Month: January 2018

The world is reflecting back to you the nature of your deepest beliefs. The physical universe is like a giant mirror provided to give you the opportunity to actually experience your beliefs, perceptions, and assumptions.

The physical world is not bad. It is a firm but neutral set of constraints engaged by consciousness for the purposes of self-realization and experience integration. The quality of your experience then contains precious clues as to whether or not you are utilizing that experience in a way that is in alignment with the more fundamental truth of love, or not.

How does your experience feel? What is life like for you? Where you feel negative emotions or fear, see if you can discover what negative self-perceptions or beliefs you have “bought into.” When consciousness has “bought into” a self-perception or a perception about the world that is not in alignment with the truth, negative emotions result. Do you perceive yourself as- and then feel- powerless? Do you perceive yourself as- and then feel- unlovable, harmable, or trapped?

While these experiences can feel quite real, ultimately, they are illusions. You are powerful, you are loved, you are immortal, and you are free.

We buy into negative perceptions because we feel the evidence vouches for them. Our conclusions about reality become assumptions about reality, and they become invisible. Our conclusions about ourselves become assumptions about ourselves, and they become invisible. But the mirror keeps reflecting the appropriate experience of those assumptions back to us. Our experience remains a faithful gauge of the assumptions and beliefs that we are holding onto.

Your negative emotions can serve as guideposts to re-discover your assumptions. Seek out: “why do I feel the way that I do?” When you find the belief that is giving rise to your feeling- do not assume it is true. Rather, use the discovery to help direct you towards the fear itself, without the story of the belief. Use the discovery to help direct you to the fear that you are- or, were- too afraid to face and feel. What are you afraid of? Sit with the feeling, no matter how strong it is. Be with the feeling, no matter how strong it is. You can face your fears, you will not be destroyed. You can feel all your feelings, you will not be destroyed.

In fact, you may be set free! For underneath all the pain, confusion, and hardship, the true and ever-present nature of the spirit is always, always one of complete love, joy, and freedom! Your bedrock is one of love, joy, and freedom. Your true nature is one of love, joy, and freedom: it is always down there within you, beneath all the negative beliefs that you assume the physical world has proven to you. So where you don’t feel love, joy, and freedom- allow the world to show back to you what you believe about yourself and the world that is causing you to no longer know it. That process of self-discovery, bravery, and feeling is exactly what the physical universe is meant for. And since the universe was built for it, it wants you to succeed, and will work with you when you are ready.

The present moment is all that there ever is.

The “now” exists beyond the mind. It is not an idea of the mind. The “now” is your alert presence in the current moment, the silent witness that beholds and experiences all of the form (all of the thoughts, all of the feelings, all of the objects, and all of the contexts). The ideas of the mind can be temporarily experienced in the now, but the now is not the ideas. The now supersedes all ideas. You do not need to live your life lost in the dream that is the ideas of the mind, in thoughts about the future or the past. You do not need to surrender yourself to anxieties about the past or future- they too only can exist as they are recalled into the present moment.

Your power is always in the now. It does not exist in the past, or in the future- it is always right now.

While you may have established great momentum in your life which may seem to bind you into a given circumstance-set or idea-set, you are not ever completely bound to the cumulative impacts of your past, because you always have the power in the now- right now- to change your momentum toward the direction that you choose. That direction can always be toward: brighter expectations for the future, new personal beliefs, greater awareness of your personal power and freedom, greater acceptance of the love that exists for you, increased prioritization of serving others over the self, or any other direction that you so choose. For as your consciousness moves in the present moment, so will your body- and even your reality itself- also move. Even if the effects may not always be immediately apparent, make no mistake that how you choose to use the present moment is always causing change. That which happens in consciousness space in the now always has an effect, even if you cannot see or understand it.

What momentum are you creating for yourself and your world today? If you are ready to do so, identify just one thing that has your attention, and choose to approach it with love, rather than fear. Even doing so with just one choice begins to move the momentum of your life in the direction of true freedom.

As we live in a world of duality, we often approach understanding all of reality with the assumptions we’ve learned in duality. As one example, we believe distance is a fundamental property of reality, so we assume someone can only be in one place at a time. As another example, we believe reality is this one big shared objective place (“the world”), and that we all are seeing the same thing. Neither of those assumptions are correct.

An assumption we bring to spirituality is: we tend to believe that some ideas from our world- for instance religious conclusions or scientific conclusions- are themselves fundamental statements about all of reality, and that others are not. We assume this in part because we personally discover that some ideas end up proving to be verifiable and true in our local world, while others do not. We naturally establish beliefs to explain our life experience and how the external world seems to work. We then almost automatically extrapolate those beliefs into the “Big Picture.”

Spirituality though is not fundamentally about a move towards one specific set of ideas, any more than it is about a person moving from one physical place to another. This is not to say that Earthly ideas do not have an important place in spirituality- of course, they do! We are having the meaningful experience of duality, so the ideas of duality are important, useful, and meaningful to us. They are the forms with which we work. I wouldn’t be writing these words, and you wouldn’t be reading them, if there weren’t some value in considering spiritual ideas.

But the spirit itself is something that fully transcends all the intellectual ideas and the many forms of Earth. The spirit in its actual nature transcends all the assumptions that we use to make intellectual judgments about reality. All intellectual judgments, and indeed all forms, occur within spirit.

Spirituality then is not just about ideas, but more fundamentally, about what actually is. Spirituality is about a “growth” of what actually is– an expansion in consciousness itself. That expansion transcends the forms with which we play, for it is not a growth strictly in the realm of ideas or actions, but it goes far deeper- to a growth in being. Spirituality is about the way in which we, as consciousness, meet our experience, and how What Is becomes more as a result. It is about experientially learning how to wield our fundamental power: our intent. Spirituality is about actually growing towards- and becoming- creativity and love. It is not fundamentally about selecting the correct ideas, though ideas are an important part of what is occurring.

If we truly wish to walk the spiritual walk, we must go far deeper than working with ideas. We must do something that is far more difficult than selecting an understanding or belief: we must face ourselves. We must face our actual experience, meet it with full presence, bravery, humility, and most importantly- Love! We must be willing to allow ourselves to change towards- and actually become- more present, brave, humble, and loving. We are what continues after the physical world ends- so what we are here to work on, is us.

Our physical reality is preceded by a non-physical one in which we, both individually and collectively, help to “drive” what is physically manifested. One of the great “forces” that moves that process forward is expectation and belief. Thus what you believe- the nature of your worldview- is actually important for how our local experience will actualize.

As we “play the game,” certain thoughts, ideas, and beliefs tend to gain or lose “momentum” within the collective consciousness. That momentum is a powerful force. It’s important to recognize however that the collective momentum always starts and ends with individual momentum. The individual is important. What YOU believe-  your worldview- is important!

You may not be consciously aware of it, but you are automatically communicating with all the many millions of other “players in the game” in consciousness space. Your beliefs, your expectations, and your intentions not only affect the “temperature of the water” in the collective consciousness, they also encourage others- and in a sense “give permission” to others if necessary- to consider those same beliefs, expectations, and intentions, too. One person who shines bright with truly loving intent is like a beacon giving permission to many thousands of others to shine their light as well!

Take time then to look within and discover what beliefs and intentions you are sponsoring within the collective consciousness. What are you inspiring in our world today within your own mind and heart? Do not be discouraged by the apparent scope of change that may seem to be required on the “surface” of the physical world, but rather, recognize your power- for one person who is fully present and acting from a place of responsibility and genuine love can make a huge difference, and inspire many others to do the same.