Awesome Insights is a book of excerpts from most of my books to date

Selected morsels from: “Grace Divine Journey” (book).

The book encompasses a journey from being a monk in India to a mental health professional in New Zealand, integrating spirituality and mental health insights.

• Pathway to Enlightenment: Personal experience and practice to attain practical enlightenment require a continuous journey, intertwined with life challenges.
  • Multi-Faith Perspective: I advocate a multi-faith approach, valuing insights from various religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism.
  • Mental Health Insights: In discussion about personal experiences with mental health, and addictions, I highlight the importance of acceptance and surrender in overcoming life’s struggles.
  • Role of the Goddess: I center on the Goddess Shakti or Divine Power as for me it is integral to understanding and accessing Divine Grace and personal empowerment.
• Practical Application: The journey is one of reclaiming one’s divinity through understanding personal struggles, broader spiritual truths, and the interconnectedness of all existence. Move from darkness to light, and release negative traits and traumatic labels, (such as depression and addiction), through spiritual awakening.
• Depression and Spirituality: The interconnectedness of depression etc. and spirituality is so important.  The experience of depression etrc. can catalyze spiritual growth rather than deter it.
• Moksha or Nirvana: Get there via acceptance rather than escape, because of the significance of self-awareness, and the importance of recognizing the unchanging Self (Atman).

1. What is the significance of my experience in India?

• My time in India served as a transformative phase where I deeply engaged with spiritual teachings, met various gurus, and grappled with personal identity, ultimately shaping my understanding of spirituality.
  •  

How do I connect mental health with spirituality?

• Spiritual practices can provide tools for coping with mental health challenges, suggesting that addressing the psychological aspects of depression and addiction can coexist with spiritual fulfillment.

What role does the Goddess play?

• The Goddess symbolizes divine female energy that guides and supports spiritual practices, representing an integral aspect of personal and universal spirituality.

What is the outcome of surrendering to divine grace?

• Surrendering leads to a greater understanding of one’s true nature, alleviating fears and anxieties while fostering.

Descending Grace!

I am a follower of the Goddess and I practice Kundalini yoga.

I repeat mantras which represent the centers of the body, and also represent certain Goddess forms, (which are not separate from the whole Shaktiform).

I repeat mantras to engage in the spiritual path. Also, because of my own personal sense of desperation!

They give me something indescribable but help me clearly to thrive despite a history of monastic reclusiveness, chronic depression, and a somewhat obsessive and addictive type personality.

The bottom line is that I need both my prayer to my Goddess and repetition of mantras for my own sanity.

The Goddess takes various forms, but it is the same Divinity that is also the Cosmic Consciousness. There is no real separation.

Chakras enable the Goddess Shakti, (power), to flow up and down as the Kundalinithrough each center from the crown of the head to the base of the spine. I have written considerably about this area in my other books.

Because of my engagement in Buddhist type meditation with a group, I am aware of Buddhist Goddesses including Tara, the mother Goddess of all the Buddha’s.

Tara is another form of the Hindu Goddesses with which I am very familiar but is much more popular in Tibetan Buddhism. So, Tara is a Goddess form, which some Tibetan gurus say is to be visualized as standing level with the eyebrows, or the third eye.

I am inspired by this Shaktipower, whatever form she takes, and hence continue to say, (as in the previous book), my writings are Goddess inspired……….

It would be nice to live a life that is easy without pain and without fear. Maybe possible for some to some degree. If we read the news, look around us, and possibly look at our own lives, we will see that this is not the case for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of the time.

From a spiritual perspective: Life and Universe is a learning experience for every moment or every breath.

Fear is a natural part of life since caveman times, when the fight or flight response was essential for survival. Now fear seems like a substratum, the foundation of our daily lives, and something that’s happening all the time, including and up to, the fear of death. We do a lot of things both for our survival and because we are fearful about what might happen to us if we don’t do certain things.

The spiritual teachers or Guides tell us that we are Divine beings, and in our Divine consciousness we are naturally free from fear. This does not translate into reality and probably never will if we are honest! Alright, reality itself may be seen as an illusion without permanence, it’s a philosophy idea that for most of us, still does not translate into something spiritually meaningful or lived experience.

It will be helpful to be centered and focused within one’s heart with solidarity with the level where you find a light that shines and inspires. This is where fear does not exist, and this translates or rather transforms the negative or dark energy in our lives. It will not just go away! It needs to be transmuted as in an alchemical process, and this may not happen in a “flash of light”. (As in “I have seen the light”). Anything towards helping us to deal with fears, anxieties and depressions, will also help alleviate our core fear. However, with significant clinical levels of depression/anxiety, medication may have benefits!

Cancer and other physical illnesses also will not just go away, just because we think we will, or may, take them out of existence. Again, there are those who have been “miraculously” cured, and those who have received great medical benefits.

But it is fantasy thinking to start putting any kind of outcomes in place, as the guaranteed benefit of any spiritual practice, positive thinking, or therapeutic healing etc. This is all ego territory, and the earnest spiritual practitioner should stay focused on what the real outcome of practice is. (Hopefully better self-surrender, better service of others, and a natural “high” based on love towards all life).

So, when we say, according to the Gnostic type philosophies, that I am the Cosmic Consciousness, or at least a Divine being, we are in psychological terms creating positivity and outlines or sketches for our individual souls to “feel into” the Cosmic Soul. (Who is free from all blemishes, including fear, disease and pain). That is if we don’t muddy the waters with our ego expectations.

The purpose or the agenda of the Truth is self-realization, not freedom from being human, or experiencing what it is to be human. Human experience still goes on even for the so-called realized person, because of the cumulative effects of past karma. This experience of remaining in the body and experiencing spiritual resonance with Truth while still having work, family, physical elements, fear and anxiety, is part and parcel of this thing called: Realistic Realization or Practical Enlightenment.

Of course, you may get there through the Christ, Krishna, Buddha, or other pathways. Your choice!

From a non-dual perspective, the world is an idea, just a result of thought activity, just an illusion with transient nature. You make things how they are by how you think. The human desires then acts, then then achieves, (or fails). In Divinity one does not act and if any actions take place, it is only the qualities of nature moving. These qualities of nature range from the pure to the filthy, the dark and deprived, to the place of light and selflessness.

So, the spiritual journey requires that we don’t give away our agenda of humanity, but we do give away the small individual soul. Especially the agenda that is based on darkness. An ego-based darkness which is full of, not just fear and anxiety, but also hatred, self-serving and the historical mankind starting point for: “divide and conquer”. (Historically also: “loot, rape and pillage”)!

Without operating from one’s own perceived or actual state of depression, anxiety, fear etc., the spiritual journey becomes truly focused on the attainment of the highest. It’s not where you will worry about the mortgage, what the kids are doing, or whether your hair is falling out, (or losing its color). More importantly it’s not where you are going to be angry all the time, because things don’t work out the way they should.

You become able to accept what is happening with serenity, without losing your ability to change things, and this is where fearlessness comes in, because you’re not frightened of outcomes or what people think of you.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change”.

Along with the wisdom to change the things you can.

enlightened we become. Even annoying little habits remain, or harmless ones.

Just stably being in the “witness state”, changes significantly the impact of any disorder or disease.  This witness state has been described in Vedanta philosophy as the soul’s overview and oversight of all activities in the world of Maya. In Buddhism there is also the meditation process which has been popularized in western culture as a mindfulness way that has therapeutic benefit.

All can be changed, because when we recognize our Strengths as opposed to our weaknesses we go about life in a very different way. (See also literature on the Strengths Model in mental health care).

The transformation occurs when the small ego-based self or personality aligns to the Truth which is other than our inherent nature. Not just a change or different person. We want to be a different Being which is our own Divinity, shining through and lighting up our daily business.

I am!

This comes after we ask: Who am I?

When we are hurt enough by the surface business, we go down and dive deeper and deeper, dependent on to how desperate we are. We even become willing to self-surrender to a Higher Power or Deity and give “handing it over” a “whirl over”.

We want that energy. That consciousness.

As we go to God or some Higher Powe & Grace comes to us

Life then is not a problem. It then is our teacher, our means of liberation, and a source that we can express gratitude for.

It’s all in our nature to be fearful, anxious, and reactive. And it’s in our nature to retain petty defects, such as picking one’s nose in public!

Also of course, we all want perfect cures, with perfect release from what ails us.

Therefore, the therapeutic or self-help managed interventions will have limitations, which is not to say they won’t work very well, especially in terms of recovery or remission.

The true spiritual path goes, however, into the transcendental, and sees recovery and remission as almost incidental. This is when we move into a new way of living in a new home for our soul and enter into the Higher Rooms of existence.

This is when we bring the Divine Light into our darkness, or we walk into the light and therefore leave the darkness behind.

Then perhaps, probably, we hope, we leave behind our negative personalities, or rather all the unhelpful mechanisms in our lives, keeping what’s essential for physical well-being. This includes keeping those ingrained petty habits that run their own show. (As long as they do no harm).

We no longer label ourselves with dysfunctions we got from our psychiatrists, therapists and spouses. We are not called depressed, alcoholic, borderline, narcissistic or neurotic.

We also move past the need for PTSD, addiction and so forth, simply because we leave the past behind and enter the future of Divine Sanity

Doing this requires a leap. Add on also a choice to make the leap, and to stay with the pathway chosen to Spiritual Nirvana. Even with this choice, healthy action can be difficult within the turmoil of everyday life, which does not want to let go. Even the monks and the nuns get this problem! That’s why we may need a Deity, a Higher Power, Incarnations or even God. (Even a Goddess)!

Therefore, it does not really need the external cave dwelling or robes. Boots, shoes, suits or T-shirts will do!

More importantly it’s not about changing jobs, marriage, and relationships.

Especially the relationships!

Seeking comfort is a distraction from the real work of overcoming fear and reactivity, let alone desire. However, we are in situations where we need to be. This is at any given time, if we can accept, learn from it, and transcend it.

If we fight the dream, the illusion or impermanence, we support it in some ways. If we bring it into the light of Truth, the darkness disappears along with the “crazy dream”.

We are free, not only from our need for salvation, but from the journey also.