Science meets spiritual reality, once again, in this second book of Ray Cataniaās "Awakening Series". Catania, now a strong believer in the afterlife, searches for answers. A vigorous, intense, search is on to connect science and spirituality and find how they align. Motivated by a will to understand what is happening to himself, he embarks on a quest to fill in the blanks of what makes it so. Blind faith isnāt an option, as he continues onward with his journey to one day find enlightenment.
Youāll read the four principles of ascension, the laws of attainment, how to create, manifest, and remove self-limiting beliefs. As a student of consciousness, life, death, and the afterlife, Catania writes of his experiences so you can view them from a practical perspective.
Written with humility, humor, and sarcasm, do not expect this book to be a boring lesson guide. Each story is based on real life events that are sure to surprise and entertain you.
*This book contains adult subject matter, adult language that may not be suitable for all readers.
*These books are not intended to be Religious in any way, nor do they support or denounce any forms of organized religion, overall.
Science meets spiritual reality, once again, in this second book of Ray Cataniaās "Awakening Series". Catania, now a strong believer in the afterlife, searches for answers. A vigorous, intense, search is on to connect science and spirituality and find how they align. Motivated by a will to understand what is happening to himself, he embarks on a quest to fill in the blanks of what makes it so. Blind faith isnāt an option, as he continues onward with his journey to one day find enlightenment.
Youāll read the four principles of ascension, the laws of attainment, how to create, manifest, and remove self-limiting beliefs. As a student of consciousness, life, death, and the afterlife, Catania writes of his experiences so you can view them from a practical perspective.
Written with humility, humor, and sarcasm, do not expect this book to be a boring lesson guide. Each story is based on real life events that are sure to surprise and entertain you.
*This book contains adult subject matter, adult language that may not be suitable for all readers.
*These books are not intended to be Religious in any way, nor do they support or denounce any forms of organized religion, overall.
Welcome to the second book in the Awakening Series. In the first book, The Atheist and The Afterlife: An Autobiography, I took you through the beginning of my journey, describing my spiritual awakening and how it came to be. It was never something I sought out. It just sort of happened to me, which may be what makes this story intriguing. Did someone or something want me to be this way, and if so, why? Also, what additional obligations have I been given? I have an overwhelming feeling that I must āspread the word.ā That is why these books were born. I never expected I would have such an important message to share with people.
Iāve made a few transformations in my life, some more challenging than others. As a steadfast student of life and consciousness, I expect more of them will come. My latest transformation once again, was a spiritual one; not driven by greed or a need to get to another level of my career or finances. In fact, I left my lucrative career behind, walking away to give my all, to share this information with anyone who really wants it.
What you are about to read is based on my realityāone which is constantly changing and expanding into the metaphysical world. As a metaphysical theorist, I write as I learn, and learn as I write. Each experience, or each lesson, is like a piece of a puzzle that fits within a much larger picture. Over time, I continue to find pieces that connect and fill voids. The search for new and important pieces wonāt end in my lifetime, but I will explore until my last breath, and perhaps beyond. As I receive them, I look forward to sharing them with you.
The picture that this puzzle will one day assemble has begun to take form and is more vivid than ever. What once appeared to be an overwhelming task, of seeking and learning truths, is no longer that. In fact, each piece of the puzzle brings more inner peace, more stillness and calmness in a world that seems to be needlessly struggling upstream against the river flow. Too many people spend their valuable time trying to swim upstream, as I once did. I am learning that fighting the current, or anything else for that matter, simply isnāt necessary.
Ā When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch you.
Ā
Learning and mastering the universal laws that have existed and will exist forever is the key to unlocking your full potential, succeeding without conflict, accomplishing without struggle, and achieving while in flow.
Iām beginning to understand why some folks, more enlightened than I, speak and write in poetic metaphors. Forgive me, as I just emerged from one of my daily meditation rituals. I promise to float back and forth between that state of consciousness and my usual profane storytelling, combined with what I hope will be, some enlightening surprises along the way.
Every book, of course, is written for a purpose. The purpose of the books in this series is that each of them will bring to you those newer pieces of the puzzle that I most recently discovered and explain them in their simplicity for anyone to use and enjoy. Believe me, if I can do this, anyone can. I will be reminding you of that throughout this read.
Ā In this book, I will reveal more about my journey toward spiritual enlightenment (which I have yet to attain), to show that anyone who wants it badly enough can reach higher levels of consciousness and have all that life has to offer. This book, like the last, will take you through some of my encounters. I will discuss what I think the evolution of consciousness has been for me and what I must do to reach my next level. We are energy beings forever, temporarily limited by a physical body while continuing to evolve in this realm. We are not a body with consciousness, but consciousness within a body.
I invite you to come along with me, experience my learning process, and join me on my path. This book is focused on the concepts I have outlined and how they affect reality. There are plenty of stories within these chapters that may put most of the concepts in a useful, practical context. I hope you will enjoy the story of my journey; but more than that, I hope you will take away with you the concepts that speak most to you and use them to achieve everything you want, and more. My lifeās dream has always been to write a book, and now here I am, working on my second. I never would have thought the subject matter would be this amazing, but that is part of what makes the experience so rich for me, and hopefully for you, the reader, as well.
About two years or so has gone by since the publishing of the first book, and I am still not what I would consider an expert on all things metaphysical. I am a man going through his existence on earth with curiosity and a desire to learn about the secrets of the mindānot the brain, but the mind (it is very important that we differentiate the two early on). I enjoy learning as much as I can about universal laws, and putting them to the test whenever possible. That being said, I try never to write about anything I have not experienced. This book is a compilation of things I have learned from my mentors and have experienced myself. Blind faith is not something I am willing to put my trust in, and I donāt expect you to either.
Ā
Take what is useful and meaningful to you from this book and leave the rest behind.
Ā
Since the publishing of my first book, I have become a teacher and private coach of metaphysics. My qualifications come from my experiences, my research, and a newly printed diploma in metaphysical parapsychology which Iāve hanged proudly on my wall. I am working toward my doctorate in the same. Being a spiritual life coach is something I find very rewarding. Watching my clients achieve their own individual breakthroughs and awakenings has been my passion since the release of my first book.
I chose to return to studying and learning in a big way. Besides working toward my doctorate, I have also gone to school to receive a master certification in life coaching, a master certification in Usui Reiki, and one in meditation. These formal trainings, in addition to all I have learned from my mentors, has put me on a path to share and to show how this information can be used in the practical world. (If you donāt know why those two phrases are in bold type, then you didnāt begin this series by reading my first book. If I hadnāt experienced all that I described in Book One, there could never have been a Book Two.)
In addition to the above-mentioned certifications, I have kept up a personal study of quantum physics, reading a myriad of books and publications on the topic. I know there is always a way to bridge the gap between science and spirituality and I continue to seek them and find them, to the best of my ability. Physics at the quantum level is nothing like the basic Newtonian laws you and I may have studied in school. Everything behaves much differently at the subatomic level, almost magically. The more one understands the so-called āmagicā at that minuscule level, the easier it becomes to understand the real magic we have access to in our world.
In this book I often refer to my mediumship, which is still developing. I am by no means a professional medium, intuitive, clairvoyant, or the recipient of any other label you may choose to characterize any of my various so-called abilities by. It is common for me to have those experiences and I write about them, because they are often fascinating and sometimes humorous. It is my hope that you will find these books entertaining and informative.
I do not consider myself special. Up until recently I would say that I have done nothing to be particularly deserving of these or any spiritual gifts. I was a regular guy who fought to get ahead and make a life for myself. As I mentioned previously, there was no going with the flow for me back then. It was all about the struggle. I fought for everything I had and everything I wanted to become. After many ups and downs, I eventually became what I thought successful meant. But just as I thought Iād made it, I had the first of several awakenings drop on my head like a load of bricks. My lifetime of experience has brought me full circle from atheism to being in a committed spiritual partnership with the collective consciousness and several beings on a higher plane of existence. In the first book I wrote how I got here; this second book will tell you what Iāve learned to do thereafter. I describe many of my life experiences in this book, and in that respect,
it bears some similarity to the previous book. What makes this one different is how much more energy it contains. By energy I mean information: information regarding things I learned post-spiritual awakening, along with actual recipes for positively transforming oneself in this realm of existence. You will read about aspects of my personal transformation and how you may wish to adopt them yourself. This world we live in is becoming less complicated than Iād previously thought. What I once viewed as an enormous, overpowering entity, with the power to dictate, has now become something with which I feel in harmony.
One of the greatest things Iāve learned recently is I can actually change my reality and guess what? You can too. Please, memorize this next statement. Write it down, email it, text it to yourself, say it aloud fifty times, get bumper stickers made with it. Wait a minute. Do they still make those? Anyway, do what you must to remember this. It is that important, and I didnāt make you wait until the end of the book to give it to you.
Ā
Oneās perception is oneās truth. Change your perception and you can change your truth. Change your truth and you have changed your reality.
Ā
(Did I just channel a bit of Confucius?)
I am certainly not by any means the first person to discover these truths. Iāll give you an example:
I once watched an interview with basketball legend Michael Jordan. He was asked how it was that he could make those seemingly impossible three-point shots that most other NBA players couldnāt duplicate. At first, he said he wasnāt sure but then, he thought about it for a moment. And he said something that will stay with me forever. I will paraphrase his answer: āYou see, sometimes I go out there on the court and the basket is just a basket. But there are other times when I am out there, and when I look at the basket, I donāt see a basket at all. I see a big, huge, oversized old bucket, and at those times I canāt miss a shot.ā
Michael Jordanās perception of the basketball hoop was unlike that of almost everyone else. Such was a part of the secret of his success. He changed his perception of truth, and that altered his reality. Sounds rather simple, doesnāt it? Well, it is, and it isnāt. You see, for one to āseeā the basketball hoop as that expanded size, one must truly believe it is that large. Regulation basketball hoops are 56.5 inches in circumference, but if one were in that āJordan zoneā or frame of mind, and, if someone were to ask how big the circumference of the basketball hoop is, one might answer 113 inches or even 226 inches. Who knows? And so, in simplicity, this is part of what made Michael Jordan so great: his ability to change or alter his perception of reality to what he wanted it to be, regardless of what it may be to the rest of us.
When you finish reading this book, I hope you will have learned how to create your own 226-inch basketball hoop and, hopefully, never āmiss a shotā again.
In his second book, You Are Still Alive, Now Act Like It, Ray Catania brings us through his life journey and discovery of spiritual truths in a blend of memoir, insight, and calls to action. I was intrigued by the combination of quantum science and spirituality when I picked this up but was disappointed with the delivery. While I have few qualms pertaining to the content, the organization, lack of citation, and delivery all obscured what the author was trying to communicate.
Narrative portions where the author recalls his past were by far the strongest examples of the authorās skill and writing style in the book. The stories were engaging, introduced and developed characters well, and flowed easily; the informational portions, in contrast, especially toward the beginning of the book, felt very forced. The narratorās voice switched from confident storyteller to nervous presenter, trying to maintain engagement through parentheticals and jokes instead of just letting it go and letting the information engage and carry interest.
It was also very hard to maintain interest as there was no clear path from beginning to end. Typically in an introduction, you will find a roadmap of sorts where you will learn what is to be covered, why it matters, and in what order. Instead, the author turned the introduction into a glossary of terms instead of introducing concepts and defining terms as he went. Not knowing where the book was going was bad enough, but hitting a wall of definitions right at the beginning is an instant interest killer for many people.
Additionally, Catania carries enough credentials to be a trustworthy voice on the topic but failed to cite sources or research basic claims like the origins of a particular native ceremony referenced. There was perhaps also a need for a sensitivity reader in reference to that, the comparison of personal suffering to the tragedy of 911, and other points that were less egregious but still startling.
Overall, I would probably not recommend this book to my readers but I look forward to what this author can produce with more organization, citation, and a more relaxed informational style to match his narrative writing.Ā