a Spirit in the Smokies
interview |
Author, lecturer and
guide to sacred sites throughout the world, Gregg
Braden has been featured on radio and television
programs nationwide.
Following the
publication of his books, Awakening to Zero Point:
The Collective Initiation and Walking
Between the Worlds: The Science of Compassion,
he has been a popular guest and keynote speaker for
conferences, expos and media specials regarding ancient
wisdom, planetary shifts and the role of personal
relationships.
Born June 28, 1954, Braden was always attracted
to the mysteries of life.
"I had a propensity for
tearing everything apart to find out how it worked."
On
his fifth birthday, he received an electric train set.
When alone a few days later, he stripped an electrical
wire down to copper with a scissors and stuck both ends
into an electrical socket.
"I honestly don't know what I
was thinking, and yet I remember doing it very
methodically."
Within two weeks, a second near-death experience occurred at the
neighborhood pool.
"I remember going to
the deep end of the pool and slipping in, expecting to sink to
the bottom. Then I started floating upward until I stopped
before the surface of the water. I felt no fear or concern about
breathing. I just completely let go."
In both cases,
Braden was visited by a presence who offered the choice to
return to his body and live, or translate into a different
existence. In both, Braden chose to come back.
"Of all the
experiences in my life, those two were the most pivotal in
relation to what I am doing now. I experienced other
worldliness, which was very different from the hard core
sciences that believe if you can't see it or touch it, it isn't
real. Rather than having me believe in one OR the other, my life
was set up very early to integrate the two."
"Plus I am a Cancerian. I'm not into astrology much, but it's
true for me that the experiential world of my feelings is very
important. As a Cancerian, I am to know my self and my world
through feelings. On the other hand, my path has been through
the hard sciences and in the corporate world which denies
internal experience. So ultimately, to personally survive, I had
to find a way to reconcile my feeling world with what the doing
world was showing me."
As a child,
Braden
lived his two worlds. In the experiential world, he had
tremendous feelings for nature and the creatures of nature. He
would venture off and return with various critters to care for.
"At one time there
were so many boxes in the garage that my parents couldn't fit in
the car."
He also studied
ancient civilizations, especially Egypt and China. And he was
intrigued by Earth's geologic history from his study of
dinosaurs. Later he became a geologist who noticed evidence in
the Earth's crust that corroborates the cataclysmic changes and
predictions he read about in ancient texts.
"The geologic record
indicates that the magnetic fields of Earth
have shifted previously, at least 14 times
in the last 4.5 million years. Additional evidence suggest a 180
degree polar shift occurred about 13,200 years ago."
This was a time when
it is known there was a sudden melting of the polar caps and
tremendous flooding on the planet. It also was a time when
humans inhabited the Earth. This led him back to studying
ancient teachings.
Braden's study included ancient biblical scriptures, some of
which are in India and Tibet and only recently available. He
also has studied the philosophical teachings and sacred sites of
indigenous peoples in the United States, Mexico, Peru and
Bolivia. From these, Gregg offers fascinating vital
information.
According to Braden, in 325 AD the Emperor Constantine
created
"the Council of Nice" to take all of the existing
biblical materials and put them together into one text:
"He saw these
documents as redundant and too mystical to make sense to people
at the time. There was no 'bible', just a lose assemblage of
papyrus reed texts, scrolls, sheep skin documents and tablets.
Twenty-five books were taken out and an additional 20 supporting
reference documents to scholars were removed. Then the Council condensed and reorganized the rest".
"The documents that
remained and
became the original Bible were poorly translated
and rearranged in the 12th century. So what we have now in the
Bible essentially is a Readers Digest, condensed version of a
much broader text. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with
the Bible - I'm suggesting that it is incomplete, at best. You
can hold the Bible side by side with these ancient texts and see
exact wording and whole sections missing."
"The
Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, were the
precursors to these texts: the Essene Gospels of
Peace-Books 1-4, recently discovered Gnostic texts like the lost gospel of the book Q, lost books of the Bible,
the Ethiopian manuscript of
the Book of Enoch,
recent translations directly from the Aramaic of Nazarene texts
that had been lost for centuries."
If the message from
these texts could be condensed into four key tenets, Braden
indicates the first two would be:
-
Of the
many people on Earth, there is only one of us here. There is a
single consciousness expressing through many bodies.
-
This
single consciousness is moving very rapidly toward a convergence
point of Human and Earth history that the ancients call the
Shift of the Ages. This point of convergence Braden
devotes to his first book: Awakening to Zero Point: The
Collective Initiation.
"The nature of The
Shift has been questioned, pondered, postulated, hypothesized
and worshipped for thousands of years. The consequences of this
Shift transcend the boundaries of religion, science and
mysticism."
Braden
describes the shift using the analogy of water. Water changes
states into liquid, gas or solid, as a function of temperature
and pressure.
Braden claims that we are changing states
as a function of a lowered overall magnetic field and elevated
frequency of the Earth.
"It is to these
frequencies that each cell within our bodies is attempting to
'map' itself."
"In Biblical terms, the act of consciously vibrating from one
state-space into another is referred to as Resurrection. We may
define Resurrection as our allowing the mind, body, spirit
complex to harmoniously shift to a higher expression of itself
rather than give into the urge to separate as death. The living
example of the universal Christ demonstrated that,
through the conscious use of choice and free will, man in his
totality is greater than the fragments of his fear or perceived
limitations. Our migration into complete resonance with this new
body of information, Resurrection followed by Ascension, is the
goal of The Shift."
"The human aspect of The Shift may be consciously
facilitated, even accelerated, through the use of choice, free
will and emotion associated with the ancient wisdom of the human
mind, body, spirit relationship. This is the purpose of The Shift, the ultimate balance and healing of Earth and
all life forms that are capable of sustaining the energy of that
healing. This is
The Shift to a new way of expression
for the human form, through the lens of higher frequency; a
Christed energy. This is Awakening to
Zero Point: The Collective Initiation."
Braden claims the
ancients knew that an environment of
higher frequencies and lowered magnetics enhances
the possibility of ascension and they therefore simulated these
conditions in many of the ancient temples for initiates. What
Braden emphasizes is that in our times we all are initiates
and that a global initiation is taking place.
As true initiates,
we all have achieved a certain mastery to be here.
Our task,
however,
"must be achieved, using the tools of choice and
free will applied to the processes of life."
"Earth will no
longer support inharmonic patterns of fear, hate, the polarity
of judgment, or the belief systems of an obsolete paradigm.
Earth will support one, highly evolved body of information, that
may be thought of as the Christed frequencies. This was the gift
of Christ, to anchor the information of this consciousness, and
all of its possibilities, firmly into the conscious matrix of
humankind, through the expression of life in our presence."
"Through his life and Resurrection, Christ's experience was a
metaphor for our lives. Through his execution, he modeled for
all of humanity a process that each will go through
individually, as well as collectively. In the closing years of
this cycle, every life form existing upon the Earth will have
the opportunity to experience the dimensional translation as
Earth shift's from a third to a fourth density experience; a Zero Point awareness and the choice of Resurrection over
death."
Many people today
report they have always felt they were to accomplish something
of special significance in their life.
"Some describe this
feeling as a sense that they have been in training all of their
lives, preparing for 'something' really big."
According to
Braden, becoming Christed is it, it is this we all are meant
to accomplish. Braden
describes our "global initiation" as being a "global Christing"
and that the challenges of our daily lives provide all of the
opportunities of this initiation into our Christing.
"One of the
greatest, and possibly least understood, messages that Christ
Jesus anchored by living it in our presence, was that of
demonstrating love through compassionate allowing: loving others
enough to allow the latitude of their experience. To the degree
that any aspect of another's experience is judged, to that
degree do we remain in the polarity of separation and the charge
of that judgment."
"The keys to Compassion, then, lie in our ability to embrace all
experience as part of the One without judgment. It is not
an invitation to callousness, void of feeling and emotion. Quite
the opposite, it is through the very act of allowing ourselves
feeling that we are guided toward those portions of ourselves
seeking the greatest healing. Feelings and emotions are our
tools from which to access the reasons underlying the intensity
of our emotion"
Braden
asserts that day to day life is our initiation.
"From my
perspective, we are capable of only spiritual activity. Life is
a spiritual endeavor. As varied and diverse as each path may
seem, without exception, I believe that each life, every death,
all of the hurt, all of the joy and every experience in between
[are spiritual events]."
And within our daily
lives, our relationships are most important, in our journey of
initiation.
"Our relationships
are not separate from our spiritual evolution. Our relationships
are our spiritual evolution. Your relationships have become your
temples! These temples are your stepping stones to the highest
possible levels of human mastery. You are an initiate of the
highest order, immersed in a world of logic and emotion to know
yourself in all ways."
In his second book,
Walking Between the Worlds: The Science of Compassion, he
describes the "Seven Mirrors of Relationship" - fascinating
information he gleaned from several ancient texts.
Used by
therapists and educators around the world, the book shows how we
are to utilize negative experiences and emotions as our
allies in discovering and releasing underlying
fear-based beliefs. Each of the seven mirrors is based on the
premise that we draw to us what is inside.
"Our world is a
mirror of processes from within."
With the constant external mirroring of our internal workings,
we have the opportunity to shift what is inside and better
create what we desire on the "outside". And Braden
emphasizes the word constant.
Braden asserts that in
understanding our thoughts-feelings-emotions as cause and the
world "around" us as effect, we must utilize negative
experiences and emotions as our allies, as opportunities to
release any underlying fear-based beliefs. We thus come into
resonance with compassion and our creative potential as
spiritual beings.
According to Braden, we all are here to embody, in our
bodies and lives, the highest knowing available to us by
masterfully aligning our lower emotions with our higher
thoughts. Integration occurs in our hearts. Braden
distinguishes lower emotions from heart feelings in that the
latter reflect integration of lower emotions with higher
consciousness. Once done, we truly are fearless and our essence
shines through, which is unconditional love, joy and compassion.
And Braden gives a whole technology (including the Seven
Mirrors) to do this.
What is particularly exciting about Braden's work evolves
from the last two of the four key tenets gleaned from the
ancient texts.
-
Through
our lifetimes, in the presence of one another, we remember an
ancient science that gracefully carries us through the
challenges of life - the science of compassion.
-
We have today, and have always had, direct access to the
creative forces of our bodies and our outer world, through an
almost lost technology called prayer.
The fact that we
draw to us what is within our consciousness (as discussed in the
Seven Mirrors) suggests we are very powerful beings indeed, and
that we have a profound effect on each other and the world.
Braden claims 50% of the Essene prophesies
that were removed from what later became the Western
Bible were prophesies of hope and joy during our
time in history:
"another path of unprecedented peace and
cooperation."
This positive creation comes from within, from
each of us emanating high heart feelings.
"Quantum
physicists have openly discussed that at any given
moment in our history - even this moment - there are
simultaneous possibilities playing out. Parallel
possibilities exist in the same time and space. And
scientists say we literally tune into specific possibilities
without even knowing it through the choices that we make - in
each moment, in each day."
From reading the
ancients texts,
Braden realized there is a certain kind of prayer that is
very effective in realizing outcomes. To get clarity on this
most promising prospect, he decided to venture into Tibet. Since
Tibet was encroached upon in recent history, he reasoned that
any remaining documents would be the least distorted.
Thus, in April of last year, Braden and 21 others went on
a 22-day journey through Tibet to 13 monasteries and two
nunneries and had,
"a series of beautiful, synchronistic,
heartfelt experiences. We found in libraries there, Buddhist and
pre-Christian history documenting this mode of prayer. We also
were invited to participate with the monks and nuns as they
embraced this mode of prayer."
After exploring, reading, asking
questions and deciphering much interpretation, Braden
understood the key to this prayer which the monks and nuns use
to heal people.
"It is based on
emotion. Science documented in 1985 and '86 the relationship
between emotion and the DNA of our bodies. While
it is important to change our thoughts, thinking is simply
incomplete until the component of emotion has been added. In our
workshop we show a video from a hospital in Beijing, China,
where this prayer heals cancerous tumors inside a woman's body.
On the video, you see a real-time ultrasound image of the
cancerous tumor dissolving in less than three minutes.
The woman is fully awake and fully conscious."
According to
Braden,
when thoughts, feelings and emotions are in complete harmony,
we directly access the creative healing forces. What he
emphasizes is that rather than praying for something, we must
pray with our thoughts focused on the feeling of the positive
outcome already present. This mode of prayer is more like a
celebration of something, especially peace and harmony.
In this
way thoughts can easily be in complete resonance with feelings
and emotions, at their highest.
"Quantum
physicists
would say that rather than a 'healing' taking place, what
happened with the woman in the video was that a new outcome
was chosen."
Last year, Braden
teamed up with others, most notably
James Twyman, singer song-writer, author of Emissary
of Light and international peace troubadour who sings 12
prayers of peace from the 12 major religions to leaders around
the world.
Together they have performed peace concerts, some of
which were broadcast over the internet in real-time and involved
countless people from over 80 countries.
"In Japan during
The Great Experiment we did in April last year, there
were two and three-hundred people gathered around a single
monitor in some places."
"I can't prove that our celebrations of peace caused certain
things to happen but I can tell you that during those
broadcasts, unprecedented peace agreements were made in the
parts of the world on which we were focused. There are studies
showing the effect of prayer on crime rates. Global prayer is an
opportunity to choose, and bring into focus peace and life. In
doing so, we release the focus of catastrophic destruction, loss
of life and warfare. In November during one of our Internet
prayer broadcasts, Clinton called back fighter planes
headed for Iraq. War can't exist when millions are focused on
peace."
"We don't pray for certain things to happen for a leader or
country, we simply emanate and celebrate peace. Peace is a state
of being that allows for the greatest expressions of compassion,
love, creativity and life. It is within the presence of peace
that we have the opportunity to realize our greatest
possibilities. Peace is an awareness, a consciousness, rather
than something we do. It's something we become."
With lowered
magnetics and elevated frequencies of the Earth, these are the times, Braden
asserts, when our thoughts and emotions manifest with a short
enough lag time to witness and understand ourselves as cause.
Awareness of our current conditions by the ancients may be the
basis of both the apocalyptic and utopian prophecies.
In any
case, according to Braden's work, these are very
important times to come into resonance with peace.
"Our world is giving
birth to
a new Earth, Land masses, weather patterns, ice
caps and magnetic shifts bear witness to the changes. If our
outer world does, in fact, mirror our inner awareness, then we
have the evidence of a new consciousness. We are both pioneers
and midwives. Together we are birthing a new era of unity and
global cooperation, unprecedented in recorded history. The labor
has already begun as we live the days of prophecy."
Braden's
passion about his work with prayer can be understood in terms of
his life-long attempt to integrate his feeling, experiential
world with the scientific.
"Prayer in it's pure
form transcends religion, it transcends mysticism and transcends
science as we know it today. Maybe prayer is the best of what
the three have to offer. It is science, religion and mysticism
married together into a technology that we have yet to name.
Prayer is an inner technology."
Thus Braden
has developed an extensive inner technology of compassion (see
his first two books!) and now, with the help of others and
ancient materials, he offers an inner technology of prayer. At
minimum, the two offer tremendous opportunity to enhance our
personal relationships and our lives.
Ultimately, they prepare
us for what he calls "The Shift of the Ages"
and the realization of a new, loving and cooperative
reality ancients long ago predicted.
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