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Any time we consider perceptions that are not in alignment with the fundamental truth, we feel a negative emotional response. Thus negative emotions can be used as a tool to locate what un-true perceptions we are holding onto. If you feel fear when you consider an idea or belief, then follow that fear. See if you can identify what negative self-perceptions or negative perceptions about reality itself may exist as a result of the idea or belief.

When we enter this world, we adopt the constraints that come along with being human. Chief among those constraints is a constraint on our knowledge: we no longer have access to the knowledge of the larger reality systems to which we intrinsically belong. This means that when we consider ideas as humans, we do so from a place of artificial ignorance. The state of not knowing permits us- provokes us, even- to consider possibilities that are frightening to us, and thus gives us the opportunity to experience first-hand a new perspective that would otherwise be impossible for the all-knowing spirit. Sometimes that new perspective we are entertaining is one that is contrary to our true natures- and when that happens, we experience a negative emotional response.

For instance, regarding one of our most prevalent fears: if you consider the idea “what if there is no afterlife?” and you feel fear or resistance as a response, go find out why. Follow the sensations sufficiently and see if you can discover what negative self-perception or negative state about reality itself that belief would mean. If you consider the possibility that no afterlife exists and you are simply destroyed at death- then the resulting self-perception you may be entertaining is one of powerlessness, or non-existence.

But in fact, the spirit is never powerless and cannot not exist. Consciousness can only temporarily buy into those perceptions, and experience the result; it cannot actually fundamentally be powerless or lifeless.

Never-the-less, in our example of the question “what if there is no afterlife?”, it’s likely that in fact you don’t actually know right now if there is an afterlife or not. Note that the state of not knowing itself does not cause discomfort: it is the resulting negative implication we quietly entertain that triggers our fears.

Our fears are meant to be explored. No matter how deep they go the sensations that come with them cannot harm us. In fact, those negative sensations are valuable guideposts that lead us to the untrue perceptions that we have adopted during our human experience!

Permit yourself then to actually welcome your negative emotions as the fear-messengers that they are. Following where they may lead often requires great humility, persistence, and courage, but the pursuit is incredibly worthwhile. Find out what negative self-perceptions or negative perceptions about reality you are buying into. When you find those negative perceptions, spend time with them and with the resulting negative emotions they cause you to feel. Let them rant and rave, hear them out in the now. Feel them. Rather than listening to the story you have spun around them over a lifetime, just allow your awareness to be with the sensations themselves, without judgment. The light of your awareness is powerful: its mere presence, backed by the power of your intent to actually experience your emotions for what they are and to let go of your control, will naturally melt the illusions. With sufficient humility and bravery, it is possible to peek through the ego-structures of our lives sufficiently to see that in fact, everything negative is an illusion; only light and love truly exist!

The unrelenting weather of “What Is” will always eventually erode the ego. That is, reality itself is built in a way that, over time, each conscious participant will naturally work their way through their fears to greater states of freedom, creativity, and love. That process may take a long time, or a short time, but the duration of time required is not hugely relevant: time-space itself is an invention.

The quality of your experience speaks to you about “how you are doing.” If your personal experience is one of peace and joy, you are following the natural way. If your personal experience is one of stress, pain, and suffering, you are often experiencing the counter-pressure necessary for you to grow. Anxiety, negative emotions, and stress are symptoms of having bought into perceptions or beliefs that are contrary to your true nature. Regardless of how much you believe the limited story you are telling yourself, and regardless of how much you blame others, you cannot escape the feedback that is your own personal experience.

The story of the ego is sometimes not one easily challenged, especially in the context of such a constraining universe as this one. But over time, that story does inevitably get challenged: beliefs that don’t seem right ask to be challenged; self-doubt that leads to pain demands to be challenged; our possessions and accomplishments do not ultimately satisfy us; hurtful action leads to retaliation; we fail to find fulfillment when our intentions are primarily selfish. Useful feedback abounds in our lives, if we are humble enough to listen.

Allow yourself then to acknowledge, and consciously play along with, the game of life! When your experience is positive, allow yourself to be fully present with it and thrive in it. When negative feedback arrives into your experience, allow it to reveal to you what needs to be healed. Always listen. Be willing to be shown. When your own stories are challenged, allow them to be. The erosion of the ego will happen one way or the other- this universe that you are committed to is made to facilitate it- so you might as well play along! When you do, and you surrender your deep need for control, you will find true freedom is waiting for you.

We who are physical are blessed with the opportunity to be physical. Near Death Experiencers and other sources from Spirit remind us that we, the physically incarnated, are particularly blessed! It is also said that there are many more spirits who wish to have the opportunity to make it IN to this reality than there are those of us who are already here. It is ironic then that so many of us here seem to want out!

Having the opportunity to walk the challenging path of physical life is a tremendous gift. Being physical is not primarily a walk of trial or judgment or sorrow. Being physical is having the precious opportunity to love when it is sorely needed, to grow through and shine in the face of challenges that may seem insurmountable, to participate in and experience Creation in an extreme way.

Thus instead of resisting your path, permit yourself to let go and accept the beauty of the messiness. Whatever is happening in your life, recognize your power to view it how you wish, or to drop your judgments altogether. Are you able to look past your own judgments and see with the ever-wondrous eyes of your spirit? Are you able to sense the profound opportunity in the challenge?

If so, recognize that your challenges are, in fact, gifts! As gifts, you might as well accept them while you are here! For when you accept your challenges and surrender to your own experience, rather than to your ideas about it, you will find the fruits of the spirit are ever available to you. True power and freedom lie in acceptance.

Our deepest personal beliefs that are fueling our experience don’t appear to be beliefs at all. Instead they appear to be “obvious observations about how reality is.” When it appears “obvious” to us (while physical) that reality is “a certain way,” that is often our own belief about it. And that belief about it is significantly contributing to our own personal experience, both in how we interpret what we experience and also in how reality itself physically manifests our experience to us.

In fact, this physical reality is neutral, and we are each imposing our own meaning upon it. For the soul, this is a critical aspect of why the physical experience is so valuable: it permits us to expand and experience our deepest powers of interpretation.

And yet, let us not confuse the current experience of personal reality with a lack of an absolute reality. Indeed, absolute reality exists! That absolute reality contains and greatly transcends the personal reality. It’s just that living a personal reality in the physical necessitates that our perspective temporarily not include the perspective of the larger reality.

In other words, we are here for the full experience of “being human.” Thus while we are here we should fully embrace our current personal experience with all its confusions and limitations, for there are great treasures available to us when we do so!

At the same time, we can also always relinquish ourselves and choose to surrender- even by a few steps- back into the ever-present and much greater reality of the love of God. For even as you embrace the experience of personal reality, you are never, ever outside of the transcendent larger reality of God’s love. Existence itself at its root is creative joy, even as in its creativity it has chosen to exercise its power to transcend personal darkness.

The “ego mind” is the portion of the mind that is devoted to defining reality in a way that will protect us. The ego mind protects us through presenting to us beliefs, justifications, and stories. We “buy in” to those beliefs, justifications, and stories. Why? Because we seek to avoid confronting the fears that those beliefs, justifications, and stories cover up. We withdraw ourselves from the experience of the darkness by building facades of light.

Sometimes when something threatens us, or our facade itself is threatened, we grip onto the facade even harder, even tighter, desperately demanding shelter within it. Sometimes the facade is all we’ve ever known.

The problem is not the facade itself. The problem is our unwillingness to face the darkness. If we let go of everything that is protecting us, and simply surrender to experiencing the present moment in all of its gory glory, it will mean that we will have to be open and willing to feel everything. We call that willingness to feel, “vulnerability.”

Contrary to what our culture has taught, vulnerability is not a weakness. In fact, spiritually speaking, vulnerability is a profound strength! It is through the willingness to fully experience ALL of what we are, ALL of what we feel, ALL of what is around us and within us, that we can fully grow and mature in the way that God intended: toward Love. Love, the most powerful force in existence, is vulnerable.

It is OK then to relinquish your control. If you let go, the spirit will always be there to catch you! God is not a fairy tale or belief, but a real conscious force of profound love that dwells within and beneath every single thing in this universe- including you. That power is always on the other side of the fears and pains you may engage when you drop the facade and choose to be vulnerable, no matter how long those pains or fears may last, no matter how long you may experience the illusion of your own powerlessness.

We live in a jungle of confusion. The veil of amnesia and the illusion of separation cause a profound state of “limited information” in which each individual must use limited data to decide what is true. 7 Billion people on Earth each have their own perspective, most think they generally have the world figured out, and many spend an incredible amount of energy trying to tell each other what to think. Advertising, religion, social media: all add to the cacophony of individual or group messages to other individuals or groups. As technology proliferates, the volume of the jungle increases.

Yet, so very much of it is confusion because none of the messages sent in metaphor or word can successfully communicate the full scope or “deeper truth” of What Is. Form (words or ideas) cannot fully describe that which is beyond form.

Since conscious awareness is fundamental, the only way that the individual can encounter “deeper truth” is by personal experience. Striving to experience “deeper truth” is a very individual and unique process that certainly cannot be articulated in words to you by someone else. But one important channel can be identified: the unadulterated experience of the Now (rather than the consideration of some idea). The more one is able to be fully present with one’s entire actual experience of the present moment, the better one will become at being able to see past the deep construct of one’s own thoughts, judgments, and beliefs. The more one is able to see past one’s own thoughts, judgments, and beliefs, and simply experience the Now itself, the closer one will be to allowing themselves to be touched by glimmers of the ineffable truth which transcends all the metaphors of the world. The sounds of the jungle can be very distracting: but fortunately, nothing can thwart your free will ability to choose to focus inward to the silence, rather than outward to the noise.

Often when we wish to “make change” in the world we perform tasks that seem pertinent, but may in fact not be very effective. For instance, perhaps we care about a local cause, so we join a committee or fill some leadership role to support it, only to find that instead of effecting great change, much time and energy is spent bogged down in procedure or politics. Or perhaps we are sick and wish to be healed, so we go see a doctor- when in fact the doctor may have limited understanding of what may actually help us. While our actions are of course always meaningful to some degree within the big picture, in the physical arena sometimes our allocation of time and activity may actually be pretty inefficient at effecting change. This is a natural part of living within a system of limiting constraints.

It is important to recognize however that the very real all-powerful source of our entire reality itself is always present. In a fundamental sense, the power of physical action is crude and paltry in comparison to the power of the spirit, and the power of the spirit is mobilized by intent. Intent is deep at the root of all events. The entire rule-set of this experience on Earth- this experience that seems physical- derives from God’s awesome intent, which we are connected to. We are connected to the source of the most awesome change- and within our own consciousness itself always lie the keys to unfolding a new reality around us. Rather than some abstract idea, and despite how it might appear on the surface, this is a real and practical engine for change. In fact, it is the primary and most powerful one.

Yet collectively in consciousness space, we have “dug this reality deep.” There is a humongous precedent, a monumental amount of vibrational history, that has set us to where we are, both in how our physical world has evolved, and also in how the human psyche typically expresses itself. But we can change it. We, collectively, have the power to bring the light of the higher realms into this reality frame.

How do we do this?

First, we relinquish old ideas that make us fearful or powerless and embrace the power that is inherent to us- for even as we do so in mind-space, we automatically begin to do so in the world.

Second, we change our focus toward celebrating the light instead of accepting and feeding the negative systems and ideas of our world.

Third, we accept responsibility for exactly who we are and what the world is.

Fourth, we recognize that how we see the world is primarily a reflection of us – not a statement about how the world actually is.

And fifth, we work on ourselves to conquer our own fears, to bring forth our own love, so that the world shines back to us the love that we are. Real change comes through love- for when the spirit loves, the physical solution naturally unfolds through and around us.

In Near Death Experiences it is often reported that the most prized and celebrated accomplishments of our lives are moments motivated by love. The smallest of actions, when motivated by concern for another with no thought of personal reward, are the greatest triumphs. Accomplishments that society may deem as successful are not necessarily seen by spirit as important at all.

Yet often we go through our lives thinking that our success is rooted in material prosperity, social status, or physical impact. We celebrate CEOs, politicians, surgeons, and actors. We hope to be “successful” too.

The entire realm of the physical is subordinate to the realm of the spirit. You are in both right now- you’re just focused on the physical, which is the one that will pass away. In the realm of the spirit, where you will always exist, love is what matters. The physical will pass away; love will never pass away. The physical dirt or money that you moved around will not last; the spirit that you moved through love will last forever.

Recognize then today that your true success resides not in your great physical achievements, but in the small matters: in making selfless choices, in helping others in small ways, in facing your own failings in simple quiet moments. Great spiritual work is done even when nothing is seen in the physical world. Follow where your spirit leads, and embrace the wonderful treasures that are the smallest decisions- for indeed in the Big Picture, even though we cannot see it, the small stuff is the big stuff!

We live in a world of imperfect human systems. The political systems, economic systems, legal systems, and nationalist systems all end up failing countless individuals in many ways. One fundamental reason is: our systems are primarily driven by self-interest rather than love. Most human systems are built to protect one’s self or one’s group at the expense of other individuals or other groups. Capitalism is a clear example of this: it is a system that capitalizes on selfish motivation to produce economic output. It generates tremendous activity- but the motivation of the activity is often selfish rather than loving.

Love supports the optimal way that individuals can interact and support one another; selfishness does not.

Because the fundamental motivation is not optimal, the human systems themselves can never function optimally in support of the experience of their participants. The systems themselves are not the problem: the quality of our intent is the problem. The answer to the world’s problems is not a new leader, new laws, or even a new financial system. The answer is love.

Love means full individual accountability and commitment to act with loving intent (intent that supports others over the self) in all things- even (and especially) in how one deals with one’s own weakness, fears, and needs. While the universal application of loving intent would heal the world, it has also proven to be the very hardest thing for us to do. In fact, as a species we have a pretty long and dark history of how we have neglected one another, the animals on our planet, and the planet itself. But learning how to actually embody loving intent in such a constraining environment is not something easily mastered by any given individual, let alone a few billion of them! Indeed, the mastery of selfless loving intent is not something that typically can be experientially learned even in several lifetimes! Fortunately, all of us are beyond time, and have been graciously given all the time in the world to really grow up and get it right.

All the time aside, though, it is important to recognize that our power to grow up is happening right now. Our power to change the world is right now- by actively working on the quality of our intent towards being more loving with whomever is around us and by confronting our own fear and ego. Every single one of us needs to own the responsibility. Every single one of us can take a hard look at where we have been selfish and can strive to put another above ourselves. That step is a step toward healing the entire world! You are an incredibly important piece of the solution. You do have the power to advance the entire world one step closer to love by the choices you make! So next time you turn on the news and see something challenging out there, instead of worrying about it, look to yourself to take just one step toward grace and love. The power to heal the world exists- and it is through your love, right now!

In our modern society, when we succeed in making money, others tend to respect us. Our system of capitalism holds up those who can earn and spend material wealth. Collectively we tend to admire those who have been “successful” – note the word “successful” typically means “financially successful.” It is even the very basic tenet of Customer Service that the customer, who is controlling the money to be spent, is to always receive respect.

The entire capitalism system of our society exists within a reality of constraints. Physical resources are required for survival, and they are limited. We have evolved within a stark “kill or be killed” environment in which stealing food from the other guy meant survival and the success of one’s self and one’s progeny. Our capitalist system is a more sophisticated version of the same process of controlling resources. As the system pushes most individuals to work hard in order to acquire the resources they want and need, the total physical output is relatively great (great relative to living in the wild), and thus many can survive or thrive. However, it is still a system of force and aggression. It may be subtle force, but the lives of billions are very heavily influenced by this system’s power over physical resources. Since control of physical resources has historically meant success and survival, our culture has evolved to applaud it as successful.

Yet success in the larger reality has very little to do with material success. Indeed, we are not even physical beings, but beings of conscious awareness who can take many forms! Our success is not derived by the material possessions or even the bodily survival of any of the avatars that we play. Ownership of physical objects or the power to allocate physical resources is almost totally insignificant in the Big Picture.

True success goes much deeper, to matters of the being: to matters of selflessness, to the conquering of fear, to creativity, to Love. As we grow on our spiritual journeys, we should take note of this, so that we might gently re-direct what we ourselves value in our lives. As we all begin to do this, we will begin to respect each other for what matters- for Love- and not primarily for our ability to control the allocation of a bunch of transient physical objects.