Vision Quest - Finding Faith And Transforming Your Life

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WHAT'S A VISION QUEST?

The vision quest is a timeless spiritual practice. The traditional quest is one where the questor goes out alone in the wilderness and fasts from all familiar things---food, (sometimes water) and all communication with people for a period of days or weeks.

All the great spiritual teachers, such as Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, spent time alone in nature to connect with their higher spiritual self. You've probably heard about Jesus spending 40 days in the desert fasting. That was vision questing.

There are many forms of questing from every continent in the world. More common quests are four-day quests. Some consider the "sweat lodge" a form of questing.
This ancient practice is becoming lost as there are very few that teach about it today.

BENEFITS OF A VISION QUEST

Why would people want to put themselves thru this "little death"?

The purpose is to quiet the mind and take inner journeys---very possibly the greatest inner journeys one can take.

When you spend extended time in nature, your everyday mind (the beta mind state), starts to quiet down. As it quiets down, the higher mind, also referred to as theta and/or delta states of mind,emerges. As you access this higher mind, you connect to a higher force, to the spirit-that-moves-through-all-things.

And when that happens, it is life transforming. Many questors get visions during their times of solitude in nature. A quest can help you map out your life's path or what you need to accomplish before you leave this planet.

It answers the deepest spiritual questions and helps you to connect with Spirit. It also tests and develops your personal strength.

Grandfather, a very powerful wise elder, considered the vision quest an absolutely necessary spiritual practice that could not be substituted.

WHO WAS GRANDFATHER?

"Grandfather" was an Apache wise man, healer and scout, named Stalking Wolf. By the time he was 20, he was called "Grandfather" by all the elders in his tribe, a sign of great respect for his spiritual and earthly wisdom. By way of several vision quests, he discovered that his path would be to leave his tribe for 60 years, traveling up and down the Americas searching out spiritual truths. At the age of 23, he left his tribe and became a wanderer on a life-long spiritual quest.

To learn more about Grandfather, ancient wisdom, powerful practices and empowerment techniques, visit our website.

Unlimited Inner Power was founded to empower individuals using basic ancient shamanic techniques, principles and wisdom combined with modern scientific understandings of the powers of the mind. We help you harness your inner power and show you how to use it to achieve success in all areas of life: material, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Although the core of the teachings are based on knowledge that has been passed down by very powerful Native American elders, the teachings are not only Native American; they transcend culture and are universal.

Visit http://UnlimitedInnerPower.com to get a FREE audio that will help you reach deep states of mental and physical relaxation and much more. We promise that you'll enter a state of altered heightened consciousness (theta) within the first ten minutes of listening. When you sign up, you'll also receive inspiring articles and stories to help you become more empowered.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mary_Rivas

Guest Author - Dr. Caron Goode: Raising Intuitive Children

Excerpt from Raising Intuitive Children

Intuitive intelligence

Intuition was perceived as the psychic woo-woo of spiritualists fifty years ago. Today it has been deservedly recognized as a valid human intelligence along with others:
§ Physical intelligence
§ Mental-creative intelligence
§ Emotional-social intelligence
§ Intuitive intelligence
§ Spiritual intelligence

Intuitive intelligence stands as an entity deserving recognition. Brain mapping using EEG topography found that creativity and intuition are associated with theta waves usually linked with daydreaming or fantasizing. Theta waves are calm states in which intellectual activity at the conscious level isn’t occurring. Children and adults with ADHD produce excessive theta waves.

Intuitive intelligence operates on gestalts or whole pieces of information and functions from our memory, not logic. Intuitive ability is finally recognized as the fuel behind innovation, creative thinking, inspiration and psychic experiences.

Let’s clarify terms:

§ Intuitive intelligence – a system of processing information from a gestalt that arrives spontaneously, beyond intellectually known information or evident thought. Every human has an intuitive processing system. Like any intelligence, different people will have varying degrees of strength.
§ Intuition - a talent or ability to grasp or understand spontaneous perception, feeling or information. This talent would be a strength of the intuitive intelligence range.
We are discussing children whose intuitive intelligence manifests in different ways along a continuum of normal skills to gifted talents:
§ Children who learn through feelings and process information kinesthetically. (Intuitive learning mode)
§ Children who are creative and artistic and intuition drives their motivation. (Artistic drive for exploring and creating)
§ Children whose intuitive intelligence is like a radar reading other people and understanding them. (Empathy and interpersonal skills)
§ Children who have intuitive episodes like dreams or a flash of creative insight. (Deep insight, precognition)
§ Children who are psychic. (Awareness of non-physical worlds through all senses or a specific sense.)

Intuition is the common denominator of these talents and, all children have the same intuitive capacities. Like musical prodigies and math geniuses, children display their talents differently.

Intuitive children with highly tuned sensory perceptions display their gifts in what our cultures might think are unconventional ways. For example, how many parents are ready to believe that their children see ghosts or who, at a young age, have an entrepreneurial idea that could be successful?

Education, parenting and psychology professionals recognize that children have multiple intelligences, and intuitive intelligence is the new kid on the block. All intelligences exist on a continuum of normal to gifted. There are math prodigies, musical geniuses and intuitive psychics. The traits for intuitive intelligence cluster into several groups:
§ Creative and inspired artists,
§ Sensitive and empathic feelers, and
§ Talents involving inner psychic awareness,
§ Spiritual intuitives

Creative, inspired artist

John always remembers hearing music in his head. This music playing was his “normal.” He constantly hummed, which irritated his teachers and classmates. From the time John was seven-years-old, he experienced interruptions in his musical pursuits. His parents divorced when he was seven. At age eight, he pulled his drowning younger sister from the pool in his back yard. How she went over the fence surrounding the pool was never uncovered. At age nine, he developed food allergies, which left his mind fuzzy, schoolwork difficult and his body fatigued. Yet, John’s intuition continued to be curious about this music. In his tough times, he turned to his creativity.

He learned to read music. His mother taught him the basics of the piano, and then John went on to learn the guitar. By age eleven, he was playing the music her heard in his head when he wasn’t in school. Music absorbed his attention and poured from his soul. When others worried about his social skills and his lack of other interests, he stuck to his creativity. As a college graduate, John took menial jobs and played in a band until he was discovered and offered a recording contract. He is now an internationally known musician.

Empathic feeler

Eleven-year-old Laurie was sprawled across her bed and crying silently. She had just finished reading the book, The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The story portrayed the life of a boy named Jody Baxter, a solitary soul who developed a friendship with a deer. Her dad sat on the corner of her bed, ready to listen. Laurie discussed her sadness from the book, which reminded her of a classmate who was sad because his brother, a Marine, had died recently in the Middle East. Then there was her best friend whose parents were getting a divorce.
“I feel it all here, Dad.” Laurie pressed her heart like she was holding her emotions inside. One drop of sadness turned into a steady stream of tears that formed a puddle. Such are moments in the world of empathic children.

Spiritual psychic

Life is a flame that is always burning itself out, but it catches fire again every time a child is born.
George Bernard Shaw

Maria’s story tells how her spiritual gift gave her a sense of trust during her grandfather’s death.
Maria thoroughly enjoyed spending summers with her grandparents at their ranch. Her grandfather taught her all about horses, and she was an accomplished rider at the age of eleven when she visited during a hot summer season in dry West Texas.

Maria first noticed that her grandfather’s skin was dotted with crusty open sores around his throat and chin. When she asked what happened, she noticed that his eyes turned downward as he said that he cut himself shaving. All her grandfather’s signals said he wasn’t telling her the truth. Something else was going on and she was curious.

At dinner, she gazed across the table at him when he wasn’t looking. As was her habit when watching people’s energy, she let her perception soften, and she noticed a tall, whitish figure behind her grandfather. She knew this was an angel, and she figured her grandfather would die soon. Whenever she saw angels around people, it was to help them die; at least this had been true for Maria, based on her personal experiences.

Maria was a brave, young woman that summer, as she never asked her grandfather about the sores on his neck again. She heard the family whispers about how painful lung cancer was. When school started, Maria chose to stay at the ranch, sitting next to her grandfather’s bed, and watching and waiting with his angels. When her grandfather died, Maria was sad, but didn’t feel such a painful loss as other family members, as she could see him with the angels.

Maria showed the intuitive traits of deeper understanding of a bigger picture and clairvoyance or ability to see into the nonphysical. She felt the love and compassion from this reflection.

An Intuitive Continuum

This book clarifies that intuitive intelligence, like other intelligences, is a continuum of skills. Skills range from an ability to feel a friend’s downer energy to the heightened intuitive, who displays a psychic ability like clairvoyance. A child who takes music lessons and has a good ear for music is far different from a musical prodigy even though both demonstrate musical intelligence. A smart high schooler, who does algebraic equations in his head, has mathematical intelligence, same as a fifteen-year-old who ponders quantum physics as a freshman at MIT.

They exist on the same intelligence continuum, but show different aptitudes.

The confusion around intuition being a valid intelligence persisted because of how different groups use the words like intuition, psychic and spiritual gifts synonymously. The origin of the word intuition from Middle English denotes spiritual insight or spiritual communication and may evoke images of ghostly séances. The term psyche means of the soul, so psychic refers to people being in touch with the non-physical, what we think of as the spiritual world. People still confuse the terms today, and so we suggest using the inclusive phrase, “intuitive intelligence.” Our support for children’s talents has to provide them a resilient foundation against those who don’t understand.

You can purchase Dr. Caron Goode's book here: http://www.raisingintuitivechildren.com