Slipping time,

Night adventures

Jungle friend

The dinosaur spread his wings and the light filtered through…

“Is this real or am I dreaming?”

“You’re in a different dimension, Gayle.”

[4/9/2013 8:31:37 PM] Louise Gilmore: Book Review
Mystery School
Gayle Clayton, 2013, AWS Publishing
Are you a seeker of the truth? Do you understand that to find the truth you must follow the twists and turns of your own path even if it feels more like stumbling than flying?
You can begin by learning about someone else’s path, but ultimately you can only experience the truth from the teachings of your own journey.
A book that acknowledges this spiritual law and refuses the typical self-help formulas of techniques, practice exercises and dot points is Gayle Clayton’s ‘Mystery School’.
It’s the story of her quest, first to find a teacher and then through the frustrations, insights and battles as that teacher refused to allow her, or anyone else in his workshops, to settle for less than they were capable of.
The teachings are there, but they creep into your awareness from unexpected directions. Clayton describes this as ‘holographic’ teaching. She challenges our unquestioned belief that ‘enlightenment’ is the ultimate outcome.
‘You may become transcendent’, she writes, ‘if not, the booby prize is enlightenment’. You have to read the book to find out why.
Clayton shares what she learned from years of training with her teacher. The topics include descriptions of building group energy, levels of consciousness, meditation, physics, ritual, tantra, karma, healing, the universe, myths and much more.
The challenge to the reader is to make your own sense of it.
Clayton is a mystic who has taught meditation, mystery school, and Egyptian cosmology at Omega Institute and written four other books on metaphysical subjects. She’s the holder of a BS in engineering and a MA in religion.
Order Mystery School as a download, from:

http://www.amazon.com/Mystery-School-ebook/dp/B00AWDWKEE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1357318490&sr=1-1&keywords=mystery+school

My own teacher in the mystery school had many near-death experiences in his lifetime. He taught me that Death was an ally; if you could defeat Death then you were entitled to receive a gift from him. When faced with my own near death experience in a car accident, I remembered this teaching. Having temporarily left my body, I found my recently deceased teacher meeting me in a realm of golden light.

“Well, you can cross over now if you really want to.”

Relieved, these words reassured me as I had struggled a great deal in my life. Yet, Raja was making it all too easy for me to die. Having heard my thoughts, he smiled enigmatically at me.

“Of course, you might like to know what you had set out to accomplish this lifetime.”

With a sweep of his hand, he showed the scope of work I had agreed to do. Awestruck, I could hardly converse with him.

“Wow, that’s all very interesting. I never realized that it was possible to do that.”

“Well, you’ll get a chance when you go back.”

“Excuse me, but I’m not going back. To be reborn? To wake up again in that dense physical body? No way.”

“Or you could go back to this body…”

“O.K.”

In a flash, I had returned to lift up my injured head off of the steering wheel. My conversations with my teacher had not changed despite his death. I hadn’t thought to ask him how much pain and suffering I would endure in my return. And he hadn’t bothered to tell me.

‘Viking sunstone’ found in shipwreck

A clear view of the Sun was not necessary for Vikings to navigate, scientists believe

A crystal found in a shipwreck could be similar to a sunstone – a mythical navigational aid said to have been used by Viking mariners, scientists believe.

The team from France say the transparent crystal may have been used to locate the Sun even on cloudy days.

This could help to explain how the Vikings were able to navigate across large tracts of the sea – well before the invention of the magnetic compass.

However, a number of academics treat the sunstone theory with scepticism.

Viking legends

The team from the University of Rennes in France say they found the crystal while examining the wreck of a British ship sunk off the island of Alderney – in the English Channel – in 1592.

An oblong crystal the size of a cigarette packet was next to a pair of dividers – suggesting it was part of the navigational equipment.

It has now been shown that it is of Iceland spar – a form of calcite known for its property of diffracting light into two separate rays.

Testing a similar crystal, the scientists proved that by rotation it was possible to find the point where the two beams converge – indicating the direction of the Sun.

They say it works on cloudy days, and when the Sun has set.

This particular piece of Iceland spar was found on the British vessel long after the Viking heyday in the ninth and 10th Centuries.

But the scientists conjecture that use of sunstones may have persisted for many centuries as a back-up to the often unreliable magnetic compass, which was introduced in Europe in the 13th Century.

There is only a sketchy reference in the old Viking legends to the sunstone.

Vikings were seafarers from Scandinavia who used their longboats to explore and conquer parts of Europe, Greenland, Iceland, Russia and North America.