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Donald Grayston on Thomas Merton

Donald calls Thomas Merton his “spiritual advisor in absentia”. Merton’s ideas of contemplation & a contemplative life … his visit with the Dalai Lama, and most surprisingly … how Merton’s long-censored book on peace is startlingly relevant to the current Iraq situation.

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Aleksandra: Death Doesn’t Exist

Aleksandra shares her reflections on the meaning and process of death with Carol Sill. These ideas are based in her deeply devotional meditative experience, which has evolved over several decades.
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Aleksandra on Spiritual Evolution

Aleksandra talks with Carol Sill about the evolution that occurs in spiritual life, the awakening to the point where we wish to go further.
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Aleksandra On Spiritual Life

Aleksandra talks with Carol about her experience and learning on the spiritual path, the benefits of the spiritual life and living the right life for you.

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Jody Renee Sillence: Forgiveness

Jody Sillence continues her conversation with Carol Sill on the power and beauty of forgiveness in the path of awakening. If you have ever experienced the deep healing feelings of forgiveness then ….

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Jody Renee Sillence: Self-Discovery

Part 1 of the discussion between author Jody Sillence and Carol Sill, on self-discovery and awakening through journaling.
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Nothing New Under the Sun

Poem by Seppo Kaarlo Odell

Nothing New Under the Sun

republican democratic
supersize s.u.v.
soccer den mothers!
Your thoughts are safe with me
imagination is just too scary for you!

the wise Woman
the ancient eyes that guide
buried
somewhere in your house.
Isis hides
between the pages of Town&Country,
culture has halted
stopped!

you know everything is connected!
bad breathing air
bad mothers’ milk
melting glaciers
dead forest
confused cells.

stir yourself up…pyramid Priestess!
Awaken your sons!
So busy creating
more
greed culture
frat house beers
on the lawn…
the date rape babes
graduating
asleep in the dorm
class after class
while the Earth turns into Mars.
Come on, Mom…!

Teresa Bockhold: Feng Shui (Pt.2)

The interpenetration and influence of the inner and outer realms and the metaphysics behind feng shui are discussed by Teresa Bockold in conversation with Carol Sill.

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Teresa Bockhold: Feng Shui (pt.1)

Feng Shui consultant, Teresa Bockhold, talks with Carol Sill in West Vancouver about her holistic approach to feng shui.
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The Soul and Balanced Mastery

In my experience of myself as the soul I feel that my main purpose in the world is to create, and that’s where I get the most joy. That’s the feedback that comes to me from those higher levels. So it has nothing to do with being able to control other people or have power or money or influence or any of that, it’s just the sheer joy of creation.

Lee Van Patten talks with Carol Sill

C: Hi, I’m Carol Sill and I’m here in Vancouver talking with Lee Van Patten about spiritual life and inner development and how that expresses in the world. So maybe you could just tell us something about your path, and what you are involved with right now?

L: I’ll tell you a little about my path. I think I really got going in my spiritual life back in the ‘70s. I studied for a while with a man who was involved in Indian guruism that had to do with a Swami in India and he was carrying on that tradition. I kind of fell into it by happenstance, and I wasn’t really attracted to it and I became disillusioned with guruism in general. I could see how it was not a balanced system that created a lot of problems among the people that were following gurus.

But at that time I also read the Ouspensky material, about George Gurdjieff, so I became interested in Sufism. And then I read some Idries Shah stuff as well, so I learned a little more about Sufism. Then I met some Sufi people in Toronto and studied with them for a while but there were some things I didn’t like about organizations, spiritual organizations in general.

Over time I came to feel that any organization that has to exist for a long period of time, maybe it’s based on a charismatic leader. The charismatic leader passes away but the organization continues on. But in order to continue on it usually attracts people that are bureaucrats basically, who are there for their own self-interest, to have a career. And the organization begins to lose the essence of the spirit from which it originally came. So I moved away from that as well, but I continued my own inner process to the best of my ability.

I’m almost 60 years old and what I’d like to convey here is a couple of things I’ve learned along the way. One is that I believe it’s wrong to think of ourselves as having a soul. I think it’s kind of the other way around, that we’re actually the soul, and we are manifesting through a physical form.

That change in perspective is important, because if you think that you have a soul, that is your ego owning the soul and essentially controlling it. And when people think of their soul in that context they often think of a child-like kind of a semi-formed entity that has feelings but no real power. In actual fact, when we come from the soul perspective, we have a lot of power, and we have a lot of creative energy.

In my experience of myself as the soul I feel that my main purpose in the world is to create, and that’s where I get the most joy. That’s the feedback that comes to me from those higher levels. So it has nothing to do with being able to control other people or have power or money or influence or any of that, it’s just the sheer joy of creation. When you’re in that space I think you’re really well connected with your soul. The minute you try and own your artwork or own anybody’s anything then you begin to lose that feeling and you go into the ego.

The other thing that I’ve learned over the course of my life is what I call the Inner Family. And that is that people don’t really grow up, in the sense that we think of growing up in our society, where you develop from a child to an adolescent to an adult. I don’t think it’s really like that. I think it’s more like these are developmental layers that pile on top of each other. That child persona or aspect of ourselves doesn’t go away, nor does the adolescent.

So therefore in order to be a balanced person at the adult stage we need to have a balanced inner family. It is our adult that provides the stability and security for those earlier aspects of ourselves that are still present and are still expressing. If we don’t have a balanced inner family, if say there are unmet needs at the adolescent level, that adolescent’s going to keep rebelling in our lives in our internal life and in our external life, regardless of how strongly developed the adult level appears to be.

That’s important in the spiritual sense because in order to bring through the soul and have that soul be able to express in a balanced and productive way, all of those aspects of ourselves have to be happy, with each other. And then that’s going to express in a really positive way. Without that, I guess an example would be like a person who meditates for several hours a day, and yet in the rest of their life they’re not happy, things aren’t working out for them. Well, that’s because there’s an overabundance of focus on spiritual practice, but they haven’t done the inner work that’s necessary to bring all of that into harmony and bring it into expression.

And that, I think, is the essence of being a spiritual master. Mastery is not in the sense of control but in the sense of skillful use of everything that comes to you in your life, that you have all of those things well-lined up with each other, and you have that inner peace that allows the soul to express. Without that you haven’t really gotten there yet, no matter how adept you are at one spiritual path or another.

C: Beautiful. Thank you.

View the video of this conversation.

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