MY HOLY TRINITY

A young friend of mine was ruminating introspectively for a moment yesterday, when she sighed "Life is so complicated."
That stuck in my mental craw. She looked at me with a little surprise. "What?" she inquired.
Looking at it, I replied, "Only when we make it so. It's actually also stunningly simple, once a few basic truths are realised."

Since I've written a whole book on basic things about life that we were never taught, I wondered this morning as I was waiting for my dirty washing to go through the laundrette -- "Can I get the simple basics down to three?" Here's what I came up with.... at least for this morning........

1. The human mind is dual: the universe isn't.
2. Nothing matters
3. There's no free lunch

 THE HUMAN MIND IS DUAL: THE UNIVERSE ISN'T.


Everything gets classified into opposing polarities of good/bad, better/worse, right/wrong... and we try to disown what we think may be "bad" for us. That's  where the trouble starts. Every saint has a sinner-inner, and vice versa. If we could get comfy with that in our selves, and stayed aware of it in others, we would be far grander and less vulnerable to nasty surprises than our protective "rightness" would have us to believe.

Everything has its opposites, and the trick is to find the point of balance., moment to moment.

NOTHING MATTERS

That;s how this all got started. Nothing wondered about itself, frequencies got lowered,  matter showed up and started organising itself into all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff.

If we could get that, outside of mind, nothing matters any more than anything else, we'd be a lot happier.

THERE'S NO FREE LUNCH

The law of Consequences. Everything we say and do has consequences. Everything we DON"T say or do has consequences. And if we get to thinking that we can manipulate the consequences, we're in for a big surprise.

But we'll go to our graves blaming "others".

And then we'll wake up.

THIS -- AS A DREAM

This place is a dream

only a sleeper considers it real

then death comes like a dawn

and you wake up laughing

at what you thought 

was your grief.

Mevlana Jelaludin Rumi

(1207 - 1273)

Trans: Coleman Banks

Life is a dream.

When I woke up to this awesome reality a few years ago

And the laughter subsided enough,

I thought I'd made the most astounding discovery since breathing.

Then I find today that this guy (Rumi) knew it 8 centuries ago!

Obviously the word has been slow getting out:

Mankind could have saved himself a few wars

And a truckload of suffering about suffering.
I guess the problem is that,
We can't simply read that "Life is a dream"
And file it away with yesterday's news;
Each and every one of us has to get it for himself.
That requires a certain level of commitment and surrender to possibility
That puts us still in an uncomfortable minority.

The experience of "getting it" is very much akin to the experience of waking up.

It's the surprise of the thing that catches you unawares.

When it happened to me
Nothing around me changed;

Nothing within me changed,

And yet nothing has been the same since that moment.

I real-ised I'd been poking around

In a half-seeing, energy depleting, anxious trance.

Perhaps just as surprising was to discover --

Thanks to Papaji --

That part of my inner awareness

That had always been wakeful enough

To know

And wait

For me to "get it."

All I had to do was wake up

And get out of the way with all I think I know

And allow real Knowing
From that nonjudgmental Awareness
To get through to me.

That process of getting out of my own way

Continues........

The dreaming continues,

But
With awareness;

That's the difference.

I am the dreamer, not the dream.

I am not my Self....

I am the watcher 

And the experiencer

Of my Self in full flight.

What a blessed relief!

And joy, too,

Except when I forget
And get caught asleep in the dream
Again

Sometimes
Until I re-member........

WHAT WE BECOME

Thanks to Ivan M. Grainger

A sapling seeks sunlight,

Reaching out for that golden touch.

Over time

The tree takes the form

Of its own seeking.

And

We become what we've been looking for.

If you think otherwise,

I have a question for you --

"How has your "otherwise" been working for you?"

No?

Then you may be kidding yourself.....

We have become what we've been putting out (for).

Ouch?

IDENTITY

It has been said
(By whom, I don't know, but it's too good to let pass by -----)

Identity starts
With an Opinion
Opposed.

Isn't that good?

Who-we-think-we-are
Is the result of a negative reaction
("I'm NOT that!")
To a limited idea about our self.

Watch teenagers;
They develop an identity for themselves
Less out of what they're for,
And more as a reaction to what they're against.
And there's plenty of that buzzing around at the time!
We all did the same.

Our contrary ideas --
The ones we attach to --
The ones we I-dentify with --
Are just as false and limited
And limiting
As the phony perceptions from which they arose.
But do we replace our ideas about ourselves,
Even when they no longer work for us?

Nope.

We hang onto our Identities for dear life.
We fight for them,
And will even die for them,
Or because of them.

Here's a bottom line....

• We can only live up to our self-image;
• Our self-image is limited;
• We live limited lives.

If you want more in your life,
Give up glaring at life,
Life is abundant..........
Look, instead, at your self image.
I mean, don't just glance at it;
Really look.
And get honest in your looking.

(You'll need a mirror or two, or three.....
You know the mirrors I mean.
Yes, those people around you,
Especially the ones you don't feel comfortable
Spending a lot of time with).
Mirrors reflect back to you
Things about you
That you cannot otherwise see.

It's ironic, isn't it? --
We spend endless hours wishing others were more like "Me",
When they actually are!
It's our self image, the way we "see" our self,
Our "Me", our Identity
That is out of whack.
Thank God the remedy is close at hand.

HEAVEN

You don't get into Heaven by following rules,
Or by breaking them....
Heaven is nothing
Like that.

ON TRUTH

When Jesus was up before Pontius Pilate on charges of sedition -- capital charges, by the way -- the subject of Truth came up.
Pilate, a very well educated and intelligent man, was intrigued;
"What is truth?" he asked.
I think he really wanted to know.
Jesus just held his gaze and remained silent.

That always struck me as odd.
For a man who, for three years, had such a lot to say,
This was his big moment.......
The scribes were paused, quills raised in quivering anticipation
To catch every nuance of every quotable note;
This was the moment;
This was holy scripture in the making!

[Had it happened today, the cameras would have been rolling, and the TV stations would have been taking live feeds to a breathlessly watching world.]

Jesus said.....

[nothing].

Was the Christ being insolent?
Had he had a gutful?
After a night of pure emotional and physical hell,
Had he dropped the ball?

No.
He was answering The Question -- What is Truth?
In the most profound way possible.
Truth is not something that can be put into words.
The truth of anything can only be found
In pro-found silence.....
In whatever thoughts, feelings, a-hah's and whatever else comes up,
Shared or alone.
Whatever you are aware of over there in your space,
That is your truth.
What I'm aware of going on over here in my space
Is my truth.
All that is going on in and around both spaces
Is Part of The Truth.

Osho said
"If you can get it, get it.
If you can't get it, I'm sorry."

Be patient.
Be aware.
You will get it.
I cannot tell you when,
But you will get it
In experience,
Willingly or not.
Don't look for it  with language.
Language, like its parent, the thinking mind, is limited and limiting.
Anything definitive and finite
Cannot contain the indefinable and infinite.
There are things in heaven and earth
For which language and intellectual discourse simply will not suffice.
Love and Truth are one of them.

If you want to know the truth....
Shut up
And listen.
Be aware,
Be available.
Have your experience.
In the deeper silence
Truth speaks.

A HOUSE DIVIDED

"Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand."  --  Matt: 12: 25.

Man and his Mind

Conspire

To divide.......

From

Against.

Man divided from his heart and soul,

Man divided from his spirit,

Man divided from Nature,

Man divided from other men,

Man divided from his godness,

Man divided from himself.

Only one more di-vision is required --

A Discrimination ---

Man divided from his mind.

Anything divided will destroy itself,

And anything that dwells within it.

Get out while you can.

We all need a mind,

(Like we need some kind of sewage disposal)

But we don't need to live there.

Out of mind

We are One.....

One with mind,

One with heart, soul and spirit,

One with the nature of all things,

One with our fellow man

One with god

One with self.

PEACE

Peace is what remains
After all striving for it
Has subsided.
Peace is What-Is.
Always.

The opposites of Peace
Are vain clutchings
For Survival,
Which should never have come into doubt.
But it did --
Just to make the trip more interesting.

Peace will not be won in conflict.
Striving for peace
Is like trying to quell the surf
With your bare knuckles:
Fighting for peace is like trying to clean off garbage
By throwing more crap at it.


Being at Peace
And being its opposites
Are habits.

Anything in-habited
Can be abandoned.
Anything learned
Can be un-learned.
Anything put into place
Can be re-placed.
Turmoil is optional.


Here's what-is.....
Even in turmoil
There is a place where
We are at peace with it
And Peace goes with us.
Under our cloaks of turmoil
We are the Awareness
That is experiencing the turmoil
And saying "Wow! Look at that!"
Become aware of the presence
Of that unconcerned Awareness.

From Peace we arose;
To Peace we return,
Enriched by the experience.
So,
Have your turmoils,
Enjoy your upsets.
You can return to Peace any time,
As often as you wish:
The Peace you seek
Is within.
Always.
It never left you.
You just got spooked
And forgot.

Peace be with you,
For Peace is with you;
Be at Peace.

JOY

If sadness is a big part of your life right now,
I want to share something with you
About Happiness and Joy.

Do you remember Happiness?
Of course you do.
We cannot miss something we don't remember;
We cannot grieve for something we don't know.

We showed up in Happiness and Equanimity
But we got shaken up coming through the upheavals and anxieties
Of being born
And adjusting to a bigger womb.
We ditched Happiness and Equanimity
In a misguided attempt to survive.
But they still exist.
They never left you.
You may even have experienced glimpses of them since in your life
As Joy -- Happiness re-discovered.
All you need do
Is go back to where you left them last,
Pick up on them,
Bring them into the present situation,
And apply them liberally, like a salve, to whatever is ailing you.
Maybe easier said than done,
But possible.
If I can do it, anyone can.

Know this --
Joy is as close
As the end of your nose;
It always has been.
Find a way to see.

The beauty of rediscovering Joy is --
This time
For the first time
You'll get to know it.

WHO ARE YOU?

Who are you?

Whenever someone asks me that,

I'm still tempted to hand them a business card,
Or tell him what I do for a living,

Or tell him about my kids and family

Or what it's like to be a husband, writer, musician, actor......

We think of ourselves in terms of the roles we play

As we meet and interact with the world we've created for ourselves.

But are we not much more than that?

Who are we?

Whenever we meet one another for the first time,

Or someone we know after a major crisis....

There is always an un-asked question –

Who are you?

And we start sorting through our files

Of things about this person that we recognise

From past experience.

The process is automatic;

We don't think about it much,

It just happens.

The truth is

That what we see in another person

Also exists in us.

If it didn't exist in us, we could not recognise it.

You see, there is so much more about ourselves

Than we often realise.

And other people often awaken us to the bits of us

That we may have forgotten about.

Some bits of ourselves – we like:

Other bits, we don't like so much.

Whatever we think we are,

There is a lot more to like about our selves

Than we realise.

But we don't look very often, do we?

We have an internal critic who's always very quick to point out our faults:

It's a habit we've got into.

And we counter that

By looking for others to do the job of liking us instead.

I think that's a bit unfair.

If I walked up to you and said –

“Hello. Look, I don't like ME at all,

But I expect you to at least pretend to like me,

So that I can feel better about myself.

And if you don't do that,

I will DISlike you until the cows come home.”

If I did that, you would do well

To walk away from me as fast as you can.

But aren't we actually doing a lot of that?

We just don't declare or admit that's what we're doing.

We can't get rid of what we think about ourself

And I have found

It is futile to try......

But we can expand our self-knowing,

And find more about ourselves to be comfortable with.

Then, maybe, we can start getting some balance into the picture,
And maybe even get a bit more comfortable

With bits of ourself that we're not so happy with.

Once the sport of kings, bishops and social satirists,
Disapproval has become something of a pandemic obsession --
We're all at it,
Practising it on anything and everything within sight.
And we've become better at it than noticing something to approve of.
Most people I ask "How are you?" 
Answer "Not bad," with a hint of surprise and relief!
How sad.

I have found

That I've never been very successful at changing anything

By disliking it..

In fact, things and people I dislike,

Seem to keep on coming back

Just to get up my nose.

The same is true of things we dislike about our self.

There is always something about what we dislike

That is worthwhile....

Always.

And it's up to each of us to find it.

Because .....
There is one inescapable truth

About what we think we are,

And it is this ----

Wherever we go.....

We always take Whover we are,

And Whatever we are

With us.

We don't have any choice about that.

Whether we go to the hairdressers

Or to Bali

We always take our Self with us.

All of it,

Lock, stock and barrel.

Paradoxically, the smaller our vision of ourself,

The heavier the baggage:

The larger our vision of What We Are,

The lighter we become
Because what we are is not exclusive;
It is something shared. 
We have a lot in common,
You and I,
Just seen from slightly different perspectives.

Whether our baggage is light or heavy

Is up to us.

[Listen to "You Always Take the Weather With You" – Crowded House]

"I AM" IS... WHO?

IN MY WORLD

I, Barrie Barkla, am 

That which is aware

Of whatever "I" is aware of

Right here and now.

In my world, 

You are a mirror....

Whatever I see in you,

I am.

It all comes back to "Me".

Then I become aware again

Of that which is aware 

Of all this.

IN YOUR WORLD

You, [Your name] are

That which is aware

Of whatever "you" is aware of --

Whatever you are thinking and feeling --

Right here and now.

I am a mirror....

Whatever you see in me,

You are.

It all comes back to you.

Remind yourself to look

At that which is aware

Of all this here now.

Look.

There is nothing there,

But there is..... [something].....

You do not know what It Is;

You know only that It Is.

Now sit in front of a mirror,

And read the above again,

Aloud to yourself;

But this time....

Read "In My World"

From YOUR perspective,

(Put you own name in place of mine).

Then think of someone close to you

And read "In Your World" about that person,

Aloud to yourself.

Then be with yourself.

THE NEW LAW OF THE JUNGLE

There is another Law of the Jungle...
"Survival of the Fittest"
Has become
"Survival of the Conscious".

ARE YOUDONE?

Life is like basking in the sun ......
You aren't done yet.

Let's turn you over
And try the other side.

ZORBA, THE BUDDHA

With grateful thanks to Osho....

Whatever experiences you are having,

Including the experiences of avoiding-experience, not-having-experience and wishing-I-could-have-experience.....

Have them.

Be present and fully available,

And go on having them 

Until there is no more hankering after them

Or wanting to withhold from them.

Get wholeheartedly into it.

Be a Zorba.

"The full catastrophe."

It will pass.

Anything that comes, will pass.

When it is finished

There will be
Silence

And space......

A Zorba becomes a Buddha.

CONDITIONING

We are conditioned,
And conditional.
It goeswith being human.

I often speak of conditioning
And being conditioned
As something that has us in its clutches,
A state of affairs to be escaped from.
It is also true that
Conditioning is a state of being that we often cling to.
Either way, we're in it up to our eyeballs.

But don't believe me;
Check for yourself.
Notice what is so for you.
Pick a single area of your life (eg. relationship, family, finances...)
And notice some of the values and assumptions
That condition your perceiving, thinking and feeling in that area.
It's surprising, isn't it?

Conditioning is a self-imposed exile,
From our Self,
A protective custody --
A prison with a picket fence and roses,
And no matter how ptretty we make it look,
We're trapped,
And we seem to have left the keys to open the prison
On the outside.
The walls begin to crumble, however,
Not when we rebel against everything that has conditioned us,
But when we get that --

1. We are conditioned - inside a prison (no matter how enlightened our egos tell us they are!)
2. There is an outside; and
3. We know it, because we're not always locked away. In certain contexts we sometimes let ourselves out on day release.

It might be useful to note
Under what circumstances we're relatively free and unconditional,
And under what circumstances our buttons get pushed;
Against whom and what do we protect ourselves
By shutting ourselves in
Behind a fence of Conditions ("oughts")?

The presence of Conditioning,
Both as a noun and a verb,
Is evidenced by any idea, thought, family or cultural value, concept or belief that we hold dear.
Conditioning organises both our perceptions and responses
To help us filter and "make sense" of our world.
Conditioning stands between us and raw experience:
It is not our truth.
It is a pale, umpteenth-generation carbon-copy
Of someone else's conclusions
About one-time-long-forgotten experiences;
The conditioning lasts long after the experience that tripped it has expired.

Conditioning prevents us from fully living here and now.
Instead of experiencing what is happening in our faces,
We're experiencing our own conditioning.
Watch any public debate about any sensitive issue,
Whether it be "racism" on Q. and A., or any dispute over a neighbour's fence,
What we see is less an exchange of real experiences of the subject,
And more of an exchange of conditioning,
Combatants hurling hangups at each other.
That's a very dysfunctional way of living and doing.

We didn't get a lot of say about how this sorry state of affairs came to be.
We've been conditioned by others for our entire lives,
From our parents onwards --
The Un-experienced being led by the In-experienced.
But we're invited to acknowledge that, at some point,
Our conditioning has our own tacit approval and support;
We give it energy,
And the conditioning perseveres,
Day after day, year after year, generation after generation....

We don't have our conditioning:
It has us.

We reluct to let go of anything we hold dear
And venture, naked, out into the sunlight, the fresh air, the freedom and the thrill of discovering what is so
In this moment
For ourselves

The first step is not difficult:
When faced with a moment of either certainty or indecision,
Just look at it and ask yourself --
"Is this my experience?
Or is it possible that my vision at the moment is being impaired
By prior conditioning?
Is there something I believe here that I want to hang onto?
If I take a different tack here, how will that feel?
Am I stuck in conditioned comfort?
Am I willing to open up and embrace
Another possibility?

COMMUNICATING TRUTH -- A MASTER CLASS

NB. The following may be dangerous to your level of social acceptance, and may require you to re-define what you mean by "friends".
Your mind may fizz and hiss and fart upon reading this -- this is natural. Pay no attention.

• Remind your self of the Ruthless Rules of Communication, especially the one about -- People may not always get what you say, but they will always get where you're coming from when you say it, and how they feel when you say it.
• Before you open your mouth, own the reflection. Whatever you see in the situation is your stuff. Find it in yourself (empathy), then draw in resources from the rest of your self. Truth will encompass everything and its opposite.
• Mind your own business. When you're asked for your opinion, or for your agreement with someone else's opinion, gracefully decline. Opinion is the lowest form of non-truth.
• When you are asked for your perspective, speak only your own truth (c.f. my blog on "Truth")
• Remember, your truth is yours, and will not be identical to the truths of others. Nor is your truth any more valid or "right" than any others. Yours is just another truth. Anything you feel arrogant about is not truth; it has become a dogma or an opinion. I suggest you test the importance of your beliefs and opinions by simply going into the nearest park on a starry night and venting your opinions with all the passion you can muster, then watch carefully how much the universe moves as a result.
• There is something about Truth, however, that the universe will move for -- when you learn how to ask, and how to notice.
• Be sensitive, gentle and kind. Even when the other person needs to be slapped sensible, do it with love. 
• If "considering" anothers' feelings prevents you from speaking your truth when it is called for, warn the others that you are going to treat them as grown-up enough to handle the truth, and give them the option of whether they are yet ready to hear you. Respect their decision. Ask if they would like to change the subject.
• Any time you feel like you're treading on eggshells around someone, that person is successfully manipulating you. You need to decide whether that situation is of their making, or yours. If you're undecided, ask -- e.g. I get the feeling at the moment that there are just some things I cannot talk about freely with you. Is that just me, or is there something here you're touchy about?"  If you are not the source of the withhold, call him/her on it, firmly and gently. If they still insist upon you withholding truth, walk away from the subject. Be with that person -- he/she is scared, and you know what that feels like. But fear is never justification for enslaving others. Polite-icians consider everything before they speak. They are obsessed with what you may like or dislike, and with avoiding being held accountable for what emerges from their mouths. They are terrified of being disliked for their truths, even when they justify them by being "right". Poilte-icians would rather lie than be disliked. They'll lie about their lying, even unto themselves.
• Make authenticity your prime consideration. Talk heart to heart, not just head to head. Be human, raw and alive, rather than rehearsed  and polished. 
• What you say may hurt, but if it is authentic to your heartfelt human experience, it will be recognised and will also heal. I would rather be hurt by a truth (temporary) than succoured (suckered) by a lie (permanent).
• Any situation where something is withheld is a lie. Nothing good can ever come from a lie -- not in the longer run.
• Don't get angry. Why should you suffer for other people? Have your own suffering, and let them learn to deal with theirs. By all means be available if they're in strife. Identify and remind them of their strengths, but don't bullshit them without their express permission.
• In a dual universe, your truth, especially if you are positional about it, will encounter opposition. You will make enemies. Don't get bent out of shape by that. What other people think of you is none of your business. 
• Understand that most people unconsciously define a "friend" as "someone who'll go along with your lies if you'll go along with theirs." Become, instead, the "best friend" who, if asked, will tell someone what even their best friends won't tell them.
• Commune-icate your understandings and what you see of choices and options. Then let them take what you've said on board and support them in doing whatever they want to do (we all do what we WANT to do, regardless of our protestations to the contrary). There should be no question of anyone following you, but of finding and obeying their own intelligence. Help them do that. Remember that we are all being drawn towards what we are becoming, and you do not even know what that is for yourself, let alone what it might be for anyone else. Be free with suggestions when they're asked for, but keep your advice to yourself.
• Appeal to their own knowing, intelligence and past experience. Ask them what they want, and how they think you can help them get what they want. Share your experiences and perspective as clearly as possible, making it clear that they are entitled to draw differing conclusions. Then leave it to them. Outline possible choices and decision options, but put everyone's freedom and responsibility to make choices and decisions firmly in their court. Be as forthright and theatrical as your personality dictates in your delineation of their dilemma, but resist every temptation or inducement to advise or direct them.(I'm doing that right now, aren't I? Good. It's your decision; I leave it up to you).
• Get them to articulate what they've decided -- whatever that is. Even a decision to do nothing, or stay undecided is still a decision and should be appreciated as such. 
• Whatever the other has decided, be happy that a decision has been made, and encourage the other to celebrate it -- immediately (even if it's just a cup of coffee, a prayer, or anything else that is meaningful to them, and immediately do-able). Mark the moment with an experience. Rituals are important. Help the other emotionally give a "Yes" to their "yesses", and an equally expansive "Yes" to their "no's".
• Once you have put something out there, seek feedback on what the other has heard.

I am not interested in obedient followers:
I hanker. though, for intelligent fellow-travellers.
How do you feel about that?

I am as ordinary as you are,
With just a little difference.. .....
I am half awake, and you are half asleep.
But that is not much of a difference
Because I nod off from time to time,
And you can open your eyes at any moment.

Shall we dance?

TOTAL SELF-ACCEPTANCE

Who am I?

What will I become?

What you will be

Already is

And always has been.

But it is not yet known.

It is in the process of be-coming

And being real-ised
In linear experience.

Since our conception

What we are has been in a constant process of evolving.

The universe has organised itself

For us to happen
Just as we are.

Look back along the timeline of your life

And notice all the events and people who conspired with you

For You to happen and become

What you are.

Stop fighting it.

Ride a horse in the direction it's going -- it's easier.

What you will become

Is drawing you

And all you have created yourslf to be

Towards it.

Everything is on track.

There is nothing wrong.

Surrender

And engage with the journey.

I am.

You are.

It is.

Be in it.

Get to know it.

A servant was walking one morning in the marketplace

When he saw Death walking towards him.

Terrified, he ducked down a side alley

And ran home to his master.
"Help me!" pleaded the servant.

"I have just seen Death in the marketplace.

Please loan me one of your horses that I might flee to Samarkand."

The master took pity on the poor wretch and gave him  a horse.

The servant fled the city for Samarkand at full gallop.

Later that afternoon the master, too, was walking in the marketplace

Where he encountered Death.

"Why are you here?" he demanded of Death. "Why did you so terrify my servant this morning here in the market place?"

"I was surprised," replied Death.

"Surprised to see him here,

When I have an appointment with him tonight

In Samarkand."

TRUTH

Truth can only be realised anew;
Truth cannot be borrowed.
Truth is what you consciously realise
From your own, personal experience.
Borrowed knowledge is not Knowing.
Knowing comes from personal experience,
Which is always unique.

Like a costume,
Borrowed truth can be tried on to see how it fits
And I encourage everyone to do that,
As many times a day as you can.
But only so that you can have your own experience
From within that perspective,
And Know what you discover for yourself.


Truth cannot be spoken;
It is beyond language.
I can only speak ABOUT the truths I've experienced --
Including this one --
And hope to evoke the unspeakable blossoming of a truth
Realising inside of you.

Truth is permanent -- forever,
And it is ephemeral -- transient.
Both.
Which places it well outside the capabilities of the limited Mind.
Truth cannot be understood;
It is either known, or not known.

Because Truth is so highly individual,
It cannot be decided by consensus or referendum.
No Truth is validated or invalidated by a majority....
It is not a question of voting.
It does not matter if the whole world says something is so,
If it is not your experience
Then it is not your Truth.
When Pilate, hoping to trap Jesus, said to him "They tell me you're the King of the Jews",
Jesus replied "What is your experience of me?"
Pilate hadn't thought of that.

Most people don't know the Truth
Even when it hits them over the head;
Most of us are so full of umpteenth-hand ideas about supposed truths
That they haven't had room or time to experience a real, live, juicy truth
Since they were knee-high to a grasshopper.
All your integrity can do with someone else's assumed "truth"
Is incorporate it as a possibility into your "Maybe" File
And then see what shows up in your experience.
Whatever shows up will be your truth -- for now.

Even when the whole world says something is so
("Everybody knows......"),
If it is not yet in your experience,
Then it is not your Truth.
Conversely, if something is in your deeply held, conscious experience,
Then it is your Truth --for now
And it really doesn't matter a twopenny damn
What anyone else thinks, says, or believes:
Does it?

How do we tell the difference between a Truth and a belief?
If you feel "right" about it -- that's a belief.
A belief excludes alternate possibilities;
A Truth seeks and includes other truths.
A Truth is something you feel neither right nor wrong about;
You just "know" it in your innermost feeling
And your heart quietly signs on
For as long as this Truth lasts.

THE FALL FROM GRACE

We awake in Christ's body

As Christ awakens our bodies

Symeon, the New Theologian

But that blessed state doesn't last long.

We lose touch with Godness
And learn quickly

To become, instead, like our parents,

Then others we love,
Trying to mould our selves into what we think they want us to be.

We get on with the business 

Of being human.
We forget what we are.

How we feel about this sellout, however,
Depends on what we believe life is all about.
I have found that...

All the great lessons and adventures in life arise because

We're experiencing everything

From within a False Self.
Without a false self we'd experience no dramas,
Or comedies for that matter.
No entertainment.
When was the last time you saw a fictional play, TV show or movie,
Where nothing happened to ruffle the waters?
Where nothing went wrong?
Where nobody got themselves into trouble?
Without perturbation, the entertainment industry would go broke.
Even Snow White had her problems!
Imagine, if you can, the Bible without any hairy bits.

Limitation and resistance are illusions we buy into.
Like actors, we suspend our disbelief in strife
In order to experience something we couldn't otherwise get.
It's why we came here --
Heaven got boring.

But there comes a time when enough limitation is enough;
Not just because we can't take it any more,
But perhaps also because we created these conflicts and separations we've got,
So that we could transmute them.
Maybe this game has a purpose after all!

By now, we already know "limited"
And what its consequences feel like.
Inside out.
There comes a time to grow up.
Is it your time yet?

When you're ready,
Keep be-littling your self

But notice, too,

How limitless you are.
Both......
The limitless experiencing limits,
(Just for a while.
Just for the hell of it.)
Got it?

Now notice what you've been suffering about --
What's just happened with it?

EMPATHY

I just saw something about empathy....

It feels like an opening-up,
A letting go of some constriction.....
I don't know what, and I'm sure it no longer matters.
Apart from the release.


In that moment
I became aware of emotionally recognising something
About two things from my own experience --

• The other's situation,

• And that person's spirit in their response to it.

My heart exploded in one-ness
And my world shifted a little on its axis.
Wow!

I also get that
It happened over here in my space
To me,
Out of me.
What I do about it is another matter,
And up to me.

EXTRESSION/REPRESSION

Expression and Repression
Can be either processes of Doing, or states of Being.

As a verb, a way of Doing ----
People who are expressing their ecstasy, or rage, or whatever...
Are too busy paying it out on someone else
To have it themselves.
Their experience is of the expressing,
Not of the thing being expressed.
I know people (including myself sometimes)
Who express emotion in order to avoid having it.
One evening at Uluru I was watching a gorgeous sunset
When some inconsiderate  cosmic wanker,
Totally in love with the sound of her own voice,
Started waxing loudly lyrical about the light, the quality of the energy, the chi, and everything else she identified herself with at the time.
I got annoyed because she was pulling me out of my experience.
I wanted to yell at her,
"Please....Shut up and HAVE your experience;
And let me have mine!".
(I chose instead to bite my tongue
And have my experience of "frustration-and-anger-at-sunset").

Expressing and Repressing experience are sure ways to keep you attached
To whatever is pulling your lariat.
The only way to complete with an experience
Is the HAVE it,
Preferably without guilt or judgment.
But if other such experiences attach themselves,
Simply acknowledge their presence
And include them in the party.

As a noun, a state of being ---
Expression and Repression happen naturally
When you simply BE what you are.
What you are emanates from your Being.
There's a natural authenticity about that.

You can simply get out of your own way;
BE what you are, and HAVE what you've got.
Now that's a way to behave!
And it's neither rocket science nor sainthood.

Can you be what you are?
Can you have what you've got?
Of course you can!
We may both be a little out of practice,
But our intention will always show up.
So have it.
So be it.

RELIGION & PSYCHOLOGY

There comes a time in all healing
When the bandages have to come off,
The splints need to be removed,
And the crutches sent back to the hospital
For others to use.

Religion may lead you to the gates,
But it is a poor substitute for spirituality.
Psychology may lead you to the threshold
But it is a makeshift expedience for responsible enlightenment.
There comes a time when.........
A spiritual person needs no religion;
A responsible, enlightened person needs no psychology.
He/she may not be changed
Or any "better",
But they are transformed.
Life is not about getting "saved",
Or "cured".
It's about getting happy, whole and healed.

UNDERSTANDING

"I understand."
Good.
But not done yet.
Understanding is an illusion,
A trick of the mind.
Understanding is the mind's sigh of relief
When it has found a pigeon-hole in its files
To fit something into.
Done and dusted -- no threat to the status quo.
Understanding is the opposite of discovery.
Understanding calls an end to questioning
And creating.

Understanding is not Knowing.

Go deeper.
Go deeper.
Do nothing
But
Be
With it.

What is the experience
Underlying this understanding?
What is the reality of this?
Go deeper and further
Until understanding becomes
"Got it!"......
"A-hah!!".....
"Uhhh................."

WAITING....

There are some doors that,
When they open,
How long we waited is no longer an issue.
Those are the ones worth waiting for.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

It is reported that Jesus said
"Love your enemies, even as you love your self."
What is not clear to me, over the passage of time,
Is whether he uttered that as a commandment,
Or an observation of What-Is.
Maybe it is both.

It is a given of being human that,
Whatever we see in others
Must exist in us,
Otherwise we could not recognise it.
Do you get that?
Until you do, you're stuck in an illusion
Of separation;
You think the person that you see before you is "different" from you.
Well, that's OK.
I still make the same mistake
And have to keep re-minding myself.

How we feel about what we see in another
Is pretty much how we feel about the same stuff
In our self.
Isn't that handy?
We can look at the vitriol we're pouring on someone we don't like,
And begin to get a handle on what we're doing to ourselves.
It's handy because the other may be utterly unaware of what you're doing to him,
Or he may not give a hoot what you think about him,
But, whether you are aware of it or not,
You are copping to it,
And suffering very much at you own hands.
Our judgments, of self or of others,
Are killing us.

To the extent (in quantity and quality)
To which we allow and love another,
We also allow and love our self.
And vice versa.
We cannot reject any part of our self
And simoultaneously, authentically accept and relate with another;
That is just not possible.

So people with lousy self-esteem
Who try to love their neighbours
Are headed for certain failure,
And doomed to become "saviours" and busybodies.

We cannot give away what we don't have.

If Truth be known,
We would not want those we don't like
To be any other way
Than exactly as they are.
Otherwise we'd have to pin our "don't like" costumes on someone else,
Or, God forbid, wear them ourselves
(And we'd rather die than do that!)
We want our enemies to be right where they are,
So that we don't have to go responsible for our own self-loathing.
And we get mightily bitter and twisted if they don't hold still for that.
We LOVE our enemies;
They give some of us a reason to get up in the mornings.

But how long is it since we acknowledged the love we have
For those same enemies within?
Those "enemies"
That our enemies reflect back to us?

Love thine enemy,

For he is thyself.

LOVE & HATE

Why do marriages that began so lovingly
Turn acid so quickly when the partnership dis-integrates?

Well, it's possible that we were kidding ourselves;
Maybe we weren't as "integrated"
As our hormones and romantic fantasies
Led us to believe.

But I've come today with something far more fundamental than that --
The duality of Love, and whatever its polar opposite may be for us.
No mater how flat you squash a coin, it still has two sides --
Heads and tails.
In this realm, everything has an opposite.
The opposite of "love" can be "indifference", "loathing", "obsession", "lust".....
We all have lot of "love-opposites" in our personal lexicon.
But, for the sake of simplicity just for now,
Let's use a common code-word -- "hate" to signify whatever the antithesis of "love" is for us......

Romantic love carries within it
The seeds of its own termination. 

In Love (as a context)
We "fall in love",
Which is a more romantic way of saying
We adopt a position we call "love",
Along with a lot of attendant feelings, emotions, hopes, expectations, ideals, beliefs and opinions
About what the experience should feel like
And how it should go.
Because a lot of the stuff we have wrapped around "love" is positional,
Falling in love also means "falling in hate",
At one and the same moment,
We just didn't see that at the time,
And we would have resisted anyone who tried to point it out to us. Right?

[It's also worth noting that when we decide to "hate" someone or something,
We have also fallen in "love", at least with our idea of it.
I got this lesson at the hands of a Swiss-German arsehole
Who was in my face daily for over 5 years.
Lessons don't come much harder than that!]

If we can get a handle on what is going on
With this Love/Hate thing,
We're less likely to get spooked
By the inevitable surprises that arise from ignorance.
Love and hate are the obverse of each other;
Neither can exist without the other.
At the outset of loving,
The hate may not be visible,
But it is there:
At the outset of "hate",
It takes a rare kind of vision to see the loving that underpins it
And you may have to take it on trust, as I did for many years,
Until I could see it.
But in a world of duality,
The polar opposites of everything are there --
Just biding for a climate change to reveal their presence.

Through meditation comes a very different kind of love,
A kind of love that we cannot "fall into" or "fall out of".
I find this kind of love impossible to describe,
But talking "about" it, I feel it like a compassionate one-ness
Which I rise to meet, rather than "fall into".
It descends/envelops when I integrate good and bad, love and its opposite.
God and demon.
A Meditation of Acceptance and Surrender
Helps to synthesize and complete.
We reach a quality of being
That has no opposite to it
Because it is the Yes-ful Ah-ness of all opposites.

MEDITATION

(With acknowledgment to Baghwan Shree Rajneesh [Osho])

Meditation is like cleaning our mirror

Of everything we did not come with

When we were born ---

Ideas, ideals, ideologies,

Concepts, opinions, beliefs

Morals, values and rules,

All the detritus
Of the conditionings of state, religion, culture and family.

Meditation is like clearing away the weedy winter-growth from an overgrown garden,
And re-discovering long-forgotten beauties and treasures.
In meditation we re-discover

Our original, pristine innocence..

Our "I-know-sense"...

And becoming once again the undistorted mirror

In which others gaze

To see themselves.

Meditation is re-birth...

Man's reconnection with himself, with other men and with nature.

But in this Re-birth we are no longer helpless,

Or totally dependent on others or the environment

For our survival or nourishment.

In this rebirth we become sovereign in our own be-ing.

Meditation  is no-religion:
It is a practice of our pure spirituality.
Meditation is a way of getting through what we are not,
To what and where we are.

THE "Y" FACTOR

Right and Wrong,
Good and Bad
Are the opposite horns of a dilemma.
A giant "Y"
On which we each crucify ourselves
In the world's longest Easter.

We argue and reason ourselves
Back and forth
From one point to the other,
Day in, day out,
Year after year
Until we collapse
Into the centre --
And discover the wisdom
Of What-Is.

If you cannot find the centre-point of balance,
Where are you looking?
In your mind?
It will not be found there.
I will be found in your heart.

What are you looking with?
Your mind?
Wrong tool.
Reason and logic will not serve you here.
Look into your heart and soul
With heart and soul.

Why haven't I made peace yet with this AND that?
Why am I allowing myself to remain confused,
Strung out between the horns of separation?
Is maintaining the "WhY?" factor
Worth the confusion and dis-ease?

Only you
Know that.

SATAN & THE DEVIL -- ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE....

I have heard......

"Satan" comes from a Hebrew word meaning "struggle".

Now that figures!

Try this on for size.......
If to "sin" is to "miss" (that's what the word means),
Maybe the ONLY sin
Is Struggle.
Easy is right.
Hmmmm?.....

The word "Devil" derives from the Sanskrit word, "deva" which means "god".
And Lucifer means "light".

I get that God and devil,
Good and evil
Are two sides of the same coin,
Inseparable polarities of What-Is.

When we change our attitude or context
Good and evil swap,
Each becomes the other.
For example -- one of the ten commandments is "Thou shalt not kill",
But when you turn the page, it seems there's a rider --
"...... except in war."

God and devil,
Lucifer and Gabriel
Jesus and Judas........
Each, on its own, is an illusion,
A metaphor;
But BOTH together
Are the What-Is of being human.

WHO ARE YOU?

Magnetically, we are all drawn
To what we are.
Your are
All that you are aware of
Right now.


Right now, I really get that I'm not my body. I can feel my body slowly shutting down, but I am becoming more alive and "younger". It seems like I and my body are going in opposite directions! The only question is, how long will it be before I and my body part company? Answer: When we part company, and not a moment before.

And I'm no longer the things I once identified with -- career, husband, father, grandfather, writer, musician, actor, counsellor, wise man -- those things are being removed, and I'm still here. I am what remains after all identifications  are let go of.......

What is that?

Pure Awareness.
The Awareness of that which is aware of "me".

In the meantime
I'm doing my best to behave myself,
But not quite in the way my father meant it
When he yelled at me in frustration -- "Behave yourself!!!"

How do you behave yourself?
By what you choose to "be"
And what you choose to "have".
Be-Have your self.
Be all that you are aware of;
Be all that you are.
Have all that you are aware of;
(You can have something without owning, stealing or otherwise possessing it...)
Have all that you are.

Just stay with the game; and
Be aware.

JUMP.......

The springboard into the adventure of living
Is Self-Confidence --
That ability we all have to be in trust with ourselves,
The willingness to confide in ourselves.

What? You don't think you have the ability for Self Confidence?
Take it from one who lost it long before he knew it
And spent his life looking for it,
Often down many blind alleys......

• Confidence in self is readily available
• Your ability of connect with it is available
• Both are as close as one word -- "Yes"
• No-one is going to force you to say "Yes". For as long as you insist upon, and justify Lack of self-confidence, you are welcome to have all the attendant experiences that flow from your choice. Knock yourself out. When you change your mind, "I" will be around.

The kind of confidence I speak of
Has an utterly different feel to it
From cocksureness, conviction, rightness, smugness, certitude,
And even credit, belief, hope or faith.
True Confidence
Arises from, and radiates a quiet repose and humility,
An inherent secureness, quietitude and tranquility.
Real confidence oozes latent Is-ness.

When our level of felt self-confidence is lowered
In times of separation and stress,
We shrink back from the edge of Opportunity.
Our minds fill up with all manner of rational, valid, justifying reasons
For not taking The Jump --
Explanations that make "good sense"
And seem to help us look good to our selves
And to others.
Oh, how right we are!

Jumping is essential to growing,
Kids know that;
And it is always a risk,
So-called grown-ups resist that.
We've learned to give more credence to Fear than to Destiny.
We don't jump when the clear and present fear of the risk is more powerful
Than the as-yet unproven benefits of the jump.

Well, what is the risk?
Fear of the death of what?
Stand in that question for a while.

What else feels risky?
Fear of letting go of the familiar?
(Better the devil you know.....)
Fear of falling back upon yourself?
(Not knowing if there's anyone there.)
Fear of dying to what you think you are
Without any certainty of what will remain?
Lack of trust?
What is trust, if not the sensing, recognising and realising
That my truest self is immortal and abundant
And willing to surrender to this life
Just as it is.

We were born in un-adult-erated Trust,
But we didn't know it.
Then we lost contact with it.
That was part of the deal,
So that we could experience the pure joy of consciously finding Trust again,
And getting to know it for the first time.

Trust is re-discovered when we choose to drop all conditions
And re-open ourselves to What-Is,
Letting go all all our "good reasons" for numbing ourselves.

Numbing myself was "killing me softly."

AD-MIRATION

Other people never are exactly as we think them to be,
For at least three very good reasons ---

1) We can only see (recognise) in others what we are aware of from within our self. Our view of others is limited by our level of self-awareness; and

2) What we see of everything around us is coloured by our own experiences, feelings. beliefs and expectations; and

3) We forget (or don't even know about) the laws of Duality, and choose to see only the bits of others that we want to see. We never see the whole person -- not all at once anyway.

To "admire" a person or thing is to look into a mirror and see reflected.....
"Admiration" contains the word "mirror".

When we admire, we see in another something we most like about our self.
(And the reverse is also true)

But whether the other person actually possesses those desirable qualities ought not to be taken as read. Nor should we discount the fact that they also have other, conflicting qualities that we may not be aware of. We mis-read others, and when they do something "out of character", we blame them! We get emotionally bent out of shape when someone does or says something that doesn't fit with the model of them that we've created for ourselves. This phenomenon is nowhere more evident than in our primary relationships with our parents and partners. We think we "know" them, then wonder why they sometimes "turn" on us, and why some of our "best-friend" relationships turn overnight into a train wreck.

When I look at you, or you look at me, we are seeing a mirror-ball of reflections -- rotating fragments of flash-glimpses of recognised bits of ourself. That's just how it is. Now what we see in another may be pretty close to a bit of their reality, as far as that goes, but what we think we know about them is never the whole thing. Never. We don't even know the whole of our selves! How can we possibly recognise and know the whole of another?

It's not anyone else's job to live down to your limited idea of them. Nor is it your job to keep anyone else comfortable by fitting in to their creation of you. As far as is possible, consider one another's sensibilities, but not at the expense of being all that you are. Allow yourself, and the other person to be exactly as he/she is, in their entirety, and not just as you see yourself, him, or her to be. Prepare and allow yourself to be surprised. Be grateful for any new glimpses you get; others are mirrors into your own unknown.

If you experience any kind of discomfort or suffering with a new discovery, become aware of your level of true self-confidence.

If you feel like a rug has been whipped out from under you,  look into the health of your self-reliance.

And be grateful for those insights, too.

THE NO-WIN BIT OF GROWING UP

From the moment of conception onwards, we've all had some way of responding to situations, ways that grew ever more sophisticated as time went on... until .....

There came a time in early childhood when we realised that not everything we did remained as cute as it once was, and some things even earned downright disapproval -- either tacit or overt. We began to encounter moments when certain responses from us to our perceived environment were no longer being admired by people we loved, especially our parents. And we couldn't understand why they changed toward us, but we figured it had to be that there was something "wrong" with us.

Which put us in a bind.... the threatening things and situations were not changing. The crises they triggered within were still very much there for us, but our responses were not approved of by people we not only loved nearly and dearly, but upon whose support we relied for sheer survival. So we solved that problem by suppressing our natural responses. We became "ir-response-able", in order to survive.

Which put us in an even deeper bind..... in trying to please others by suppressing ourselves, we generated an internal, emotional cocktail of despair, separation, grief, frustration, anger, jealousy (especially if we had siblings)..... all of which also had to be suppressed. We were definitely not allowed to get angry, frustrated or jealous with our parents and siblings -- how could we? We loved them! We were toting an ever-growing grab-bag of separating emotions, that we didn't feel we had a right to, and had no legitimate way of putting them where they belonged. We dealt with the pain of that, firstly by numbing ourselves to it, reducing our awareness and sensitivity; and later by taking it out on ourselves. We became accident- and illness-prone.

This growing pustule of internalised, accumulated resentment, frustration, anger, anxiety, despair, grief, etc. lies perilously close to the surface, ready to pop at the first sign of experiencing threat or offence. And when it does, we'll pay it out on any unfortunate who happens to be handy -- as long as.... 1) that person is not the real, legitimate target of our resentments and fears; and...  2) that person can't fight back and do serious damage. One of the reasons why relationships encounter difficulty is because most of us go into them without first resolving the unfinished business from our first and fundamental relationship -- the one we have with our parents. We carry over our stuff from there to taint every other relationship we'll ever have. Our poor spouse, our bosses, family members and any others we give emotional authority over us cop buckets of stuff that belong to our Mum or Dad. And they wonder what they've done wrong! (They're doing it, too, in their lives, but they don't make the connection either.)

What was once child-like, innocent, confident Being-ness became perverted years ago into self-rightness and self-importance. Self-confidence and self-awareness got lost. We mislaid our ability to respond appropriately and began reacting like emotional robots.

FROM UNDERDOG TO TOPDOG

We become what we resist.

[I vowed I would never become like my Dad. Never!.......... Well, the big difference between him and me is that I can talk and write about it. For that alone, I'm grateful to Mum]

As crises arise in our personal daily dramas, the reservoir of resentment, frustration, insecurity and hostility generated by, and accumulating from a lifetime of "irresponsible" reactions to our parents and subsequent authority figures waits, ever ready to fire us up. 

In the past, though, we were always "the losers" in our tussles with our parents and rellies. Always. They were always bigger and wiser and more all-knowing than we were. In our reality, they still are, until they get so frail that we eventually feel brave enough to treat them like children. But that's the flip side of the same dynamic: we still secretly feel like "losers", towed around by our resentments of them.

But with others, it's different. Now we have grown up. Now we're bigger and older. Unless we absolutely have to, we're not going play "loser" any more; now we're going to play the apparent "winner". We switch from "underdog" mode to "topdog" mode -- the mode we learned from our parents. We become what we've always resisted. And we "do" our parents better than our parents ever did! WE become what we resist.

When an Underdog becomes a Topdog, he becomes a worse topdog than the old one ever was. That is, until we meet a bigger topdog, when we immediately flick back into resentful Underdog mode..... (Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full sir! [I'll get you for this!])

What's more, we think it's normal to be this way. Everyone else is doing it, too.  We hardly know, or consider the possibility of any other way. We've lived so long with it, we think we NEED the anger, the self-pity, the self-importance, the frustration, the resentment and all the other stuff in order to survive! Internally and externally there always seems to be something we need to stand against, to struggle with, to go to war on, to change...

And we wonder why so many of us die of cancer! We even go to war on our cancers.

What's eating you?

GURU WHO-DO?

There's an assumption going around,
Well supported by the Enlightenment Industry
And the India Tourist Office,
That one has a snowball's chance in hell
Of attaining enlightenment
With out a Guru to guide one.

Sitting in the presence of an enlightened one
Is a phenomenal experience, to be sure,
And I'd love to do it again some day --
These guys know some very interesting disciplines to entertain oneself.
But I'm not so sure that it is essential to satori.

"Guru", I'm told, originates from two Sanskrit syllables
Meaning "darkness" and "light",
Thus the word means literally "From darkness to light."
But does it?
What if "guru" could also be translated
"Both darkness and light"?
That would qualify me to have a whack at being my own guru;
You, too.

And it seems to me that many of the masters, living and dead that I've come across
Have said at some stage the equivalent of
"Beware false gurus. You can do it yourself..... What are you waiting for?"

By all means, go to India, or Bali, or Thailand, or Mecca or Rome --
Wherever you fancy;
Lose yourself in chanting and mysticism, 
And drench yourself in incense and satsangs until your blood turns saffron,
But eventually it comes back to
You.
Darkness AND light
Balanced.
GuRu....
One word.
One be-ing.

Uh......

JEALOUSY & ENVY

Jealousy is an insane, irrational emotion that arises from a ground being of "Without you, I am not enough and sufficient for myself, and it's up to you to supply my deficiencies." ]
Who wants to live with that?

Underneath  a blanket of emotions we call Jealousy and Envy,
I have seen.. and felt
Three positions --

1. "You are my property" (arising from Insecurity)
2.  "You have no right."  (arising from Self-Importance)
3.  "You don't deserve" (arising from Lack of Confidence)

Any more......?

AN AFFIRMATION FOR ABUNDANCE

From the lord god of my being.......

I acknowledge that all that is

In and a round me,

Is what I am.

And all that is

Supports me.

There is no lack.

I stand challenged to receive

The support of all that is

For all that I have created myself to be.

So be it....

WHO SHOULD WE CHECK WITH TO FIND OUT?

What is your question?

Is this the right person for me to be going into relationship with?
What's wrong with me?
Am I in the right job?
Why can't I sleep?
What am I afraid/jealous of?
Why does this keep happening to me?
How should I deal with this?

Whatever question you're standing in at the moment,
I'd like to answer you,
Rather than the question,
With a question --

Who should we check with to find that out for you?

Often, when I ask this question,
I meet with a measure of resistance.
One day I wondered why.....
It occurred that, in order to be our own guru
And answer our own questions,
We need to access ALL that we are,
And all that we give to ourselves.
If there are No-Go Zones within --
Emotional, intellectual and spiritual places we just will not go,
Then we're bound to encounter questions
For which we come up empty,
And go looking outside of ourselves,
To others
And to other busy-ness
For our answers.
Such a strategy may be OK for getting an opinion,
But it's not a good recipe for fulfillment or enlightenment!

I create the measure of fulfillment, success, loving, bliss and sufficiency
Out of what kind of entity I feel that I am.
So do you.
If we feel we're coming up short and don't know why,
There's only one place we can go
That will give us the empowering answers we're looking for.y
With-in. y
Answers given by others run a very real danger of being irrelevant, misleading, uninspiring and depressing.
Even the informative and relevant ones can get lost.
And, at their very best, answers from others can only ever inspire us
To look within.

So, let's go back to your question......

• What is your felt sense about it? Your answer will be an experience.
• If you don't have an answer yet, take a guess what they might be (there will always be more than one or two). 
• If your very best friend asked you this question, what would your answers be? Stay open and let them pop: the answers that really matter often don't come up until 'way down the list.

Once we pick up a thought or feeling and give it our attention,
They energise and affect whatever they're focused upon.
If we're getting limited information from within,
It's possible that we're being limited by, or focused on our own perceived shortcomings.
Are you willing to let go of any identifying
With anything you think you are not,
And simply let it lie in a Possible tray?
Are you willing to widen your scope
And embrace, firstly, all the "I Am's" that you know to be true
And put the ones you're less sure about into your Maybe File?
Good.
Now come back to those "I-am-Nots" in your Possibility tray --
Are you willing, at some time, to embrace them, too?
Is that a possibility?
Good.
Just loosen up and allow your field of vision to broaden a bit;
Take all the blinkers off.
Take your reading glasses off
And check out the whole panorama
That contains you and what you're focused in on.

This is the meta-physics of how it works.....
Your attention expands and solidifies wherever it's directed,
And the thought-field attracts everything from the environment to support it.
Which is a poncie way of saying
Whatever we focus upon, we're likely to get more of it.

But we've developed this really annoying habit
Of finding what we don't want, and trying to "fix" it.
Haven't we?
That's where our attention is.
So the universe (which doesn't say "No, you can't have that; it's bad for you.")
Gives you MORE of what you don't want,
And everything to support that.
Which gives rise to a realisation --

We can never seem to get enough

Of what we DON'T want.

When we shift focus OFF what we don't want

And look around us at the existence and availability

Of what we DO want,

There it is. 

It's been there all along

Waiting for us to wake up

And to drop Separation.

All we need do to connect with what we want

Is to drop anything and everything we're carrying

That is separating us from it.

Are you game?

Are you ready to get off the Wheel of Lack?
Really? Are you sure?
(The only reason we sucked onto Lack is because we think there's some juice in it).
Have you had enough Lack?
Good.

Reconnecting with yourself may mean going within to some of those No-Go Zones;

In fact, I can just about guarantee that for you.

Are you willing?

Willingness is all you need, for now.

The day we created Duality,

"I Am" divided into "I-Am-and-I-Am-not"

And "I Have" split up into "I-Have-and-I-Have-not"

(Amongst all other dualities)

"Am Not" and "Have-Not" are mirror illusions we've created

That we're allowed to believe and be right about

So that we can really get what hell feels like.

(Heaven got boring one day, so we came here/now for a bit of entertainment. Don't fret, being human is not forever, nor is it fatal.

You might like to enjoy it while you've got the chance!)

When an "Am-Not" thought arises

Simply acknowledge it as a former guest

Who used to monopolise conversations around the board table of your mind.

Let it be,

And call in a thought that serves you better

To join the conversation.

And remember........

"Missing' is Opportunity in disguise.

LONGING FOR PERFECTION

Do you want things to be better than they are?
Do you want to be better than you are?
Or....
Do you resist betterness
(The obverse side of the same coin)?
Either way, good luck!
I've tried "Better" ways --
Outside of some incremental change
"Better" has led me around in ever-closing circles.
"Better", I've decided, is a figment of one's unkind mind.

Of course, we can see ways for something to be better than it is,
And we can all play our part in Change.
But what if life is not about getting better
But about getting happier?
Well, we were told right from Day#.1.....
"Change will bring happiness",
So we've grown up thinking...
"When this or that changes, I'll be happy."
We even learned very early on to use Unhappiness
As a way of getting others to change something.
As babies, we bunged on an "unhappy" act
To get some changes happening over there with other people,
And it worked (or so we thought),
For a while..........
Then, if we were well-parented, it stopped working.
If we were spoilt, we continued to get away with
Withholding our wellbeing to manipulate, dominate and control.

Either way, we still try it on --
(Don't say that; it'll upset somebody")
(Don't you dare upset me!")

We have a row with our partner in the morning,
Then rock off to work and forget about it,
Cruising through the day,
Our minds on other things.
We ride home at night, walk up to the door, turn the handle
And remember this mornings row.
Suddenly we turn from Mr.Hyde into Feckle Jeckyll.......
Well, how has that been working for you lately?
Any change? Any happier?
No? Me either.
Maybe it's time we both grew up.

I suggest
Our efforts toward change
Ought not blind us to opportunities for Transformation.
Change strives for Perfection;
Transformation is Renewal.

Perfection doesn't have a universal mould;
It isn't even genuine.
Perfection seems more like an imitation
Of someone else's idea
Of what some aspect of life SHOULD look like.

There is, in fact, no such thing as perfection.
"Perfection" is THE state of Is-ness.
It is the way of all be-ing, just as it is,
That you're either tuned into, or you're not.
When we switch from seeing something as "perfect" to be suddenly "imperfect",
Nothing has changed
Other than our perception of the thing.
So, Perfection/Imperfection rests within the "me" -- the perceiver;
It says nothing whatever about the perceived thing itself.

Here's how it looks to me ---
I can try and manipulate people and circumstances
To shape up the way I think they should be,
So that I can feel comfortable.
Well, I've tried that, and it hasn't worked,
And the closest I ever got
Never felt like "perfection" anyway,
Because I knew I'd dominated and controlled to get there.

But I do know the feeling of Perfection --
I've felt it.
As I remember it in the past,
The benediction -- the feeling -- of Perfection always showed up when I wasn't expecting it.

Then I went chasing after it. 

That's when I discovered something --
This feeling I was chasing,
The feeling I was addicted to,
That I call "perfection"
Happened spontaneously
When I felt aligned with things as they are.
Nowadays, I don't have to wait for Perfection -- the feeling --
To descend like a benediction at the whim of chance:
I have found that Perfection is as close to, and as far away from me
As a deep, unconditional "Yes"
To what-is.

Sometimes that's easy;
And sometimes "Yes" IS emotionally still out of my reach.
So I say "Yes" to that.
That helps.

Where are you with "perfection"? 


Perfection is what we are,

And it's hidden
In how we see ourselves
And what we experience ourselves as,
Not in relation to all things
(Because relationship implies separation),
But as inseparable from all things.

That feeling of suchness need not be as rare as we're experiencing.
But we're not going to find it
By striving to make someone or something "better";
Our chance for perfection begins
With making it all OK.
That's the hard bit;
That's why our experiences of Perfection
Are as rare as hens' teeth.

A friend said to me once, not out of despair but in a moment of relieved realisation .....
"You know, I thought when I started on this inner journey
I'd become a better person."
The quest to be better than we are arises,
At least in part,
From a consciousness of Lack --
Something is felt to be missing in what and where we are now.
That Lack-consciousness is, in turn, a product
Of the fundamental mis-take of Separateness;
A perceived gap between "what-I-am" and "what-I-ain't";
The so-called gap between "the way it is", and "the way it ain't",
The chasm we feel between "me" and Existence.
That gap does not, of course, exist.
Whatever we think we are not
Is part of what we are.


Whatever we think is not
Is part of the way it is. 

Light we are
Thought we are
Feeling we are
Worthy we are
For God we are.

- AND -

Darkness we are
Thinking and feeling
Unworthy we are
For God we think and feel we are not --
We are.


When we're entertaining thoughts that "There should be more than this. How do I get?....."
We are coming from a ground being of Lack
And we are perpetuating the Wheel of Insufficiency.
We, in fact, go looking for "missing",
And we find it;
Everywhere we look
We see something "missing".
That is the Law of Seeking --
We will always find what we're looking for;
It's a part of being god.

I've just had a woman come to the door delivering Meals on Wheels.

Now see if you can picture this --

After a cold and wet winter, it's a radiantly soft spring day;

The sun is shining in a clear blue sky,

There's a light breeze stirring the spring blossoms and budding branches ,

And it's a balmy 28 degrees out there.

She remarks "What a nasty day it is!"

I'm flabbergasted. "Nasty?"

"It's nasty and windy!" she vows.

Who am I to argue with her?

She's looking for "nasty" (probably not for the first time in her life)

And she's found it!!

Maybe she's now decided I'm nasty, too

For not chorusing with her.

(We will always find what we're looking for.)

Consider this possibility...
What if we're mistaken about the reality we're in?
What if there's another reality that is available to us
If only we'll give up on our insistence upon Lack and Insufficiency.
What if there is more
That is not actually missing,
Just hidden from us by our own blindness.
What if, when we change our assumptions that our universe is lacking,
We discover things that have been there all along ---
We just couldn't see them.
Sometimes reality is a bit like those wonderful 3-D illusions
That appear at first glance to be a jumble of patterns
But that suddenly become something quite miraculously different
When we get a click-shift of perception.

What if....
There is nothing missing.
What if we're standing in the middle of abundance,
And we have everything we need for now?
What if there is nothing to "work on",
Nothing to get
That we don't already have?
What if, instead, there is just everything to embrace,
Everything that is
Right now?

What if we ARE perfection,
And there is no goal to reach?
Nothing we ought to be that we are not already?

What might you have to give up
In order to allow a Perfection reality through?
What's stopping it?
What is hanging onto that costing you?
Is it worth it?