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Browse published articles attributed to ROBERT RIDEOUT, with full-archive search.
Many spiritual seekers have become acquainted with Mahavatar Babaji, and an artist’s conception of him, through Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. Some claim that this same Babaji was known as Hariakhan Baba, from the early 1800s till 1922, and that he reinca ated again in 1970, in a cave in northern India, looking much younger but changing dramatically over his fourteen year inca ation.
A practical article connected into the broader SelfGrowth topic graph.
Looking back now, my path to A Course in Miracles probably all started in 1969 when I accepted Jesus my personal Lord and Savior, under the influence of the Campus Crusade for Christ. However, after joining a Christian brotherhood of aspiring monks, where I was daily quizzed on how many Bible verses I had memorized and could recite verbatim, I was totally confused by it all. Their version of reality just didn’t sit well with me. I felt like a parrot of Bible verses, that I didn’t even begin to understand, or the town crier that nobody wanted to hear. Jesus would show me more, much more.
I have been wearing rudraksha seeds around my neck since the early 1970s. Most people have no idea of the power that these sacred seeds contain. To even gaze upon rudraksha, brings a spiritual blessing! The Dahli Lama and a very large faction of India’s holy men wear them. Why? What am I talking about? Rudraksha is a large evergreen broad-leaved tree, bearing the scientific name of Elaeocarpus Ganitrus Roxb. It grows primarily in Nepal, northern India and Indonesia. And it has many benefits for mankind.r
In 1994, I was at a major turning point in my life. I had just survived a near tragic accident where I broke my body in twelve places, my father and best friend had recently died, and to top that off, I was now being forced to sell my house and land in the woods due to divorce. My soon to be ex-wife was taking my young son with her to New Mexico, so we really needed to sell our home, as neither of us could afford to buy the other out. As the house was off the grid and on a 12Volt system, this cut out the majority of possible buyers for us, as far as the banks were conce ed.
Back when I was a nineteen year old, budding born-agai Christian, some of Jesus’ clairvoyants came to visit. All I remember was being on my knees bent over, as an older middle aged couple placed their hands upon me, proclaiming that “to really know God, He may take everything from you”. At that point in my life, I didn’t have much for God to take. I was still living at home with my parents but getting ready to fly the nest too. It was that time in life to create my own path. And what a path I did create, paving it every inch of the way with my own choices, both good and bad.
Many years ago, I was having serious problems and facing possible prison time, all because of alcohol. I didn’t really realize fully yet that I was an alcoholic and still hadn’t hit my bottom. I was told I should have my own peyote meeting, as an emergency healing service. I did just that. However, I want to be clear here. I do not want to offend or disrespect the Native American Church or any of its members, by relating my story of sitting up on peyote. With the advent of the internet, it is all out there anyway.
Kava is a mild liquid intoxicant and a large element in Fijian culture. And it’s legal. This is the liquid drug or beverage of choice in most of Melanesia and Polynesia. Kava or kava-kava’s scientific name is (Piper methysticum) (Piper: Latin for 'pepper', methysticum: (Latinized) Greek for 'intoxicating'). The roots of the plant are used to produce a drink with sedative and anesthetic properties. Kava is consumed throughout the Pacific Ocean cultures of Polynesia (including Hawaii), Vanuatu, Melanesia and some parts of Micronesia.
Back in 1983, I began reading "A Course in Miracles" and doing the daily lessons in thought reversal. However, the text part of the Course was overwhelming to me then; I felt I was too young to really understand it, and I was in my early thirties. I did realize that this book held all the answers to life's greatest questions and offered a new way of seeing things. But each sentence I had to re-read over many times to get it. Then twenty years later, I find myself in prison doing 2.5 years for a felony DUI.When I was at my lowest point in my life, the Course returns to me there.
Have you become aware of the divine synchronicity in your life, to where you can say, “Everything speaks to me”? Learning how to read the Book of Life definitely isn’t easy by any means; it takes a life time of practice. I only know what I know from my own self-realization, but I feel that when I’m aware and open and really pay attention to each moment of life, everything does speak to me. I’ve been a singer/songwriter for three decades now and recently wrote a new song entitled Everything Speaks to Me. The lyrics speak for themselves: Verse 1r
The Egyptians believed that cats carry the light of human intelligence. I couldn't agree more! My three felines are like my fur gurus, teaching me to be gentle and loving with them, as I learn their boundries of respect. They seem to live in a spiritual realm, especially when they stare off for great lengths of time, at apparently nothing. Yoga postures were developed from watching cats. They are so relaxed, cool and calculated. It's no surprize we have terms like "cat nap' and "cool cat". Cats have also been rated as the worlds greatest hunters, due to their incredable concentration.
Do you believe in ghosts? Lord knows, we have all seen enough movies about them, but have you personally encountered one? It finally happened to me a few years ago, convincing me of the supe atural reality of ghosts. They do exist.
Most all of us, if we’ve lived any length of time here on earth at all, carry some bodily scars from accidents. Are accidents karma? I certainly believe they are; the scars we carry are constant reminders of those incidents that happened long ago. When I shave in the morning, I see a small line on my chin where I cut myself on a broken baby bottle back in my infant toddler days. I certainly don’t remember this accident, as I was too young, but my face remembers. It remembers my mother telling me how I fell as a baby with my bottle that broke.r
My parents gave me a Grand Tour of Europe as an initiation into life, back in 1968. The export model Volkswagen bus, which cost $1900 new, was a gift which would later be sent home and travel the United States with me. My friend Randy and I started our trip in Holland, where we saw A Frank’s upstairs hidden apartment, the famous “red light” district, numerous canals and tulips and learned all about how Edam cheese was made. Most of our trip, we survived on Edam cheese. Ann’s place and the girls of the night made quite an impression on us.
Gravity inversion, or hanging out, upside down, has been a way of life for me for many years now. It all began with learning the headstand pose of Hatha yoga back in the early 1970s. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, knew all about the benefits of inverting the spine; he hung patients from ladder rungs on ropes back in antiquity.r
After writing my autobiography, I realized that as long as we, human beings, exist on planet earth and have our ever growing and expanding cyberspace, my book Still Singing, Somehow will be out there when I'm long gone and forgotton. My desendents for many generations to come can read about their ancestor who lived through the sixties and survived about everything life can throw at you, to write an inspirational book all about it. So, I ask you; are authors immortal? To view Still Singing, Somehow and learn more about Rob Rideout, go to http://www.stillsingingsomehow.com/
How many people do you know who have a daily spiritual practice; one that they’ve been doing for many years? Most of us are aware of devotional practices, but how many of us actually put any devotion into practical application? Counting myself, I might know of four or five people who have some form of a spiritual discipline. If we profess to love God, then why don’t we make the time and effort, daily, to show that we do care enough to remember Him?r
Back in 1959, when I was ten years old, I spent two weeks of my summer with my sister in a child’s version of heaven on earth. I’m talking about the Pony Farm, or “Children’s Happy Acres” as it was officially called. North of Bellingham Washington, forty boys and girls came together for a week of living on a farm, and having their own Shetland pony to ride everyday and learn how to take care of. The price tag was forty dollars per week, considered high back then, and included three square meals a day of the best fresh farm produce and livestock I’ve ever tasted- and all organic, of course.
I became a musician back in 1964, with the invasion of The Beatles. I have played music professionally, as a lead singing drummer, both on the road and in house bands for over twenty-eight years. Then, I learned to play guitar back in 1981. My life has never been the same since! With the guitar, my vocal ability and my creative nature, I was soon trying to write my own songs. They came slowly at first, sometimes with years in between, but I continued to play around with good words and melodies. Now I have thirty-three songs that I proudly call my own.
When my eyes are spiritually open, I see that I live in heaven. It took a very long time for this realization to come to me, but it is so true. I DO live in heaven. Gratitude for everything is what opens the door to this vision of heaven.r
As fate and karma would have it, I attended the 1995 Kumbha Mela festival in India, where Babaji appeared to me. This Mela was the ardh or six-year festival, with only ten million sadhu, holy men and spiritual seekers in attendance, compared to the twelve-year cycle Maha Kumbha Mela that often reaches even greater numbers, like up to seventy million souls. It is believed that this Kumbha Mela has been going on as far back as nearly 3500 BC. To even be here, is the equivalent of a thousand other pilgrimages!
I guess you could say I started jou aling when I was seventeen years old and took a sailboat trip up the coast of British Columbia with my friend’s dysfunctional family. I chronicled our trip, calling it “To Hell and Back in a Sailboat”. This was my first attempt at writing; my mother loved it and encouraged me to do more. I did two years later, at nineteen, when I traveled through all of Western Europe in a VW bus and kept a daily journal of that experience. I can’t remember exactly when I started daily jou aling, but it was in my early twenties when I got married.
When I arrived home from work the other day, I sighed to myself, “I am home” as I closed the front door and began taking off my work boots. Then the significance of those words hit me like a powerful mantra; I Am Home! Stop for a moment to consider the deeper levels of interpretation this statement carries. What does home mean to you? To me, home is Om, as well as a heartfelt place to rest your head.r
How many of us have heard the sound in silence? What sound, you may ask, could there be in silence? To me, it is the sound of life, AUM or OM, the voice for the Holy Spirit.r
After a recent divorce, I was definitely at a major turning point, in my young life of thirty years. In early October of 1979, Bruce and I flew fourteen hours to Nandi, Fiji. We had gotten an incredible introductory airfare on Continental airlines for five hundred dollars round trip, with Hawaii included, and good for up to one year. During ’79, Brooke Shields was busy filming The Blue Lagoon in Fiji. She would soon be our neighbor, island-wise. In Nandi airport, the first thing we heard was Bula, Fijian for hello. We’d just stepped off the plane into another world.