A Walk in the Physical

When you are thinking, you are lost in a dream of form. When you are being, you just “are”: no distinctions are necessary, and all possibilities actually exist.

The intent to dwell “in the now” is often referred to as being “present.” Being “present” is like looking at a sunset and fully experiencing its beauty in the present moment: you simply are being present with the experience, rather than quantifying or judging the experience with thought. The sunset admirer does not begin to think “the sunset should be more pink,” for as soon as she does, she is no longer experiencing the sunset, but is instead judging it. God often speaks to us far more clearly in the former (presence) than in the latter (thought judgment).

If you slow down the momentum of your thoughts and go far enough into the present moment and allow yourself to completely surrender to it without judgment, you will find rather than nothing being there, everything is there. You will find your awareness exists beyond the boundaries of your body, and that you can experience your being that transcends your entire physical identity and all of its thoughts and judgments. The only thing that separates you from that native transcendence are the thoughts, judgments, and beliefs that you have decided to cling to and formalize over a lifetime.

This present moment, this very moment right now, the great depths of your own being are available to you. While the momentum of your thoughts and judgments may be great, and that may seem to keep you far from being fully aware, recognize that at any time you can take one step away from the thoughts and toward awareness of the present moment itself.

Who you really are is much bigger than who you may think you are right now, and it is completely OK to explore that!

In the context of your belief system, especially a religious one, if you are feeling doubt it is a sign that your Reason is compelling you to explore. It is OK to follow your Reason. “Big Truth” is not make believe and does not require your belief to exist. (Only your ego requires things to be a certain way.)

If you genuinely seek truth, you will look fearlessly into your own history and experience, and your own reaction to it all. If you look close enough you will see that your beliefs have deeply colored and created your experience. In addition, if you consistently take the time to explore deeply into the present moment beyond your thoughts and judgments, into your awareness itself, you will find that your awareness is fundamental to every experience you have had, while the intellectual justifications and beliefs are not. “You” have (your awareness has) persisted and endured, while the thoughts and forms that you have entertained have come and gone.

Faith then is not about simply finding an idea and holding on to it with tenacity. Faith is setting your deepest intent in the “right direction”- which is toward Love and God (no matter what you call it or don’t call it). Those two words attempt to encompass many aspects of truth which vastly transcend all human language, but we might say they include actually setting your intention toward: fearlessness, personal responsibility, active relationship with your Source, peace, acceptance, humility, surrender, joy, creativity, being fully present in the current moment, and always striving to put the needs of others before yourself. Genuinely pursuing all of that is both much more challenging and much more rewarding than tenaciously holding on to any human intellectual dogma, creed, book, name, or idea. God vastly transcends the forms you may identify Her by anyway, so your selection of the form itself is not critical. That being said, admittedly we are physical beings living in dualism- so the form or belief pursued can in fact be extremely meaningful and important! Religion often serves this extremely meaningful purpose. But when you are ready it can also be liberating to realize that the form or belief itself is not the “active ingredient.” Spirit- which we might also call “life” or “awareness”- is the thing that is real; and the “active ingredient” is the mobilization of that spirit- including your spirit- by intent! Intent transcends the forms of your mind, even as it must work through those forms.

You can at any moment let your faith transcend belief!

When you glance upon truth, there is no doubt: you know it in a way that resonates perfectly with the true goodness in your soul, because at their deepest root all things- including you- always exist within harmony, love, and perfect beingness. If you feel conflict, resistance, pressure, or fear, in that moment you are not operating from a place of higher truth. And that’s OK! You, as a part of the Creative process, utilize your experience of duality and contrast to expand and create. None-the-less, YOUR personal decision in any and every given moment to choose loving intent versus fearful intent is truly, truly important! It is the very reason this reality exists- to give you that opportunity! Faith then is always striving for the divine however you may personally identify it. Faith is choosing to embody pure loving selfless intent. Faith is allowing the greater truth and mighty river of Source’s ever-present love to flow through you in whatever your circumstances, regardless of the forms involved!

The primary thing we are accomplishing is not anything external, like production, consumption, amassing wealth, or creating something physical. The primary thing we are accomplishing is in consciousness space: the development of the quality of our intent toward love, the addition to creativity and to ideas, the broadening of awareness that occurs as one has experiences and makes choices. WE are the substance of what is happening in reality; the things we see around us are not. We can turn materials into finished goods, build a thousand cities, direct resources by spending money for decades and centuries: none of that has any meaning except through the experience of, and resulting beingness of, those doing it and those affected by it. When the Earth has passed- and pass it will- the objects we moved around effortfully will matter very little. However, our experience, our love- that will be incredibly precious and eternally enduring!

You and I will exist past the death of our bodies. We will exist after the roads have crumbled to dust, the skyscrapers have fallen low, and the languages of the Earth are no longer spoken. Someday, eventually, all the things we have built will be gone- but you will remain.

Should we then while we are here spend our energies primarily on physical production and acquisition? Or should we instead work towards building up that which will never pass? Are not the treasures of the spirit worth far more than any possession? For wisdom endures! Joy lifts up all of Creation! Creativity adds to What Is in an eternal way! The growth of the spirit cannot ever be lost, and love never, ever dies or diminishes.

Work, then, for love! Work to conquer your fear, to fully face whatever your experience may be. Work to create. Work to add to the experience of those around you. Work to serve, to humble yourself, to make the world better for someone else. Work to expand your understanding, your perspective, your willingness. Work to surrender. Work to face yourself and be the best you can be. Work to allow the love of the divine to flow through you. And know that your “work” is not work at all- it is the gentle calling of your spirit to be the loving being that you are at your core, wherever you are. Let go of all concern, follow the quiet asking of your spirit, and know that “all is well.” For you are the brave one who has decided to come here, not to accomplish the transient ends of the physical, but to add to yourself, to love, and to Creation!

Judgment pervades our society. We constantly label, categorize, and place blame. When something that we deem as “bad” happens, we quickly seek to identify who is at fault. We are deeply attached to the idea that there are enemies somewhere out in the world.

But in truth, there is no enemy. There is never an enemy.

All of us are integrally spiritually connected to one another. We may be currently entertaining the deep illusion of separation, but never-the-less fundamentally we are all individuated facets of the same Great Spirit. How can there ever be an enemy when the other is always a part of us?

Those among us who are acting hurtfully are simply doing so out of the ignorance caused by being on this side of the veil: ignorance to their own undiminishable power; ignorance to their inherent worthiness; ignorance to the unspeakable love that exists for them- especially this last one. Everyone who acts hurtfully is suffering themselves, for lack of love has prompted them to act out of fear. Can you forgive your brother and sister who is suffering, like you have? Can you forgive them for being afraid?

Relinquish your need to place blame or be on the “side of right.” For the sense of empowerment one may gain in doing so is only a false illusion set up by the ego. It is fake security. The ego may proclaim, “I now have power over the situation because I have identified the cause of my duress” or “I now affirm that I am good and justified because of which group I belong to-” but such proclamations are illusions.  Like all illusions of the ego, they are created to give us a false sense of comfort, which we often embrace wholeheartedly rather than facing our fears and feeling our discomforts.

You do not need the securities of the ego, including that of judgment. The truth stands firm and strong, always: you are loved, you are cherished, you are divine- and so is the person next to you. That truth when experienced is far more comforting than the comfort that any egoic judgment can provide!

The wonder of “That Which Is” is far beyond any description. The creative power of God is beyond imagining. The beauty of Creation is vastly beyond that which can be quantified. The Love of God is more beautiful and desirable and perfect than anything we have ever articulated in any form in this entire universe!

All things, everything we’ve ever considered or felt or experienced as humans in the sum of human history, is but an infinitesimal speck in the grandeur that is God. God’s nature is totally ineffable, undefinable, and sublime!

How then, as humans of such limited intellects, can we believe that we can quantify “All That Is” in our petty tongues? How can we announce that we have grasped the truth while we are here? How can our rituals, our metaphors, our forms and understandings, our symbols, books, names, identities, beliefs, or stories ever capture the truth? How can our fleshy brains, our failing bodies, our limited minds, our imperfect organizations and systems ever profess to have the truth?

No word, song, voice, symbol, person, place, story, or any other form in all of Creation will ever be able to quantify the great, awesome, awe-inspiring, limitless, boundless, perfect truth of God!

Your experience is what it is for a reason. You cannot escape the nature of your experience- because what you are experiencing is always exactly what you should be experiencing in any given moment, based on the many natural laws that Source in Its incredibly loving wisdom has laid out. Thus the nature of your experience itself contains precious keys to your own development and your own life. This includes “negative” experience, which actually contains rich messages for us, if we are willing to listen.

In order to properly excavate the gold mine of your experience, you need to surrender to it. Surrender to your experience itself, not to your ideas about it. You have to be willing to actually feel whatever arises, to fully dwell in the present moment with whatever it is presently offering you, and to do so without any intellectual judgment whatsoever. The more you do that, the more you will be able to see the contents of your intellectual mind- and the resultant emotions- for what they are.

In the context of the larger reality around us, our society currently has a lot of things wrong:

• We are taught that possessions will make us happy, when in truth they will not
• We believe that matter is the most real thing there is, when in truth it is not
• We believe that the Earth and the outer space that we can see is all there is, when in truth they are not
• We believe that God is judgmental and “angerable,” when in truth He is not; or alternatively we believe God doesn’t exist, when in truth that which we crudely call “God” is more real than everything we know
• We are taught that we are harshly judged for our mistakes, when in truth all things are understood
• We are taught that we are only worthy if we do or achieve certain things, when in truth we are fundamentally worthy
• We believe that we are unloved, when in truth we are profoundly loved, cherished, and adored
• We are taught that humans are the only beings “with a soul,” when in truth we are not
• We are taught to fear the dangers of the world, when in truth there is nothing to fear
• We are taught that we have no power to change the world, when in fact we are incredibly powerful
• We fear that death is the end, when in truth it is a fantastic beginning

With so much misunderstanding “out there,” it is no wonder that clarity often eludes us. And yet, your greatest source for knowing is not external: your own experience, your own intuition, your own knowing, your own inner connection to Spirit will whisper answers to you when society’s constant messages fail you. God is always speaking to you in one way or another, if you are humble enough to listen. Listen within openly, and with pure loving intention, and you will find that a light is always available to lead you through the ubiquitous misunderstanding of this seemingly physical world!

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.