A.R.E. Meeting for 4/27/20

We Zoomed in to our meeting tonight, again. The expectation is we will be doing so for a while yet as we continue to be under restrictions from meeting together in public, and I'm in the "safer at home" volunteer quarantine yet. Tonight during our check-in we had good news that one Colorado Springs nursing home resident infected with Covid-19 is doing well recovering and did not succumb to the contagious virus as most infected seniors in care seem to!

We discussed our experiments and how they went, in addition to our reading from Herb Puryear's The Edgar Cayce Primer, on Prayer, and Prayer and Meditation pages. This week we will choose an experiment individually from this week's between meetings reading:  How does Prayer work?, page 152 and ends 3/4 of the way down page 155.

Our next scheduled meeting is Monday May 4th @ 7 p. m. on Zoom at the same zoom address, same password.

Tonight was our last meeting in April. John is on our schedule to lead our meetings in the month of May.

Prayers of Protection and blessings,

Sylvia Raye

A.R.E. Meeting for 4/20/20

Our second meeting on Zoom was better with more of us accustomed somewhat to this electronic format. It was so nice to be together again, and to hear and  see each other's faces, and to renew our long standing friendships thanks to the wonderful advancements in electronics and Zoom for meetings. We took time to check in about how things are going. There are many positive effects along with all the negatives of a pandemic.

We decided that we'll mute all microphones to do our unison prayers. The sound does not go from microphone to microphone at the same time it is spoken. That is an improvement to look forward to.

For next week we will read on our own from The Edgar Cayce Primer, the first four pages of chapter 18, Prayer to the bottom of page 151. We will be prepared to discuss it.

For our experiment we will pray with intention of reaching full attunement. We want to pray for multiple concerns related to the Coronavirus: the seemingly uncooperative people gathering to protest our protective quarantine, our service workers growing our food, stocking and delivering our groceries, and all workers at risk because they must be out at work in public or close quarters. 

Until next week,

Blessings and protection for us all.

Sylvia Raye

A.R.E. Meeting for 4/13/20

Hello dear Friends,

We held our first meeting via zoom tonight. It is a learning experience for us. We had challenges with broadband width, flickering pics at times, and lost bits of sound at other times. And we are in good company city wide and country wide. All of us are in Zoom together as well.

But we were able to meet! Without zoom we would have had to stay home off of the potentially slick, icy roads and challenging visibility while it's snowing here all night! As well as our Shelter in Place law of protection during this Covid-19 Pandemic. So we did succeed in overcoming two of our obstacles to meeting.

It was good to break our isolation, check in, to just see each other's faces and hear our voices as well. So many of us are feeling depressed and grieved at losses of daily contacts, the countless losses and griefs these changes have brought up upon us.

We discussed how we are being affected, what we are doing.  We discussed some dreams.

We discussed giving additional donations as per our letters on the ARE Crisis Relief Fund from ARE. When Kevin Todeshi last spoke in Denver years back, he said the ARE needed $20 thousand everyday to just keep the doors open.  So now the ARE is experiencing big losses financially due to the seminars and programs cancelled. ARE staff is feeling badly about all the employees they have had to let go. To keep the doors open and keep doing as much as they are doing electronically, they are asking us to see how much can we give as keepers of the light!

So I'm trusting we all value how much ARE has enriched our lives and are motivated to give additional amounts accordingly now. And support them with membership renewals and bookstore purchases.

Our Experiment is to reflect upon the Gratitude we are feeling about the positive results of the Shelter in Place for an undefined length of time the situation has brought about. For example, New Yorkers opening up their windows and cheering all their life risking heroic heath workers, the joy created and spread by people of Italy singing on their balconies, entertainers performing from their homes and posting on social media their vibration raising, morale boosting happiness to be singing for us. So this week our experiment is to write Our Gratitude List.

We are continuing to pray for each other. And for Bill Mays, now back at home from the hospital, for Dr. Chuck, Dr. Michelle, Monica, Chaplain Rev. Jim White, home alone 14 year old David, Sarah as they continue their work out among people they serve.

Those unable to attend tonight were missed. 

Remember: We have a Zoom meeting next Monday at 7:00 pm and will meet, icy streets, pandemic, or not.

I am GRATEFUL for EACH ONE of you. Your presence, participation, contributions to our discussions have been significant in our mental, physical, and spiritual growth. Not to mention spreading and holding the Light brightly across our city. And all the people and countries it has touched internationally with Greg's blogspot of many years. Thank you all.

Sylvia Raye

A.R.E. Meeting for 3/9/20

Precious and sweet is the time hearts and minds join together to express LOVE for Universal Forces in meditation. June provide two ideal meditation pieces of beautiful music enhancing our meditation experience. Prayers of gratitude were offered for the cohesive, cooperative effects the Covid 19 is requiring and creating among countries of the world as they MUST team up to protect the health of the people of earth. There were prayers for healing and other concerns.

We read the remainder of  meditation chapter  in the Cayce Primer and discussed it. We discussed how  incarcerated inmate John Sherman's painting (at the Cottonwood Arts Gallery show this month), is an expression of divine love and the divine feminine, while portraying personal growth and spiritual development. It is entitled "Pink Aura." Business discussed was whether we should have a visitation/social time at 6:30 pm so we can begin our weekly meetings at 7:00pm.

We talked about ways to support a much needed shelter for rehabilitation, like Bakhita Mountain Home for women impacted by human trafficking (not one place in Colorado). In 2018, there where 178 confirmed cases needing Bakhita Mountain Home services including trauma-based therapy in order to heal. A group of Franciscan and Benedictine sisters, female survivors of sex trafficking and lay women envisioned a home well suited to meet survivors needs. We can support remodeling and furnishing of the Home by donations or pledges set up online at http://BakhitaMountainHome.org/donate.

One member shared a personal story that began after she attended her first ASF group in Texas in 1971. Before long, she entered a bookstore, walked over to a shelf as if guided to the spot, purchased the first book her hands and eyes touched upon.  It was a book by Lobsang Rampa, which she then read.

Fifteen years later, in the Ballroom of the Golden, Colorado Holiday she listened to retired New York Metrpolitation Opera singer Shirley Rabb Winston help attendees see whether they could recognize a past life listening to music from ten different cultures of the world. Throughout the seminar, she watched raised hands of numerous people answer Shirley's question, yes, they liked music of that culture. All day the melodies were nice but none of it made a connection.

Near days end, Shirley played a shrill high pitched wailing sound and a slow drum beat. That ugly sound? Hardly music. Who likes this one? Shirley Winston asked the final time. How can I say I like this? She struggled with herself, and stopped smiling. That ugly sound is not music. Her hand went up as she realized she felt more joyous than she'd ever felt in her life. She surveyed the big room. Every person there agreed with her intellectually, only her yoga teacher's hand was up.

Shirley explained this sound is one of Tibetan monks marching in to evening prayers. Thirty years later, people from Nepal here were doing a Sound Healing Bowls fund raising tour for a school. Before we start we are going to give away a bowl. My heart jumped out across numerous rows of people in the theater to the stage. Then he announced she had the winning number. This bowl is not a healing bowl; this bowl is a begging bowl. It was made with a prayer every time the bowl was struck, he said, handing it to her.

Feeling guided to buy a book about a Tibetan monk, the highly emotional experience of extreme joy and happiness upon hearing Tibetan monks marching into evening prayers, while the conscious mind strongly disagreed, and my heart jumping in recognition a long way down the theater to the begging bowl on stage are three unquestionably convincing experiences that, yes I did live a life as a Tibetan monk. Far more indisputable than dreams, regressions, and readers telling me believable past lives. 

No experiment was chosen for this week.

Contemplatively yours,

Sylvia Raye

A.R.E. Meeting for 3/3/20

Four native born citizen dreamers joined together tonight at Ruth Holly Library  in meditation and prayers for Judy Overman, George, Jeff Herwitt, Ed Murphy, Paul Freiler. Let's remember these people in our prayers.

Cindi will type up and send out the excellent meditation she led us in last week on Loving God (our purpose for meditation), ourselves, and radiating out that love to others. This meditation was our experiment during the week just past.

Cindi shared just a gem from two pages of notes gathered while listening to the material on "Suffering" that Greg alerted us to. "Karma is the result of of A LACK OF COMPASSION."

"Understanding your Dreams," from listening to the tape June brought and played the first half of, provided a tremendous quantity of information given by Cayce. It emphasized the importance of being early to bed, so as to experience more dreams remembered during longer hours of REM producing sleep in the 7th and 8th or so hours, of having an intent of remembering and using, working with the dream and it's message to us. It gave half a dozen reasons we might want to remember our dreams. It also gave half a dozen ways we can approach understanding the dream's message and how to then apply the information from the dream message to the life we now live. It could be a dream pertaining to spiritual growth, health, finances, our personal problems/solutions, or whatever we requested a dream on.

Unique to the Cayce dream material may be the suggestion that we write down all of our personal reasons we might want to remember and apply a dream's information to our life. The people in our dreams may not be the people of our waking life, but symbols or aspects of ourselves. The message may be a direct statement of a problem solution, or a play on a word or symbol. We need to search for what is happening in our lives and how it pertains to the dream's message. A dream can give many points of view in solving a problem.   We need to recognize the problem or situation where the information given in our dream needs to be applied in our life.

For our experiment, as a group we decided to write on a dream journal page "...the reasons I want to remember my dreams."  Once we know the types of information dream's can give us, we can be more strongly motivated to remember our dreams. The tape suggested re-reading monthly our half dozens reasons we want to remember our dreams.

Next week we'll report on how our experiment went and listen to the remainder of the tape.

Sweet Happy Dreams,

Sylvia Raye

A.R.E. Meeting for 2/24/20

The swirling waves of winds of the afternoon let, and it was a pleasant cold evening when five truth seeking souls came together at Ruth Holley Library. In opening the meeting, Cindi read a short 1/2 page article from an archaeology magazine describing cave paintings preserved 44 thousand years by coatings of uranium among others, as time protectively covered over them. An unusually high entrance to the cave also provided some protection. Most unexpected is the quality of the painting demonstrating that 44 thousand years ago all the principles of art were developed and known. Cave walls displayed part animal,  part human figures, some winged, and a spiritual essence.  Group members answered the question of how they saw this discovery. Was the artist painting spiritual language with the subjects shown, something else, or possibility the reality of man and animals in those years as mythology, and Cayce described, so unbelievably for the masses of people today?

Dreams were discussed and potential messages and meanings were sought.

Cindi also lead an excellent guided meditation on love, in three aspects: Loving GOD, others, and self as written in a Mark Thurston book.

We finished reading from the Edgar Cayce Primer the final four of Herb Puryear's seven points on meditation;  the Physiology, Preparation for Meditation, the Pattern and the Power, and finally, The Promises of Meditation.

#4. In physiology, physical, mental, spiritual, and emotions challenge one to bring these as well as other elements (such as food, sounds, odors) that could work against achieving a oneness of body and mind, allowing the points of the chakras to contact the endocrine glands to stream spirit thru the mental into physical. Or, from Infinite to finite.

#5. Preparation is an ongoing, continuous activity, of caring, nurturing, and nourishing the body, energy raising positive thinking to nourish our minds, and willingness to allow meditation to effect our entire lives. The Readings recommend a prayer of protection prior to each meditation experience. 

#6. The Pattern and the Power - when we select love as our Ideal, the pattern within is selected and awakened and the CHRIST power flows through us.   

#7. The Promises of Meditation - Meditation is a way to personalize the promises of our Bibles and to claim these promises personally for ourselves.  He is there whenever we call upon him.

Remembering the purpose of meditation is to love GOD, we chose to do the above meditation for our daily experiment.

In loving service,

Sylvia

A.R.E. Meeting for 2/17/20

A chilly winter night this is, but a good night to come together for discussion, meditation, and prayers for healing each other, and also prayers for our individual concerns. Then reading and more discussion in fulfilling our purpose as a group to support and uphold each other on our spiritual journeys.

I felt such gratitude that we were comfortable, warm and indoors, that we had taken that extra bit of effort on a colder night to be there. I also felt gratitude for the experience of the group energy, the presence of which added more depth and intensity and meaning to my Individual meditation experience. And I trust this was both a group and individual experience I'm attempting to describe.

Until I was back with the group, my soul group, I hadn't realized this is what I'd been missing.

We discussed the Radiac, how it's designed, and the energy smoothing or clearing it does, and how it is needed. Staff understand, are knowledgeable in part because of doing manufacturing of health appliances at Barr, and knowledgeable because a telephone sales clerk there also reads and studies the readings. He was excited that a Cayce inhalant formula sold by Barr is not only effective for viruses, but the clerk also believed this inhalant formula could also be effective stopping the potential  Coronavirus spread. An important discovery of a Meridian Experiment is that when one of the two groups were being treated, the healing results were greater in the treated group who also performed a service.

Following meditation, we read the Primer chapter 17, points #2 and completed reading point number #3. Briefly the 7 points describing meditation are:

#1 the purpose of Meditation is to love God, not to have particular experiences

#2 for the practice of meditation, we need to find the technique that relates to the purpose of life-becoming more loving. It is not the particular technique of our meditation practice, but in response to our own seeking and quality our our desire to seek God, that we do attune to him in our practice.

#3 phenomenology: we can and do have any variety of physical and mental experiences in meditation as we open and invite the Spirit of God to flow though us and transform us. A personal transformation, unconscious and too subtle for us to see, a changed life, is the outcome of a regular meditation practice. The phenomena of popping sounds in one's head or experiencing visions in the meditation at the moment, cannot reveal the transformation over the years of a meditative practice.  We have no experiment this week.

Checking the temperature this evening I see that yes, next week, beginning Monday, 24th, is the 4th Monday in February that snow is predicted once again.

Sylvia Raye