Carrying Feelings from a Past Life into the Current Life
This post is inspired by a follow-up question from Jolanda, who’s been married to an abusive man for four years. For background on Jolanda’s situation you may want to refer to our earlier posts: Whether to Leave an Abusive Relationship, Follow-up Questions on Leaving an Abusive Relationship, and Help Leaving an Abusive Husband.
In her comment that inspired this current post Jolanda asks if The Council can explain the strong feelings of attachment, obligation, and protection she has toward her abusive husband. And The Council says it comes from a lifetime in the 1400s where her husband was her unruly son. The feelings of protection she has in this lifetime are from the memory of wanting to protect her child in that lifetime.
In this other lifetime Jolanda believed more in herself and her natural spiritual powers, but there were many people in this time who were being punished for being witches. Because her son (her husband in her current life) was so difficult he decided to report Jolanda as a witch, and her life was ended because of this.
In pre-planning their current lifetime together Jolanda’s husband wanted to be with her as an adult, to be more open to her spiritual beliefs, and to show her more caring. Their pre-birth plan was to give both of them the opportunity for a good and loving life together. But the husband still carries feelings from this other lifetime of wanting to punish Jolanda, and he hasn’t gotten to the stage where he can ask himself why he treats her the way he does.
Jolanda asks The Council if she and her husband will be able to resolve these powerful issues from this other lifetime. And The Council says at this time, where they see her husband’s energy heading, they do not see a change coming any time soon. Although they add the husband is still able to create opportunities to change and see things differently if he desires.
Even though these feelings from this other lifetime were strong, so was the desire for change. When they returned to spirit and looked at that life, they were willing to give each other the chance to change it in this lifetime, to bring love into the situation and make this a life of joy.
Jolanda asks The Council if they see her finding true happiness. She says her life has been a relationship battleground until now and she would like to experience the peace, harmony, and true love she feels she deserves. The Council advises Jolanda to find the love she is looking for within herself. She is able to find true happiness by leaving the relationship and finding another partner. Or she can stay in this relationship, but The Council advises her to see it differently because of this new information she has now.
She can choose one path and if it doesn’t work she can choose another. But always begin by feeling the love for yourself and knowing if this relationship doesn’t work out, you both went into it to give each other that opportunity. And they add there’s nothing wrong with that.
Listen to the entire 11-minute session we had with The Council (below) to hear all their guidance for Jolanda and the rest of us, and tell us what you think.
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You’re Here to Experience Everything With Love
This post is inspired by a question from Ali who asks if you have a natural talent for something are you obliged to use this talent.
The Council says there’s no obligation. You come with gifts and you chose whether to use them or not. There is no should. You have a talent you brought forth in this lifetime if it brings you pleasure to use it. They ask what is the purpose of practicing art, even if you are talented, if it doesn’t bring you joy. You are suppose to enjoy what you do; find fun in it; love it. These are the things you want to do in this lifetime.
The Council says they are here to hopefully give people clarity and help them feel better. They remind us we are here to bring love into every situation and know you have the choice of what you want to experience and how you want to experience it. And they remind us it’s our purpose to bring love from our spiritual reality into our human reality.
Look at every part of your life and ask if you are bringing love into it. Can you make your life more fun? Find a better way to experience your life. There’s no need for guilt or fear. When you experience these emotion it’s because you’ve forgotten you are pure love and light. That’s the true you.
You’re so much more than your body and the person you are in this reality. You’ve had many other lifetimes and many talents. Great beauty and great love is within you. You’re here with many spirits to experience anything you want to experience, and your intention is to experience everything with love.
The Council’s closing thoughts go beyond Ali’s questions to answer larger questions you may have about your life. Listen to the entire 6-minute recording to benefit from what The Council is saying.
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Should We Be Vegetarians?
In this question from Ali she asks if being a vegetarian raises your vibration. She understands animals agree on a spiritual level to be eaten, but she assumes these animals suffer and asks if we have an obligation to stop this suffering by not eating meat.
The Council says there are healthy vegetarians, sick vegetarians, and people who only eat junk food and are the healthiest people you’ll ever see. The difference is their beliefs. How you live a life that feels more comfortable to you depends on how you think about it. The Council says these animals do not suffer and it’s not necessary to become a vegetarian, but if you truly believe this is a better way to go, then travel that road.
Ali says she’s not currently a vegetarian, but feels a lot of guilt when she prepares meat. The Council asks her to look at why she puts herself in a reality where she feels guilty, and says only she can change it. They say explore whatever feels good to her and know that this is her higher self showing her the path it wishes to experience.
Listen to this 4-minute segment of a session to hear The Council’s full guidance.
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The Difference Between Worry and Guidance
This post is inspired by a question from Ali, who asks the difference between intuition and worry. When she feels the loving source of well-being, she knows everything is okay spiritually, but she still worries about physical events, mainly with her child. She wants to know how to tell when to accept these feelings as guidance and when to ignore them as worries.
The Council says guidance always comes with a calmness while worry comes from fear. You may feel a tightening or nervousness with fear, but with guidance and intuition you generally experience how to move through a difficult situation. They give an example of feeling intuition about a car accident, but you feel calm about it and take extra care while driving to prevent the accident.
Ali asks if her chronic worrying affects her point of attraction even if she doesn’t express it out loud. Ali has a lot of fear about vaccines and waited until recently to have her daughter vaccinated. The Council says Ali’s fear created the difficulty using her leg that her daughter temporarily experienced as a result of the vaccination.
When I asked if the situation is okay now The Council answered that it depends on how Ali focuses her attention. They remind us we create future experiences with our thoughts and if Ali continues to worry, she’ll create situations that keep her worrying. They recommend she acknowledge her worries, try to look at the situation differently, and ask herself how she can turn this worry around.
The Council says if you change the way you think about something, when it’s time to experience what you’ve been thinking about you can have a better reality than if you stayed thinking more negatively. Have a listen to the 6-minute part of the session with The Council to hear their guidance.
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Choosing Love vs. Battle
Gail’s question
In this post Gail talks about identifying with the spiritual warrior and asks The Council what this means to them. The Council responds by saying they don’t see Gail as a warrior. They ask her to look at her life and see that what she wants is a change in the way she’s manifesting. The warrior is one way to give Gail the strength she needs to make these changes, but The Council adds there are other ways.
Peaceful warrior
The Council adds that Gail can go in the vibration of the peaceful warrior, in the vibration of joy. And yet if she feels things are difficult and she needs to fight her way through to change what is not wanted, then the spiritual warrior is available to her. Both ways will take her to her goal.
As The Council has said many times, the bottom line is what she believes. If modeling herself after a warrior gives Gail comfort and that is her belief, then use this. But if if she can become the peaceful warrior, going within and finding the joy she truly is, there is nothing she cannot accomplish.
The choice is Gail’s, but The Council asks why go into battle when when she can go into love.
Click the triangle in the play bar below to listen to the 11 minute recording of Gail’s question and The Council’s answer.
Play: Click triangle (►). Pause: Click icon (||) that replaces the triangle while the recording plays. Fast Forward/Rewind: Click to the right/left of the play bar during play. Mute on/off: Click speaker icon. Volume: Click bar to the right of the speaker icon.
This post is part of a series of 4 questions that were answered by The Council on January 4, 2015. Stay tuned for posts on the other 3 questions, which are all on the subject of abortion. Copyright ℗ 2014 Bob & Cynthia Dukes
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A Question about Portals – an Answer About Creating Your Reality
During a recent session with The Council, at the end of a discussion on ancient historical records that were predicted will be found near the Sphinx in Egypt, I (Bob) asked why people who’ve been looking for these records for a century or more have not been able to find them. The Council gave 2 interesting reasons. First:
“Because much of what will be discovered will be powerful information that, at this time in history, we are not ready for; it would be misused.
“And so as spirit evolves and brings what it has planned – more love – and peace begins to be more present, and [there is] more understanding and more unity between all of the peoples, all of the nations that are here, then the documents will be released.”
–The Council
(The formatting above throughout this post represents The Council’s comments during our session. Text [in brackets] in these quotations has been added to improve readability and clarity when this seems useful.)
When I asked for clarification about the process of releasing these documents, and how something that doesn’t appear findable can be found, The Council gave the second reason.
“We believe our friend, Esther [Hicks], that channels Abraham, has explained it very nicely when she lost her gold pen, and yet it was there all the time.
“So when the belief that it is not lost, and that this information is there and it is ready to be discovered… when someone feels they will make this great discovery and work towards it, it will be discovered. It is all there.”
Powerful Information
In a session a few years ago, The Council suggested Atlantis was destroyed by the misuse of power (this seems consistent with other sources of information on Atlantis), and I asked if the potential for misuse of the power in the undiscovered records is anything like what contributed to the destruction of Atlantis.
“Yes. It was suggested because that also needs to be recognized.
“When the information [is discovered] on how to utilize this power, and how the power is not just in these crystals or in this form of vibration that is conjured up, the truth will come forward that the power comes from within, in each person.
“And so that is, as what would be said in your time, very heavy information.”
The Council imitated the way people sometimes exaggerate their voice in a low tone when they refer to heavy information, which I found very humorous. Ordinarily I’d be probably be interested in asking for more information about the power of the information in the undiscovered records, about the crystals, and about conjured vibration, but the thought that came to me was a conversation with Cynthia earlier in the day about a client of hers who had lived in a house he described as seriously haunted.
What is a Portal?
Cynthia mentioned she received guidance for her client that the house was some sort of portal for disturbing energies that were coming into his physical reality from other dimensions. But neither of us understood this very well, and I found myself asking The Council what they can tell us about portals. The rest of this post describes a highly informative discussion that touches on the subjects of multiple realities, evil, rituals for protection, love, Satan, and most importantly, how your vibration brings what you experience into your reality.
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The Human-Spirit Relationship and Free Will
Overview
This post is inspired by a question from a reader named Jose, who has read in some of our blog posts (links at the end of this post) that humans are spiritual beings in a physical body, and that spirit sometimes chooses to have human experiences that we (as humans) find undesirable. Jose wants to know how it’s possible for humans to have free will to choose our human desires, if who we are as spirit is choosing human experiences that feel unwanted from our human point of view.
Lots of people have become interested in the spiritual teaching that you are the creator of what you experience, which has been around a while and has become more popular through the teachings of Abraham and other spiritual teachers. Jose’s question suggests he’s aware of lots of things in his human experience he doesn’t want, and after reading in our posts that who you are as spirit sometimes creates human experiences that feel unwanted from your human point of view, he came to the troubling conclusion that spirit is preventing him from having more of the human experiences he desires.
Topics Covered in this Post
Even if you don’t believe spirit is keeping you from manifesting more of what you desire in your life, and you’re not particularly interested in the subject of free will, if you’re interested in ideas to help you feel an increased level of well-being in your human experience, we’re finding the information and guidance from The Council in response to Jose’s question has been a big step for us in that direction. Topics covered in our sessions on Jose’s question and in this post include:
- The relationship between who you are as a spiritual being and who you are as a human being.
- Why the spiritual part of you might desire to have human experiences in a physical reality.
- Why the spiritual part of you might desire to have human experiences that feel undesirable to you as a human being.
- The validity of your human free will to choose your human desires, even if who you are as spirit is choosing to have different human experiences.
- Why you may be having difficulty manifesting your human desires in your physical experience.
Nothing Going On That Spirit Hasn’t Planned For
The Council began our first session on Jose’s questions by emphasizing there isn’t any separation between spirit and human.
“The spirit works through the body it [spirit] has created.
“So there is nothing that is going on that the body wants, that the spirit hasn’t planned for.
“Is that understood? It is all one – the mind, the body, and the spirit – it is all one.”
–The Council
Continue reading
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How is It Possible There is No Separation Between Spirit and Human?
Jose’s Comments and Questions
Several months ago after reading one of our blog posts about how every human being – as a spiritual being in a human body – creates every aspect of their human experience (pleasant and unpleasant, wanted and unwanted), a thoughtful reader named Jose asked The Council whether humans have the free will and power to create a better-feeling human reality when we feel spirit is creating a reality we’d rather not experience. Jose also asked some additional questions about the nature of spiritual reality and it’s relationship to our human experience.
In response to his questions we did a session with The Council and published 5 separate posts describing The Council’s information and guidance for Jose and other readers interested in this information (links to these sessions at the end of this post). Recently Jose posted a comment expressing appreciation for the information in those 5 posts and how they opened his mind to some new questions. This post is the first in a series that describes two new sessions with The Council on Jose’s recent questions. This post was originally published on July 5, 2013 and has been revised several times as our understanding of these sessions evolved.
Feeling Separate From Spirit
Jose says The Council’s teaching that spirit sometimes creates challenging or difficult human experiences leaves him feeling like a slave or a pet; and spirit seems like an uncaring master who creates negative human experiences (like pain, loneliness, fear, lack, desperation, etc) to satisfy a selfish desire for spiritual expansion. Jose compares spirit to a matador who enters the bullfighting ring for the adrenalin rush, but has no compassion for the bull (which he equates with his body/mind/ego) that is physically hurt, humiliated, and is ultimately killed in the process. Jose concludes, “the mind/body has no choice but to follow blindly and painfully without knowing what the lesson or purpose was, is, or will be” in physical reality.
Jose also asks 3 questions related to these comments: one about why spirit would chose to be born as a child without limbs, one about why a buffer of time is needed between our human desire and our manifestation of what is wanted, and a question about whether it’s possible for spirit and its mind/body/ego to both simultaneously have free will to do what is wanted. Jose politely ends his comment with an apology if his questions sound too harsh, “but would love to know The Council’s opinion on the matter.”
Overview
The two sessions on Jose’s questions generated a lot of thought-provoking information and guidance from The Council – too much to comfortably include in one post. In this first post of the series, we focus on The Council’s advice regarding Jose’s feelings that spirit doesn’t care about the difficulties humans experience, and we address aspects of his question about a child born without arms and without legs.
We plan to follow this post with additional posts on Jose’s questions, and in each post we’ll focus on how you and Jose can feel more connected to spirit’s unconditional love when you feel like spirit, or something else out there, is giving you a hard time.
Praise for Jose’s Questions
Although Jose’s question may seem harsh, The Council offered the following praise for Jose:
“And we applaud him for his thinking, and how he is trying to explore different ideas. And so we hope, as he comes to the reading of this material, that he will begin to let [in] the feelings that will come with the words.”
Mind/Body/Ego is One with Spirit
If you’re looking for some uplifting spiritual reading and you’re not particularly sympathetic to Jose’s point of view, you may be wondering if you made a wrong turn with this post. But The Council says that from the point of view of who you are as an eternal spiritual being, there are no wrong turns in your human experience, only opportunities to use your free will and power of choice to find better-feeling ways of focusing your attention, and allowing more of the feeling of love you are in spirit into your human experience. And that’s a big part of what this post is about.
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Future Lives, Connecting with Famous ‘Dead’ People, & the Importance of the Present
This post describes part of a session with The Council inspired by a question from Jose about how the past, present, and future all happen at the same time. Topics addressed include:
- Jose’s question: Why does The Council sometimes refer to ‘past’ lives when they say at other times the past, the present, and the future are all happening at the same time?
- Future lives
- The connection all human beings have to the creative genius of any human being who has ever lived, and your ability to access this creativity.
- The importance of your ability to choose
- The importance of the present moment
- Karma
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Does Spirit’s Pre-Birth Planning Negate Human Free Will?
This post is third in a series describing a session with The Council on Saturday, March 30, 2013 to answer questions from Jose, Michelle, and D. This post focuses on the first of Jose’s four questions and it’s about guidance from The Council in a recent post and the issue of free will:
“In the case of what was shared in Maria’s Plan for a Spiritual Leap, it appears that the spiritual agreement made prior to the incarnation is more powerful than Maria or her friend’s “godly” power to manifest a new reality of survival and togetherness in this lifetime, as if there is no free will in this incarnation.” —Jose
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Every Question is Important
This is the first of several posts describing a 1-hour session with The Council on Saturday, March 30, 2013 to answer recent questions from Jose, Michelle, and D.
Jose’s Question #4
We began the session with Michelle’s question about whether to move to Barnstaple, Devon or Glastonbury (both in England), and when I (Bob) was about to ask The Council D’s question about what she describes as a broken soul contract, The Council interrupted:
“There is a number 4 that we keep seeing; what is that, Bob?”
—The Council
(This formatting throughout the post represents The Council’s comments during our session. Text [in brackets] in these quotations has been added to improve readability and clarity when this seems useful.)
I explained that we have four very interesting questions from Jose and that we answered his first 3 questions based on our understanding of The Council’s teachings because they seemed related to guidance we’ve written about in other posts. It was our intention to ask The Council about Jose’s fourth question in this session and when they asked about a number 4, I assumed they were referring to the Jose’s fourth question. I asked if they’d like me to read Jose’s fourth question to them and they said, “Yes.”
Jose’s Question #4: “If we come to this incarnation to have fun and remember who we really are, why do most people, if not all, fail at this attempt?”
Click here to read the rest of this post→
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Career Council-ing
Jaqueline’s Questions – Part 2
This is the second of two posts to answer questions from a reader named Jaqueline. In the first post, Trusting You are Spirit in a Physical Body, The Council answers her question about how to connect with inner guidance and find inner peace “even when things seems to be so messed up.”
Jaqueline describes herself as being 23 years old and concerned she hasn’t decided about a career yet. She says, “I know I worry too much and think way too much, but I could really use some clue about what I’m supposed to do in this special lifetime, if I’m going in “the right direction”.
This post describes the portion of our July 24, 2012 conversation with The Council (non-physical spiritual guides) that addresses career and life-direction issues. We found this information personally very helpful and we believe it can also be helpful to others.
At the very end of this post we introduce some new guidance from The Council on the law of beliefs that came at the end of our session on Jaqueline’s questions.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL POST→
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Trusting You are Spirit in a Physical Body
Jaqueline’s Question
This is the first of two posts answering questions from Jaqueline, who asks The Council how to follow her inner guidance and find inner peace “even when things seem to be so messed up” in her life.
Jaqueline writes that she understands and sincerely believes in teachings like The Council’s and other teachers she’s familiar with who say, “We shouldn’t worry about anything ever because everything is gonna be just fine,” and, “We should enjoy life and think about whatever we want in our future in a positive vibration.” “But sometimes [it] is really hard to put this in practice.”
We like Jaqueline’s question because it frankly addresses a dilemma faced by many of us who are trying to follow teachings like The Council’s. In our saner moments these teaching make a lot of sense to us; they inspire us and lift our spirits. But sometimes, despite our best efforts, life can feel like an insurmountable challenge. When this happens it can feel equally challenging to remember and put in to practice these teachings about who we are as spiritual beings.
At the time Jaqueline wrote her questions for The Council she commented that, “All the time my head seems to be full of stressful thoughts about my future…about my present…if I’m going in the right direction…if I should do something…or nothing at all. Sometimes I get trapped in some drama and get very emotional about everything. Resuming, I have a hard time going with the flow.”
Stressful thoughts, feeling trapped, and feeling other unwanted emotions can be a challenge. When we feel this way and we also believe we’re not supposed to ever worry about anything and we should always be enjoying life, these expectations can sometimes add to the challenge of turning the situation around so we can ‘go with the flow’.
On July 24, 2012 we had a conversation with The Council (non-physical spiritual guides speaking through Cynthia) to get their advice on how to feel more in touch with well-being on a day-to-day basis when life seems to make this difficult.
This session contains many helpful insights, but for us the highlight is the reminder to meditate regularly on the idea that each of us is a spiritual being in a physical body. The Council advises that this type of regular meditation will help us feel more trusting that we really are spiritual beings, and this trust will help us through difficult times.
Interestingly, The Council says that as spiritual beings we actually look forward to these challenging human experiences because we view them as desirable opportunities to expand who we are as spirit into a physical reality.
This post relates the details of this session with The Council, and also includes some information on two meditation techniques they recommend. We plan to publish separate posts describing these meditations in more detail and eventually we plan to include audio recordings of these meditations as guided meditations.
This session also included The Council’s answer to Jaqueline’s question about whether she is going in the ‘right direction’ career-wise, and how career choices relate to experiences we have in other lifetimes. We feel this information is better suited to a separate post and we plan to publish that post in the near future also.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL POST→
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The Influence Our Thoughts & Feelings Have on Other People’s Experience
This post is a response to a question from a reader named Bari who wants to believe her better-feeling thoughts about her boyfriend will create better-feeling experiences of the two of them together, as taught by the spirit guides Abraham. But when her boyfriend repeats behaviors that contrast her better-feeling thoughts, Bari wonders how much of an impact her thoughts and feelings are really able to have on the experience of her boyfriend, or anyone else, and she asks The Council’s opinion on this.
This post is the third in a series based on comments from The Council during a single session on Sunday, April 15, 2012 to answer three thought-provoking questions from Bari and Rachael. Reincarnation and past lives were the subjects of the first post, and the second post, in this series.
Helping Others with Our Thoughts
Part way through reading Bari’s second question, The Council offered the following initial comments:
“In the non-physical it is sometimes planned: ‘At some point in my life I will meet you on Earth in the physical. And if I am going through something difficult and I can’t remember who I really am, will you remind me by your thoughts? By your thoughts I will feel that energetic change. I will feel the positive vibration that you are thinking.’ And then, of course, it is up to the [other] person to tune into it and expand with it.
“And so your thoughts go out, whether positive or negative. And the soul you are working with or you are in partnership with feels that vibration.
“And so if they are depressed or they are not accomplishing what they want to accomplish, your positive thought vibration is there and it sort of kick-starts them, but you can not control what they do.
“It’s [as if] you hold the light; you hold the remembrance of who they really are for them. And then, if they allow it, they will feel that and they will move forward.
“But when you have positive thoughts or negative [thoughts] about someone, in your experience that’s how you will experience them. Is that clear?”
–The Council (similarly formatted text throughout this post indicates quotations from The Council
Click here to read the full post→
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Welcome
Bob & Cynthia
Welcome to Ask The Council, a blog where you can ask a group of loving and wise spirit guides a question and get an answer, for free. You can also contact us for a paid private phone session with The Council, and you can read the questions other readers have asked and the answers they’ve received. Other posts contain quotations from The Council that we hope you find inspiring, uplifting, and educational.
Ask The Council a Question
If there’s a question you’ve been thinking about and you’re curious how The Council might answer it, we encourage you to either use the blog’s Comments feature to ask your question, or contact us for a private phone session. You can click here to go to the ‘Let us know what you think about this post, or ask The Council a question’ section of this Welcome post and type your question there or you can type your question in the same section at the bottom of any post that inspires you to ask a question or leave a comment.
Since the blog is currently a project we do in our spare time it can take a while for us to do a session with The Council on a question and then publish a post on the session. Depending on the question and the session it can sometimes take weeks after a question is asked to publish a post with The Council’s answer. Please be patient.
The Council
Cynthia is able to communicate with a group of five non-physical spirit guides in a manner similar to the way Esther Hicks communicates with and speaks for the spirit guides, Abraham, and Jane Roberts communicated and spoke for the spirit guide, Seth. I (Bob) basically interview The Council as they speak through Cynthia during what we refer to as a session. Sessions generally last 5-15 minutes and are usually audio recorded. During the session Cynthia is aware of what The Council is saying and she also receives visual impressions and other types of telepathic communication from them.
The Council’s Basic Guidance
Since we began these sessions with The Council around 2009 they consistently emphasize a few basic ideas that we attempt to summarize here:
1) You are an eternal spiritual being in a physical body.
You are the energy and vibration of continuously expanding love, intelligence, and joy.
Your physical experience in your physical body and your psychological experience of your personality is a small part of the totality of who you truly are.
Let yourself imagine from time to time what it might feel like to experience more of the wondrous totality of who you really are, and don’t be surprised if you are able to experience this more often.
2) You are the creator of all that you experience.
As you open to the possibility your true nature is greater than you ordinarily perceive, it becomes easier to consider the possibility that this expanded you is truly the creator of everything that you experience.
If you’re used to thinking of yourself in a more limited sense, the idea that you are the creator of your experience may be difficult to understand. Our post, What About This Idea That We Create Whatever We Desire, offers insights into this idea.
3) You are here to expand the love you are into physical reality.
You chose, as a spiritual being, to come into this physical reality to experience the joy of expanding the love you are as a spiritual being, into this physical reality. This is your purpose for being here.
Finding Your Way Around the Blog
Home Page
The left-hand column on the Home page contain a long chronological series of posts with the most recent on top. Each post begins with a title. Clicking on a post title will take you to a blog page dedicated to that particular post. Following each post is a Like button where you can indicate to us and other readers if you like the post.
The footer section of each post identifies the date the post was published, the Categories the post has been assigned to, the keyword/keyphrase Tags assigned to the post, and a Comment link. If readers comments on a post, the Comments link will indicate the number of comments. If a post has no comments yet, the Comment link text appears as “Leave a Comment”.
Clicking on the Comments link takes you to a Comment text box on a post page dedicated to that post. Here you can type a comment in the text box and click the Post Comment button to have your comment displayed just below the text box. If you are replying to someone else’s comment, your comment will appear indented underneath the comment you are replying to.
At the bottom of the left column on the Home page is a ‘Previous Entries’ link that will take you to a page with a list of earlier posts.
Blog Features
The right-hand column of most blog pages contains this Welcome message. Below the Welcome message in the right-hand column are some useful features:
Email Subscription: Use this to subscribe to blog posts. You will receive an email notification with a link back to the blog each time a new post is published.
Search: Type a keyword or phrase and click the Search button to get a list of posts in the left column that contain the keyword or phrase.
Archives: The Archives list indicates the number of posts for each month listed. Clicking on the link for a month will display in the left column of the page a list of the posts published that month.
Categories: This is a list of keywords used to categorize posts. Posts can be included in more than one category, if applicable. Clicking on a category link will display in the left column a list of posts assigned to the category you selected.
Navigation Bar
The Navigation Bar at the top of each page contains a link to the blog Home page and links to the following additional pages:
Welcome: A link that displays this Welcome message in the left column (and the right column). At the bottom of the Welcome message is a Comment box where you can post a general comment about the blog or ask The Council a question.
Questions & Answers: Use this link to display a list of introductions to our longer posts, most of which are responses to reader questions. This is an easy way to check out these more in-depth posts. They are listed in chronological order with the most recent post on top. Clicking on the post title will take you to the page where you can read the complete post.
Contact Us: The Contact Us page contains a contact form similar to the Comment form mentioned above. The difference between the Contact Us form and the Comment forms is that the Contact Us form is a private message to us (Cynthia and Bob). It is not posted on the blog. Comments appear on the post page where the comment is posted. The Contact Us form can be used for communicating with us about private sessions or other private matters you think aren’t appropriate for posting in a public Comment.
Bob & Cynthia
Ask The Council 