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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781463448950 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 08/22/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 164 |
| File size: | 192 KB |
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Harnessing the Force
A Manual for Weary SeekersBy Richard Koepke
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Richard KoepkeAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-4897-4
Chapter One
Grasshopper Implants
Chapter one of The Force sets the theme that God is in total charge of the universe and that God gives to each one of us certain implanted experiences that we can draw from when the time is right. Actor David Carradine played Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970's television series Kung Fu and was called Grasshopper by his spiritual teacher because of one particular lesson he had been taught as a boy. As an adult, Caine wanders through the American Wild West (spiritually wandering in the wilderness) invoking those learned spiritual lessons in the fullness of time.
The phrase, in the fullness of time, is a biblical theological concept from Galatians 4:4. In the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. In other words, the implanted lessons that Caine was taught at the Monastery would be remembered and harnessed to help others when the time is right to do so. Thus, Caine is God's messenger bringing those spiritual lessons to those who were really meant to hear them. He was given those lessons and experiences purposely to help others down the road when that moment finally arrives to apply the particular lesson learned. In those television episodes, he remembers the spiritually implanted lessons via flashback technique to his childhood past.
It is my basic premise that we are all given spiritual lessons throughout life that can be harnessed and used when the time is right. Nothing we experience is coincidence but rather those experiences are carefully designed for our soul growth and given to us for a specific reason. I am saying that God is extremely active personally in each and every one of our lives and has every pre-planned experience down to the minutest detail. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without Infinite Intelligence' complete awareness. Nothing in life is coincidence! The entire universe, including us, has Infinite Intelligence in its design. God is the webmaster/webmistress in charge of the entire universe and not just of one site on the World Wide Web!
If God is in such total charge of the universe, then where does free will come into play? I believe that we each enter life at a specific pre-chosen time and place (in the fullness of time) with certain soul lessons to be experienced and learned in each lifetime- God's plan for our lives. That is our destiny of where we were meant to be. You are always where you are supposed to be at any given moment in your life. However, within that destined life path, we also have a certain freedom to choose from infinite possibilities of experiences that which we wish to experience as well (our free will), so long as it doesn't conflict with our planned destiny points in life. In other words, I think life is something like 75% free will and 25% destiny, much like the ratio of free will and destiny cards in the tarot deck. I can choose to go to New York City and see a Broadway musical, my free will, for instance. That choice will not hinder my destiny at all, you see.
However, with free will also comes potential for evil to enter the world as well- metaphorically speaking, the biblical snake's temptations acted upon in the Garden of Eden. We all have free will and do harm to others for our own selfish ends. The biblical definition of sin is to be way off base so as to miss the mark (target) altogether, like missing the whole dart board in darts, or to move 180 degrees in a rebellious direction away from God. "I am all that (a very important person) and I want it (say, a divorce or a Porsche), so I should have it, no matter who is hurt or destroyed by my selfishness"- the "I" in sin, if you will.
What does the "I" in sin concretely mean? In the news today, for example, a seventeen year old Florida teenager allegedly murdered his two parents with a hammer and then celebrated by holding a big party at his house that dozens attended. Powerful media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son were getting grilled by lawmakers for the phone-hacking scandal rocking Great Britain that includes police corruption at the very top echelons. A gallop poll out today indicates that Americans believe that political party self interests are motivating the debt talks. Could these all be examples of the "I" in sin?
In the Garden of Eden, it is the biblical sin of pride that is being exposed, namely, that if you eat of the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, you will be as knowledgeable as God and therefore will not need God anymore! You can be your own God!!! Such stinking thinking leads to stinking feeling leads to sins of selfish desire- like violence, theft, rape, torture, adultery and murder. The "I" in sin leads a person to negative blaming, shaming and stereotyping of others and becomes the birthplace for such things as concentration camps and Zyklon B gas. We might say that it is the heart of a person that is important and that sin stains the heart. Nowhere is this truer than with Nazi extermination camps, Communist pogroms, American government torture prisons as well as our government's admitted human guinea pig experiments, etc.
Getting back to grasshopper or spiritual implants, I use several examples from my own life in The Force to illustrate this idea. In the first "home run derby" example of losing my ball one day in childhood, the point is clearly that sometimes, when we don't find answers where we think they should be, we need to look outside the box to where we don't think they should be. We have too often been culturally brainwashed to think in a tribal mindset that preaches only one size must fit all (even when it doesn't). "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," or something to that effect! Orthodoxy becomes law and the right to think apart from the tribe becomes mental illness or deficiency.
What is the meaning of the tribal mind? We have been religiously and culturally conditioned or brainwashed to think the thoughts of the tribal understanding of things, whether it is about Christianity, nationalism, or things like psychiatric hypothetical constructs (sitting in judgment and then labeling a person with a certain disease without autopsy, say, ADHD or Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and other such dubious "mental illnesses").
When we think outside the official party line or box, the tribe tends to want to excommunicate those wishing the right to think independently, whether it is my own experience with the Presbyterian Church, Galileo, Martin Luther, or even John Lennon suffering the persecution of the jingoistic American government for supporting the anti-war movement during the Vietnam police action, for example. (Note: My understanding of a "conflict" or government "police action" is an undeclared war without populace approval or support, sometimes also referred to as a limited war by those in power.)
The tribal (group) mind tends to discourage (independent) free thinkers. However, even a sponge has the right to think, it is said in the classic movie, Inherit the Wind. This concept will be discussed in greater detail in another chapter. For example, were the American "Indians" really just savages while the American military "Custer's" the truly civilized people taming the wild west- as I learned in elementary school as a child? Remember the 1949 John Wayne movie, Fort Apache where the Henry Fonda (Custer caricature) character rubs both the Indians as well as his own men the wrong way in his personal obsession for glory? Native Americans may see it quite differently than those on the winning side of that war- even as the biblical Israelites might have seen it quite differently from their numerous conquerors as well.
The second example of a grasshopper (or spiritual) implant is how I learned the value of an education. My father wanted us children to have a better life than he did, and, as a child, it was never "if" you go to college but rather "when" you go to college. He was the messenger for that Spirit message. All four of us were meant to become professionals with college degrees.
In my third example of spiritual grasshopper implants, I use the example, also from my father, of the value of a dollar. Like Caine's lessons in Kung Fu, these values were implanted in me as to where my life was headed during my own childhood. Today I live frugally and happily without any credit card debt. If I don't have it, I don't spend it. I don't want more but enjoy less! Learn to appreciate what you do have instead of focusing on what you don't have. I don't need a Wii system in order to be happy! "Wii" will not make "me" happ-ii. Neither will a brand new home or a Porsche that I can't afford. Will Miss Universe or Miss USA make me happy? Okay, I'm vacillating a little there! LOL. (I wouldn't mind testing my theory out on that one!) So I'm a little weak on that point- nobody's perfect! The point is that external things or people don't make you happy and you cannot serve both God and mammon (materialism as an evil or dishonorable pursuit). Happiness resides within and not without.
The fourth example of a grasshopper or spiritual implant is in my getting an MS Degree in Education. That which may have seemed at the time like a superfluous degree as a clergyman not planning on teaching school for a career, Spirit nevertheless implanted numerous lessons from that experience that I would use in my counseling practice later on. For example, I teach clients the difference in parenting between eliciting and then rewarding behaviors (learning) versus punishment- my Ward Cleaver approach as I call it. (Remember Leave it to Beaver?) That degree also implanted other lessons, too, such as the differences between the left and right brain tasks so important in my understanding of psychic ability in the fullness of time.
The fifth and sixth examples of grasshopper implants were in seeing two moments of Dorothy Stratten's life on earth on TV long before I ever connected with her. Exactly thirty years to the month before my book about Dorothy was published in 2009, I came home from work in October, 1979 and turned on the TV to a Playboy Roller Disco special that featured Dorothy. Six months later, in April, 1980, Dorothy was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson as the 1980 Playmate of the Year. I had absolutely no clue back then that she and I would cross paths and become connected as BFF. My guides knew, however, and I was meant to have those two experiences implanted. Grasshopper implants are experiences that will be harnessed often years after the time they were given to us.
The example of Belle, our black cat, like the Stratten examples, is both a grasshopper implant and also a highly symbolic one as well. Belle is a physical symbol of psychic ability and where my life was heading during the next decade. We are given numerous signs like this along life's path from Spirit if we would only pay attention to them.
The next concept I present is why being on the cutting edge of society can lead to getting abused and how a spiritual leader may well become orphaned from the group as a result. I reference Carolyn Myss' book, Sacred Contracts, where she makes this exact point about, in my case, taking the "Hero's Journey" archetype in fulfilling one's spiritual contract with the universe. When you become conscious of your contract, you go through a painful social severance because you are no longer a part of the tribal mind.
I say that I am a Moses now, going up the mountain of hallowed Consciousness (awareness) and having my own personal, communicating relationship with Yahweh and those on the other side of the veil. There is a price to pay for such enlightenment, however, the slings and arrows of the golden-calf-making tribal members below my level of Consciousness. Those who live in their lower selves always want to pull you down to their (lower) tribal level of spiritual functioning. However, it is when we transcend ourselves by raising our own Consciousness, going up that metaphoric mountain to see the Lord, that we can no longer be the same as before our Consciousness was raised. We become enlightened to a higher self and a higher level of spiritual functioning. We have crossed the Rubicon and there is no turning back.
Our astrological charts, as well as numerology, the spiritual study of numbers, are not coincidental. They are like AAA TripTiks and tour books that provide valuable information if we but take the time to discover their signposts as to where our lives are headed on our life's journey.
There are four lessons of the soul that correspond to what is elemental in life: earth, wind, fire and water. We must learn to rise above our lower "don't get mad, get even" V-2 rocket (vindictive reprisal weapon) world in order to learn these soul lessons. We must learn to do no harm- much easier said than done. While water symbolizes gaining control of our emotions, air symbolizes gaining control of our thoughts. Fire symbolizes the harnessing of our actions and learning how to love (especially our enemies and those who do harm to us), while earth is about harnessing the first three into service, caregiving and servanthood.
Throughout history, these elements have been noted in four basic personality temperaments. For those of you familiar with the Myers- Briggs Personality Inventory, those temperament letters are included below:
1. The friendly, idealistic self-expressive types like actors, poets and writers (NF).
2. The innovative, action oriented "flirt with death" adrenaline junkies that are the virtuoso of tools (SP).
3. The technical, theoretical, logical, scientific personality that gravitates towards anything complicated and exacting (NT).
4. The service-oriented caregiving personalities and conservers of tradition and history (SJ).
How do we forgive our enemies and those who harm us? Clinically, forgiveness has two aspects to it:
1. Let go of victimization and the "somebody done somebody wrong" song. We are victims if and only if we choose to be. Some people spend a lifetime being professional victims, but I don't recommend it. Let go and let God.
2. Identify the good in the harm doer. In other words, hate the sin but love the sinner. Again, that is much easier said than done.
Living a Healthy Lifestyle
When I was a boy, there was a pithy saying that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. While I have seen only scant empirical research to back that expression up, I have, however, seen considerably more positive correlation between healthy relationships and wellness. I believe that having good relationships to God, self and others promotes better overall health. The holistic approach of developing mind, body and spirit is a tried and true approach to living in a better quality of life. The question is: how do we create healthy relationships in the midst of our violent society?
How do you turn an enemy into a friend? Do you bomb them into submission? Dump Agent Orange onto them? Torture them and deprive them of their human rights such as habeas corpus and the right to a speedy and fair trial? Do government ordered medical experiments on them without their permission? Should you waterboard them into friendship? It is interesting to note that during World War II, the United States hung Japanese prisoners for waterboarding American soldiers. Should Americans now be hung for waterboarding others? If it was wrong then, isn't it still just as wrong today? Has American cultural morality slipped into the abyss of total barbarism? It sure seems to be the case these days!
It is the premise of this chapter that health and wellness go hand in hand. However, we live in a very sick society that promotes neither health nor wellness, but preaches instead violence and revenge as seemingly the only answer to healthy living- don't get mad, get even! The Bible, by contrast, tells us to repay evil with good and that "Vengeance is mine ... saith the Lord."
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. (Romans 12:19, King James Version)
One of my many favorite movies is Dances with Wolves. I believe that this movie offers a blueprint on how to become friends with your enemies as well as how to live in a state of wellness. The movie stars Kevin Costner as Lieutenant John J. Dunbar, a decorated civil war soldier assigned to the then far west post of Fort Sedgwick, Colorado. There he encounters Lakota Sioux "Indians" who are purported to be "beggars and thieves." He discovers that they are quite the contrary to what he has been told about them and that they are anything but barbaric.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Harnessing the Force by Richard Koepke Copyright © 2011 by Richard Koepke. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
In the Beginning....................ixChapter 1 Grasshopper Implants....................1
Chapter 2 Living a Healthy Lifestyle....................9
Chapter 3 Magnificent Obsession....................21
Chapter 4 The Pain Within....................29
Chapter 5 Living in Gratitude....................39
Chapter 6 Accepting "Whatever"....................47
Chapter 7 Love Never Dies (and Neither Do We)....................55
Chapter 8 The Age of Aquarius....................63
Chapter 9 Soul Music....................71
Chapter 10 The Force is with You Always....................77
Chapter 11 Living in Abundance....................89
Chapter 12 Spiritual Supervision....................95
Chapter 13 Living in Joy....................103
Chapter 14 Having a Sense of Humor....................109
Chapter 15 Telescoping the Future....................115
Chapter 16 A New Vision....................123
Chapter 17 The Best is Yet to Come....................131