Category: Uncategorized

You do not need to be hard on yourself for being where you are. Wherever you are, whatever you have become- you are at an OK place now, and the universe understands fully why you got to where you are. You made a lot of choices to get here- both those you remember and many you do not- and it is OK that you made those choices.

Simultaneously, oftentimes spiritual growth is only possible when we recognize where we have failed. In response to our fear and the negative self-perceptions that we have bought into over the course of our lifetimes, we commonly tell ourselves stories about why we are worthy or justified. In fact, we are already worthy and justified; none of the stories are required. However, those stories do often prevent us from seeing where, in fact, we could be more loving. We can become blind to where we need to grow when we think we are already grown up.

Being both totally OK with where you are and also simultaneously being aware of your shortcomings requires a profound amount of both full self-love and humility. Self-love and humility are not opposites; we can and should develop both qualities simultaneously. The path for doing so is a complex and personal journey that is not easily articulated. Yet wherever you are, allow yourself today to recognize it is OK that you are where you are, no matter the circumstances you may find yourself in. Accepting ourselves by accepting our circumstances and our part in those circumstances is a powerful step toward lasting peace.

We are fundamentally beings of freedom and love. We are not born into the world “sinful”- meaning in any way opposed to or separated from God. In fact we can never escape God, for that which we call God is our very root and nature, and nothing in all Creation exists apart from it/ Him. In fact, we have come into the world for the very purpose of making hard, messy choices within a set of constraints that permit us to learn to operate lovingly within a hard, messy environment. We are encouraged to use free will, in order to grow and participate in Creation. God knows we are making choices. We are not punished for making choices, even if they harm others. Punishment is not needed: as countless thousands of Near Death Experiences tell us, after our life we will inevitably experience a “life review” process in which we will come to understand and actually feel the full effect that all of our choices had on others, and we will be fully able to judge ourselves. Also, importantly, God in His loving wisdom has set out certain “universal laws” of operation that naturally and inevitably guide each individual in growing toward love. The ability to make mistakes is a necessary part of that process.

Some may say that the sinful and narcissistic nature of man is evident. Yet narcissism is no more than a natural consequence of a yet undeveloped spirit seeking to make choices within challenging constraints. Ego- the erection of self-protective justifications, beliefs, and identity- is no more than a great castle of illusion built by the individual to protect himself from facing his own fear. Man who acts narcissistically is acting from ego and from fear. He does so because his spirit has not “grown up” enough yet to make the more loving or fearless choice within his current history and constraint set, not because he is inherently bad or separated from God in any way.

When my children are whining or fighting, I do not think, “what sinful or selfish people!” Rather, I see joyous and loving beings who are befuddled by a situation. We as adults are not much different. Our ego structures and beliefs may be complex, well justified, and built high over a lifetime- but beneath it all, we, too, are beings of love and light!

Original sin, then, is a myth. The truth is original sinlessness- followed by very real conscious beings making very tough choices in a very real simulation called physical incarnation.

We are taught to constantly focus outside of ourselves. We have things to do, places to go, bills to pay, appointments to keep, and people to interact with. We need to eat, sleep, walk, talk, and move. We think we are our physical bodies, and we perceive others as theirs. We even believe quite firmly that what is “real” is that which is outside of us that can be verified by others.

Yet through meditation, one begins to get profound glimpses of a much larger truth: all of that which is taking place “outside” of us is in fact taking place “inside” of us!

You are not the objects of your experience that have beheld your attention for so long (the objects of your experience include both the perception of physical objects and also your thoughts and emotions). Rather, the objects of your experience are taking place within your awareness. The sense data that you experience even when others verify what is “outside” of you is also taking place within your awareness of it.

When you gently and gradually quiet your physically-focused mind-self, and you permit yourself to sink deeply into simply “What Is” in the present moment, you will eventually find without any effort that there are treasures within you that go beyond all the treasures of the physical world of form. How remarkable it is that such fantastic treasures go unnoticed by us while we are on Earth! Indeed, they often do. Yet, they do not have to. Take a few moments today to allow yourself to take even one gentle step towards actually dwelling quietly with your own awareness. If you can quiet your thought-momentum sufficiently, when you least expect it you may just get a sense of the incalculable and unspeakably precious treasures that are, in fact, within YOU!

Fundamentally what we are is conscious awareness. Fundamentally what we do is exercise intent by making choices. Put another way: the fundamental substance is consciousness; the fundamental force is intent. These statements are true no matter what reality system we are in and no matter how things may currently appear “outside” of us.

Consciousness may elect to participate in experiences that provide rich constraints in which difficult choices may be made. Physical reality is one of those meaningful constraint-sets.

Yet even here, because focus is a part of intent, focus itself is a creator of momentum. When we focus on a certain perception, that perception grows. Physical reality is meant to give us the opportunity to have the experience that our nurtured perceptions yield to us.

It is valuable to recognize this phenomenon because it allows us to take back our power. How? We can move away from perceiving the world as a place that happens “to” us, and gradually shift our perspective towards recognizing that in fact the power lies within us. This may seem like a big leap in such an immersive and challenging environment; indeed in this reality it can take time to institute substantive internal or external change. But we do have the power to change our momentum in every single “now” moment. “Now” is always the moment! We can choose now to focus on the good instead of the “bad.” We can choose now to dwell on the love in the world, and not the fear.

We are not powerless to our circumstances, but are in fact powerful creators who are able even to commit ourselves to the temporary illusion of powerlessness.

If you have relinquished your power in your own mind, it is OK to take it back! Become familiar with how you are perceiving your experience. Choose to focus on the positive, even as you fully confront and embrace the negative. Your awareness is at the root of all of it. Change the momentum of your experience by intentionally choosing what you focus on and how you decide to interpret what happens in your life. You as consciousness have that very real power- it’s time to remember that you do!

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”  -C.G. Jung

It is holy when you finally actually, actually choose to face your deepest pain with full commitment.

Pain cannot kill you. Pain may be profoundly challenging to experience at times, but your awareness cannot be harmed by it. Your body can and will die, but suffering will not obliterate your spirit. In fact, there is tremendous power to be gained by facing all of what you feel. Choose to accept all of your experience, including pain when it comes! Do not justify it away or tell yourself a story to temporarily ease its presence. Even when pain feels insurmountable and completely overwhelming, go in to the storm. Even if you fear deeply that it will destroy you, plunge into the tsunami. Rather than being destroyed, you will come out far stronger on the other side.

When you make the journey into pain, do not judge the pain or its perceived causes. Rather, simply experience it and be present with the feeling itself. It is important that we feel our pain without any judgment at all. Often the stories we are telling ourselves about the pain only contribute to it as they simply layer new negative self-perceptions on top of an original fear. The original fear root is available to be processed and truly healed, if we are willing to actually feel our way through the branches (individual surface pains) one-at-a-time as they surface. The divine will always be there to guide and help us when we are truly willing to face our own darkness. To feel it is to heal it.

If all is not well, it is because you have interpreted that all is not well. Your evidence for all not being well may seem obvious to you. After all, it appears clear that suffering abounds and the world is in rough shape. You may even feel disdain for those who don’t see that things are “obviously” not well. How can anyone say “All is Well”?

In fact, consciousness has the power to place interpretation and meaning on anything. We come into the physical to experience the constraints of physical life, including the constraint of ignorance which causes us to have to interpret our experience. In response to our sense data we “buy in” to interpretations, perceptions, and beliefs, and then have the resultant experience that our interpretations, perceptions, and beliefs yield to us. That process of actually living through our interpretations, perceptions, and beliefs is what adds to Creation and is so meaningful to our soul.

At the fundamental level beyond all the interpretations, perceptions, and beliefs, the consciousness that exists is unharmable and capable of nearly infinite creation. Its ability to have the experience of limitation is simply a part of its creative power. The brave soul that jumps in to experience the darkness helps “All That Is” grow in its experience by providing profoundly valuable contrast and perspective. You are participating in that incredibly meaningful activity right now!

Beneath all the wants and “not wants,” sickness and health, sight and sound, birth and death: ineffable Beingness exists deeply. From that state, it is totally and wholly apparent that All is Well, and always will be.

If you cannot sense that right now from your current state of awareness, don’t worry- that’s a part of the game! Allow yourself at least intellectually to consider that the pains and fears and destruction of your life and the lives of others exist within something greater. If you fearlessly listen quietly within, beneath all your own interpretations, perceptions, and beliefs, you may just hear a voice gently reminding you that indeed, beneath (and through!) all the drama, all is indeed very, very well!

You are so unconditionally loved by God that you are permitted to almost completely forget that you are unconditionally loved by God. In coming to Earth, somehow the truth of God’s unconditional love that exists specifically for YOU has moved out of your waking awareness. Perhaps you have no recognition of it at all. Perhaps the concept of God’s unconditional love has become simply an intellectual concept for you, as an aspect of faith. Or perhaps you have had tiny partial glimpses of it, through personal moments of surrender and dedication to the divine. In any case, the truth of the unconditional love that exists for each of us remains largely obscured while we are physical: painfully, persistently obscured.

Yet, being brought to the brink of total ignorance about how much love exists for you is an extremely important and necessary part of your purpose here. You could not have your adventures in physicality, with all of the opportunities for mis-perception and personal growth, if you actively recalled all of what you are! The very purpose of physical life- growth of the spirit toward love- could not be accomplished with such recall.

Take some time then to simply sit in silence with yourself and the divine, and see if you can quietly feel even a glimmer of the real love that does exist for YOU (specifically you!), so that you may be encouraged. For you are what you are- which is a loved immortal spirit- even if you don’t remember it. Even if you’re so deep in your current personality that you cannot feel God’s love- comprehend at least intellectually as much as you can that today, right now, you are indeed an incredibly adored, cherished, powerful, and irreplaceable portion of All That Is.

From the other side, the spirit actually excites at the prospect of having to deal with such constraints as we experience here in the physical. When we’re here, though, often the incredible challenges of our lives seem insurmountable and crushing.

And yet, the spirit does transcend them!

Thus we can approach our deepest challenges with an understanding that we can in fact rise above (and through!) that which seems to thwart us, no matter what it is. We can embrace our difficult experiences, and use them as the counter-pressure they were meant to be. Metaphorically, we are on the weight bench- so we might as well lift the weights!

Doing so is a process not just of intellectual willingness, but of a deep commitment to have the intent to actually embrace our current experience, whatever it may be. We must be willing to feel. We must be willing to be honest with ourselves. We must be willing to be fully present. We must be willing to face our fears. We must be willing to remove the blame from others and the outside world, and instead accept responsibility for our own state of being. We must choose to experience what we are experiencing. In doing so, we may find that physical life is not just a challenge- but instead it is an amazing and precious opportunity for peace, love, and joy!

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!