uncoverawareness

Plunked smack in the midst of seeming chaos, on a messy and breathtaking planet we call Earth, most of us don’t quite know what to make of it. Sometimes all we need is a dash of sweet perspective in our slightly bitter soup… If we’re lucky and something ignites, that spark of inspiration can change our lives forever…

You are not just on this planet. This planet is alive in you. The world you know is made from nothing other than your own consciousness. There is nothing apart from you. However… The limits of your own experience are entirely up to you.

This earthly life is like an exquisitely crafted, no-holds-barred amusement park.

Beings at all stages of their evolution line up to take the rides. And we all choose our own rides. It’s “pick your own adventure.” But we, as individuals, don’t control the rides, themselves. This can be tough when you’re hanging upside-down on the loopdeeloop. “Arrrgh, why did it look so fun? This sucks!!” The attractions span from joyous frolicking in lollipop land, to terrified shrieking in the little house of horrors. Some like the predictability of the merry-go-round, some like the adrenaline of roller coasters. Some can’t get enough. Some get sick after, and still go back for more. These ones eat astronaut ice cream and stuffed-crust pizza, gambling for stuffed plush teddy bears the size of Shaquille O’Neal, and those ones sit quietly under a tree, admiring clouds that look like ducks.

One’s dream is another’s nightmare. One’s poison is another’s nectar. Those who keep going into the haunted house scoff at the wimps who always choose the ferris wheel, and those on the ferris wheel are aghast that there is such a place as “The Royal Palace of Blood and Guts,” and that it always seems to be such a popular venue.

Whatever your taste may be, monsieur le Chef is in the house. No matter how obscure and absurd, all is available for the small price of….

Yep, you guessed it: all memories of your last trip to the fair.

That being said, there is no sense in judging others– or ourselves– for our choice of rides, especially since those choices are mostly made in the absence of conscious awareness. As if while sleepwalking. No matter how crazy some of the rides seem. “I mean, who would choose that one?! Goodness gracious…” Well, chances are, you did once, too. This isn’t your first time here. So don’t take your opinions so seriously. What we can do is to become more conscious of the choices we are making in our own day at the fair. Then the adventure starts to change. Big time.

What’s that, you say? You’re tired? You wanna go home? For now, maybe, but you’ll be back to play some more… Unless you lose interest in this mode of entertainment, which you will, eventually… When? Who knows, maybe that’s why you’re on this website?

If you’re here on this planet, you’ve agreed to join the circus.

You just don’t remember. It’s okay. It’s not a bad thing.

Next time you wonder why things happen as they do, remember: this is a custom-made adventure. You’re here, are you not? That means you signed up! Now stop blaming the world for your perceptions, and the experiences they produce. None of it is random, and none of it is permanent, either. YOU, on the other hand, ARE permanent.

“You are free!

But you must determine

as what are you free.

You want to be

free as the ego.

But you have to be

free of the ego.”

-Mooji

Take back your power by owning up to your experience. Life doesn’t “happen to you.” You’ve asked for all of it, in every detail. Every moment, in all its aspects, is a perfectly arranged opportunity for your growth. What you do with it is up to you. All this, the whole of existence, is nothing other than your enlightenment school. If it didn’t seem so real to you, it wouldn’t be such a great school then, would it? This is a precious, precious opportunity. It’s exciting! Forget what you THINK you know.

Wake up!!!!!

THEN, life really begins, in earnest. Why? Because you finally see it for what it is.

We could say that every being is on their respective path, but it’s not just any old path. It’s a journey into the Heart of the Universe. This journey is both initiated and orchestrated by the Universe itself. There is nothing “out there” to save or help those who find themselves living this mysterious life, yet all beings are supplied with exactly what they need at all times, without exception. The help and the salvation are built-in aspects of the same all-encompassing evolutionary process. Why? No idea… Wrong question.

At a certain stage of this journey, a choice becomes available that didn’t seem to be present until then. This choice is to merge with the flow of life’s movement, until essential at-one-ment is gradually revealed as one’s subjective reality. The experience therefore shifts, from one seemingly at odds with the universal flow, to one of contributing positive and supportive energy to the movement as a whole, no matter how many potholes appear on the road. Those tend to be the biggest blessings, the greatest opportunities for soul growth. So, if things get hard, seek to understand rather than to escape or fix. You may be quite surprised by what comes of it…

The question is this: to support, and therefore experience being supported, or to deny, and therefore experience being denied? Affirm, or reject? Two directions, ONLY. Peace and freedom is the nature of the former experience, while resistance and suffering are the nature of the latter. What is false is not the opposite of what is true, it is only the denial of what is true. Darkness is not the opposite of light, but only its absence. It has no intrinsic existence. You can’t shine “darkness” into a room, can you? Therefore, suffering comes from believing in what has no reality, and peace comes from letting go of resistance to welcoming self-evident truth.

The road crosses in and out of time, but itself cannot be measured in time, which is only a pragmatic invention to serve a particular way of perceiving and getting on in a limited world. The “you” that doesn’t seem to remember who it is, isn’t bound by time, but you feel that way because time is believed wholeheartedly to be real. Otherwise, there would be no fear about it. The whole Universe is your oyster, your womb, your sandbox, your paradise, your inferno, or anything else you want for it to be. That is, until you realize that the game only goes for as long as you want for it to go.

*******

“But what a path it has been! I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. But it was right that it should be so; my eyes and heart acclaim it. [...] Whither will my path yet lead me? This path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it.”

- from Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse

*******

The world can’t be what it is without the experiencing of it, so, to understand the world, take a closer look at the “experiencer.” Be curious! What is this bundle of learned behaviors and tendencies for thought? Who’s this “me” supposedly doing and thinking all this stuff? If “I” am aware of that, then who am I? What is “I”? If one is persistent in this way of questioning, one starts to notice an uncanny correlation between the content of mind (thoughts and emotions) and experience. One feels less like a thing and more like an environment.

“The world is not what you think it is.

The world is exactly what you think it is.”

-Mooji

Like a life-size rorschach blot, everything we perceive is in us, not in “the world.” It’s like a giant house of mirrors, and the only way out is to transcend the ego, with its inherently limited and distorted perceptual reality. To transcend the relative means to transcend the personal, but paradoxically, the absolute can only be known subjectively! This is because it is pure, non-dualistic subjectivity, and therefore not demonstrable to an “other.” And no, the ego is not a disease to be eradicated (that would be an egoic impression), it’s a stage in the evolution of consciousness to be outgrown. The world isn’t itself “an illusion.” The world, as it’s being perceived, is an illusion. Big difference, but very subtle point to grasp. Most will not understand this, but those who do will be quite thrilled to see that this is so.

It can get a bit surreal, when we realize, for ourselves, beyond any doubt, that we are in fact experiencing only the content of our own minds, and not anything we could call “objective reality.” Obvious synchronicity begins to replace what one had ordinarily assumed to be coincidence. As the context becomes more interesting than the content, the game changes drastically.

Our ordinary experience of life, made claustrophobic by virtue of being imprisoned in our own minds, due to a simple lack of awareness, begins to expand. Something relaxes and opens. A magical quality starts to seep into the ordinariness of life… In this expansion, the feeling of identity, with all its correlated projections, memories, opinions and fears, starts to be absorbed in a deeper seeing.

Ahhhh… Welcome to Reality. And the discovery continues….

“You may say the world is unreal, but until the very unreality of the one saying this is confirmed within your heart, this utterance will remain a shallow display.”

-Mooji

 Human/Being

The human yells out, “Love me!”

The Being says, “I am.”

The human cries “Prove it!”

The Being smiles. “I am.”

The human wails, “I’m still not happy…”

The Being replies, “I am.”

The human feels trapped between birth and death. What can he hold onto? Is it possible to stop existing? Why don’t his beliefs give him peace? The boat is sinking! The questions are endless in the mind that is ever reaching outward, avoiding the pains and perpetual changefulness of life. Desperate for air, he sucks in smoke. Hungry for life, he consumes death. The more he knows, the less happy he is able to be, yet he doesn’t see another choice, since to not know would seem to be the very ignorance he wishes to dispel. Beneath it all, he pleads “Love me!”, not realizing that he screams of thirst in an ocean of the purest water.

I AM.

If he would stop clinging to his rotting piece of wood for long enough to take a drink, he would see his foolishness for himself, without the need to hope for some future salvation. Freedom was here, all along, as the immutable core of all changefulness, the very ground of Being. It’s not that it’s all gonna be okay someday. In his very Heart, which is none other than the Heart of the universe, okayness already is.

The Love we crave is our very I, for there is only the one I, but all we need to do is stop actively knowing who we are. To undress this I of all its costumes is to discover that there is nothing but I, that I is identical with Love, and that all existence loves itself. The one who knows is the one who suffers, while the one who embraces unknowing discovers the One who IS, the very source of all knowing and being.

One Who Can Quit Seeing Himself

I look for one simple and open enough

to see the Friend, not an intelligence

weighing several perspectives. I want

an empty shell to hold this pearl, not

a stone who pretends to have a secret

center, when the surface is all through.

I want one who can quit seeing himself,

fill with God and, instead of being

irritated by interruption and daily

resentments, feel those as kindness.

- Rumi

When the human discovers the Being, it is a most sacred and holy meeting. 

Few are willing to be honest about how little they really know, including all thoughts about what is or isn’t possible. All we know is that we are. But we don’t even know who is. We’re just aware that we’re here, in all its infuriating mysteriousness. And then all the thoughts, memories and sensations piled on top of that simple sensation, the feeling “I am,” have created the incredibly peculiar experience of forgetting our unconditional existence.

Not really forgetting, but unintentionally ignoring that we exist (ignorance). Beingness is somehow distracted from its simple truth, the eternal constant in all that is changing. This is because we are continuously telling the story of who we are, and believing it to be true. It’s not. It’s just a story, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not true. The story is nothing more than a comfy, or not so comfy, cocoon.

When the “me” is seen to merely be a ghost, telling its ghost stories and believing them, space is created for true wisdom to present itself. What we are is Beingness itself, the formless, infinite intelligence, the substratum and essence of all names, forms and experiences that appear and disappear within it. There is no “you” outside of It to be in or out of harmony with It. There is only It, and Harmony is another one of Its names. It is beyond creation and destruction, and all that is seemingly created and destroyed is actually the endless expression, the unfathomable outpouring of essence.

In this big theatre of life, It is playing all the parts. Existence is playful. There is no you, as separate from It, but mysteriously, it pretends that this is the case. Why? Perhaps so that It can have the ecstatic and triumphant pleasure of rediscovering Itself, like a child outrageously delighted by being found in a game of hide and seek. What a mystery!

By continuously examining the unreality of our self-image and definitions, attraction to what is untrue gradually fades away, in light of what is found to be eternally and unchangingly present. Until the misunderstanding is swept away, and we recognize clearly what we are not, we cannot see that we are, in fact, ALL THAT IS.

Simple, right?

What is Truth? Self-understanding. Unknowable, unteachable, unspeakable, and immeasurably beautiful! Wading into the these waters, you cannot bring anything with you, not even your idea of who you are…

It all begins with courage.

The only requirement is a willingness to stop squirming, and to meet whatever is present here and now, no matter what. Utterly uncomplicated, deceptively simple. But it’s not a one-time deal, it’s more of a continuous thing, a realignment of your life’s compass. An opening. When the decision to really find the Truth is made, with unflinching resolve, an endless unfolding is welcomed into awareness, a way of living that invites perpetual, ever-deepening insights into the mystery of life. That process of unfolding is not in our control, but our choices in each moment are.

This, I must clearly express, is not child’s play. Yet, through it, the child in us is set free… Genuine inquiry is ruthless and unsparing, for no dishonesty whatsoever can survive a direct confrontation; falsehood evaporates like drops of water in the sun. Turn towards the light of Consciousness, and even the most cherished beliefs and fears crawl into its infinite embrace…

Remember, there’s nothing to get, because if you are something, there’s nothing to get about it. There would have to be a “you” and an “it,” and folks, that just ain’t true. We’re quite ingrained in the habit of getting, of wanting and grasping. Additionally, there’s nowhere to go, and nothing to achieve. You are the Truth, now. The very reaching out is your blindness. The very clinging is your bondage.

The ideals we reach for will always evade our grasp. And that which we manage to hold, holds us. You cannot hold what is true, only your thoughts about what is true. As far as the Real is concerned, all self-definitions (from “victim” to “seeker of Truth”) are like prisons, even when they are decorated with flowers and incense. We hold onto our stories of suffering and struggle, and take hidden pride in being “right” about what we consider to be “wrong.” These are survival mechanisms for a coveted self-image, an intricate way of hiding which continues to operate subconsciously. All that disturbs us in the world is very much alive in us as well, but we avoid this fact like the plague, even when we act like we understand that this is so. [Whew! Don't worry, it's only heavy at first-- but it's worth the shock. The Truth is very very good news, from all angles, I promise!]

Courage begins where pride ends.

With maturity, there comes a willingness to recognize the futility and arrogance of chasing perfection, inner or outer. Spiritual or material. Maturity is deeper than the lifetime of one body– it’s a soul ripeness, and it can’t be forced. That willingness allows for an openness to emerge, which ushers in humility: “Holy smokes, I guess I don’t know.” As this openness grows, so does one’s receptivity. But in order to be receptive to the joy and wisdom that progressively reveals itself, we must be just as receptive to what makes us extremely uncomfortable.

We build walls around ourselves, then complain about feeling trapped. To step out of the self-built fortress is to open up to what’s actually here. To remain courageously with what’s here is to allow that ancient structure, with all its unconscious layers, to be disassembled by the power of Consciousness itself– not by the “me.” That vulnerability is also our freedom, but it takes courage to set aside all the bits of “me-ness” that we are protecting, even just for long enough to investigate what they’re covering. Only then can we discover what is invulnerable, and what has no inside and outside. Courage isn’t recklessness, it isn’t a display of bravado– it is stepping outside our comfort zone, to stop actively playing the game called “me.” Including the “spiritual me” that seeks Truth (easy trap!). Same game, different costume. Radical honesty is both scary and fun– the alternative is boring, exhausting, and only seems to be safe. It’s not, because our illusions are so fragile and require so much energy to maintain.

Freedom is unknowing, in which nothing is held to be true or not true.

To really want Truth, you have to be a little insane. By this, I mean that in order to discover true sanity, we must embrace our insanity in a way we never, ever thought possible. As long as we are trying to be a better person, or make our pain go away, or master some kind of spiritual technique, absolute peace will not be possible. These things may be enjoyable, but as far as our essential Reality is concerned, it’s systematic avoidance. Only in directly meeting this moment, in all its ugliness and beauty, can the Truth be revealed.

Yet, in order to authentically meet what is here, we have to be willing to let go of the story we are telling ourselves about who we are, where we’re going, what this all means, and what is true. And if we let it go, what’s left?! If you muster up just a brief moment of utterly insane courage, with no expectation whatsoever about what will come of it, then you will be opening yourself, for the first time, to a real taste of freedom.

My suggestion? Go for it.

You can’t know what Love really is, the Love that has no opposite, until you’ve allowed yourself to fully experience fear and hate. You can’t understand selflessness until you completely experience all angles of selfishness. You can’t know what joy really is until you’ve descended to the depths of despair and self-loathing. NOT the story of self-hatred, the experience. The story is unconsciously being told, already, in avoidance of the feelings. The lid we are always trying to keep slamming down on the steaming, boiling water has to come off, completely.

Yes. It takes a lot of courage to stop suppressing the flood. This is the true meaning of Noah’s ark. The ark is the light of Consciousness. The flood is here, washing away all lies. We can be “spiritual,” talking in nice little soft voices about how “we are all one,” going around saying “namaste,” smiling “lovingly” at everyone we see, going on yoga retreats to “open the heart,” and doing our best to walk around in a self-hypnotized state of “egolessness.” We can pray, volunteer, refrain from eating meat and cursing, and try to be the most righteous people we can be. And that’s all fine and dandy, it really is. Unless, of course, you genuinely wish to discover the Truth of who you are, beyond all ideas of what that Truth looks and feels like. Most will continue to avoid it.

Human perception is simply not capable of recognizing Essence: knowledge is ignorance.

In order for this to be possible, the life force needs to flow unimpeded. What does this mean? If we are to be free as Love, we must also be free to be complete and total shitheads. This doesn’t mean “act wild and crazy,” it means, stop trying to be “a certain way.” Relax, you’re not gonna get a medal. No personality can ever be perfect, even a saintly one. We must stop tip-toeing, for fear of betraying an ideal. The Truth of who you are is beyond both heaven and hell: it’s not personal, and it’s not a thing. As the Self-aware totality of All, it was never created and it can never be destroyed. Even scientists know this now; quantum physics is well aware that there is no such thing as a separate self, or a separate anything for that matter. There is only the central Self, the infinite potentiality that expresses itself as the timeless unfolding of everything that is, including the space-time dimension in which this experience of personhood is taking place. Only, an intellectual understanding of this isn’t enough, or all quantum physicists would be Buddhas and Jesuses.

Love as something that’s “good” or that we “should do” has nothing to do with the Love that flows spontaneously. That contrived expression of “love” is really a four letter word, much like “duty.” It’s all ego, still. Mock holiness and mock humility coming from the spiritualized ego, with all its spiritual virtues and accomplishments. We do this only because we fear rejection and judgement, whether from others, from God, or worst of all, from our own superego, the little voice in our heads, the metaphysical policeman that so many mistakenly worship as God. This is subconscious ego-worship, not surrender. What a maze of baloney! At some point, we gotta wake up from the nightmare of illusions…

We live in denial, as individuals and as a society, but there is another way.

If we do not open to our own ugliness, our own unworthiness, our own unlovable, irredeemable wretchedness, we will never discover the compassion that lives as the core of our Being. Our inability to embrace this ugliness as it is, without judging it or trying to fix it, detached from our story about it, and just allowing it to flow, translates to an inability to accept the same energy in others and in the world as a whole. We continue to strategize for personal salvation, and project all of our delusions onto the world, calling it “evil,” yet what we see is only a mirror for our own denial. Harsh words, maybe, but necessary. Enough anesthetic! If it doesn’t hurt at some point, then it’s probably not leading you to the Truth. Growing pains, that’s all… Evolve! It’s time.

Genuine Love is always fresh, and always a surprise, because it’s more powerful, and yet more subtle, than anything that can be imagined. It’s not personal, it’s unconditional. It cannot be hidden, only hidden from. And where do we hide? In thought, and the belief we have invested in thought. So ask yourself, “What am I hiding from, what am I avoiding?” And don’t stop asking until you find out.

And when this gnarled, mean and pitiful toad springs up to say “Hi,” give him a big, welcoming kiss (I know, the frog above is more on the cute side, but you get the picture). All of us have this slimy toad alive in us, and unless we open completely to him, we will continue to harbor hatred and anger throughout our lives. We hide this toad away, for fear of discovering that we really are that awful, but until he’s brought into the light, and spared the judgement we are so accustomed to dishing out, our freedom is missed! As long as we are divided within ourselves, between the “me” that we like and the “me” that we despise or merely tolerate, the war will continue, and we will never know true peace. The war is inside, and outside. It is the same war. But YOU must be courageous, and take that step. Nobody will do it for you.

A moment of insane courage. That is all.

“When mind is left– Peace is left.” — Mooji

Life is only complex and overwhelming when lived and understood in terms of the mind. We literally hide out in the mind, since we aren’t aware of any alternative. In truth, the mind cannot know anything at all– it only knows about. Reality is out of its reach; it cannot be anticipated, or even be imagined. You can’t cling to the mind and see Truth– the one looking off the edge is not the same as the One who can see.

Consciousness, experiencing itself as “me,” is strangled by thoughts into a painfully limited sense of being. Yet, this ”me” is only a powerful dream, a product of imagination and conditioning. Ego only exists as the need to be loved. It is, by definition, neediness, selfishness and ignorance.

This continues indefinitely until we stop looking outside for love, happiness and fulfillment. There’s no such thing as a perfect personality, so don’t stress out trying to fix it. Be kind to yourself! You have all the tools you need, as you are. But you must be open in order to see this. To be truly open is to be relaxed, unconcerned with defending any sort of position, or living up to any kind of ideal.

“You are not here to fix the world. Your opportunity is to discover who you are, and to know this beyond conviction. There is a mystery bursting to reveal itself, but it will only do so inside a pure and worthy mind; a mind free of the bigotry of identity.”

– Mooji

As long as we believe our thoughts are actually indications of reality, rather than potential choices within an infinite realm of possibilities for experiencing, a buffet for the mind, if you will, we find ourselves in quite a bind. We miss the simple beauty and joy of BEING.

Thought becomes a spider’s web, an endless network of patterns and sequences that entangles us in a unique and continuously managed virtual reality. We become victims of this, calling it “fate,” or “the way things are,” and resign from any genuine responsibility, because we refuse to acknowledge our true role in the orchestration of the reality we experience.

Liberation from this virtual reality comes at a price– that price is who you think you are. Most are not yet ready to give this up, and continue life as a process of protecting the fragile boundaries of a self-imposed illusion. Of course, this imagined “me,” the one who thinks it knows all the stuff which has caused it to lose its joyful innocence, is itself the root of all misery and delusion. To stop defining yourself and the world is to start opening to a direct understanding of what is, prior to any thought. What freedom!

To really understand, you must go beyond thought. Turn towards awareness. See first-hand that awareness itself is unaffected by whatever it is aware of. This field of awareness (which is you, the SUBJECT– you are not an object) includes as much as you’re willing to open yourself to– the spectrum goes from “little old me” to All That Is.

First, recognize the intuitive sense of presence (the feeling “I AM”), which is deeper than thinking or even the senses, and which is more encompassing than personal identity. Attend to that, and leave the mind to itself. If you are sincere and determined, resistance will gradually diminish, and insight will unfold as the attention is trained to stop going out and away from this presence, in which life is directly understood rather than known.

Animals can be of enormous help. They live simply. It also helps very much to be in nature, to drink in its simplicity and be healed by it. It is not concerned by all your troubles, it accepts you unconditionally, as you are. In fact, it IS you, but there seems to have been a forgetting of this truth. Make yourself available to the wisdom of nature, and it will make its wisdom available to you…

Forgotten Language

by Shel Silverstein

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,

Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,

Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,

And shared a conversation with the housefly

in my bed.

Once I heard and answered all the questions

of the crickets,

And joined the crying of each falling dying

flake of snow,

Once I spoke the language of the flowers…

How did it go?

How did it go?

There is a knowing deeper than knowledge. The moment you say– “I got it!”– you don’t. The Truth is here, already– you only need to notice. Yes, it really is that simple…

Don’t believe everything you think.

Even if you’re already a meditator, it’s simpler than you might be making it! We easily fall back into old patterns without realizing it…. So don’t get too good at talking about your experiences. The elaborate layers of stories we tell ourselves are the only obstacle to a simple, direct experience of our original state of being, the fruits of which are beyond all possible descriptions.

“If you keep copulating with thoughts, you will produce scores of illegitimate children. You will be compelled to look after each and every one of them. A full-time job relieved only by deep sleep.”

- Mooji

Meditation need not be so mysterious. The idea tends to be shrouded with foggy images of a levitating yogi, or a wrinkly old monk sitting in lotus posture going “Ommmm.” We also fundamentally misunderstand being “without mind.” To have a quiet mind (to be without thought) is quite the opposite of thoughtlessness. Intelligence, empathy, creativity and responsibility (read: response-ability) actually skyrocket. When the attention is withdrawn from thinkingness, enormous clarity and space emerges, while wisdom and joy begin to replace self-absorption.

Free of the noise that clutters our vision, life is met with greater perspective and ease. We are increasingly present in each moment, free of the neurotic, zombified state most of us walk around in. We discover resources and talents that had no room to flourish with so much investment in thought, and we begin to uproot and release the emotional obstructions tied to those investments. Meditation helps us to wash away all the suppressed emotion we’ve kept buried and out of awareness, subtle poison that holds back our hearts and our lives.

To meditate on the intuitive sense I Am is to meditate on consciousness itself. This allows some space, some breathing room that allows us to step back from the cherished self-image with which we have come to identify. Turning our attention to our own simple sense of being assists us in a transition from person to impersonal Presence, and eventually deepens into a full recognition of pure, non-dualistic awareness: the very essence of who we are. Our sense of individuality (“me-ness”) becomes more of a background phenomenon, diminished by an emerging recognition of the deeper truth. “Little old me” turns out just to have been a story in the mind, a hallucination taken at face value because of its vivid qualities.

In questioning our assumed identity with continuous and unsparing honesty, the notion of the highly protected “personal self” seems more and more absurd. We begin to see that wherever life is taken personally, that is, wherever there is personhood, there is suffering: fear, pride, regret, disappointment, anger, bitterness, hopelessness, self-pity, depression and loneliness. Thankfully, there is a way out. And the way out is the way in.

“The I is the ocean; you the clouds. And is a cloud a cloud save for the ocean it contains? Yet foolish, indeed, is the cloud that would waste away its life striving to pin itself in space so as to keep its shape and its identity forever. What would it reap of its so foolish striving but disappointed hopes and bitter vanity? Except it lose itself, it cannot find itself. Except it die and vanish as a cloud, it cannot find the ocean in itself which is its only self.”

- Mikhail Naimy, from The Book of Mirdad

“You live in illusions and the appearance of things. There is a Reality. You are that Reality. When you recognize this you will realize that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all.”

- Kalu Rinpoche

All spiritual traditions have mysticism at their core: from Sufism, Zen, Taoism, Christian Mysticism and Kabbalah, to African and South American shamanistic traditions and Aboriginal spirituality. The great religions arose around the teachings of mystics, like Buddha, Jesus and Krishna, which all pointed to the universal and timeless Truth, prior to all concepts that may have been used in the pointing. Before the institutionalization of these religions, which began polluting the integrity of the original teachings, the message these beings shared was utterly simple.

I Am is your immediate source of guidance and wisdom: it is the door to your own Self

No hoops to jump through, no elaborate tests of worthiness. And there’s no need to drive yourself mad reading books and books… The answer won’t be found in your head. So don’t try to figure it out, no matter how much you think you know, no matter where you consider yourself to be in your own spiritual evolution. All you need to know is that you ARE. Start there. I mean HERE. Lol. There is no there HERE!!!!

The resistance we have to letting ourselves be still has to do with an inability to face, and understand, the anxiety and discomfort that becomes so apparent in those rare moments of total stopping. We squirm and wiggle, dreading a confrontation with our own dishonesty. When it comes to the subtle but powerful untruths that permeate our lives, most of us fight tooth and nail to avoid seeing them. And who wouldn’t? It’s a survival mechanism: it’s all we know. The good news is, there is another choice.

There is much ignorance about the nature and process of mind, so we become trapped in conceptual gymnastics without realizing their limitations. Given the average level of consciousness, we are hard pressed to find much support for a meditative inclination. It’s natural to judge what we don’t understand, so don’t worry about what others are doing or saying. Let it be. If you wish to move deeper into an understanding of life, or need some encouragement in that direction, go no further…

As far as finding out who you really are, there’s no need for fancy techniques and practices. Different approaches and methods may be useful at different points along the way, but your journey’s only as long as you want it to be. At some point, you will want to wade into the pool of your own Beingness directly, no matter what swamp creatures you fear are awaiting you. You have ability to choose, and that choice is with you always.

“In the kaleidoscope of change seek only the unchanging.”

- Mikhail Naimy

Here is a beautifully guided meditation by the always clear and gentle Mooji.

Love.

“This great world appearing in front of you, and to which you feel you belong, all of it including your sense of self, is as illusory as the blueness of the sky. Like a lengthy dream, none of it is permanent. Know yourself to be that colourless sky.”

- Mooji

We humans are a sleepy bunch.

Cute, sometimes, but sleepy.

We get so used to looking out, and believing what we see, that we don’t even know looking in is an option, or what that could mean for us. Human life is generally lived as if from the inside of a shoebox, where our only knowledge of the sky comes from two tiny holes poked in the side of the box.

Or we could say it’s like being trapped in a dark room with a flashlight. Everything that thin beam of light touches and allows us to see, we call “reality,” and most of us settle for those tiny glimpses of life as “the way things are.” Occasionally, a person decides that they’re fed up with seeing so little of the room, and relying on such a measly source of light. This one goes around, feeling the walls, looking for a light switch… This search can take quite a while. When they find it, in what seems like the most unlikely of places, they can put down the flashlight, since it isn’t needed any longer.

“At some point, the illusion breaks down and the opening for the start of the spiritual quest commences. The quest turns from without to within, and the search for answers begins.”

– David R. Hawkins

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DISCLAIMER:

Meditation is not an escape from reality, to become “blissed out” and float off in dreamland. As a health practice, it certainly has its purpose (maybe that’s all you’re looking for at the moment). But that’s just skimming the surface.

Meditation, in essence, is for one reason alone: TO WAKE UP.

It is a willingness to stop hiding behind our concepts, and the beliefs that shield us from our doubts, and to meet Reality head-on. The direct meeting of this very moment gives us the opportunity to watch all the lies we tell ourselves (and so, each other) disintegrate in the light of awareness…

The Truth will reveal itself if you turn towards it, but your heart will need to be a lion’s heart, not a cub’s. There is much disillusionment involved. But do not fear the fear. It derives its strength from avoidance and belief, like the monsters under your bed… When you really take a look, there are no monsters after all.

Relaxation and peacefulness are side-effects, the aroma arising out of meditation, not the goal. Nor is the goal an altered “state” where there is no more pain or feeling. It’s not just another strategy to manage stress (like massages or saunas), although for the most part, that is how it is understood.

So, be sure of what it is that you really want. Freedom is not a casual decision.

That being said…

Nothing is as it seems. Why? Because YOU are not as you seem. But the whys and hows are always the wrong questions. They will lead in circles. The only questions that will lead to real answers are the most difficult ones to ask: Who? and What?

Everything we see is a projection coming from who we think we are. What seems to be reality is only a result of our own unique lens, and the level of consciousness operating through that lens. Our entire life story is our own particular dream, since it’s precisely what we think about who we are that is determining our experience.

We are not victims, by any stretch of the imagination, in any circumstance. That’s a hard pill to swallow for most, because we are stuck on how “unfair” everything seems to be. Seems to be. It’s safe to say that we don’t understand why things are as they are. Well then…

It might be time to take a closer look.

Within a greater cosmic context, there are no accidents, mistakes, coincidences. None. The question is, are you willing to move beyond what seems to be, into what IS?

On that note, let’s be dramatic for a second… Lol… I like this clip from the Matrix, it’s actually quite profound:

Don’t worry, there really isn’t any grand conspiracy or looming end times. All kinds of people are blabbering about these things, but they’re just sharing their own dreams with us, some more charismatically than others. Most of them are nightmares. So, whether it’s George Orwell, Edgar Cayce, or your friendly neighbourhood prophesizer, don’t take them too seriously. Don’t take yourself too seriously either. We really are dreaming.

However, do not be mistaken: if you think it’s real, it will feel real. As vivid as vivid can be. In living color, not just in your head. Why? The immaterial and material are not separate from each other. As far as limited truths are concerned, there’s nothing that can’t be real for someone. This dreaming, which we all find ourselves in the midst of, is continuous, as long as our thoughts are believed as reality. That is, until you pop the bubble of your relative reality.

In Truth, you are beyond the dreaming, and even the one you believe to be the dreamer. It sounds odd because most of us never examine our basic assumptions about life, other than through convoluted philosophical ramblings or religious dogma…

A house of smoke and mirrors is quite a place to be living in. To get out, find the one behind the mirror. Whose reality is being mirrored to you every minute of every day? Whose dream are you living? Is there really a wizard of oz behind the curtain? Don’t ask someone else, look for yourself. It’s an open-ended question. The only one that will ever set you free of this mess. Then you won’t find it to be such a mess, after all.

Magic is fun, unless of course the woman being chopped in half on stage is actually believed to be chopped in half. Then it becomes horrifying and traumatic. This demonstrates the transformation of illusion, which is not at all problematic in and of itself, into delusion, the illusion believed. That state of delusion is the dominant state of consciousness for all humanity, full of superstition and fear. This is the egoic state.

So, we must ask ourselves, do we want to be right, or do we want to understand? Because you can’t have both, and only one will make you happy. Through and through, there is no person, as such, who has ever been truly happy and fulfilled. Happiness comes from realizing that one isn’t actually bound to personhood, and that our existence, along with the source of that happiness, doesn’t rely on anything external or transient, like the always changing idea we have about who we are.

To be or not to be is NOT the question. To be AWARE, or not to be aware. THAT is the question. Ignorance isn’t bliss. It totally stinks. But we fear change, so we cling to our suffering, and avoid facing our inevitable demise by any means available. What we don’t know is that the only thing that can die is your idea of who you are: you are neither body, nor mind, and you don’t have to wait until the moment of death to realize this, beyond any doubt.

For the majority, the only relief we get from the weight of being who we think we are is in deep sleep. And how blissfully happy we are to be unconscious! How refreshing! Our stories are so tiring. Thankfully, there is another option, and it doesn’t come from adopting more refined beliefs, or entertaining romantic ideas about how everything’s gonna be better later, and that in some other time and place, our immortal soul with be much better off.

If we think along those lines, now would be a time to deprive ourselves of all joy, of all sensuality, and to hope that we amass enough karmic brownie points to get a sweet reward in heaven. Or maybe this story has a more spiritually evolved twist. No matter. All this is the definition of ignorance [read: ignore-ance]. Ignoring what is already right here, right now.

[Click to enlarge.]

A certain lightness of being doesn’t become possible for anyone until they examine their own personhood. It’s not until we give up the idea that we are a separate entity, victimized by the world, that we relax enough to start seeing things as they are. Up to that point, the whole “me” thing is just in the way of clear seeing. Paradoxically, your individuality, including your intellectual capacity, only starts to really flourish the moment you stop attributing so much importance to it. You start to enjoy life a lot more, since the world is no longer sticking to you. You wear the world like a loose garment. You can have fun with the illusions. You have the capacity to master them.

The first step in de-hypnotizing yourself is realizing you’ve been hypnotized in the first place.

The individual ego is merely a ritualized and celebrated social fiction, believed into reality. Since we were toddlers, we’ve been put under some very powerful hypnosis by others who are unaware that they themselves are under hypnosis as well. Hypnosis becomes self-hypnosis. It’s a world of sleeping buddhas.

Many of us, often the most “religious” among us (athiests included!) unknowingly worship an aspect of our own ego (the superego, the “conscience”– the enforcer) as our God, and only feel good about ourselves when we’re in “his” good books. Although, most of us are continuously in the dog-house, and therefore we think we’re wretched! This divided self, between the Hero and the Villain, the Cop and the Thief, God and the Devil, is the very definition of MIND– duality– not Truth. Truth is not divided by thought. You are beyond it. This is the hypnosis! Snap out of it!

Here’s a brilliant and funny little story told by Alan Watts:

Once there was a fish who lived in the great ocean, and because the water was transparent, and always conveniently got out of the way of his nose when he moved along, he didn’t know he was in the ocean. Well, one day the fish did a very dangerous thing, he began to think: “Surely I am a most remarkable being, since I can move around like this in the middle of empty space.” Then the fish became confused because of thinking about moving and swimming, and he suddenly had an anxiety paroxysm and thought he had forgotten how.

At that moment he looked down and saw the yawning chasm of the ocean depths, and he was terrified that he would drop. Then he thought: “If I could catch hold of my tail in my mouth, I could hold myself up.” And so he curled himself up and snapped at his tail. Unfortunately, his spine wasn’t quite supple enough, so he missed. As he went on trying to catch hold of his tail, the yawning black abyss below became ever more terrible, and he was brought back to the edge of total nervous breakdown.

The fish was about to give up, when the ocean, which had been watching with mixed feelings of pity and amusement, said, “What are you doing?” “Oh,” said the fish, “I’m terrified of falling into the deep dark abyss, and I’m trying to catch hold of my tail in my mouth to hold myself up.” So the ocean said, “Well, you’ve been trying that for a long time now, and still you haven’t fallen down. How come?” “Oh, of course, I haven’t fallen down yet,” said the fish, “because, beacuse– I’m swimming!”

“Well,” came the reply, “I am the Great Ocean, in which you live and move and are able to be a fish, and I have given all of myself to you in which to swim. But here you, instead of exploring the length, depth, and height of my expanse, are wasting time pursuing your own end.” From then on, the fish put his own end behind him (where it belonged) and set out to explore the ocean.

“To become more conscious is the greatest gift anyone can give to the world; moreover, in a ripple effect, the gift comes back to its source.” – David R. Hawkins

CUP AND OCEAN

These forms we seem to be are cups floating in an ocean

of living consciousness.

They fill and sink without leaving an arc of bubbles or

any good-bye spray. What we

are is that ocean, too near to see, though we swim in it

and drink it in. Don’t

be a cup with a dry rim, or someone who rides all night

and never knows the horse

beneath his thighs, the surging that carries him along.

- Rumi

We are all seeking something. Companionship, pleasure, peace of mind, financial stability, happiness, certainty, justice, success, recognition, health, “heaven,” or maybe just more stuff. [George Carlin knows what I'm talkin about...] It’s only the rare one who seeks true freedom: to be completely free from desiring all this stuff, the desire for a kushy afterlife included. Of course, the golden question is, “for whom will this stuff be of value?”

By the way, “stuff” isn’t just material: all our attachments (to ideas, people, places, experiences, things, and stories about those ideas, people, places, experiences and things) are also STUFF. We’re all carrying a ton of baggage. Are you really surprised almost nobody’s actually happy?! It’s friggin heavy! Put the baggage down!!!!

Lest we forget, many people in this world are seeking physical safety, a reliable place to sleep, and enough food to make it through another day. For those of us who, at this precious moment, are enjoying the enormous privilege of not having to worry about these things, and aren’t immediately in survival mode, we have an opportunity to honor those blessings by turning inwards, in service of Love and Freedom.

Why does turning inwards serve Love and Freedom? Because consciousness is a nonlinear Unity: the individual who decides to take the so-called “spiritual path” is actually helping all, elevating the consciousness of humanity as a whole, and making it easier for others to make the same choice. What gift do you think all the great sages, prophets and saints have given us? If only we knew how to listen!

But for that we would need to be quiet, for once. [We could all take notes from John Francis' TED talk-- see the Videos section...]

How not to discover the Truth:

It is our self-definitions, only, that prevent us from seeing the essential truth of who we are. It’s all mind games, but we are not aware of how powerful the mind really is as far as determining how we experience life. Worthy, not worthy? Right, wrong? Healthy, sick? Young, old? Victim, bully? No definition will be of use, I promise. The Truth is before them all. Just leave them alone, stop trying to change or fix them. You’ll never find an arrangement of self-definitions that makes you truly happy.

We must move beyond life on the level of the mind. To discover what is untouched by all this noise, we must allow ourselves to become rooted in our basic sense of beingness itself, which is the miraculous source of all joy and understanding (we just never look there, and think everything we want is outside somewhere). It’s much much simpler than that. Our basic feeling of existence is the sense “I AM,” before the pollution of conditioning, before all add-ons like gender, age, race, religion, culture or any other label, the “me” and the “you” included. PURE. Unknowable to the mind.

We like the idea of exploring the unknown, but our inner child is naive, and can get us in over our heads. When we first discover the magical rabbit hole, and it strikes us that existence is more vast and exciting than we originally thought, we can be a bit like kids in a candy store. Big eyes, and no sense whatsoever. This stage is usually prolonged, because we’re still avoiding being still! We just have more fascinating things to be entertained by. Levitation, spoon bending, ancient mysteries, psychic powers, out-of-body travel, and other astral shenanigans. It is these partial truths that have given birth to all the apocalyptic gobbledygook about 2012, the mass appeal of pseudo-spirituality, light workers, big shifts and so on… [For David Hawkins' take on the occult, etc, go to the Videos section.]

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Please do yourself a favor, and pay no mind to all that. It’s a massive distraction, just more baggage to weigh you down– more add-ons for the ego. The Truth is realized as one’s own subjective reality: it’s not an experience, some big mystery to be let in on, an event or some sort of “thing” apart from you that you can see.

In fact, you, as the context, can only ever know that which you are not, the content which is arising in you… You are like the movie screen. Even if all hell breaks loose in the movie, does the screen itself change? The drama may be pretty convincing, but that doesn’t mean it’s real. The fire doesn’t burn the screen.

What am I getting at? These objects and experiences are not separate from you, but your existence doesn’t depend on them. To understand that existence, stop getting so wrapped up and lost in the movie. Just WATCH. The more we see what we are not, the more the layers of untruth fall away, our immense load gets lighter, bit by bit, and we shed our burdens in the light of our own Self-discovery. And what a relief it is!

You want lasting peace of mind, freedom from suffering? Then stop searching for more stuff!!!!!!!!

There’s nothing wrong with taking the long road, but at some point, we gotta stop beating around the bush. My heartfelt advice is, steer clear of the nonsense. Don’t read or watch just any old thing. The universe is big, bigger than we even realize. Does “infinite dimensions” mean anything to you?! To avoid being overwhelmed with such a wealth of potential things to be engaged in, recognize that if something comes and goes (any experiences or phenomena), it isn’t the Truth you’re really looking for.

The Truth is where you’re looking from, not what you’re looking at. As boring as it sounds to the mind (“where are the fireworks?!”), it’s not boring, I can assure you. If peace is really what you want, don’t waste time. There is only one moment, and that is Here and Now. Even tomorrow, even next year, it will be the same Now.

NOT HERE

There’s courage involved if you want

to become truth. There is a broken-

open place in a lover. Where are

those qualities of bravery and sharp

compassion in this group? What’s the

use of old and frozen thought? I want

a howling hurt. This is not a treasury

where gold is stored; this is for copper.

We alchemists look for talent that

can heat up and change. Lukewarm

won’t do. Halfhearted holding back,

well-enough getting by? Not here.

- Rumi

“Spiritual Work”

The main thing to recognize is that it’s only possible to know ABOUT the Truth.

As frustrating as this is for mind to accept, we will never know the Truth, as in: “I” know “that.” However, the transition from knowing about to being that takes time. That process of unfolding can be understood as “spiritual work.” The risk in hearing very advanced spiritual truth early on is that one mistakenly starts to believe that it is fully understood, and becomes yet another artifact in a pile of dead concepts, a mere trophy for the mind. Then we walk around thinking we know something. It’s best to say, “I have heard such and such” until it is confirmed by subjective experience. At that point, even the idea of proving, convincing or arguing with anyone will seem absolutely irrelevant and silly to you.

The next thing to recognize is that the Truth IS, already.

That which IS, is not in need of healing, enlightenment, or any other type of modification. Even though it may not be your current experience, you are That, even now. Your True Nature, the Higher Self, the Divine, the Supreme, the Absolute (whatever term one may use for All That Is) doesn’t even know what a problem is. That concept simply isn’t relevant, or even applicable. NO CONCEPT IS.

By virtue of the nature of the mind, our concepts of the Divine (“My God vs. Your God,” fear of God, etc.) always get in the way of directly understanding and merging with What Is. When we identify constantly with all the content, it’s not possible to discover the freedom of the context, which is really what we are. When the shift from one approach to the other is made (mind–>pure being: I AM), the difference is utterly unmistakable, as one begins to feel lighter, more spacious, more relaxed: a quality of energy that simply wasn’t felt before. The more you surrender to that energy, the more one’s commitment to that Truth deepens. It’s a very powerful stream. Much more powerful than we think or can even imagine it’s going to be. So, if you dare, for even a moment, to let go of what you think the Truth is (or isn’t), come on in, the water’s fine!

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We are all spiritual. 

Any and all paths ultimately lead to the same Love; yes, even atheism is a form of spirituality. It is an evolutionary expression as much as any kind of explicitly religious devotional practice. Appearances are quite deceiving, especially when one is not absolutely clear about whose eyes from which one is seeing the world. There is always a filter, a particular tint of our shades that shapes the reality we perceive. Remember, to perceive is to select. Much of the picture is necessarily blocked out by virtue of the perceptual mechanism itself. Don’t worry about it, but strive to understand it better. Do not be fooled by your own misperceptions– to be alive is to be spiritual.

Spiritual work consists of removing all obstacles to a full expression of What Is. This process expresses itself through your particular form, that is, the human being you are experiencing yourself to be. (That’s right, who you are is not a person, exclusively.) With that being said, one doesn’t cultivate Love, one cultivates an environment in which that Truth can present itself. Be clear about this! You plant the seed, you prepare the fields, and in due time the season will be ripe for the springing up of that pure seeing. You’re not waiting, you’re actively inquiring into what is true, but the process is not in your control. So, this realization doesn’t occur in time (it’s not an “event,” even though there are certainly glimpses, “aha” moments), but the sowing of the fields does take time: the conditions need to be right. It’s about alignment and commitment. Living in sincere commitment (ie. not for show– this is mostly what we see in the world) to humility and unconditional (no exceptions) acceptance, love, forgiveness and understanding, in and of itself, will take you all the way home. Home is here, already,  but to be fully established in the fullness of that truth, it may take some time.

There is no better and worse. Just more or less evolved expressions of consciousness. Why do you think humanity is so full of turbulence? The answer is, all different levels of consciousness are here on earth, expressing side-by-side. It appears as a bit of a mess, sure. But, is a butterfly better than a caterpillar? Certainly not. The thought that it is, because of its beauty, maybe, would only be an opinion, and is therefore of no value whatsoever.

The Dalai Lama is not better than George W. Bush, either! At some point, all opinions, all grudges, all positions about world affairs, all identifications with political or religious ideologies– everything– has to go. As hard as they may be to let go of, it’s precisely what prevents you from knowing who you are, really, from finding true peace, and from seeing things as they truly are. All that fear and passion will only block the light. When we keep our back to the sun, all we see is our shadow.

The sense of an individual self or ego is not the source of one’s existence, so death is not even what we think it is. It’s nothing to be afraid of. To live in fear is to live in ignorance (ignore-ance). But, waking up and conquering fear is always your choice, even if you aren’t aware of that. Love, death and meditation are all really the same thing. To know one is to know the others; in all three, the vivid and powerful illusion of separation dissolves.

So, there is only one disease, one so-called “problem” at any level of experience, whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. OBSTRUCTION. Period. Blockages at any of these levels “cause” all conceivable issues. Remove all the obstacles to Love (the core of which is the deeply worshipped idea of the separate “you”), and Love will shine forth of its own. Worship Love itself, not your definitions of Love, which take innumerable forms, including the form you believe yourself to be.

Walk the walk. Listen. Don’t take things personally, everyone’s living in their own dream. Be kinder, be more aware of yourself in the world. Forgive yourself when you make mistakes. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter what we think about how things should be. Take it one moment at a time.

It’s only through accepting that it’s all about you, that you can come to the realization that it’s not all about you, after all.

Quite a paradox, right? Get used to it! Life is full of em… If the Truth is really what you want, you need to walk the walk even when nobody else seems to be. Not only that, but don’t expect anyone’s approval or applause, let alone that of your family, friends and community. It’s not a popular choice. Appreciate and respect that most human beings are operating on a very superficial level. To go into the depths is not the easy way, but it is the only way to freedom from all the lies and confusion.

To expose the judge in you is to expose the victim: they are one and the same. This means, when you allow your victimhood to be washed away, your inclination to blame will dissolve along with it. Then, and only then, will it become possible to see.

Longing is the core of mystery.

Longing itself brings the cure.

The only rule is, Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,

and what you want to happen

in time, sacrificed.

- Rumi

The most powerful choice a human being can ever make is to STOP.

To be still, to be quiet…

It’s quite tempting to wax poetic about spirituality, raising our vibrations, opening the heart, and the like. But when it comes to walking the walk, discovering the living truth, most of us get a bit squeamish. “You mean, forgive unconditionally? I dunno… What about that one guy? ” We don’t realize that acceptance and forgiveness get us off the hook, not the person we’re forgiving. It’s our burden, not theirs. [Actually, the hardest tends to be self-forgiveness.] Our own ego gets a lot of juice from our resentments, opinions and positions, especially when we feel justified, attributing that stance to absolute righteousness. It takes some pretty radical humility to give that up. To be a fish swimming upstream, against a current of strong support for non-humility that calls itself “right,” takes a certain maturity– a readiness or ripeness to start asking the deeper questions.

But that requires looking in the mirror, and overcoming our massive aversion for inner honesty. That is where it begins. And it’s a huge step, for anyone. So do not underestimate it.

We need not live in fear of being judged. Be inspired, take a leap! The support and wisdom will be there as needed, even if you don’t trust that yet. If you you’re not satisfied with life as it is, and somehow, you know there is more to it, why pretend? What do you really want, to serve your deepest calling, to honor your intuitive guidance, or to continue living a lie, a life in which something just feels a bit off?

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Whether we walk around with big-ol smiles on our faces, holding doors for old ladies and such (this is great, by the way, but isn’t the full picture… lol), there are energies operating in us, out of awareness, that continue patterns of negativity. However, they can only function in us if we remain unaware, and in denial of them, for fear of diving into a quagmire of suppressed emotion and confusion.

True opening is learning to accept feeling ashamed, anxious, scared, confused, guilty, angry, jealous, hateful, sad or prideful, without fear of pain or punishment. No need to try managing the whole mess. Through acceptance alone, it becomes possible to understand what these vibrations are, and that they can only thrive in the absence of conscious awareness. Otherwise, we are perpetually victimized by our lack of awareness, in that we simply do not understand why things happen to us as they do.

The only way out of this mess is through it, not around it. Yet, it’s not such a mess after all. Adversity is a blessing for our growth, it’s our impetus, our catalyst, the fertilizer for the crop. We cannot forget the importance of fertilizer! That’s the secret. That’s the shortcut. But virtually nobody will tell you this, except the great prophets, mystics, saints, sages and teachers. But who actually listens to them, right?! Indeed, the very thought “I know”– is the sole true obstacle to knowing.

“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” – Socrates

We are lightening rods. Like radios, we only attract what we are tuned to be attracting. This is not a placement of blame, this is just a statement of fact. The vast majority is not aware of this, especially not beyond the intellectual level: Most of humanity is primarily tuned to conflict and hatred, to fear and judgement. Yes, this is actually how most of our brains are wired– thankfully, we can do something about it! And is it so surprising? Look around you! Open your eyes, open your senses, connect with nature, take some deep breaths… Take a walk, maybe, sit under a tree. Take a long look at the sky.

When life is a nuisance to be escaped in any way possible, and most everybody’s a jerk who’s full of prejudice and out to get you, this means you’re tuned into some pretty unpleasant stations. You are not a victim of your life, but it takes a lot of guts to accept that, and to be willing to see where that acceptance leads you. If your experience is that nobody respects or appreciates you, for example, try tuning into that frequency– express gratitude more consistently!

What’s goes around comes around, or karma, is merely a reflection of a universal law: LIKE ATTRACTS LIKE. This is not cause and effect. Causes and effects are actually two sides of one coin, which only look like two separate events (this causing that) when the full picture isn’t seen.

A mystic and philosopher named Alan Watts clarifies the common confusion about this by pointing out how, if we were to look at a patch of grass through a hole in the fence, and a snake slithers by, and we had never seen a snake before, it wouldn’t be so obvious to us that the head of the snake doesn’t cause its tail. When we see the whole snake, we realize it’s ONE pattern. Even though we give it distinct parts (head, body, tail etc.) when we talk about it, the descriptions are not the thing in itself. As we can see, perception is usually mistaken for reality.

In this way, we are experiencing only what we draw to ourselves, unconsciously. To change this, we must become more conscious, and change our attitudes. The glass is always half full.

The simplest truths are always the most powerful.

Love.

LIGHTEN UP! Sheesh…

I do feel your pain– life has its rough patches… some longer than others.

Yet it’s much too easy to lose sight of the big picture…. that is, if we ever even had sight of it in the first place!

“Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter” – Alan Watts

It’s astonishing how intensely exhausting life can get. The more invested and involved we are in our stories about ourselves, the more they become dramas of operatic proportions, violent struggles against insufferable injustice. All the while, we settle for little stretches of sentimentality, humor and pleasure that make the nightmare almost, if only slightly, more bearable… We look at the sky, or our feet (depending on whether we’re looking to be saved or resigned to feeling sorry for ourselves), wondering how we got thrown into this mess in the first place, and if anything short of dying will get us out of it…

If we’re willing to step back from all this, and take a moment to be ruthlessly honest, it’s really we who make it so dramatic for ourselves, all by indulging our seriousness with such religious fervor. We’re simply too close to the drama to see it for what it is. Living has tremendous meaning, just not the meaning we think it has. Like a self-made prison, the mind is an awfully dark and confusing place when it’s given the reigns to your life. To take back your power, and invite unimaginable clarity into your life, is to assume your rightful position; the mind makes for a phenomenal servant, but is an absolute tyrant for a master.

It’s like when a little child is complaining loudly and obnoxiously enough that her parents finally give in and say, Okay honey, I’ve had it with your whining, so do whatever you want. You are officially the ruler of this land– you happy now? Knock yourself out, sweetheart, for all I care. I just don’t want to deal with your tantrums anymore…. Of course, this strategy backfires at first, and everything gets a whole lot more noisy. She’s crashing into everything, leaving it where it falls, and stomping around like a mini Tyrannosaurus, eating all the candies in sight.

Then, by some miracle, after exhausting herself by staying up late, eating lots of junk and making a complete mess, the girl comes back to her parents, head drooping and feet dragging. She says, I’m tired, I feel sick and my room is too messy for me to sleep. Can you help me please? [Of course, she's extremely quick to forget, and revert to her old ways, but now's a great opportunity for learning.]

This scenario is a perfect illustration of the mind hitting the brick wall of its own limitations, which is an experience we all need to go through: learning it the hard way, for ourselves. Eventually, we’re just plain tired and we want some rest. Only, most of us haven’t gotten to the point of asking for the help we need in cleaning up the mess we’ve made, and that we’re living in. In fact, we generally don’t even notice the mess until someone comes along and says, Wow, what a mess! This is ignorance (the mind) coming back to the feet of understanding (the heart).

When we start believing it’s all actually as serious as we take it to be, the burden of being alive becomes unbearable; we feel like Atlas, struggling under the massive weight of the globe, while somehow immensely proud of the effort. This anxiety-ridden pride is why fanatics start popping up all over the place, personally taking on the role of “divine messenger,” fully equipped with missionary zeal, hollering hellfire and damnation to all sinners.

Fun fact: In Jesus’s lifetime and the culture he taught in, the word for sin was actually an archery term used for positive feedback, meaning “you missed the mark,” as in “give it another shot.” It didn’t mean [hillbilly accent] “Ya gone and did it now, Jebediah, now yer gonna git it!” Actually, if this is how you understand sin, as a crime punishable by a judgmental, vindictive and irritable God in need of appeasement, you’re already living in a hell of your own making. Tip toeing around life, for fear of mushing the wrong bug and screwing yourself into an unpleasant afterlife… In this way, life is lived in a state of constant stress and worry, and approached as a sort of business transaction for future gain. Unhealthy? Totally. And kinda selfish, no?

[Click to enlarge.]

Well, what does this all mean? It means that the massive burden tied to self-righteousness is totally self-imposed: it is the very definition of egotism, arrogance and delusion. Our attention is so locked into our story about who we are, which hypnotizes us into re-telling it over and over again, that we completely miss what’s constant in this perpetually transforming story. [The constant is awareness. But more on that later.] The point I’m making here is that, through laughing, dancing and just loosening up in general, a wee bit of space opens up through which the light of your Being starts to stream in. It creates distance between you and your story. As this happens, and as you start to become conscious of this happening [this is key!], “my” story (my life, my problems…) starts to become “a” story. This is called perspective. And perspective can lead to an experience we can call awakening. It’s like realizing you can actually come up for air!

But alas, my friends, no need to feel bad about it, even the most sane among us are subject to occasional bouts of extreme seriousness. It’s an affliction, a disease (dis-ease) in its own right. We entirely forget to dance, like nobody’s watching. Take it away, Carlton! Lol…

This disease of seriousness is equally present when it comes to those who genuinely seek the Truth. Show me a person who’s serious about their idea of God, and I’ll show you someone who’s really miserable, full of tension and fearfulness (though they will never admit this to themselves for fear of being struck by lightning). On the other hand, show me a person who’s entirely unserious about their idea of God, and who cares more about discovering what it really means to be alive, in its essence, and I’ll show you someone who’s full of contentment and relaxation. Acts of kindness and generosity are natural expressions of who you really are, not things you should do. We got it all mixed up, folks.

We seriously all need to take ourselves less seriously. Otherwise, we can never discover our true seriousness, which doesn’t feel at all like the seriousness we have become so accustomed to. Loosen up. Being uptight is counterproductive, like tensing up in the cold weather– it only makes you colder, since your circulation gets worse, not better!!

Unless we can laugh at ourselves, there is no hope for humanity. Please, no need to be cynical! Again, totally counterproductive. Smile, laugh, dance… You can even do this when you’re depressed. Not that there’s anything wrong with feeling grief or anger or fear; it’s actually healthy, and necessary, to let these emotions wash through us without judgement. We’re just way too absorbed in our own personal story, which makes it impossible to see the forest for the trees. [We actually love our stories so much that many would rather die than entertain the idea that it's not the whole truth.]

Just like how your brain can’t tell the difference between past experiences it’s programmed with and present experience (hence the ease with which we find ourselves stuck in repetitive patterns), your brain can’t tell the difference between a fake smile or laugh and a real one. It produces the same effect chemically in the body, and it can help to lift you out of a slump. It’s amazingly healthy, too. Laughter really is the best medicine.

In fact, the best meditation I can conceive of is to wake up each morning and laugh uproariously for fifteen minutes. It takes some willingness to feel like a total weirdo, but you’ll be amazed! Lol…

Wishing you much healing, wisdom and courage in this new year… and some positive Bob Marley vibes… Bless up!

“Happy Now Here!”

Most of us long for and speak of falling in love. While there is definitely magic in that experience, I’m reminded of some lyrics: “sometimes falling feels like flying, for a little while…” By contrast, rising in Love is not something that occurs in time. It is of a different order altogether. Even to taste it is to be forever changed– our internal compass is automatically reset. The Essence is really all that is, but most of us take an eternity to find that out, because we’re tearing the house apart looking for the glasses that have been on our face the whole time! Not even the wildest imagination can grasp this– it is beyond getting, because there is no separate you to get it. You are THAT.

To seek the Truth is to begin recognizing what is being overlooked in this very moment, turning your attention to your own heart. The world cannot give you what can only be seen within. Only a few make the brave choice to look in all the way– we have some shining examples, and there are many more of which we are not aware– but that choice is here and now for you. A level of understanding that was once so unusual is now becoming progressively more accessible…

However, be very clear about this, wherever you are on your path: The heart gives understanding to the mind, not the other way around. When that knowingness is present, the need to know, prove and defend that knowledge is not.

I should make a point here that all this hoopla about 2012 is much ado about nothing… It is a distraction, a huge venue for metaphysical entertainment and superstition; it is not an indication of anything that will “happen.”

[We can get pretty carried away with fear and misperceptions: in any case, apocalypse literally means "lifting of the veil" in Greek-- "a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception."]

“Don’t let your mind look through your eyes” -Mooji

Confusion and suffering are not solved through actions or externalities, they are dissolved through evolving awareness and understanding. To watch our own delusions fall away is to elevate all beings. As the step of an insect at the corner of a spider’s web is felt throughout the entire web, so too is the state of one’s heart reverberating throughout all of consciousness.

Here is a New Year’s message from a beautiful teacher… May his words uplift and inspire you as they have for me!

Peace