Questions About Spiritual Enlightenment
This post answers questions about spiritual enlightenment from a reader named SoulPeace. SoulPeace has been reading about Buddhist culture lately and is drawn to the subjects of spiritual growth, human reincarnation, and lesson learning.
The Council says this is a big step in itself because SoulPeace has opened to enlightenment and knowledge that will help them move forward in their current lifetime and on an easier path.
SoulPeace asks The Council if we’re able to learn our lessons without being born on the Earth path? The Council says we need an Earth body to learn what we desire to learn when we choose to be born in a physical body. We come to Earth to learn about emotions.
There are other realities besides Earth where you experience only the energy shifts within you. You learn with your thoughts: both positive and negative. You don’t need a physical body.
The main reason we come to Earth is there is so much we desire to learn where we need a physical body to learn it. In other realities we can exist only as energy or thought forms and we are also able to learn in these non-physical realities.
When you’re back home in spirit, that is another reality. And many choose while in spirit to help people who choose to live in the Earth reality, and this is another place where you learn. You’re able to learn lessons without being born into a physical body, but these lessons are different from the ones you learn when you’ve chosen to be born in a physical body.
SoulPeace asked The Council how we can achieve freedom from being born into an Earth body and achieve moksha or nirvana (freedom from death and rebirth). The Council says every time you finish an incarnation it’s always your choice whether to come back in an Earth body or remain in spirit and not come back.
The Council says in spirit we always have the desire to come back and learn something on the Earth path. There’s always a new goal; something else that wants to be experienced.
If you decide not to come back, you’d remain in spirit and you’d learn through the experience of others who do come back. You’ll tap into their thoughts and feelings and continue learning that way. And sometimes by doing this, it strikes a chord in you where you think about trying the Earth path again.
SoulPeace closes by saying they’re trying to find peace for themselves and wants to know where to begin in order to experience this. The Council says you begin by knowing you are a spirit within your physical body that you’ve created. They say to see the things you’ve created in this life that helps you experience love and joy, and to follow that feeling and do more of these things.
As you experience one joy and it leads you to another and another, you will find what you planned to experience when you were in spirit before being born into your physical body. Know that your job is to experience love and joy and compassion for others, and the rest will all fall into place.
Listen to our entire 6-minute session with The Council (below) to hear all their guidance for SoulPeace and the rest of us, and let us know how you feel about it.
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Challenges, Suicide, and Spiritual Growth
This post is inspired by a reader named Cait, who says she thinks about ending her life every day because it’s so painful, and she asks The Council if she’s able to break a pre-birth contract she made in spirit once her incarnation has begun.
Cait begins by asking The Council, what if the path your soul chose to achieve spiritual growth actually inhibits your spiritual growth? And The Council says this is never the case. They say your spirit works out whatever challenges it wants to meet while it’s in the physical body, and while this can seem difficult from a human point of view, your spirit knows exactly why it has chosen what it has chosen and what it is trying to accomplish.
The Council says when you begin to accept you are spirit in a physical body and believe you can learn with less difficulty, and can focus on the way you wish your life to be rather than the way it is, this is the beginning of change. You always have the power to turn your situation around. When you plan in spirit whatever you want to experience, it isn’t written in stone. You create every minute of every day, and so you can create something new.
Cait says she thinks about ending her life every day, and while The Council says there is no judgement in spirit for taking her life, they explain there’s growth she can experience from going through these challenges. And if she chooses to pass on these challenges in this lifetime she’ll be postponing them until she chooses to learn from them in a future lifetime.
Cait comments that her life is harmful to her soul, and The Council replies that her soul will never create circumstances that will harm her spiritually. It creates these situations for her to grow from them, to change them, and to bring love into them.
Cait asks how she can get out of her current challenge without killing herself and The Council advises her to refocus her attention and read as many books as possible on spiritual growth that can teach her who she is as a spiritual being.
Cait finishes her comment by saying her higher self doesn’t appear to care about her or her suffering. And The Council says Cait has no idea the love, caring, and support that spirit has for her if she’ll open up to it, even if she only pretends to feel it at first.
The Council recommends Cait read a book written by the spirit guide, Emmanuel and Pat Rodegast, and the energy from this book will help her turn her life around.
The Council tells Cait she’s come to this feeling of desperation and wanting out on purpose to experience an extreme situation so she can find a better way through this. And The Council says she will find it.
Listen to the entire 11-minute recording of our session with The Council to hear first hand all their guidance for Cait and anyone else who’s having difficulty navigating their current circumstances and is looking for a better way to experience them.
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July 26, 2011 Thought for the Day
You Are Spirit, On a Journey
What we always wish to let you know
Is that you are so much more than a physical body;
You are spirit
On this journey
In a physical world.
—The Council
Excerpted from The Council’s opening comments to participants of a Manifesting Your Desires meeting on Tuesday, July 19, 2011 in New York City.
(The Council’s opening comments lasted about five minutes and with the exception of a brief greeting, each statement seems to stand on its own as a thought for the day. Beginning July 25, 2011 we are publishing The Council’s opening comments during this session as eight individual thoughts for the day. This post is the second of the series.)
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July 6, 2011 Thought for the Day
Meditation is a tool
To help you release yourself
From the limitations
Of your physical body.
—The Council
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June 30, 2011 Thought for the Day
All pain and suffering
Comes from a belief
You are only your body.
When you can go within
And experience
That you are really spirit
In a physical body,
Your identification
With pain and fear
Will end.
It is in your quiet times
That this will be revealed to you.
—The Council
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June 25, 2011 Thought for the Day
Do you know that you have created your own body;
The way you look,
Your shape,
The color of your hair and eyes?
This was all part of your joyous decision
To have a physical experience.
You knew you needed a body
To experience this physical plane,
So you began planning your creation before you came.
Your creating began with your choice to incarnate.
—The Council
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June 15, 2011 Thought for the Day
As spirit, you have greater freedom
Than you experience in your physical body.
As spirit, you can visit any person or place
Just by using your thoughts.
—The Council
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Many Earth Changes
The new energy that is being sent to your planet
Will create many Earth changes.
It will affect its geology,
Weather conditions,
And the consciousness of all spirit,
Whether in a physical body or not.
—The Council
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2011-01-29
You are so much more than you think you are,
Which is precisely why you are here.
You came for the joyous experience
Of discovering you are more,
While in a physical body.
—The Council
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2011-01-23
When you are depressed or fearful,
It is only because you have forgotten that
You are in control.
You are in control.
Anything else is an illusion
And a false belief.
You are a magnificent spirit
In a physical body,
Creating and exploring
Your world.
—The Council
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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 