Welcome to SpiritWeb,
First of all, I do not claim to give an overview of all spiritual concepts, but of some which I feel are sincere and comprehend a part of the bigger reality. What I first feature and support are alternative approaches to spirituality, besides the established religions.
The established religions are valid for the people who can relate themselves to a certain view of the world, of God or All-That-Is, but certainly there is a new but actually, an ancient way to discover spirituality beyond dogmatic scriptures and beliefs but based on personal experiences:
Channeling is a process of passing information from within yourself, which may be perceived as your inner voice, or if you are more open, may be perceived as spirit-guardians or your Higher-Self (non-embodied Self). In ancient times this kind of poetry and counseling was well known in the form of prophecies and visions from seers or shamans. Almost every culture knew and counted on these prophecies and visions, and I think they counted on them because they knew they were based on real perception beyond the physical plane. I consider this vision and channeling process worthwhile because it provides an additional point of view from which you can live spirituality. Therefore I give some space for these kinds of messages here.
Lightwork is a term that describes consciousness and spirituality which is lived in daily life, rather than setting aside special days to celebrate dogmatic rituals the way many established religions do. Lightwork covers a wide range of activities, which may start in small circles doing meditation, discussing concepts and sharing healing energies with each other, and finally activation of places and intuitive abilities. One well-known activation was Harmonic Convergence 1987, then 11:11 and also 12:12. Most of such activations have two sides, one side anchors divine energies on the physical plane by uniting thoughts and the will to bring understanding into human consciousness, and the other side enables the people who participate to rediscover through the activation process the inner qualities they always had but covered up by forgetting.
In ancient times, people used to call those beings gods (Elohim) or angels. Today, with the belief-concept of western culture, we use the term extraterrestrials or aliens to describe presences who don’t live on Earth, but in other planes, realms or dimensions. We need to recover the spiritual side in all of us since our rational minds have denied it for so long. Our vocabulary is under construction, as we rediscover each part of the other realms consciously, step by step. The UFO-Phenomena and belief-concepts of space brothers/sisters, who are watching over us and offering guidance is a modern expression, whereas the ascended masters are the more traditional expression of discovering the mystical side we all have. Some may remain in old ignoring and reject realities, others open themselves to new ones and will have and make their own experiences.
There are life, energy, and consciousness, and all three words describe one thing: the Soul, the essence of our divinity. This essence exists in many worlds or dimensions. We all come from the inner worlds and are embodied in an outer world we call the physical world. One slice of another dimension is what we call dreams, one step further to control the dreams is called lucid-dreaming, another step is controlling the pass-over from awakened-state to sleep-state to full-consciousness, and one such state of consciousness might be called out-of-body experience (OBE or OOBE) or Soul-Traveling. Beside those particular techniques, meditation has different meanings. One is a contemplation technique, and another a more spiritual connection that controls the mind with a mantra. Anyway, this all prepares your awareness and inner knowledge to become conscious of some planes with your conscious mind, remembering that you exist simultaneously and multidimensionally on all planes and that it is only your attention that relates you to one or another reality or realm.
Reincarnation is a concept that perceives an evolution of the soul on a physical plane. From a higher point of view, we experience all lives simultaneously, and only when we become aware of the portions of our Self that aren’t embodied (Holy-Spirit in Christian context, Higher-Self in the modern context, Paramatma in Vedic-context), are we able to perceive those other life-experiences. Past or future don’t matter; only the body with its mind relates us to a defined space-time. If you can perceive in a time-independent way, as the soul does, you are beyond it. One step in this self-realization might be the reality of Reincarnation.
Yoga is a system for realizing your connection to God, which only comes with the realization of the Holy-Spirit, Higher-Self or Paramatma (the name depends only on the cultural or religious context you grew up within). Religion has the same meaning as Yoga, but the word “religion” too often is (mis)used, and leaves many people with a bad taste. For most people, Yoga means doing some athletic practices to train the body, but that’s Hatha Yoga, where many realizations, from the importance of breathing (i.e., pranayama) to the chakras are taught. There are many additional ways to practice Yoga, and in this section, I have tried to provide a kind of overview of “Reconnecting to God,” true Yoga, true Religion (without an organized hierarchy or dogmas).
Veda & Dharma, where Veda represents the inner knowledge, and dharma the dedication and reason to live, often called the “meaning of life” in western terminology. I decided to collect some material on this topic because I considered the Vedic understanding and view of spirituality to be one of the most profound and complete of the belief-systems that are still present today (versus those many belief-systems that have been lost). I was hoping to share some material beyond the somewhat limited Hinduism understanding of the western world. When Veda means knowing, then everywhere spirituality is practiced a Vedic culture. The section on Veda & Dharma isn’t specific to India but is a glimpse of a Vedic culture which remained in India the longest time. Vedic culture exists anywhere on Earth where native teaching and spirituality are taught, but in most cases, the teaching is fragmented or has nearly disappeared as a result of western influences.
Theosophy, an approach to transform Vedic knowledge into western thinking. There was, and is still, much controversy about its success, but I think it was needed by many people around 1900 when materialism appeared to be the only way of humanity. Theosophy was created by the need to understand mystical teachings, especially the eastern approach to the mystical. It was later enriched and influenced by those individuals who gave Theosophy further expression.
Mysticsm is a term which means mystos keeping silence or myen to be closed (i.e., the eyes or lips), something unspeakable. In the ancient past, much knowledge of a spiritual nature was collected by a master and given to his or her disciples. Most traditions of sharing mysteries were organized into groups with different levels of initiation (priest, priestess, etc.). Those titles were used to represent a certain stage of awareness and weren’t intended to create a hierarchy. But many mystical schools turned into places where hierarchical power battles were played until they disappeared because of lack of disciples or lost the battle with the power-greedy Christian movement in the Middle Ages. This section within SpiritWeb does try to give an overview of those mainly western mystical schools.
Healing is a term to recover health in a physical sense, that’s the usual use of this term, I hope to expand that view to an understanding to recover true identity as spirit, where health is an expression of soul-balance. The chakra (Sanskrit for spinning wheels) are the major expression of our spirit through the physical body, and its balance is the key to realize spirit. This can happen without the understanding of chakras itself, but it may help to understand more of the relation of the different bodies (physical, astral, emotional, mental).
Astrology is the science of the influence of planets toward individuals and humankind as such. The planets are celestial beings, and those seen with our physical eyes are those beings wearing physical bodies. The planets are a clockwork, where each planet expose and rediscover aspect in ourselves. We are not only connected to Earth in the ecological term, but we are connected with the Solar-system and Universe as well. “There is time to do the right thing,” this is astrology.
Well, that’s briefly some sections you may read about in SpiritWeb. My perception and thoughts you may read in RKMCorner.
Some topics of spirituality which you can not find in SpiritWeb: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Taoism and many others are more or less traditional approaches to spirituality. Every one of those religions also has such mystical aspects as esoteric teaching or secret doctrines, but these esoteric or metaphysical teachings almost don’t play any importance anymore, except for a small minority within each of these religions; at least, that is my perception. You may look at the Yahoo Index of Religions: Faith & Practices for further information.
Religion means re-connecting, and religions were invented because people lost touch with themselves. The people were like lost sheep looking for a shepherd, and then when the shepherd finally came and said, “Divinity comes from within,” the people started to write it down, and after many generations, the people believed divinity comes from within the book it was written.
How many scriptures do we need to understand that divinity comes from within the heart of each one of us?