Category: Uncategorized

We commonly turn to beliefs for answers when the world “does things” to us that cause us to feel personal fears. Beliefs give the illusion of control, which makes us feel better. Thousands of times over a lifetime we turn to our beliefs for comfort. We justify, bury, or avoid certain pains or fears by buying into the stories of our beliefs. If and when we eventually want to truly question our beliefs someday, we often find then that we cannot, because questioning them would mean tearing down the wall we had built to protect ourselves from what we didn’t want to feel in the first place. It can be difficult- and even completely terrifying- to finally face the fear that we originally needed the help of beliefs to avoid fully feeling.

As two brief examples: if you are afraid of being (feeling) worthless, perhaps you have adopted a belief that your actions or affiliations give you worth. If you are afraid of dying, perhaps you have embraced a belief in a prescribed afterlife. Typically, we each have many examples of such beliefs that we have erected over a lifetime. In fact, over time our core beliefs end up becoming so deeply rooted that they do not appear to us to be beliefs anymore, but rather they appear to be fundamental characteristics of reality itself!

Yet in fact, the “Big Picture” reality exists firmly beyond personal beliefs. As stark and unforgiving as this current constraint-set of physical reality may seem at times, truly it is subordinate to the greater reality of love, peace, and bliss! That is true even if we don’t see it in our current level of awareness. Thus, if we are willing to leave the comfort of our beliefs and walk through the opaque hellfire of our fears to experience exactly “What Is,” we have the opportunity to reach true relief and joy. It may take incredible personal courage and humility to do so, but such are some of the most exciting and rewarding challenges to the spirit!

So be brave, and be hopeful, and when you feel you are ready, know that you are free to tear down those walls where you find them. For you exist firmly beyond the concepts of your local identity, and ultimately you have nothing to fear by challenging them.

Reality is efficient. All things occur within “divine laws” that have been established from inconceivable wisdom and love! That includes experiences of hardship and pain. As difficult as it can be for us to understand, pain too is meaningful, and ultimately has an important role that serves lasting love and joy.

How can this be? How can terrible pain and misery exist within love? What purpose can it possibly serve? While this is very difficult to speak to from the human perspective, there are three important points we may consider.

First, the experience of contrast creates a distance into which the fullness of the Joy of Being may expand. Everything “negative” serves as a point of contrast to help establish the experientially known depths of what is “positive.” In other words, love can be better known, forever, when the spirit has actually known and understood separation from love.

Second, “negative” experience, even when unanticipated, offers a “counter-pressure opportunity” for the spirit to exercise loving or brave choice-making through. Put as a very crude metaphor, if you can play the video game on a harder difficulty level, you develop mastery very quickly and can then later apply that mastery in other games (other realities) in other ways. The counter-pressure of challenge enables us to expand our capacity for expressing and actualizing love.

Third, by experiencing challenge, the whole system ends up “discovering novelty” within itself and adding potential. Creative manifestation begets more creative manifestation. Put another way, even in apparent destruction, more things become possible than may otherwise have been possible.

All three of these ultimately serve lasting love and joy! Indeed, in the perfect balance of What Is, not one ounce of pain is wasted- for even when we cannot see it, every element of our experience, including our pain, is a precious and meaningful part of the great love-threaded tapestry of Creation.

The soul’s JOB is the Joy Of Being! There is nothing else required of the soul- it only needs to exist, and then flourish the beauty and bliss of that existence in a multitude of ways!

We are bold in how we create. We are so bold that we have embarked upon this great journey of the human condition. We are so free, and so powerful, and so loved, that we have decided to exercise our Beingness to new depths by experiencing almost complete separation. And now that we are here, many of us have come to take this experience quite seriously.

But beneath the seriousness and the pain, the soul has no restrictions, no requirements, and no hardship. The soul is free in love! The soul ever-burns with the joy and bliss of Being!

You are soul- so that is true of you, too. You do not need to fret or fear: you only need to be. Your only job is to exist in the radiant joy of what you are, and to share that joy richly with all other parts of the One!

Your job then is to exist, to experience joy, and to love! There are no other true requirements of you. And when your mind says otherwise, be brave and bold enough to find the beliefs you are holding that “prove” that to you. Those beliefs are, in an ultimate sense, untrue. Yes, we must strive to do our part in our local world in a practical way, to care for those who need us and to perform the many daily actions of life. But that can be done through the freedom of being that is already ours, and not only as a struggle against the weight of responsibility. Any belief in shame, or fear, or powerlessness is ultimately untrue. It is only when we buy into the illusions of those perceptions- when we wrap our true selves up in those negative beliefs and self-perceptions- that we, because of those beliefs, feel something is required of us to return to wholeness.

We never left; our true job never changed. The Joy Of Being is all that we must do, and even as we perform our many meaningful roles in the human drama, the Isness that we are dwells firmly in joy beneath all the requirements that our local self may have put upon it.

Love is always the foundation upon which all is built. There is not one process that did not begin in love and will not end in love.

The truth is not hard or cold, ever. The truth always falls back to love. If something appears hard or cold, it is an appearance. Appearances can last a long time; appearances can seem very real as we buy into them and believe our own interpretations about them. We only have the power to do so because we are a part of the One sovereign consciousness, and we can choose to even deeply experience a temporary interpretation for a while. But the greater truth, the ever-lasting unshakable bedrock of all of existence, is love! Freedom, joy, and love is the true root of all creation.

Every single thing always, always occurs as a result of the unfathomable depths of unconditional love giving rise to it. Reality systems come and go, complex patterns in the tapestry spun out of love, and spun because of love. The tapestry may contain horrifying images; but no more than the greatness of love that gave rise to them and expands its own creative depths even through them.

We are free to buy into our interpretations of less-than-love. We are so free we can do even that. But we cannot ever truly escape the truth of the freedom, joy, and love of our own being. Even as we take temporary experiential sojourns seemingly far away from that freedom and joy, we are still within it. Love cannot be overcome, and we are love- so what shall we fear?

God has no religion, except that we do.

As we exist in a world of form, we come to understand reality within the context of that form. We impose meaning upon the form we have experienced. We formalize and institutionalize our interpretations, and we are often happy to buy into the interpretations that are passed to us, and to pass them along ourselves. In spiritual matters, we tend to attribute the very real internal experience of the divine to the forms themselves. But the forms- the ideas, the objects, the traditions- do not have fundamental existence. They are but shadows arising within the One, as are all forms. They are fragments, and not the Whole. No fragment can fully satisfy, because our true nature is not fragmented at all.

Beingness needs no name. Beingness transcends all names. Beingness can arise into the experience of limited perspective, and temporarily assign the power to the shadowy forms occurring within it, but such forms are not truly reflective of the perfect unity and limitlessness of What Truly Is.

The true path is Love! Love transcends all restrictions, all requirements, all definitions. Love cannot be contained within a given set of ideas or practices- it can operate through them all. Love can mean both structure, or lack of structure; beliefs, or lack of beliefs. The living power of love thrives both within and beyond all the form of our entire universe! May our human practices align with that living power! May our religion be the religion of compassion, kindness, humility, personal ownership, bravery, and selfless love- whether outside of named structure, or within whatever structure or form we genuinely feel called to express it.

Your body is an experience, not a fundamentally real object. Your body is a set of constraints that your consciousness is experiencing per a defined physical rule-set in consciousness space. There is not a fundamentally real piece of flesh that you are inhabiting. Rather, your body exists as an experience that is occurring within you!

You already existed before you engaged in the experience of a physical body, and you will exist after that bodily experience ends. Just as a movie screen exists before and after an image is projected upon it, your awareness exists before and after the experience of the body appears within it.

However, in our case, many of us do not remember existing before the body. That is because the veil of forgetfulness is tied to the acceptance of the bodily constraint-set. It feels to us like the body is all we have ever been, because that is the nature of such a highly specialized experience as being human.

Regardless of the veiling that occurred so that you could have the focused human experience and remember nothing beyond it, your true nature stands firm. Your true loving nature does not give way; its existence is sure and ever-present! It is only within that sure and ever-present true nature that the experience of the body with its limited perceptions and recollections exists.

We are One, and yet we are Individual. This is a great truth. From our local perspective, those two statements may seem like a paradox, but they are not. In other systems you are aware of your Oneness with All, and yet also your Individuality, which is precious and preserved.

You have likely forgotten that you are connected to everything else because you agreed to adopt that restriction (in appearance only) in order to have the human experience. Even though that is true, you are still what you are. You cannot ever be separate from All That Is! You can only agree to have an apparent experience of separation so that you can participate in experiential expansion!

When physical life ends, you become aware of all the ways you affected everyone else in your entire life. Near Death Experiencers often describe this “life review” process as being “first hand”: you experience exactly what you caused others to experience. You know because what you have done to another, you have done to yourself.

And this is why love is such an important theme: love is reflective of the unity that is native to our being. Love is reflective of what we really are! Love is the body of the One Being working in concert. Treat the other as yourself, for the other is yourself!

There is no lack in your being. Lack is a perspective voluntarily entertained to help That Which Is truly know the abundance of its own nature.

Beingness is already perfect. It does not have error or flaw. And yet, Beingness also works to Create and to expand within manifestation, and through that, much growth in actualized joy and love is possible.

That is true of you, too, because you are Beingness. Even though your experience may have many apparent shortcomings, your perfect true nature transcends them all! That transcendent nature is not abstract- it is the real abiding truth that forms the foundation of your experience of form, including any given perception of lack.

Know then that beneath the noise, you are the fullness that surpasses all things! That is true no matter how your local reality experience may appear.

If you trust God, you trust reality. If you trust reality, you are trusting God. An experience of form is not the experience of the full reality of God, but physical reality does not occur apart from God. All occurs within the One, and in accordance with the divine laws of the One. Since those divine laws arise from unconditional love and unfathomable wisdom, all of our experiences ultimately take place within and for the purposes of unconditional love and unfathomable wisdom!

Our reality system is one in which experiences of tremendous difficulty are possible. From this side of the veil, beset by so many difficulties and even burdened by the requirements of physical survival itself, we tend to see reality as an adversary to strive against. We “fight to survive” in many ways every day. But what we are truly working to overcome is the difficulty we perceive from our relationship with the content of the present moment; what we are truly striving against is our own imperfection.

Our rigorous universe with its high potential for challenge has been established purposefully. It has been established so that we may expand the very nature of Being. It has been established so that we may more deeply understand and apply the power of our own beliefs and interpretations. It has been established so that we may truly learn what it means to grow in love and compassion, even in this rich context.

No matter what happens, no matter how much pain you may be in or how dire the world may seem, your experience does not escape the bounds of God’s perfect love and wisdom. Even if you rage in response, you are loved. Even if you denounce the world as terrible and unjust, the divine laws of God work to fulfill plans of love and joy that are far beyond our comprehension!

And we can trust those plans. We can trust the love and wisdom of God!

Reality is not your enemy. Your only enemy is your own fear, and your own resistance. Your obstacle is your own unwillingness to fully find and then meet your reality for exactly what it is any given moment, beneath the story. That is not easy- our own imperfection is vast, our fears are many, our wounds are deep- and our stories and identities protect us. But our reality is here for us so that we have the real opportunity to resolve that imperfection, to face those fears, to heal those wounds! And when we are genuinely ready to do that, when we trust reality enough to really take ownership for our experience and surrender to the fullness of the present moment, the spirit can then flow through us and once again reveal the truth of the ever present love and joy that is the enduring foundation of even our existence.

You are completely free to choose what to believe. The only way this can seem untrue is if you believe it is untrue.

Your beliefs act as a filter through which you experience reality. Our physical reality is a place where you are able to buy into some set of ideas, including ideas about yourself and the world, and then experience exactly what it is like to have that perspective.

Does that mean there is no absolute truth? No. Absolute truth exists within Beingness, but Beingness transcends all form (all “this and not that” distinctions as we perceive them). That which we call God is the living conscious source of “big picture” Truth. But God is not a “thing,” like one thing among many, but rather God is in fact beyond all form and gives rise to it all. Beingness is not beholden to perceived objects or ideas, which exist only because of Beingness and within Beingness- so no objects or ideas can fully speak to What Is Happening.

Meanwhile as our consciousness is engaged in a form-based reality like ours, of course we use form to understand and engage this physical experience. Our reality experience takes place within a consistent rule-set (the physical rule-set), and within a rigorous context, so we intently look to that context for answers. In other words, we understand and engage our experience through the ideas, objects, symbols, sights, sounds, and all the other many forms of our physical lives. That is good and natural, and the divine can and does work through those forms to engage with us. But ultimately, “big picture” Truth is beyond naming. There is no way to even attempt to utter the depths and vastness of “big picture” Truth with physical language. As we strive in vain to do so, we might say that the truth is: absolute and total love, limitlessness, and transcendent Beingness!

And that is what you really are.

As transcendent Beingness yourself, you are absolutely free then to decide how you will frame this reality experience you are having. You have that power. If you don’t believe you have that power, it is because you bought into that belief. Perhaps you have done so long ago in Earthly childhood. But the power is still yours. You cannot not be what you really are. Your true being transcends the forms of your life- and thus, you always get to choose how you will interpret and what you will believe about those forms.