Month: December 2015

You deserve freedom. You deserve love. You deserve admiration, adoration, and respect. These statements are true! And yet, on a deep level, you probably don’t accept them. If you’re like the majority on Earth right now, you have established a system of beliefs and justifications to convince yourself that you are worthy, when in fact, you already are.

You’ve been conditioned to do this by society, or family culture, or perhaps by religious beliefs. You may believe you are a good and worthy person WHEN you perform the right tasks, or go to church, or act a certain way, or believe a certain thing, or maybe even when you pay your bills on time.

But the fact of the matter is: you are an awesome precious consciousness that is a part of All That Is. You are intrinsically worthy, a creation and fragment of God, an immortal awareness. You don’t need any Earth-bound words, actions, or justifications to establish your worthiness.

Except when you believe you do. Except when you interpret your reality within a system you’ve bought into that says you do. Except when you meet the constraints of physical reality with fear, and respond by setting up a system of action to justify yourself to yourself.

Loving brother or sister, please be gently reminded: it is certainly OK to embrace your own worthiness. I am not speaking about the empty worthiness we convince ourselves of when the ego tells us a story. Ultimately there is nothing to be found there. Rather, I am speaking about the inherent, intrinsic worthiness of Being.

Within that context please also be gently reminded that it is certainly OK to question your beliefs- including those that make you feel less than worthy. It is certainly OK to change interpretations that cause you or others pain. It is certainly OK to evaluate even the most cherished of what you perceive to be your “core understandings.” Even your “first principles,” or the basic “truths” you establish for yourself by which you understand reality itself, can- and sometimes should- be up for interpretation. You are worthy of doing even that. You are fundamentally free enough to do even that. No one can take that ability from you- though you can quite easily take it from yourself.

This reality is an experience simulation, built so that your awareness can truly experience what it is like when you “buy in” to certain beliefs and then make free-willed choices based on those beliefs. Yet recognize that free will choice is at the center of the game: you get to choose how you will see this world! And the world will respond to your choices.

So as you make your choices about how you will see the world, just remember: you do deserve freedom! And if you bravely let yourself have it, truly, you will!

Right now you are dreaming. You are having an experience in an apparently physical reality. You are receiving sensory data (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) from an environment that seems external, your thoughts and feelings seem private, and you appear to be separate from those around you. While that’s all a very real experience, it may be helpful to understand that it is also a fantastic illusion!

You signed up for the illusion. You made a choice to come and have this experience, to live in this reality for a time, with all of its rules and constraints. But you probably don’t remember making that choice. You don’t remember because that’s a part of the deal when you come here: you accept a kind of “amnesia.” It may sound all too convenient to explain away such incredible statements with amnesia. But amnesia was a requirement because this experience would be impossible without it. In fact, this experience is about operating within some staggering constraints: including even, and especially, the constraint of not remembering all of what you really are.

Here in this reality, you experience yourself as- that is, you “are”- a human. You are male or female, young or old. You speak a language to communicate with those around you; you send symbols (words) to others who must interpret them in their own way and send symbols back to you. You get up in the morning, eat breakfast, do what you have to do during the day, and you use the toilet in the apparent privacy of the bathroom. You experience the pleasures and pains of the body. You have a name, a history, a list of things to do. You ARE somebody.

But in a far deeper sense, you are much, much more. You are an immortal being of conscious awareness. You are a spirit! You are unconstrained, unlimited, unharmable. You know on a deep level that you are an integral and fundamental part of the great all-comprising loving consciousness that we call “God.” You project your awareness into realities like this one to have the experience of being something within a special set of constraints, in order to grow your own being and participate in creation. Coming from God, the great foundational consciousness of unconditional love, at your core you also are profoundly loving, and you wish to expand and develop that capacity in yourself.

If these statements seem aloof and abstract, do not accept them! Rather, seek instead to simply discover for yourself if they are true or not. There are many ways to do so, and each is very personal and unique. But in general, meditation is a powerful first step: gaining familiarity with your awareness as it exists beneath the thoughts and judgments is a window to actually experiencing glimmers of wakefulness. Don’t take anyone’s word for it- listen within!

Science analyzes what is happening. It doesn’t analyze why. Note that many mistake “causes” for a “why.” Determining a cause-effect relationship between two things is not the same as truly understanding “why” that cause-effect relationship exists.

As an example, scientists may ask, why did this ice melt? And their answer may be, because its temperature rose above 32° F. They may then ask why did its temperature rise above 32° F? And they may determine an explanation for that too. They may further question that explanation, and so on, to perhaps even hundreds of degrees of questioning. In materialist science every question asked must report an answer that is physical, as science and its language is about the content of this physical reality frame.

However, materialist science will never arrive at a real answer by speaking in physical terms. Why? Because the entire physical reality system is derived from a non-physical source. There is nothing within the physical system that can explain why the entire system itself is occurring. Science may go deeper and deeper into the rule-set of this reality, and may even identify universal physical laws and make certain wide-arching conclusions, but it will never be able to explain the entire system from within it. As an example, if science wishes to explain the origin of the universe as the Big Bang, it cannot do so without yet still being unable to explain why the Big Bang occurred. (“We don’t know why, it just is that way” is not an answer.)

The non-physical source of this physical reality is consciousness. Thus, it is only through consciousness that a comprehension of the source- the Big Why- can be attained. Fortunately, you are conscious- so you do technically have the ability to attain it.

From our physical perspective, death appears to be the end of the person. Our senses behold a body that is no longer animated by the spark of life, and we no longer can interact with them in the ways that we know. What’s more- we cannot typically see to the other side to have any certainty that the person continues on- so we linger with fear, doubt, and sorrow. To us on Earth, death seems merciless and final.

What has died, however, is not the person. What has died is the constraints they were bound to. The body and its crude limitations are shirked. The old coat is cast off, and the spirit is set free!

Death is not the end. It is a beautiful new beginning! It is going home. It is a journey from the fog of the less real, to the clarity of the more real. It is an awakening from the dream that we call physical life.

For those of us still dreaming, the absence of the person from the dream can bring us deep pain. And yet in a reality that is built upon loving consciousness, those who have passed from us are truly no more than a thought away. For unlike the body and its crude outcomes which are so temporary, the love between two people is real, and it cannot die. Love is never lost. Love transcends the binds of matter. Love supersedes muscle and bone. Love is the force of incalculable power that fuels Creation itself!

Thus when someone we love experiences the death of their body, let us remember our love for them. Let us take consolidation that we have not truly lost them, for they exist right now not as less than they were, but in fact as much, much more.

For my uncle Jimmy, who passed from the Earth in the past hour of our time.

Really knowing yourself has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind. Fundamentally you are not your name, your body, your possessions, your affiliations, or your ideas. Rather than taking new ideas- even spiritual ones- and adding them to your idea of who you are in order to define yourself, instead turn your attention toward full present moment awareness of the Now. Even if you cannot sense it at this moment, your awareness itself- your consciousness- transcends the forms that it is currently beholding and identifying with.

Personally experiencing that is a matter of gently but consistently shifting your momentum of focus away from thoughts and judgments towards a quiet and full awareness of the present moment itself. We call that process “meditation.” Yet, meditation is not an action- it is simply purposefully setting intention toward being present in the current moment without judgment. In doing so, your awareness very gradually and naturally becomes less beholden to the “datastream” of the current physical reality. That may sound strange, but getting to know your true self is not a foreign activity. It is rather a subtle yet joyful movement toward that which is “most you” and most comfortable to you: being aware is the most natural thing in the world. If you permit yourself to simply dwell with your awareness regularly, you will find that gaining familiarity with your true self is not only possible, but is one of the most rewarding and freeing pursuits available to you while you are here.

The great conscious awareness that gives us our being- that which we often call God- is also the Source of all forms. That Source is unfathomably loving! Thus, the deepest root of all things- every single thing- is Love. This can sometimes be extremely hard to see here while our awareness is constrained to the experience of physical reality. Yet, no matter where we are, if we ever totally let go, we immediately begin to move away from the confusion of form and toward the constant foundation of God’s love that endures beneath every surface.

Love is our source and our nature. Love the substance from which all experience is built. Love is our challenge, our desire, our unavoidable destination. Love is the answer.

A man I admire once said something to the effect of: physical incarnation is like holding a pea between two fingers and squeezing down on it to force the pea core out of the skin. It can’t go up, it can’t go down, but it’s gotta go somewhere- so the pea just shoots out in some wild direction.

Being physical imposes all sorts of perceived constraints upon us, per the rule-set of this physical reality. We experience the physical constraints of having to live, think, and function with a body of flesh. We experience social constraints as we are affected by the choices and actions of those around us. We experience resource constraints as we strive to support our wants and needs. We experience time constraints. And we experience communication constraints, as we are limited to crude words and bodily movement in our communication with one another.

Yet all of these constraints are meant to allow us to experience a truer and much more fundamental set of constraints: our inner constraints. The feelings and thoughts that arise in response to our physical constraints cause us to enter into a complex jungle of seemingly forced self discovery. The world seems to take our money- we feel powerless. The world seems to thwart our relationships- we feel lonely. The world seems to bring disease to our body- we feel pain. We typically perceive all these conditions as negative. And yet, hidden in them is the very meaning and power of the physical experience- for they allow us the opportunity to actually better ourselves.

In Amy Call’s NDE she recounts that a wise being who had mastered humility was gathered among many spirits who would benefit from learning it. He said to her (without words) something to the effect of, “All I can do is plant a seed of interest for them to learn it for themselves. Without a physical body they cannot grow in that way. They need the contrast of the physical experience to learn it.”

Let us take a fresh look then at the contrasts in our lives! Every pain, every challenge, every quandary holds a bountiful treasure- if we are willing to truly, fearless venture inward to discover what it is about ourselves that the experience challenges. Seek out your negative self-perceptions, and meet them. Seek out your pains, and feel them. Seek out your demons, and hug them. Seek out your fears, and sit with them fully. For such is the reason you have come to this place of apparent limitations.

You can’t fully explain Reality by pointing to metaphors (including words or ideas). You can’t explain the Whole by pointing at the part. Since the Whole is consciousness, the Whole can only be fully identified as it is experienced as consciousness. When one is experiencing form- that is, differentiation of any kind- one is not experiencing the Whole. Take care then when attempting to explain some things by using other things- any time you are doing that, you are not fully explaining Big Truth, or All That Is.

We often think we are not accomplishing anything when we’re not doing anything. And we often think that when we’re not doing anything, nothing is happening. Neither is true. Our very being exists on a level that transcends all elements of the physical experience. We can move around the physical props all we would like, and in one sense we are doing little more than modifying pretend objects in a video game.

The real action takes place in consciousness. The real change occurs within consciousness. The real scene is the landscape of the spirit. And thus our accomplishment in this life is not measured in physical objects moved around on the stage of life, but rather, in the lasting impact we leave with others and within ourselves.

We are here to Love! Loving another conscious being is a true accomplishment. Conquering one’s own fear so that one may be more vulnerable and loving is a true accomplishment. As attested to by thousands of those who have seen the other side (“NDE’ers”), the success of our life is in how much we have loved- not in what we have physically achieved. So take one moment today to do something truly loving for yourself or for another- for even if it may seem small, it is the very reason the universe is here for you.

My name is Christian, and I’d like to extend a warm welcome to you!

My intention with this blog is to provide SHORT, bite-sized contemplations for the purpose of encouraging YOUR spiritual walk- whatever that may be. There are no specific beliefs or dogmas required here- simply a desire to reach beyond the physical experience you are now having.

See my Welcome page and recommended material here:

Welcome Page and Recommended Material