the crew.

The time has come to unlock the chains of imprisonment and allow our authentic, trusted captain to gain mastery of the controls of our ship. To escort us to safe waters, where we can float on a tide of supreme bliss. Each day we will set out to achieve new goals and visit places beyond distant horizons. We will still encounter many storms along our cruises but with a steadfast captain at the helm, we will never fear any assault on our peace and tranquility. We have a twenty-four hour watch in the crow’s nest. Our finely tuned awareness is enjoying the true order of command. We have turned off the old worn out motor and we are sailing into the sunset with Spirit’s forces supervising our sail.

Within our life span, everyone will sail the seven seas. We come into this world as a newborn baby and some of us leave within a day or two. We have still sailed the seven seas, only we did it in a pure vessel and in super fast time. Others may sail for over one hundred years. The time-scale is not that important. The quality and value of time spent joyfully is important.

The seas are the same for everyone. Only the time frame is a little longer for some. In cosmic terms, there is little difference in a second or a hundred years. The first taste is the banquet. The first sail is the experience of a lifetime. So we sail the seven seas of life, until the time comes to set our ship adrift. We then sail into the infinite calm waves, in the imponderable galax-seas of eternity. Until that day comes, let’s sail our charter on the authentic sensations of love & joy. Only Spirit can award us with a true captain and navigator. Allow each moment to become a soul-filled adventure of unsurpassable bliss.

* Michael Levy is the author of seven books. His inspirational poetry and essays now grace many assorted web sites, journals and magazines throughout the world. He is expert columnist for Positive Health magazine, the leading complimentary health publication in the UK. He is also published in the The Royal Collage of Psychiatry special journals.
Michael’s new books – “The Joys of Live Alchemy” – “Ultra-Violt Haiku Delights” – are now available at all bookstores.
www.pointoflife.com

I have had psychic experiences since I was small, the first being fear…anyway, in 2000 I had a massive emotional breakdown and a total of six months in a clinic. Before and after there were many times where I needed a guide and sure enough they came in some shape or form and even when people did hurt me. Something seemed to always get them back for their actions.

I don’t know if I have a living guardian or a spiritual one or both…but I will say this now…I find it hard to believe in Churches but it never disturbs my belief in God, even when I’m angry with him, he has never walked away. He has never left me to really get seriously hurt.

He has held my hand without me even realizing until afterwards and he has rescued me in the final hour to make me continue living.

I have met people that just seem to know me and all the pain in my head and they are there just when I need them. I will always believe I have a guardian angel and I won’t hate God no matter what goes wrong. Even when I yell at him, he still looks out for me.

One day I nearly jumped from the top floor of college in High Wycombe in the UK a just as I was really about to get up there and do it, this guy appeared from a class room and said very calmly, “you’re not going to jump are you”? One night when I was walking alone at night because I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t cope with my emotions… this guy offered to walk with me up the hill by my home and then back again to make sure I got home safe. I have never seen him again.

One day in the underground in London (a lovely city) an Asian man walked up to me and asked me how I was feeling and was my head hurting? I sat down on the seat by the tunnel and I nodded. Without even thinking how he knew I felt so bad. He told me to sit and be calm and the headache would go away. He caught the next tube, while I sat and tried to calm down. When I got up to catch the next tube. I realized my head wasn’t pounding anymore.

That’s another reason why I believe that God is All…whatever name or religion, it is just the same person with a million different faces every day and a million different names.

I don’t know who my guardian angel is apart from God or Gods friend but I’d just like to say, Thank You.

The task of a writer is invariably the following:
To reach up to heaven with one hand, and to reach down to hell with the other. When the currents have flown through – let something beautiful emerge!

I call the way I write the top-down approach, which means I make a mental structure first, and then I translate it into writing. The other way is the sequential approach, where you make decisions on the fly and write as it comes to you.

The top-down approach of writing has three major phases:

* attitude of openness
* research
* projection

The attitude of openness is the single most important phase of writing.

It is the entry point where you, the writer, as a human being, form a relation with your writing and the prospective readers of your writing. Who is it who writes? Are you balanced? Can you breathe ideas as well as air? Is your mind quick and sharp? Is your heart open? Do you feel strong?

If the attitude you take is not proper, your writing becomes gimped. If your attitude is one of balanced openness, everything flows with ease.

So, do your thing! Draw upon your life experiences and your own place in the universe to make you feel at home and centered. Use whatever works for you to achieve the attitude of openness!

The research phase is where you form the mental structure of your writing.

The research phase can be broken down into these steps:

* formulate your goal
* choose your subject
* brainstorm
* choose key ideas
* observe relations
* establish structure
* dynamic
* ocean of context

In the first step you formulate your goal.

What do you get out of this work? Is it money, pleasure, formulation, or clarity? What does the reader get out of it? Knowledge, power, breathing space? Answering these questions with clarity helps you keep focused.

Formulate your goal so you become certain of it. This is your motivation; this is what gets the writing done. If things get rough, remind yourself of your goal.

In the second step you choose your subject.

The subject forms the center of your writing. If you are writing non-fiction, let the title state the subject. These few words maintain the balance of the whole work. Everything goes in here and out of here in concentric circles. The center, upon which you can build.

Your subject may come naturally after formulating your goal. If it doesn’t, have a mini-brainstorm session until it does. The time you spend on finding the most clearly defined subject is well worth it, because it will be the object of much reflection later.

In the third step you brainstorm.

This step is where your skill in assuming the attitude of openness comes most useful. You have your goal, you have your subject – let the exploration begin! Let your mind fly! Thinking is optional. Explore everything!

If your goal and your subject are most clearly defined, your mind is most likely choke-full of ideas! You probably can’t even actively ‘think’ of every idea because they come so fast. It doesn’t matter. Let them through you and become a piece of you. When the waves have settled, you feel like you know and can everything.

If the ideas are not washing over you, return to the first phase and work on your attitude of openness. The ideas are there, you just have to open yourself up to them.

In the fourth step you choose the key ideas.

From the ocean of possibilities these ideas presented you, you have to decide on the key ideas. These ideas form the beginnings of a metaphysical structure – the outline of your writing, if so you wish. Again, it’s good to formulate these ideas simply and clearly.

In the fifth step you observe relations.

The ideas you chose inter-relate somehow. Your task is to observe those relations. Do they fit? How do they feel? Where do they lead you? Play with the ideas! Let play and observation reveal the basic structure (the skeleton) of your work. Add, delete, smash, create, cut, enable, change. What are the colors? Is the flow to your liking? Is the structure sturdy enough for further development?

When you are satisfied, move on.

In the sixth step you establish the structure.

You chose the key ideas and explored where they lead you. It’s time to solidify, to decide on structure. Don’t cast in stone, but do make an informed decision about the contents and the interrelation of your writing.

Solid. Firm. Durable. A ‘hard’ thought, a material among the spiritual. This is the form, the structure of the writing to be.

In the seventh step you create a dynamic.

You have completed the steps so far and created an metaphysical image of your work. It’s nice, isn’t it? If ‘nice’ is enough, skip this step. If ‘beautiful’ is what you’re after, continue.

A dynamic is force, energy, motion – strength. By applying the phrase “that which kills you makes you stronger” to the structure you created, it can become dynamic.

Unleash hell upon the structure of ideas you have worked so carefully on. Let everything ‘bad’ you can imagine; the antithesis of your ideas wash over your work. Let it absorb your work into nothingness…

Then – observe your work rise like a phoenix.

In the eight step you let go into the ocean of context.

You visited heaven in the ‘brainstorm’ step and trod down to hell in the ‘dynamic’ step. The image of your work is now complete. It is a carefully constructed whole which can stand alone and has the ability to interact.

Let it go.

Congratulations, you have completed the research phase! Half the work is done and weren’t even required to write down a single word. The essence and the unfolded essence of the writing has been created.

If you have done these steps correctly (and you are the judge of that), everything you write down regarding your chosen subject will be accurate. That’s when the sequential approach works – when you’re already done.

If ours were a telepathic society, you could just take this grand concept you developed, and pluck it into another’s mind. Since we still need ‘harder’ material for communication, projections are necessary.

The projection phase is where you choose the specific implementation of your work.

The projection phase consists of these aspects:

* target audience
* coherency
* perspectives
* angle
* context
* balance
* multi-layered writing
* interaction
* loss of information
* jumps of thought
* flow
* pace
* compact
* dark side

You now have this metaphysical image of your work which is not only nice, but beautiful – and what are we going to do with it? We’re going to butcher it. Instead of detracting, hopefully the process will accentuate the beauty.

From here on, beauty is not only a stand-alone attribute, but also a function of communicating that beauty to your audience.

You have to know your target audience. Which group of people are you communicating to? What do they have in common? How great are the differences relevant to your work? Who are they in relation to you and who are they in relation to your writing? Consider your audience individually and as a group as well.

Your writing has to be coherent. Your subject makes sense to you as a coherent whole; you have to maintain that coherency within the projection as well – the reader has to be able make sense out of your writing as a coherent whole.

You employ many perspectives. There are many ‘places’ to view your subject from. Depending on your goal, you may focus on some and disregard others. Some views fit nicely, other seems contradictive. If you are aware of the multitude and are respectful, they contribute to the whole of your writing.

An angle is a consistent perspective throughout the work. Use it if you wish to lead the reader in a specific way. (Think of a prism which unravels white light into color rays of different angles.)

Context is the environment in which the projection of your work floats on. Words, thoughts, lifestyles – there are many levels of context. Your writing has to embrace the greatest levels of clarity to survive the deepest levels of context.

Research deep into context enables you to balance successfully. Balance is not a passive ability – it’s an active process; a flux. The essence of the work behind the written word interacts with the reader as the pieces click together. A clear, coherent balance of words helps and enhances reader comprehension.

Your audience consist of different people. Each of those people has various levels of consciousness. The metaphysical image of your work also has multiple levels. Talking to all those different consciousness requires careful balance, coherence, and multi-layered writing. The structure of metaphysical image should be projected clearly into the multi-layered meanings of the written words.

Let your reader interact with the writing! Give something to the conscious, the sub-conscious, and the super-conscious of each reader; let the outflux depend on the influx. It may help to think of your writing as a transformer or an amplifier. A good writing takes as well as gives.

When ideas become words of language, loss of information occurs. As developed a language may be, it cannot hold all. Some ideas and perspectives are left out. Be aware of it. You cannot circumvent this problem within the boundaries of written word, but you can minimize the damage. Furthermore, you can do your best to take this factor into account while writing and use it to your advantage!

The thought-processes of people flow as they do. Pay attention to the jumps of thought within your work. If you jump around too much or take leaps too wide, your writing becomes incomprehensible. If you stand too much in one place or your leaps are too small, your writing becomes boring. Do your best to find balance, because the first one is a waste of time and the second is a sin!

Let your work maintain it’s flow.

If in your writing you employ a time structure (like when you tell a story which has a beginning in time and an end in time), be aware of a special type of flow called the pace. Stretch it or squeeze it, but let it be a coherent aspect of your work. It is a tool to be used to enhance communication between you and the reader.

Your work should be as compact as possible. This works hand-in-hand with multi-layers, balance, and clarity. Don’t just blabber on and on! The reader’s time is precious. Show your respect to the reader by respecting his/her time. Honesty and candor.

The unconscious, rejected, fearful part of the human mind is that person’s dark side. If you fully reveal your reader’s dark side to him/herself, you will be hated as much as that dark side is hated. If you completely ignore the dark side, your writing will be no more than sugar-coating; no meaningful substance. Thread carefully, and accept responsibility towards yourself for the actions you take through your writing.

Have fun!

Nandor Gyerman
www.AscensionLoveSpirituality.com