Faith And Personal Spiritual Experience
I come from a long line of orthodox priests. My grandfathers and all the lineages behind them were priests — orthodox priests with strong religious belief patterns. They were not happy when I would stay for hours and hours in lotus posture as a child, reading, eating or speaking with the people around me. They told me that religion does not accept that. Sitting in a lotus flower posture for them was something unimaginable, difficult or impossible to comprehend. Later when I told them that true religion is to know God as your Father (Mother) and man as your brother (sister) they were enraged and furious.
We have to understand that during the psychologically unsettling times of the 20th and 21st century, when all economic upheavals occurred, amid sociological rip tides of the cyclonic transitions of a scientific era and the moral crosscurrents, millions of humans have become humanly dislocated. They were fearful, uncertain, unsettled, anxious, restless and stressed. As never before in human history they needed consolation and stabilization of sound religion. In the face of unprecedented scientific achievement and mechanical development there was a clear spiritual stagnation.
However, I have to say that modern science has weakened only those religions which are so largely dependent upon fear, superstition and emotion. Unfortunately, it is what one believes rather than what one knows that determines conduct and dominates personal performance. Purely factual knowledge exerts very little influence upon the average man unless it becomes emotionally activated. But the activation of religion is super-emotional, unifying the entire human experience on transcendent levels through contact with, and release of, spiritual energies in the mortal life.
Religion is a personal spiritual experience. It is first an inner or personal adjustment, and then it becomes a matter of social service. It is not a slavish belief in threats of punishment or magical promises of future mystical rewards. A few weeks ago I was talking with somebody who was trying to convince me and the other guests that Jesus and Buddha and all the other Masters, were trying to build their own religious system. I explained then that, for example, Jesus didn’t look to build a religious system. Jesus shattered tradition, destroyed dogma, and called mankind to the achievement of its highest ideals in time and eternity — to be perfect, even as the Father in Heaven is perfect. Jesus sought to restore man’s dignity when he declared that all men are the children of God.
However, since true religion is a matter of personal spiritual experience, it is inevitable that each individual religionist must have his own personal interpretation of the realization of that spiritual experience.
It is basically a matter of “faith”. Faith stands for the individual’s relation to God, not a creedal formulation of what some group of humans have been able to agree upon as a common religious attitude. What is faith then? Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.
What is happening now all over the world is a transition accompanied by confusion, a transition from institutionalized religions to a real spiritual brotherhood of God-knowing individuals. A true religion is to stimulate individual development of character and augment integration of personality, it must not be standardized. It has to be a personal experience, it must not be stereotyped.
What Drunvalo is teaching us is that we have to take ownership of our beliefs, we have to empower ourselves and have our own personal experiences that will lead us to become God-knowing humans. Being able to go in the Heart is basically a God-knowing experience. Drunvalo is teaching us that there are no “chosen-people”. Everybody has a Sacred Space of the Heart. Every human can and has to make this journey: move the consciousness and the spirit from the brain to the heart. It is possible. It is achievable. This is our only chance to remain here: on our Mother Earth.
We can never wisely decide temporal issues or transcend the selfishness of personal interests unless we meditate in the presence of God and work with the realities of divine meanings and spiritual values. This meditation has to be done inside of the Heart. There you will literally meet your Higher Self and you will become a God-knowing human.
I have faith that we are able to magnify the truth, beauty and goodness if we are in the heart. I have faith that we are able to provide wise counsel and spiritual guidance, that we are able to overcome the fixation of beliefs and crystallization of sentiments. I know that we can avoid the tendency to standardize and fossilize the truth. We are all able to go in the Heart and create a better world.
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Daniel Mitel
For over 30 years, Daniel Mitel has searched for spiritual meaning around the globe. Everywhere he travelled -- from Tibet to Africa, Siberia to Egypt, Canada to South Korea -- he found a hunger among the people to find a new way of life. So many people want to understand their relationship to their inner and outer worlds. Daniel has been practicing martial arts and meditation since 1981, and teaching worldwide. As a martial arts master, Daniel is dedicated to inspiring the world to move from violence to peace, and from anger to love. He has been teaching the Tibetan Heart Meditation, Cleaning the Past Meditation and chakra cleaning worldwide Since 1996. Daniel also created the Body, Heart and Soul Workshop and the Meditation Day Workshop. Throughout his work, workshops and spiritual conferences, Daniel has changed the lives of thousands of people. Now Daniel is bringing the Awakening The Illuminated Heart Workshop to the world. This is a workshop covering the entire life work of Drunvalo Melchizedek. Daniel is proud to call Drunvalo a mentor and teacher, and considers Drunvalo’s work to be among the most profound and important material in the world at this time. By teaching Awakening The Illuminated Heart, Daniel is sharing a message of hope and possibility to anyone who wants to experience a new understanding of life; an understanding which comes from the heart. Drunvalo Melchizedek appointed Daniel to the first Council of School of Remembering: the Awakening The Illuminated Heart (ATIH) Teacher’s Council. Daniel is now travelling all over the world teaching the Awakening The Illuminated Heart Workshop. Daniel is blessed to be working with children, teaching them Tai Chi and Meditation. Lastly, in recent years, Daniel has changed the life of hundreds of children through his work at the Montessori Schools. www.danielmitel.com