A Walk in the Physical

You are immortal awareness that surpasses all form. That is not a metaphor or just an abstract concept- you actually surpass the entirety of your physical experience and all the form in it. The only reason you may not be aware of that fact is that you agreed to be bound to the constraints of having a defined experience within form, and that experience requires a limited physically focused stimulus-set, understanding, and memory. The fact you agreed to have this experience does not change the much more fundamental fact that you actually are an immortal spirit who surpasses all of the form.

The experience of form can be very rich, very convincing- and at times, very painful. We end up quite naturally believing that the scenery of the stage is real. We go very, very deep into the illusion. As we do, we artificially define ourselves by choosing some form (ideas, identities, thoughts) over other form (contrasting ideas). This is all expected and natural, except that we have gone so far into the illusion that we have “lost sight of the forest for the trees!” As the world challenges us deeply, we end up taking shelter within the illusory forms of the ego to stay safe and avoid pain. And as we do that, we naturally end up rejecting parts of our experience.

When you reject your experience, you are choosing illusory form over the infinite formlessness. This is because when you reject something you are choosing to stand against some form, and that can only be done as a form itself. Your consciousness ends up lending credence and solidity to the form that it is trying to stand against. As the form strengthens, so does the (typically negative) experience that it brings.

For instance, if someone perceives what is occurring in the world as terrible, and rejects it, then he or she will be giving energy toward that negative perception and will experience the negative, constricting emotions that go along with that rejection. If someone perceives that they must struggle, then they will experience struggle. If someone rejects their body, then their experience in it will be more difficult. Rejection is a “low vibration” energy, because it is an occurrence of some part of All That Is temporarily turning against itself. Acceptance- also called Love- is a “high vibration” energy, because it aligns with the innate natural unification that exists at the deepest level of our connection with All That Is. Rejection is an expression of fear; acceptance is an expression of love! (Yes there are times that it is proper to “reject” something unloving, or to intercede to stop violence- but here I am speaking about rejection at its most fundamental.)

The source of all power lies beyond all form! Acceptance then is regaining power: by relinquishing your need to resist “what is,” you automatically take a step away from the illusion of form and naturally move closer towards the infinite, powerful, and peaceful formlessness that gave rise to the form in the first place.

You do not need any single thing to be happy. Happiness is available in every moment at the root of experience. Yet we experience unhappiness. We experience unhappiness because we buy into thoughts and beliefs about the current situation or stimulus that are counter to our true nature. It is never the situation or stimulus itself that causes us to be unhappy- it is our interpretation of the situation or stimulus that causes us to be unhappy.

The Source of happiness is within you! You do not need to go anywhere to find it. You do not need to do anything or attain anything to be what you are. What you are is conscious awareness- and awareness, when it hasn’t been obscured by getting lost in the illusion of form, is profoundly blissful! When you allow yourself to let go and just be what you truly are, joy is always the natural experience. Joy is the native and natural state!

In order to re-familiarize yourself with what you really are while you are inside this “dream” of physical life, you can allow yourself to completely let go- at least for awhile- of all that you are not. You are not your thoughts, you are not your judgments, you are not your expectations, you are not your beliefs. You are not your responsibilities, you are not your abilities or disabilities, and you are not your pain. You are the awareness that beholds those things. You are the you that feels most like you to you! You are the awareness which is “wearing” those thoughts, judgments, expectations, and beliefs for a while.  As awareness, you always have permission to let go of your thoughts about the present moment, and to just fully experience the present moment for exactly what it is without any resistance or rejection. If you do so deeply enough you will find that beneath all the pain, there is always joy!

You can trust reality, and you can trust it completely. The reason you can trust reality is: absolutely nothing takes place outside of the “natural laws” established by Source, and those laws have all been established from a place of incredible wisdom and love.

The ego typically has serious trouble with this. It thinks: “How can I trust reality when it is so dangerous? Reality is cold, merciless, unrelenting. Reality has cruel people in it. Reality is unfair. Reality is full to the brim with suffering!” And thus the idea of actually trusting reality seems impossible.

Reality was built for Source by Source, so that you- as a part of Source- could experience exactly all that you are experiencing now in your life. Reality is not some ship adrift out at sea ready to sink unattended, or some happenstance, or some forgotten creation- it is perpetually and indefinitely and completely within the loving Source that created it. You are, too, even if you are not consciously aware of that fact.

How can such a loving Source permit us to be in a place where we may experience so much lack of love? You are so loved by Source that you have been given the opportunity to temporarily forget that you are unconditionally loved, so that you might actually experience real contrast and thereby better experientially understand what that love truly is, forever. You have been given the gift of the opportunity to “play real life,” the gift of being able to make meaningful choices and to experience the results, the gift of being able to live as someone experiencing defined perspectives- and this physical reality is simply the stage. Its purpose is being fulfilled, and that purpose is ultimately loving.

All the laws that take place to govern the workings of the world do so for the ultimate purposes of Source, which are all motivated by love- which means ultimately for our benefit! For instance, even the most horrendous pain can be a profoundly valuable experience in the grand scheme. As we learn to trust reality for what it is, it can better work with us to further the grander divine awareness-expanding intentions that often elude our limited human minds.

Recognize also that the entire stage of reality takes place within your awareness of it. It is not an independent external thing as it appears on the surface- it is something that takes place within your awareness. The reality you experience then is a reflection of what YOU are, right now. Allow it to function as the mirror it is meant to be! You can trust the mirror- it is only faithfully serving the purpose of reflecting back to you what you believe about it.

From the divine perspective, what is important is not necessarily what we do, but why we do it. Our deepest intent is what matters. And our deepest intent is always totally unobscured and plainly obvious to the spirit. In fact, every intent we’ve ever held and every action we’ve ever taken in our entire lives is clearly remembered. When our lives are reviewed after their completion, what is applauded is not necessarily what we did, but when we truly acted from selflessness and love. Genuine unconditionally loving intent is the key, not the actions themselves.

But loving intent will lead to loving action. Intention causes action. Personally mobilized action cannot take place without intention.

When we pass we will be fully aware of the full impact that we had on everyone we ever affected in our entire lives. That impact will include the many effects that our physical actions had on others. But furthermore, our impact far surpasses even the effects of our actions: our intent itself – our love itself – has a tone that rings out through Creation! We are communicating with and “nudging” this reality and each other with “who we really are” every day, and that is also a significant part of the impact we have while we are here! In that sense, intention is action.

Be brave then while you are here not only to discern the many effects of your actions, but also the quality of your intent- for what you really are, the love or fear that you really carry, has far more impact than you can see with your physical eyes.

Your most fundamental power, the one that exists beyond all of the boundaries of realities, is your intent. Your intent is a force that always belongs to you. The context in which you are able to make choices may change drastically: your constraints may change, your environment may change, your body or your knowledge or your circumstances may change- but your power to choose and to wield intent itself always remains. The effects may not be obvious, depending on what reality rule-set you are participating in, but your intent always has an effect of some kind.

Interestingly though, what we are actually intending is not always obvious to us. This is because the portion of ourselves we call the “ego-mind” has often buried our true intent deep beneath a complex pile of beliefs, judgments, and justifications. We are often not ready to examine the true nature of ourselves, because we are full of fear: fear of the unknown, fear of pain, fear of negative perceptions that we have bought into along our walk in the physical. And because our true nature is currently obscured, many times we believe we are making choices from one motivation, when in fact our true motivation is something quite different. Many times we believe we are motivated by love, when in fact we are motivated by fear.

No matter what your mind says, you cannot ever trick your intent. Your intent is always exactly what it is. It is a fundamental force. Your intent is YOU- it is the very deepest ultimate “what and why” of your motivations and choices, the reason and movement of your spirit. It is not the choices themselves. It is not the intellectual reason you are making the choices.

We are here on Earth to develop the quality of our intent by being something within a context. We are here to actually experience what it is like to live in a world where billions of conscious participants exercise their intent within a shared rule-set, and to grow in a real way towards beings who genuinely make choices out of love, rather than fear.

Since that is why we are here, it is very beneficial for us to take time to genuinely search for what our intent really is. Doing so takes remarkable courage, but for the individual who is ready to accept responsibility, face their fears, and truly serve others, the universe itself will respond.

The process of attempting to establish an intellectual framework to understand one’s reality is, in itself, natural and healthy. However, as we seek to intellectually gain control so as to allay our fears, in our clamoring for answers we often collectively or individually institute assumptions and beliefs as if they were knowledge. Since the dawn of our history, ignorant man has ever concocted ideas about how reality works, and then declared those ideas to be truth.

As we evolve, we will need to be humble enough to recognize how very little we truly understand. The old stories we’ve been telling ourselves- even the old stories about physical matter being what is “most real”- will need to be deeply examined and then put aside as necessary in the honest pursuit of truth. We will need to recognize the limitations of our materialist science, which will not be able to answer the Big Picture questions from within the physical. We will need to be bold, humble, and brave enough to confront what is within us, so that we may truly grow our understanding of both the “internal” and “external” worlds, and more consistently bring the truer nature of love into this reality.

That can’t be done, however, until human ignorance is recognized for what it is. Being ignorant is not a vice. But claiming knowledge where there is none is a hindrance. Human knowledge currently is extremely limited. Sure, we understand a lot more about the physical rule-set of this reality than we did a few hundred years ago. But our understanding about reality itself, about our place in not only the cosmos but within the greater dimensions in which we exist- in that regard, as Tom Campbell once so eloquently put it, we barely have even one foot out of the cave!

All forms of darkness are temporary manifestations that occur as a result of experiencing lack of love. Love is our native state: complete, perfect, and whole. When we agree to become physical, we do so knowing that we are agreeing to participate within a set of constraints wherein the native love that exists for us will temporarily be obscured. We do this, in part, because how else could “What Is” know what it is, other than to actually experience what it is not?

The constraint-set that we have adopted permits us to actually experience the ability to make hard and meaningful choices, even under duress, within a context. Physical life is the context.

The very natural result of making choices in obscurity, however, is what we often call “negative” experience. We experience the effects of selfishness and greed. We experience misunderstanding, judgment, and violence. We experience pain as we are misunderstood, as we are mistreated, and as we even buy into mis-perceptions about what we really are! We are hurt ourselves, and we often retain that hurt and then pass it to others: person to person, parent to child, we perpetuate the pain that is in us by operating out of our pain. All of that pain is rooted in fear-based choice making- choice making that naturally occurs within the context of being obscured from the complete and total love, power, joy, and acceptance that is our native state.

So then how do we heal this cycle? LOVE! The solution is to love the individual who is experiencing obscurity- in effect, to seek to remove the obscurity by reminding the individual of the greater truth that always exists beneath the surface: that he or she is wonderful, accepted, taken-care-of, adored, powerful, free, and worthy! For ultimately we are accepted and loved, and God’s love is always, always available to us- it’s just that we have undertaken an experience wherein we have forgotten it.

Love is the ultimate healing power in the universe. It is the expression of the wholeness and unity that is native to what we truly are. It is what we yearn for, and what others here so desperately need. We are called to be beacons of love while in this place, to personally express the divine love that exists for us to each other. That is our mission while we are on our walk in the physical.

Know that regardless of the fact that you are having an experience in a place where love often appears to be obscured, you can never truly be separated from the incredible love that exists specifically for you. Be assured that one day, you will return to the loving foundation of your existence, and you will be healed fully by that love. However, we do not need to wait until the end of our time in the physical to experience healing! In fact, we are here in this place to take a shot at seeing how we can do under these challenging constraints in the name of love for each other! Since the love of God is often not immediately apparent here- can we choose to shine that love in to each other?

True spirituality is the dwelling in what is real. It is not primarily adherence to ideas in the mind. This is an important distinction because as beings living in dualism we commonly feel that truth is to be found within certain ideas, and not others. Yet all ideas and all form exist within the One Thing That Is, or what we sometimes call “God” or “Source.” Source transcends all the ideas and forms. And at the most fundamental level, Source is the most real thing there is. Spiritual truth then ultimately does not need to be taken on faith: we are talking about something that is actually real. In fact it is far more real than that which we commonly experience day-to-day. Because it is real, we have absolutely nothing to fear in honestly searching for what is real and in exploring what we feel is real.

Many people find it terrifying, however, to explore what they feel is real, because they believe that the world is a terrible place or that life is terrible. Indeed, they have much evidence to convince them of this “fact.” In fact, this reality will always give us evidence to support what we believe. This occurs because what is fundamentally true is not our beliefs themselves, but our awareness itself. Nothing is ever believed, conceived, or experienced without our own awareness of it. And thus in order to actually discover what is real, we must be willing to truly and deeply explore the most challenging thing there is to explore: ourselves.

Spiritual growth can occur when one commits to the honest pursuit of what is real in one’s self. Doing so, however, takes considerable personal courage, because it means one must be willing to feel what one actually feels, and face what one actually is. It is far, far easier to place the blame on certain ideas, or to cling to long-held beliefs for safety, than it is to drop the charade of the ego and allow one’s self to actually experience everything- including the experience of uncertainty about what is real.

But the whole charade of the ego is ultimately an illusion. It is not real, except that we have made it to be.

Truth, on the other hand, will stand up to scrutiny, because It Is. But since the truth transcends the human mind, the human mind alone cannot fully discern it! Because consciousness transcends the objects of the mind that it beholds, the window to true discernment is a deep familiarity with that which is more real than one’s mind: one’s awareness itself. This is why meditation is such a valuable tool: it is simply exploring “what actually is” by dwelling fully in the present moment, instead of being lost in the many thoughts of the illusory mind.

Your goal for being here is not to survive. In fact, your body won’t. Your goal is to shine joyfully as your true self, to bring the light of love into this experience, to grow toward genuine love, to process your fears, and to add to creation by being the real you. You are here to be genuine and to exercise true loving intent in common moments wherever you are, not to protect yourself at the cost of others.

In this context, it is not enough to financially succeed. It is not enough to fit in and to be comfortable. It is not enough to achieve stability in a world where the normal way of doing so is by primarily thinking of yourself and not those around you.

It is enough to simply be. It is enough to put another before yourself in whatever small way is available to you in the present moment. It is enough to create something, even if no one else will see it. It is enough to have fun. It is enough to follow the calling of your spirit, even if you abandon comfort.

The universe is built in a spirit of playfulness, joy, and pure creativity. Thus, while your body here won’t last, you might as well enjoy the rigorous environment of this physical universe and use it in a way that satisfies your soul!

When pain shows up at your door, let it in. You do not need to fear it. It is not necessary to open your door and go looking for pain to let in, nor is it necessary to be excited that pain has showed up at your door. But when it shows up- open the door, let it walk in, and be with it. Let it be your guest. Listen to the story it wants to tell you. Be a good non-judgmental listener. When pain has splurged all that it meant to express, being empty of anything else to say it will leave happily, often to never return.