IT'S TIME

Modern man has heard enough of Guilt and Sin. He has heard enough that he just isn't good enough -- good enough for whom? He doesn't need more holy irrelevance. Already he is beaten to a pulp by his own bad conscience. What he needs now is to become re-conciled with his own true nature.

Christ is reported to have said "Love your enemies." How? Love Thaksin Shinawatra? Love Al Quaeida? Love the Pope? Love George Dubbya? Love that guy who cut you off in the traffic? Love the guy who comes home late at night and starts drilling the concrete floor of the flat above me? "Love your enemies" may have sounded fine in a sermon one balmy afternoon on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, but how do we actually do it when the heat is on? And who is "The Enemy?" anyway? Doesn't that have a little bit to do with where we stand and what our prejudices are? From where I stand, it looks as if one man's saviour is another man's enemy, and vice versa. Who does God love more? Which one?

The more I think about the God I was taught about in Sunday School, the more he begins to look like an idealised version of my parents. Certainly the righteous anger and certain punishment bits ring some painful bells.

The enemies around us, however, pale to insignificance alongside the Real Enemy. Tell us, please, how can man begin to truly love the enemy within his own heart? How did that evil little monster get there in the first place? What is his purpose?

Wouldn't that be a good starting point?

Modern man has had enough of trying to imitate the life of Christ. I'm told he was sent to be a man like me, with the same weaknesses and shortcomings, to prove that salvation is possible, even for me. But the same people who proclaim that little gem also get uppity if I question why he would have been born of a virgin if the whole point was that he was to be a regular bloke? They get offended when I ask how many times a week Christ had a wank. They get very shifty when I ask what it was with him and Mary Magdalene. Any way, I distinctly remember reading somewhere in the Gospels that Christ turned on a particularly pathetic bunch of Victims one day saying "Heal yourselves!" May be I'm wrong. Maybe that was John Cleese

I'm exhausted from a lifetime of trying unsuccessfully to live up to other people's ideals of how I should be. And I don't think I am Robinson Crusoe here. I'm also beginning to notice that every form of imitation is imperfect, dead and sterile. But then I get a bit scared. I'm closer to death now than I am to birth, and what if I'm wrong, and those pompous pricks are right? Do I get busted to hell? And what is hell anyway? I went there after my wife walked out. Nothing could be worse than that, and I'm still here.

Modern man wants to know how he can deal with his anxiety, depression, and his teenage daughter who is so out of this world he doesn't know what to do any more. He wants to know what he can do about politicians he elects and pays to run the joint, who spend their days endlessly getting into the media to yap at each other like demented poodles while the country goes to the dogs.

Modern man wants to know how he can get back the serenity and sovereignty he sold out to family, state and religion on the promise that these sacred institutions would do it all for him, as long as he followed the rules. Well, to the best of our ability we followed both the letter and the spirit of those rules and it hasn't worked, and modern man has had a gutful of political hoop-la, religious fairy-floss, and yet another social experiment. This doesn't need another white paper, green paper, or any other kind of paper, except toilet paper.

Modern man just wants to experience a few moments of Authenticity and Aliveness, from himself, and from those who put themselves up to act on his behalf. Is that too much to ask?

Most of all, modern man is looking for a Ceasefire --
In Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, the backstreets of America, Europe, Asia and Australia
And a Ceasefire where peace really matters --
Where peace begins and ends --
In the civil battlefield of our own bi-polarity.

Enough already. The old ways don't work. It's time for another way.

Is that too much to ask?

COMPASSION

Warm and welcoming, Compassion is a hug from Existence. How often we long for its embrace!

Compassion, while not exclusive to human beings, is possibly the greatest and most ennobling gift we have. It blesses both the giver and the receiver. It acknowledges and honours the oneness of all being.

I see Compassion as a kind of respect for the facts of Life, and a sensitive connection with the differing realities affecting each of us. Compassion unifies us in a celebration of the riddles of being alive. Compassion is the antidote to insularity.

In a being of Compassion, we are able to receive another's reality unjudgmentally alongside our own. It is the art of knowing in experience what it means to be human. Where that knowing is not immediately available, Compassion produces a willingness to do whatever it takes to explore another's experience for oneself so that it can be known. Compassion offers emotional shelter to the storm-tossed, while knocking gently on the doorway of another's experience with the invitation "Can I come and play with you?"

Compassion is no kin to understanding. In understanding, the mind simply grabs an experience, sticks a standard label on it and files it away into a pre-existing pigeon-hole. There is no freshness or aliveness of the heart in understanding. I have encountered people who understand everything and have found them to be emotionally among the poorest on the planet. In fact, a lack of compassion is a symptom of serious psychic damage.

Compassion arises initially from a willingness and commitment to explore the parts of oneself that we see in others, and to receive that self-knowledge with indulgent warmth, humour and lightness. A life committed to compassion begins with embracing the whole of oneself with a deep and tolerant "Yes".

We cannot give away what we don't have. Without compassion for self, what is given away looks and feels more like sympathy than empathy, more like pardoning than forgiveness, and more like pity and patronising than something that is felt with (not for) the other. Try this, and be aware of the feeling that surrounds these two sentences --

• I feel for you.
• I feel with you.

Say each alternately a few times. Feel  into the difference between the two. One feels more detached than the other; the other feels more  inclusive; doesn't it?

Whether the trigger arises in oneself or from another, Compassion is a voluntary expansion of the heart to embrace yet another raw experience of being alive. Compassion knows that life is too short for each of us to formulate every available experience, so it willingly interacts with others to openly share feelings and thoughts.

If you experience your life as lacking in compassion from others, start by seeking it within yourself, for yourself. Let it grow there. It will expand and, in time, naturally overflow into the world around you. Don't push it; let it happen in its own good time. When you find yourself spontaneously giving compassion away to others, do so without any consideration or expectations of what you might get back in return. Give it away as anonymously as you can. Give it away as a simple expression of Who You Choose to Be. Give it away for its  own sake.

Compassion is the deepest expression of Connection. In Compassion there is no separation. In a state of Compassion, the old adage "There but for the grace of God, go I" becomes ---

"There, thanks to the Grace of God, am I."

Compassion frees us to be more than we think we are.

MIND

Mind is a state of being to walk out of. With Mind comes a whole range of Conditions -- default states of being that come about as a result of unexamined and out-of-date conclusions, opinions, beliefs, ideas and principles. Some examples of a Condition include chronic states of sadness, anger, anxiety, resentment, depression and confusion. Accompanying all default conditions there are chemical and hormonal imbalances, and perhaps even outright physical, mental, spiritual and social dis-ease. In my experience, these physical, emotional and mental manifestations are not the root cause of the condition, but symptoms of it and the consequential circumstances that perpetuate and possibly even worsen the condition.

I know that there is a lot of debate about this -- which is the cart and which is the horse? I don't think it matters. But it seems to me that if we accept some authorship of our own conditions, then we have some possibility beyond the bind we're in right now. We can make some changes to our self and the reality we create. If, on the other hand, we are totally the victims of our conditions, then we're fucked. The debate rages on, and will continue to do so until each of us finds for our self a synthesis of both truths. We are at once both victim and cause.

And this brings me to my point. Synthesis will not be found in the Mind. Mind is the arch proponent of Analysis and the source of all dissection and apparent separation. And I do know this. Synthesis is creative. Analysis, dissection and separation kills the very thing it seeks to understand.

The human mind is finite. It cannot contemplate the eternal. Trying to get the mind to wrap itself around eternity is like trying to park you car in its glovebox. The finity of the Mind is why it cannot be in the here/now, because the here/now is infinite. Here and now never ends. Here and Now is not a point in time. It is endless and simply is as it is.

What happened with the big bang was that Awareness lowered its frequency through thought, light, atoms, molecules, and eventually gross matter, organisms and environment. Everything got artificially and momentarily slowed down, giving us an opportunity to evolve an increasingly more sophisticated, albeit still clunky, ability to notice things and respond creatively with them. Time and distance are artifices we humans invented that help us to measure out  this apparent continuum of "time"and "space", this slowed-down experience of Now. The slowing down allows us to experience moments,  replay a recollection of  them, and even make some predictions about their possible impact. The trade-off to this slowing-down, however, is a loss of clarity. The slower things get, the fuzzier and less accurate they become. My experience of death is of a speeding-up, where things get clearer and clearer, but increasingly more difficult to perceive because my mind is just not fast enough to keep up. Finally I have to give up. There is a "pop", and everything suddenly disappears into a dot that itself fades into blankness -- nothing -- oneness -- serenity that is no longer aware of its serenity. Pure Awareness, that can no longer be aware of itself because the illusion of separation is no  longer available to it. The mirror has gone. Nothing happens here. Nothing can be done. Nothing needs to be done. There is no time any more. In the  here/now nothing can, or needs to be reasoned out, thought about, felt about or compared...... Mind is no more.

Awareness is first. The advent of Separation gives rise to Consciousness -- Awareness with limitations. With the fall from Grace comes separation, so that Awareness can have a mirror in which to see itself, a way to experience itself and anything it considers itself to be, and a path to come back to itself at the end of the day and know itself for the first time.

The illusions of Time, Space and Separation are divine gifts of the condition of being human.

My mind is the creator of my world. Limited mind = limited world. The same is true for you. And our perceptions of our world reinforce the mindsets that shape them. I say the world is a certain way, the world agrees with me, revealing just enough of itself so that I can be "right" and have the experience of living in my kind of world. The same, again, is true for you. Every creation proves the rightness of its creator. The universe presents different limitations, depending on who is doing the creating.  But the limitations are more apparent than real. The universe is so much more than any of us will ever know. This universe is both Heaven and Hell. Which one depends on the consciousness that is doing the creating and perceiving.

But outside of that there is that other reality I referred to a moment ago -- the real universe, the one uncreated by limited minds, is unlimited and infinitely resource-full. As it evolved from the Big Bang, every organism became part of  the environment for other organisms. Every organism is inseparable from the environment that sustains it. There is no point where I end and my environment  begins. Similarly, where is the dividing line between my environment and you? There is no separation: it is all one organism. Creation is indivisible. If you try to eliminate any part of creation, it no longer works.If you try to excise any part of yourself or your environment, as Mind wants you to do, your life no longer works, and neither does mine. All is in perfect balance. But in Mind, you and I cannot see that, because of our limited view. And we will never be able to see it until we first change our minds. That happens rarely because minds do not take kindly to change. It was a human mind that said "I'll believe it when I see it." That mind knew very well that it can only see what it believes. That's the way minds are. Minds do not see anything they don't first believe. Conversely, minds see everything they believe, no matter how true or false the belief is. Whatever the mind believes and sees is that mind's reality. Period. End of discussion.

CHANGE THE WORLD

When I was younger, I wanted to change the world. I wanted to change the world because I was NOT going to changed my mind -- I was right! Well. guess what? ..... Oh, you guessed! You're right. I had no hope of changing the world without first changing my mind. Neither do you. But along the way I found out something remarkable and miraculous ---

When I change my mind, the world changes -- for everyone.

When you change you mind, the world changes -- for everyone.

Changing the world lies over here with each one of us changing our world

By changing our minds.

We can each make a difference, by becoming the difference.

Regardless of intellectual, emotional or physical capacity

There isn't a person on this earth that does not have the ability to change their mind.

If you cannot live happily in a hovel, you will not live happily in a palace.

A palace is larger, more ornately decorated, and has hot and cold running everything.

So does heaven

And so does hell.

A larger, more ornately decorated and fitted-out hell does not a heaven make.

Even when we are forcibly thrown into Heaven (and we all have been), we manage to turn it into Hell and search frantically, looking for the nearest exit.

Mind is an appearance. There is no thing any surgeon can point to in the body and say "There's his mind." It is like electricity. You can't locate it, touch it, see it, smell it; but you can sure see the evidence of its passing through.

Mind is an interfering, futile effort at making what always was and is designed to work -- work. It is an ingenious, stupid survival mechanism in a game where survival was never the main issue. In trying to make it work,  mind throws a spanner into the works. Mind goes on promising, hoping, negotiating and compromising for More, Better and Different. Mind just does not get that More, Better and Different are deserts where nothing much grows, certainly nothing of any beauty or with any nourishment value.

We cannot live without our minds; we have achieved a lot with our minds. But when we come to this point now and look at the bottom line, nothing much remains of enduring consequence. Certainly nothing worth the price of all the struggle, stress, pain and strain.

Now is the time to wake up. There is more, and it is available, but it all lies beyond the mind. Mind is only capable of short-term gratification which is a long way shy of replete satisfaction. Mind cannot create. It's promises are pipe dreams because it cannot be where all creation takes place -- in the here and now. Anything mind gets it has to steal from someone or something else. But please do not believe me on this. Like all knowing, you have to experience the futility of Mind for yourself.

The whole effort of the mind is to sell me a better dream. But a dream is a dream. I can dream of food and drink for a while and fool myself, but for how long?  I may sleep all night long on such a dream, but if I am hungry or thirsty, I need real food and water. In the morning I awaken to hunger and thirst. My mind has deceived me, again.

What is your mind promising you that you're hanging in there for? Reality will keep bumping into you and shaking your delirium Wake up!

Living in mind is like living in a glass house. Reality keeps throwing stones, calling us to wake up. The glass shatters, but we keep picking up the pieces and try to put them back together again. Let it go. We have achieved nothing but a mess. It's time to start again with something more substantial than mind. Mind is fine for a certain kind of seeing, but it is not suitable building material for the whole edifice.

Enough is enough

STUCK?

When you get stuck, create something. Anything will do.

Begin by creating what already is. You can manage that, can't you?

If that proposal sounds silly to you, ask yourself which is sillier --- 1) for the first time in your life creating what is; or 2) trying to create what-is-not, something you have been straining at for decades without getting any traction? Which is sillier? There is no right or wrong Answer to this question, just an Indication of your present state of readiness to get un-stuck.

What you create does not really matter, as long as you create, and acknowledge that you are doing the creating. This is Drano for the spirit.

If you tell yourself "I cannot create", then acknowledge that "I can't" is what you have just created -- probably out of habit. Take a moment to experience the success of that. I mean it. I'm not being sarcastic. You are a very powerful creator, especially of your own experience. Whether you feel empowered or ineffectual, you are the creator of that. One extreme gives you the juice; the other keeps to bogged down in your own mire. The acceptance of both frees you from getting impaled on either end of the axis.

When you've mastered Creating #101, ie. choosing to be in What-Is, just as it is -- then try creating something different for a change. Just create it. You create all the time; you know how to do it.. Creating is not a question of Ability, but a question of Choosing WHAT you create.

To create something, simply declare it to be, on your own authority. Then leave the rest to life. If your intention is genuine, life will show you what to deal with next in order to get ready for the Delivery. If your intention is not genuine, Life will still present you with the opportunities to move on, but you probably won't see them as opportunities.

If you keep on doing what you've always done, you will continue to get what you've always got. If you're stuck, and have finally realised there's no more juice in being stuck, then do something different. Anything will do, as long as the desire to do it comes from someplace other than where you've been lately.

Let me know how you go.

THE BIGGEST LIE

Come unto me all ye who labour and are heavy-laden

And I will give you rest.

"I" and "Me" are both ego. Ego IS the burden.

Don't feel bad. We all fell for that one. We were meant to.

TRUTH

The story goes about Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor on assignment to a backwater  but troublesome province in the Middle East who was interrupted one day by the posse of the local holy men. He called this bunch of arse-licking hypocrites The Jerusalem Jihad. Their noses had been poked out of joint by an itinerant preacher who'd only been on the road about three years, but had already just been hailed by the hoi-polloi as the promised Messiah. Behaving more like our federal parliamentary opposition than a parliament of holy men, the priests wanted this upstart rubbed out, but they wanted Pilate to do it for them. At first, Pilate was annoyed at having his morning coffee break interrupted, but the strange preacher began to interest him greatly. Despite his shabby appearance, the man had an amazing aura of authority about him that was distinctly different from the usual bunch of Judge Judy rejects he normally had to deal with.

Pilate took him aside for a while. Away from the carping scribes and pharisees, the conversation got decidedly deep and meaningful. At one point Pilate said to him in some petulance, "You talk about Truth! OK smartypants, if you know so much about Truth, tell me what it is." The guy didn't say a word. He just looked into Pilate's eyes. Ponty felt like he was looking into the clearest mirror he had even seen. He saw himself, and became profoundly disturbed, but he couldn't look away.

Ponty was saved from eternity by his wife who sidled up behind him and whispered, "This guy spooks the bejeezus out of me. Get him out of my house.!" Pilate gratefully took his cue and washed his hands of any further involvement. Not much is known about Pilate after that moment. Maybe he became a holy man.

Pilate was an educated man. He really yearned to know what Truth is. He got his answer. In experience.

What I'm writing now is not Truth. It's not a lie either. I write - from my Truth - some of my theories about Truth. That is the closest I can get to communicating the truth of my experience.Truth is only found in personal experience. Nothing is Truth until it is experienced. Your experiences produce your truth; my experiences give rise to mine. Whose truth is The Truth? Both. And neither. When we put our two truths together, we still do not have all of it. The Truth reveals itself when all truths are embraced. Then there is silence. The page is blank. There is nothing to say. There is nothing to write. Truth is a wholly personal experience. The Truth is universal. I cannot tell you what it is, but I can tell you what it sounds like --

"Sh--sh--shhshshshshshshshshshshshshshshshshshshshsh....................................."

The more we think about truth, the more we miss it.

Now a deeper silence falls.

OPINION & CONSCIOUSNESS

We all have opinions. We have opinions on just about everything, and as far as we are concerned, our opinions rule.

Let's put that assumption to a simple test.

Pick a calm. clear moonlit night, and find a space out in the open, well out of earshot of neighbours -- you don't want potentially embarrassing attention from the constabulary.Don't worry, I'm not suggesting you do anything illegal......

Look up at the moon and stars above you. Then look around you at the trees, bushes and anything else natural that you can see in the vicinity. When you are ready, give everything around you your opinions on anything and everything you can think of. Don't hold back.Give it all the energy you've got. Keep going until you are completely exhausted -- of opinions, ideas, beliefs and energy. When you are finally finished, watch the moon, the stars, the trees and anything else around you very closely. ........

See if you can detect just how much the universe moves in response to your almighty opinions.

Get it?

Good. I get that you've got it.

Opinions and knowledge are constructs of the mind. Truth includes what's on your mind, but it is not from the mind. Truth is what you become aware of when the mind is still.

Opinions are what we're certain we know about. We treat them as Truth and expect everyone else to do likewise. We could hardly be more mistaken.

Truth lies inside what is not-known. When what we think we know subsides into silence, the unknown comes naturally. I love silence. I feel totally at home here in silence.

Consciousness is aware of opinions -- the judgments and prejudices of an over-active mind. Consciousness is a mirror.

THE MIRROR OF CONSCIOUSNESS

A mirror has no opinions. That's why we can rely on it. A mirror does not subvert what it sees. It is not selective. A mirror simply mirrors what-is. That is its nature.

Mind, on the other hand, is like a photographic print. It captures a fleeting glimpse only once and hangs on to its processed image. It carries dead information. Beautiful maybe, but limited and ossified. Dead memory, and the information never changes except to go brittle and fade over time.

A mirror reflects and then is empty, ready always to let go and receive something anew. There is no desire to cling onto anything. There are no concepts, ideas, opinions or beliefs to clutter its reflection. It comes to each moment clear and unattached to anything that has gone before.

How blissful to be a mirror!. But I also have a mind -- a thick soup of considerations.

And mind cannot be here/now because here/now is not part of time. A now moment is eternal and simply is as it is.... now. A mirror is always here now -- it cannot be anywhere else.

I am both mirror and mind. And I am that which is aware of that, and content for it to be so.

So, too are you.

LIVING IN VISION

What do you want?


What is it about this question that so daunts us? In my counseling, no other question ever halts the flow of woes so dramatically and abruptly as this one. I can almost guarantee a stunned silence long enough to go out and brew a cup of tea, and even then there is unlikely to be a cohesive response. It's almost as if the caller is waiting for permission to phone a friend.

How is it that we do not know what we want? How is it that we seem reluctant to even ask? Why on earth do we openly and (sometimes) aggressively resist an invitation to look into it? What is that all about?

Is it because we believe that putting out for what we want is somehow wrong or inappropriate? Is the sky going to fall in, or are we suddenly vulnerable if we divulge what we want, even to ourselves? Do we believe we don't deserve it? Do we believe we have to forcefully take what we want? Why is the possibility of unconditionally being given and receiving what we want so difficult to embrace? Do we suffer from an underlying obsession with beliefs  about Scarcity, Lack and Undeserving? What is it about NOT knowing what we want that we have to be so right about?

Or is it because we are so focussed on what we DON"T want, in the mistaken belief that planting what we resist will somehow get us a harvest of sugar and spice and everything nice? Where on earth did that idea come from? The universe is not so contrary: but we are!

What happened? When we were children at play we had no problems whatever in imagineering what we wanted from moment to moment. As children, we lived in a state of being called Vision. We played Cops and Robbers and Cowboys and Indians, spacemen and pirates, all with a commitment and surrender to imagination that would have made Brando blanch!

Vision is a heightened form of reality, unbounded by considerations of "impossibility". In Vision we choose to take personal response-ability for the differences between What-Is and what is envisaged. We create a multi-sensory image of what could be, we catalyse it into becoming, we create a fertile space for it to show up, we drop any addictive demands about how or when it should show up, we commit ourself to learning the lessons and doing the work that must be done to bring it about, and we personally authorise and empower it to become our reality.

Now re-read that last paragraph from a Negative-conscious point of view. Isn't this essentially the same process we use to manifest what we DON"T want? When we are caught in catastrophising and creating a life of misery for ourselves,  do we not sow multi-sensory images of what we don't want, cover them despairingly with resentments about the gap between what we've got and what we want, manure the ground with negative beliefs, ideas and opinions about how-things-should-be-but-aren't, water it with tears of woe, blanch it with the artificial sunlight of our addictive expectations, and nurture the weeds? We have not so much lost the way the process works, just its purpose. We have become engaged in a weird compulsion to throw a spanner into the works. It has become more important to us to have things be a certain way than to have our life working joyfully. We've got ourselves snagged on the rocks of Individualistic Me-ness. We have allowed our selves to slip into ways of being that are health hazards -- victimness and selfishness. We just need to make some different choices.

The first choice is to live in a state of Conscious Vision. Once be get divinely dissatisfied with the results of the passive Unconsciousness in which we presently find ourselves, the switch should not be too hard. Vision is, after all, the natural state of who and what we are -- we were born this way. Vision is our natural state of self-expression, and it is the First Expression of our be-ing.

It is easy to spot a person with Vision. Despite all their challenges, they exhibit  marked traits of inspiration, natural potency and quiet enthusiasm. They have no quarrel with the rest of creation. Quite the contrary, they see their place in all of it, and all of it mirrored in them. They are firstly satisfied with their life as it is, a state which seems to connect them with the power to make a difference. They exude an aura of life-working. Most revealing of all, they have no unfinished business with anything from the past, and no dissatisfaction with the present, because they have decided long ago that it was - and is - perfect just as it is. Any urge to change anything comes not from a dissatisfaction with it, but from a confidence and an urge to join in with the natural process of evolution. They have learned that, rather than trying to make change happen (the human way), it is far more preferable and effective to envision something new and allow it to evolve -- the way God does it.

VISION IS SIMPLE


So much of our waking moments we spend longing and fossicking around -- for what, we do not know.

A ground being of Vision is the answer to the $64,000 question --

Given who you are, what do you want?

OK, there are some observations I'd like to add around this question that may shed some light on where we get derailed.....

There are four qualities you need to bring with you when you're ready to create an empowering Vision --- 

R.S.V.P.

• Responsibility
• Serenity
• Veracity
• Power for All

These are the essential aspects of your self that are required for a life of effective, empowering Vision. Where can you find them? Within. You already have them deep within you. You'll find them where you left them last, when you opted to give up playing creatively with your dreams in order to "grow up"and start manipulating the "real" world

What do you want?  This is more than a grab for quick information. Regard it instead as an invitation to step into a context that will trigger and engage you in an ongoing journey of discovery. Ideally, the answers that matter will come to you couched in challenges and experiences from which you learn. 


What do you really want? -- Not what you think you should want, or what someone else may want for you. And if what you want is something concrete, you might like to dig deeper and find the quality of life that you suspect might be available in what you say you want. Go for that, and give up any fixed ideas you might have about how to get it. Life often has better ideas, because it knows you better than you do.


Who do you want it for? If it is only for yourself, your group, or your family, you may be digging into very infertile ground. True Vision is inclusive and requires and involves the co-operation of the whole of creation.


Even after you have found your answers to to what you want, stay in the question. There is real experience waiting to be had from that enquiry. You don't even have to go looking for it. The appropriate experiences will present themselves to you at exactly the right time, and some of them will surprise you. Whatever comes, keep asking "What do I want in this situation?" Like an eternal onion, there are always more layers to be peeled away.

How will you know you've got it? If you have any idea of what will constitute proof that you've got what you put out for, you are bound to miss it. What we're looking for rarely comes as we expect. Our perceptions are too limited. Our ideas about how what we want will look and feel will blind us from seeing the reality when it comes. There is more work and more surrendering to be done. 


How will you know when you've got it? There is no pat answer, but here are two possibilities that I have experienced -- a) When a sublime peace -- a sense of Completion -- descends upon you; or b) When you experience Nothing. A profound silence falls. In both cases, separation disappears. There is no line dividing between desire and fulfillment, or between Vision and Completion. In both cases, the euphoria won't last; don't try and hang on to it. Let go. Allow the next phase of your journey to present itself. Let the process begin anew.

Given who you are....   OK, but who are you? Do you know? 


Well, you are not defined by:-

• the circumstances of your life
• the world as you perceive it
• your doubts
• your fears
• your problems
• your values, beliefs, concepts or opinions

These are things we all have, but they are not who we are. I have depression, diabetes and house keys, and I carry them around with me, but they are not who I am. I am, and you are much, much more than our stuff.

But our stuff is the reality that we ordinarily live in, and from which confined space we usually pose and answer the question "What do I want?" We come from a limited definition of the word "I". That is why our Wish Lists rarely get to be much more than just that. Every question delivers answers at the level of consciousness from which the question arose. When our visions produce negative results, it's a fair bet that our visions are limited by the low-level consciousness in which they were created..

You are, of course, all of the above ..... and also much, much more. You need to get to work and discover the rest of it -- your positive and negative self-image would be a good starting point. There is a process for discovering Positive and Negative self-image, but it's a little outside the scope of this article. What you can do in the meantime is start listening to your self-talk -- that incessant commentary going on  inside your head. Note what it says about you, about others you admire, and those you don't like. Jot down all the negative and positive things you catch yourself saying about yourself and others. Why others? The judgments and critical assessments you lay on others are the same as ones you bring to bear on yourself. You're just more open about your crits of others than you are about what you really think of yourself. They're more easily accessible. Put them all together, and you will start to build up an idea of how you really see yourself. Prepare for a nasty surprise. You would not tolerate other people talking about you the way YOU talk about you!

And there is more. Complete the picture. Go through each of the evaluative words on your list and add its polar opposite. For example, in my negative self-image are words like "irresponsible", "selfish", and "callous". The opposites of those for me are "responsible", "allowing", and "caring". Add the opposites. We live in a universe of duality -- one cannot exist without the other. This is where you begin to discover some things you don't know that you know about yourself.

As very young children, we were as yet relatively unhindered by positive and negative self assessments, and we had no barriers to bringing our whole being to the process of playing. It was safe to be all and envision all. We were naturally aligned with the world and there was no need then to negotiate or compromise our dreams. But we learned very early that we should be careful who we shared it with. Other kids made fun of us when it suited them, and grown-ups either poured iced water over our enthusiasm, or hedged us in with dark comments like "Wait until you grow up". Their disillusionment was palpable and infectious. They weren't trying to sabotage us; they were trying to spare us their dis-appointment. We caught the disease. For most of us, growing up meant compromising our Self and finally giving up our high-flying visions and replacing them with poor, low-level substitutes. That was my experience. If yours was similar, do not despair. That's just the way your journey was taking you then. Now is the time when you can turn back and come home.

You can do that now...... E.T., it's time to phone home. Here's one way to do it.

Back before we sold out on playing with life is the time where we created the Vision for our life. There was an innocent knowing then of what we wanted our life to be all about. You may find it very healing to gently knock on the door of your early childhood and ask yourself  "What did I want?" "What were my dreams?"  If you have a photo or a memory image of yourself at an early age, even as a baby, look into the face of the child you once were for a few moments. Connect emotionally with that person. When you have established contact, ask "What do you want?" Putting the question in the present tense is important. Take any images, sounds, feelings and words that come and simply let them lie alongside your present reality, without further comment or evaluation. Continue the dialogue for as long as you can. Come back to it as often as you want.

As I grew older, I made the mistake of rejecting gifts that life handed  me, labelling them as "misfit". If I had thought to called them "genius", I could have saved myself a lot of struggle. I'll bet the same is true for you. Everything that has happened in our past story led to the formation of our Now realisations. They were gifts. In the moments we are out of our Vision, our past no longer appears to co-operate with our present; it appears to dominate and restrict it. The ride gets bumpy. The domination is, however, an illusion that does not serve us well. Our past is a place to walk out of.

Don't lose heart. Keep zeroing in on The Question -- "What do I want?" As you persevere with the enquiry, your daily answers will broaden and become more universal in their appeal. Answers will become less about   parts of you, less about your relationships, less about your social groups, your family and your country; they will broaden to embrace ALL of it.

There may be the inertia of years of negative programming to overcome. Stand in the possibility that Life asks your permission to help you become the kind of person who will attract what you want. When the question "Given what I am, what do I want?" is asked authentically for yourself, the answers will naturally be relevant  for the whole world.

If quality of Vision is all that great, and there does seem to be a very real hunger for it, why isn't there more of it around?

• Living a life of Vision presents challenges and responsibilities that visionless mortals do not have to contend with. Humans are often given to taking the softer options. Every one of us is aware of a disparity between life as we see it, and life as we'd like it to be. Every one of us is challenged at some level or another to transform life as we see it now into life as we envisage it could be. But there is a softer option on offer -- to reduce our vision to fit inside our current reality of "how it is". We are allowed to do that, too. Fortunately, the consequences of the less challenging option are a long way short of satisfying, so there is always the possibility that we might later decide we've made a poor choice and change our mind.
• People with vision often speak a language that flies in the face of "common sense". From a Victim consciousness, for example, much of what they say may sound like non-sense. The truly dis-illusioned may even think they're barmy.
• We may confuse Charisma with Vision. The two qualities are not mutually exclusive, but they do differ in nature, quality and effectiveness. Charisma can inspire; Vision empowers. Problems arise when we expect visionary people to be charismatic (some are; some are not), or when we expect results from charismatic people that charisma alone cannot deliver.
• A lot of people simply do not know they are permitted to have a vision. The admonishments and jibes of their parents, relatives and teachers still echo eerily down the years. They explain the existence of the occasional visionaries by comforting themselves that these people are somehow "special". That, too, is a lie. There is no test of "worthiness" for Vision; it is freely available to everyone, even the brain-damaged. This ignorance of possibility would explain why so many look for "visionary leaders", surrogates and saviours to have visions for them. I counter with the possibility that, by the very fact of being human, each of us has a responsibility to align himself with creation and, willingly and consciously.create a vision and a life on purpose. A life of passivity is a waste of opportunity. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's no great virtue either.
• There is very little space given, either "in here" or "out there", to Vision. At times it is mistaken for something else, or actively discouraged. If that has been your experience, the space might have to be re-created. We might also have to be aware of the workings of Vision in ourselves before we can re-cognise them in anyone or anything else.
• Very few people actually exist in the possibility that life, at least in part, can be about what we want. It is my contention that life is very much about what we focus on. When we focus on what we want, we tend to get it. When we focus on what we DON'T want, we tend to get that instead.
• With Vision comes a Responsibility to do something with it. Perhaps people baulk at what they see as the domination of an onerous commitment. In a desperate bid  for Freedom, they reject, or fail to recognise the Escape Hatch of Responsibility through which freedom is actually accessed.
• There is also a responsibility to share Vision around. Vision always involves alignment with the rest of creation. There is no vision in individualistic Me-ness. Vision turned inwards sours the soul and turns to poison. That is not the fault of Vision itself.
• When we see the disparity between our Vision and current reality, that disparity creates a tension that might be uncomfortable to tolerate. It sometimes takes boldness and trust to nurture a vision. It helps to remember that Vision itself offers enough motivation, inspiration and energy required to overcome a timid mind  and dissolve the disparity.
• The blessing of Vision is bestowed. By its very nature, the vision is greater than the ego of the visualiser. But even good and well-meaning people mistakenly introject their vision (ie. let their egos "own" it) and thus dis-empower it.

Life is no less challenging for someone living in a Vision. But the nature of the challenges could hardly be more different. In vision, they are invigorating. On the other hand, the challenges of living without something larger to grow into are depressing and depleting.

Vision, as a quality of energy, is pretty much the same the world over. We give individual Visions different labels -- eg. Clean Up Australia, The World Hunger Project, Band Aid, Lifeline, The War on Terror, Holy Jihad etc. Outside of individual ego, no one example of Vision is any more or less important or valid than another. But the labels give focus to the activity and to the kind of people, values, principles and practices that will be drawn together by it. Participating in The World Hunger Project is a very different experience to participating in The War on Terror, and so are the type of people you are likely to meet and the events you're likely to experience.. How you judge the relative values of each depends entirely on your individual conditioning, values and perspective. But Vision is Vision. [You may feel very challenged at this moment to avoid getting sucked into snap judgments of what I've just said and feel an irresistible urge to play the "Right/Wrong"Game. If so, note it with interest as part of your journey of self-discovery]

Any problems that arise are due, at least in part, to the fact that many people who crawl under someone else's vision for cover have not bothered to create their own vision, or at the very least, to commit to a shared vision. They have, instead, adopted someone else's vision and turned it into a protective Position that they can feel good and right about. Well, Position creates Opposition, and will ultimately neuter and destroy itself. Meanwhile, the original vision is in danger of contracting and becoming tainted and polluted. Creative Vision feels neither right nor wrong: it allows ego, and is above ego, and too grand to succumb to the tyranny of petty notions.

Vision is vision -- a state of being in the world unbounded by considerations of impossibility, lack, undeservingness or IOU  Everything outside of Vision is just a  point of view, a bunch of opinions and beliefs that cloud, contract and obscure the purity of the process. When we recognise, acknowledge and share our own Visions, our lives automatically become about creating. Visions arising from our divine nature are naturally expansive and evolutionary.

Make a Declaration of Common, Aligned Vision that answers the question --

Without consideration, what do I truly want?

When you are in your Vision, you are not on a Position. You are both right and wrong; and neither right nor wrong. You live your Vision because it is the best expression of both your divine and your secular natures. When you are in Vision, you speak out of a commonly shared experience for the whole of mankind.

When you feel righteous, you are on a Position, and have lost touch with Vision.

In Vision. everything that enters that space expands it. In vision, differences contribute to create a greater reality.

When we recognise and acknowledge our Vision of some aspect of the human experience as it could be, we operate in a context that encapsulates and hallows the work we do within it.

THE MEANING OF LIFE

What is the purpose of the whole play of existence?

Mind decides that meaning is found in the end. Where am I going? What do I hope to achieve by doing this? Where is the world going? What will happen next?

A sage named Sosan declared that, if there is meaning, it must lie at the beginning. The beginning is the end in potential; the end is the beginning, realised. Meaning may not be apparent right now, probably because we are looking everywhere but here and now. Meaning is inherent, he proposes, in the developing seed. Therefore, we do not have to wait until the end to understand. The mystery can be penetrated because here it is. The past has happened and it is here right now, carrying with it the flowering germ of meaning that gave rise to it.

We carry in us the seeds of all meaning and of all possibilities. There is no need to wait. While we wait with our gaze fixed on the future, the seed flowers at our feet and we miss it. Even if we look down at our feet, we don't recognise it because it doesn't look as we expect it to. The mistake is ours. Seeing and recognising the flower does not depend on the flower; it depends on us, and where we focus our gaze. While ever we wait for meaning to manifest itself some time in the imagined future, the present appears to be meaningless.

In Mind's eyes, it is absurd to look for meaning in either the beginning or the now, because Mind dwells on how it thinks the future ought to become, and moves and works through desire. Motivation, like a carrot on a stick, has to be somewhere out in front of the donkey. Mind seeks the meaning of Life in eventual Death. No wonder we bought the ideas of resurrection, reincarnation, heaven and hell. Ego cannot believe it is going to die.

The problem I have with the future is that it never arrives. As I write this, "today" is Thursday.When Friday finally comes, it will no longer be "tomorrow", it will be "today". Fridays tomorrow'(Saturday) will still be just as far out of reach. Tomorrow is an imagined fiction, an illusion harbouring hope and dread. It appears as if it is coming and it never does. There is no substance, flavour or aroma to it. Like the horizon, it is coming continually and never here. The future always remains un-arrived.

Waiting, waiting and waiting -- for the kettle to boil or for The Messiah -- we feel meaningless, impatient, despairing and trapped in a rut. The only solution seems to be to suicide.

Why wait for life to end? There is every chance that, in death -- the death of consciousness -- we will miss it anyway. That would be the cosmic joke of all time, but with no-one to laugh at it.

Is there another way of looking so that we can penetrate the seed now? While we can still get the joke? Is there another way of looking into it? Try this for yourself ..........

We belong to this existence. It preceded us and we arose out of it. The blueprint of existence is in every cell of our body, every thought that crosses our mind, and every feeling that washes over us. Existence in every moment now/here is fulfilling some part of its destiny through you and through me. My suggestion is to quit resisting it and, instead, engage with it. Get into a deep and intimate friendship with the whole of existence. You may find that what you've been looking and waiting for out there is already in you, waiting for you to notice it. Give up chasing shadows and dreams. Step into the shade and sit down. Meaning is flowering already. So are your deepest desires, especially the ones you have forgotten about. They have always been here. But we all listened to ideas about what Meaning should look like. Old ideas. Out-of-date ideas. Ideas irrelevant to you and your existence. Ideas about anything block our access to that thing.

What have you been waiting for? Meaning is here, now, waiting for you to "get it". What you crane your neck so painfully to see coming is standing right in front of you. Your mind might object "Nah, that ain't it!" Take no notice. Whatever it looks like, enter whatever is in front of you; the door is open to you, and the journey beyond that will open up to you in due time. It always has: it always will. You can trust that.

The blessings and graces of life wait patiently for us to stop peering into the future and come back to the present. We have been distracted, engaged and occupied in other things while we waited for that which is already here.

Give What-Is your attention.

Turn and see.

FEAR

"A life lived in fear is a life half-lived."

Fear is an irrational, primitive, elevated state of emotional arousal that seems to be a fact of life. It is governed by the amygdala and the limbic system, that part of our brain that was the earliest to evolve And it is not confined to humans. It is an almost universal alert system that gets our pulses racing to pump hormones and energy to all parts of our system, fueling the freeze, fight or flight mechanisms that, at a very primitive level, keep us alive. In Fear we are in Survival mode, the most basic of all levels of consciousness.

Fear is a Claytons form of engaging with life -- the kind of engagement you're having when there's something else you desperately don't want to engage with. It is a negative substitute for engaging creatively with what's in your face. Fear is creative, but its creations include isolation, separation, disengagement, and all manner of physical and emotional diseases.

We jump at shadows. We can manage to feel threatened by even the most imaginary and innocuous things. All at once we feel a cocktail of emotions that may include insecurity, fright, anxiety, superiority, inferiority, outrage, insult, self-importance, self-consciousness, self-righteousness, guilt, rage ....... it's all fear.

While we are living in fear, we are locked into a very primitive stimulus/ response existence, defending something we fear we might lose. Because Fear is entered emotionally, we are not likely to have much success trying to reason/rationalise our way out of it. But in the less hectic times when our level of emotional arousal may have abated for a few moments, a possibly enlightening line of self-enquiry might be "What am I afraid of losing here?" "What am I attached to here that I find myself to be so anxious about?"

Fear is a negative attachment to something we identify our self with, and Attachment is the chief cause of all manner of suffering. Any attachment, even to altruistic values like integrity, love, service and sacrifice, means we are not free. There is nothing noble about high-mindedness rooted in fear.

Fear gives rise to most of our actions. It comes to us in the feeling form of every negative emotion known to mankind.... including anger, jealousy, prejudice and guilt. Fear lurks behind the need to bully, manipulate, cajole, dominate and control. Fear hides inside the compulsive overkill of effusive friendliness and niceness. As we are with others in times of stress, so we are with what we fear from within.

Because we fear from others the very rejection we have meted out to ourselves, we're reluctant to give a true and whole picture of ourselves to others. We pretend. We hide behind masks. We fake honesty, reliability, integrity and spend enormous amounts of energy and mental sweat keeping the facades in place. Then we get outraged when others do to us, seemingly shamelessly, what we would "never"do to them!

Anything we see to be a source of our fear, we attack, and every attack intensifies our fear. You can almost pick it up on CB in Alaska! Fear attracts fearsome events, characters and consequences.

What does fear attract into your life? Now there's a question worth spending time in!

Fear is the polar opposite of love: the two go together. Little wonder we find it so hard to experience the love we have for one another when we are so wary of each other.

Why?

What is it about the "other" that is so daunting? Let's begin with the unacknowledged bogeymen from within our hidden selves that we project onto others. We pin feared and rejected aspects of our selves onto people we don't like: it momentarily helps us to feel better about what's left of ourselves.

There is also our fear of Judgment -- both of judging and of being judged.  Many of us fear the judgment of others because we think -- a) that others are thinking about us all of the time and judging us as mercilessly as we judge ourselves; and b) we need the approval of significant others  to survive. And we fear our judgments of others because, deep down, we know who is really being judged and that we are inexorably becoming what we judge. We all expect to be judged, whether by others now, or by God some time around 4pm on the day of Armageddon. We cannot imagine God and others not judging us! Because we are doing it to ourselves and we can hardly remember a time when we were not evaluating and criticising our self.

It is all our own creation.

Can life be lived without fear? I doubt it, but maybe there are some for whom fear has ceased to exist. But for the rest of us for whom fear is a reality, here's my suggestion. Say "Yes" to your fears. They will then do one of two things; either they will disappear, or they won't. If they disappear, say "Yes"to their disappearance. If they do not disappear, say "Yes"to their non-disappearance.

Fear may well be the price and the spice of being alive. Otherwise, would it be such an adventure?

WORRY

Worry is a compulsive preoccupation of a mind without trust. Worry is an anxious mind's way of polluting the present by dredging up some imagined future nightmare fantasy, obscuring the perfect reality of here-and-now. Fueled by Fear, Worry fulfills its own prophecies by creating a false present from which to move into the next moment

Worry is the result of a gross misuse of two divinely inspired human abilities -- to predict possible outcomes, and to create whatever we give our attention to. The human mind cannot tell the difference between something vividly imagined and something that is real. We catastrophise, in order to prepare ourselves for a worst-case scenario we are certain will come. And we get to be right.

Worry is a synthetic substitute for a natural concern we never gave ourself the chance to experience or express. We worry to ennoble ourselves, but we succeed only in degrading our possibilities. Worry is a phony virtue. It takes us out of a real experience of what-is and paralyses our possibilities.

It is the action of a frightened mind in the deepest dark of its own shadow.

Oh, how we love to scare ourselves to death!

TO CHOOSE AND NOT TO CHOOSE

Now we come an even broader paradox......

When we wail woefully that we have "no choice", we can choose at least whether to accept that reality or resist it. And we now know the probable consequences of each choice. If we find our strident ego resisting and refusing to take direction from from our higher self, then we must choose "no choice" to be the way that it is. Any decision to Choose What-Is breaks its victimising stranglehold and hands power back to the Chooser.

But once we are back in the driver's seat, there must eventually come an end, too. to choosing It is an effective tactic for initiating a break for freedom, but it must be temporary only, because the very act of choosing creates divisiveness and incompletion by saying "Yes"to one thing and "No"to another. That, too, must be abandoned before it becomes yet another barrier to transforming our experience.

When we choose to accept or reject anything, we create countering ideas, opinions, principles and prejudices that colour everything and obscure the perfection of its entire nature.

A perfect mirror simply reflects accurately everything that comes before it. A mirror does not judge or select. There is no editing or choosing.

When our eyes have no mind behind -- intervening -- they simply mirror. There is no appreciation or condemnation, only the acceptance and knowing of the whole of what can be seen. Then everything is as clear as can be and we are enlightened. Living becomes a mystery to be enjoyed, a dance to be danced, a game to be played whole-heartedly. We are no longer in any conflict with any part of it.

There is nothing to be dropped, or let go of. I have found myself unable to drop or let go of anything that is incomplete or split; it comes back to be completed and re-united. Only the whole, when it is complete, can be let go. But that is then no longer necessary: the perfect and complete automatically drops itself.

There is nothing to do. No bliss to be attained. Bliss is here, obscured only by a doing of accepting or rejecting. There is nothing to be done. Nothing to be earned. Nothing to be chosen -- not even to choose not-choosing. When you give up the choosing and the not-choosing, bliss showers itself upon you.

Simply see it all, and in the next moment add whatever comes then, too.

Allow

And embrace.

LIVING IN A STATE OF COMPLETENESS

Worry looks ahead -- negatively

Sorry looks backwards -- negatively

Completeness looks only at Here/Now -- gratefully.

Ahhh! The blessed relief of completing something over which you have been sweating hard and long!! You cease efforting, lean back, take a deep breather, relax a little, maybe stand up and stretch tired and cramped muscles. You might take a little walk to get sluggish circulation going again, and celebrate your self with a refreshing drink. Your mind puts down its load. You feel re-created, lighter, freer and more alive. You feel a restorative sense of accomplishment, satisfaction and renewal. The harder the task has been, the more intensely you feel the relief of Completing. Completing feels good!!

So why don't we do it more often? Maybe because we don't realise the opportunities that are available for completing. We spend so much of our thinking time either mired in the past, or wrestling with an imagined future that we miss the bliss of simply being - complete - in the present moment, where everything is perfect.

I notice this particularly with callers who ring in the small hours of the morning suffering from Insomnia. They simply have not been able to draw a line under the day before going to bed, thus missing out on the restorative powers of healthy sleep. In deep sleep, our conscious minds take a much-needed rest, giving our subconscious minds time and space to catch up on the pile in the in-tray, and work on unresolved problems in the background -- sorting out confusion, untying knots and dissolving tension and hardness. When we deprive ourselves of that time of re-creation, each new day begins with a backlog of unsorted stuff from yesterday, increasing the load and lowering our spirit before we even get up. Weary and uptight, we get upset and disheartened, adding to the load we carry for the day. Take a few years of that downward spiral of rising uncompleted business and gathering anxiety and we may find ourself in a condition we label "depression".

In healthy sleep we are able to bypass what I call "The Horizon Effect" that often afflicts our waking moments. We are all familiar with the feeling of striving for some particular goal, only to find that, like the horizon, it always seems just as far away and out of reach, no matter how hard we go at it. In REM sleep we suffer no such limitations.

The key to being able to return to this healthy re-processing state is to reconnect with our ability to Complete. Notice how carefully I choose my words here; the ability to complete is something we already have. All we need do is reconnect with it.

Every moment, unadorned, is complete just as it is. What gets in the way of our seeing that is our mind. Mind cannot be in the present; the present is a state of No-Mind. By the time mind has noticed anything and started to evaluate it, it is no longer alive. It is a dead thing of the past.

Mind is OK for an occasional visit, but to camp there permanently is a waste of Now-time, and a health hazard. Mind is a right-saying machine for superimposing its own favourite ideas, concepts, conditions, expectations and limitations onto something that has piqued its attention. Your Mind and mine even have their favourite concepts of what Completion should look, sound and feel like. But those concepts are not based on any knowledge: Mind has never known completion because it has never been here/now. Pure awareness, however, has never been anywhere else. Any time we want to experience completeness, all we need do is give our attention to something -- it doesn't matter what -- here and now. Just notice something; it doesn't matter what. The act of noticing brings you to the present. Then move on to notice something else before Mind can jump in and start thinking about what you've noticed.

In the Now moment, Completeness is a fact. The fact of Completeness and the feeling of Completeness are not interdependent. Whether or not we FEEL complete, everything is always and ever Complete and Perfect. All we need do is hook into that.

Every Now moment marks the beginning of something as yet unrealised, the middle of something else ongoing, and the end of something else again. Always. If we can allow for that, even as a possibility, we need not go searching for what that finished thing might be -- in fact I'd even go so far as to say it's probably a good idea if we don't. To do so we have to leave the Now moment to dredge around the dead past, and if we find what was completed, we automatically un-complete it again. Let go what has gone. Let it go, and let go again, and again, and again........

I see a shade of difference in meaning between Completing and Finishing. Some unfinished tasks can be completed -- in their unfinished state -- at any time, rather like a bookkeeper draws a line under transactions and balances the books up to that point of time: the unfinished process can continue next day, next week, next year. But the moment of completion allows us to take a break and take stock. It allows for a time of renewal within an ongoing enterprise. and it can be done at any time without hindering the process. While as yet unfinished processes roll on, their present state is complete in and of itself.

Completing as a verb is part of an ongoing cosmic process. The universe, and everything within it is a self-completing organism/environment. I think this fact goes a long way to making sense of the fundamental human urge to realise our unfulfilled potential. All suffering arises from the gap between our situation as we see it to be, and how we sense it could be.

Let's assume for a few moments that we may be part of a universal process of all creation continually completing itself. Maybe we realise we've not reached our potential by a long shot, and we're trying to beat the race, without having any clear idea of what our potential might actually be, because we have some very limited ideas about that, too. I'll come back to that in a moment.

If life had a purpose beyond the experience of living itself, I suspect that purpose would be to complete itself. And I see it already doing that.

Completeness is the alignment of all things in perfect balance. It already is; it does not have to be created, found or reached -- only realised. The process of Completing involves taking a moment to see the balance

What is -- is --

"What-Is" is complete in and of itself. If we add anything at all after the great "Is", then we make the completeness incomplete. We are allowed to do that. The creation of an imbalance makes for great adventures and learning experiences. But when we want to rest and get our bearings, we are challenged to let go of the suffering and remember the overriding Balance of it all.

Completeness doesn't have a mould. There is no model for completeness. It cannot be recognised, because it does not look quite like anything that has ever gone before.

In both the past and the future there is always unfinished business. We sometimes dream about a heaven of completeness and go through the hell of striving towards attaining conditions that will supposedly give that to us. ("When I do this or get that, I will be happy.") It never works, because Completeness cannot be manufactured or reached; it can only ever be found in the present moment.

We exist in order to exercise our Mastery, and actualise the deepest desires of our hidden heart. Every time we experience a fundamental desire being satisfied, we realise that, although we have limitations, they are not who we are and we don't have to live inside them. [I have a set of house keys, and I carry them around with me, but they are not who I am. I am the person who has them.] When we truly get the distinction between what we are, and our stuff -- we begin to feel a sense of completeness.

Between Desire and Fulfillment there is usually a boundary. We refuse to experience Fulfillment until we our fixed conditions on what constitutes Fulfillment are met. The problem is that those fixed ideas on what constitutes proof of fulfillment prevent us from getting it. We are caught in the complexity of our addictions to particular outcomes. We are blinded to the possibilities of satisfaction available in other outcomes. The purpose of Desire is to free us from limitations, but we somehow have managed to subvert that purpose to the opposite effect.

How do we free our Desire Nature, and drop being so addictive and complicated about how we want things to be?

Whenever I give attention to the Inner Boss -- that voice that always thinks it knows better, the voice that constantly criticises me, the world and everybody else, I lose the totalness of Completeness that I once used to enjoy as a child. The treasure of Completeness still exists, but it lies long-buried under the rubble and dust of failure and disappointment. Somewhere along the way I bought the oft-repeated notion that there was definitely something wrong with me. I lost contact with my Contented Child and became a Lost Adult, tormented by the stereophonic voices of an equally lost Topdog and a resentful little Underdog -- the two-headed monster of my Ego. I put this never-satisfied, discontented Tyrant/Victim in charge of my life the day I sold out on the Completeness in order to smarten up, grow up, and fix everything that appeared to be wrong with me.

That decision can now be reversed. It is the "how" of regaining completeness and contentment that puts most people off.

The principle is simple:-

The Destination is the Journey

If we want Completeness and Contentment tomorrow, we begin by creating it today. This is the hardest part because it is very much about giving up trying to make my life go however it should be, and learning Mastery -- the art of starting from where I am, allowing life to be as it is and of riding it creatively. However I see myself now, however short of some ideal standard I may feel I fall, moment-by-moment urges to resist it being that way have to be replaced by moment-by-moment choices to unconditionally accept the way I see it. There is nothing wrong. Nothing is missing. In this moment. everything is complete. God that has to be the hardest message for me to get! It is, however, my choice to give up trying to change, and accept the possibility that this is perfect as it is -- a necessary step on the way through my transformation. The challenge is to give up preconceived notions of how I think it ought to be, and get creative with the way it is. Out of this relaxing, other possibilities begin to present themselves.

Most people are concerned about getting a balance right -- how much to give and how much to expect from life. " Am I a sucker?..... a second-chance Charlie? Am I being used? Am I loved enough? Am I being appreciated? Paid enough? I think they are the wrong questions -- red herrings that distract us from the main game. They arise from a parent belief in Scarcity and Limitedness.

I invite you, instead, to stand in three related questions..........

• Am I prepared to be the whole of that which I wanted only a part?
• Am I prepared to say "Yes" to a nature that wants to give us everything? {Don't be too hasty in answering this one. Think of all the things you say "No"to!]
• Am I prepared to give up saying "No" to whatever comes along?

Does your rational mind at this moment have trouble embracing the concept of "having everything"? You're not alone. "No, I'd be happy with $200,000 and a new partner." ....."I'd be happy just to get this problem out of the way." Every mind shrinks Abundance to its particular Level of Acceptance. It constricts our ability to manifest to its own Level of Awareness.

We live in a Scarcity Consciousness, aided and abetted by people, governments and corporations who get very rich and powerful by limiting our access. They can only succeed, however, because we are complicit in the lie. Every mind (including yours and mine) has a Level of Awareness that shrinks both what we think we have got, and what we think we can have. That is what minds do. Minds doubt. Doubts form the main boundaries that enclose us in a narrowed consciousness -- fortifications that we have put into place and must demolish if we are to access the infinite resources that are freely available.

As we expand beyond our mind's doubts and self-limitations we begin to see that Having Everything does not necessarily mean that we win the Jackpot Lottery and we get a mansion on the Gold Coast and 7 Rolls-Royces in the garage.... although that possibility isn't ruled out either. What is guaranteed is that we always have had. now do have, and always will have everything we need in each moment of our particular life journey. Even most of those living on the Gold Coast in opulent luxury don't get to experience that kind of Abundance.

A perception of having everything we need is an expression of completeness and inner freedom.

There are some things I desire which, at my age, I'm rather pleased I'm still capable of desiring. I may not be able to accomplish them, but the desire is joy enough. If I could have got this ability to enjoy desire for its own sake earlier on in life, I'm sure I could have avoided a lot of heartache. When we can enjoy all that we are and have now for its own sake, we touch Completeness. We have everything. In hindsight now I realise that a lot of what I wanted in the old days may have eluded my grasp because I was so hooked on the Desire for it.

Any attachment to a goal, a condition or a particular outcome is a limitation that separates us from the source of the desire. The Desire cannot be completed. It may be gratifying to get what we want, but nothing that is conditional or has conditions hanging off it can be satisfying and complete. To be complete, we must drop all conditions (including the condition that life have no conditions).

We already have something far more precious -- our Self. Anything we emotionally attach to is not What -We-Are. When we attach to our ego, or anything it invests itself in, we lose touch with That-Which-We-Are. We become incomplete.

When we experience ourself truly as someone who accepts everything unconditionally, then we experience ourself as having everything -- complete.

SOME SIGNS & SYMPTOMS OF COMPLETENESS

• An infectious tendency to think and act spontaneously, rather than out of habits. Here's a question for you to stand in -- What is the difference?
• An unmistakable propensity to uncritically enjoy the moment.
• A gradual waning of interest in evaluating or judging situations, events, other people or your self.
• A loss of urge to critically interpret the actions of others.
• A loss of interest in conflict, either as a participant or a spectator. A corresponding reduction in the volume and intensity of in-your-face hostility showing up in other people.
• A loss of propensity for worry.
• Frequent and sometimes overwhelming bouts of appreciation for very simple delights.
• An increasing frequency of feelings of connectedness with others, with your inner self, and with nature. A blurring of the boundaries that formerly separated them.
• Frequent attacks of spontaneous smiling, and occasional gales of hearty laughter provoked by a seeing of the funny side of being human.
• A marked toning down of the hostility, unkindness and resistance that formerly characterised our inner dialogue.
• An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others, whatever form that love might take. This extension of capacity is mirrored by a corresponding urge to pass the love on to others.
• A discovery in experience of Satisfaction, and a decreasing interest in Gratification.

INCOMPLETENESS & DISSATISFACTION

Incompleteness is merely a limited (and limiting) point of view, usually adopted as some kind of goad to whip you into a state of completeness. Such an approach to life is highly unlikely to succeed, because it ignores at least two laws of life that say "Where you come from is where you're going to," and "You will reap what you sow." If you come from Incompleteness and Dissatisfaction, then that's the road you're going, and it won't get you to the Emerald city. The road you take IS the destination. Similarly, changing the metaphor, if you sow thistles, you get thistles come harvest time. It would seem self-evident that it's not a bright idea to court and cultivate the opposite of what we want in order to get what we want, but we all do it to a greater or lesser extent. How come?

One explanation is that we don't know what we want. I may lust after $3 million in blue-chip investments to keep me fed and clothed, a log cabin retreat in the Byron Bay hinterland, a couple of Mercedes -- one for town and one for the bush, and a Winnebago motor home to get around the country. There's no law that says I cannot have them. But they haven't shown up yet, perhaps because they are not what I'm really after; they may be a code for something else. Maybe I'm looking for security, physical comfort, and a bit of adventure. Well all those are available to me right now, if I'm prepared to be a little flexible on how I get them. My main point now is that it really helps if we can boil our desires down to what we really want, give up our ideas about "how", and do the work.

Another reason why I don't have them is that I've allowed myself to be sidetracked by other priorities and spent my money on other things. It's good to know that you have other priorities, to know what they are, and where they fit in the overall hierarchy of your desires.

Yet another reason why my wishlist doesn't show up may be more psycho-illogical. Perhaps I secretly don't want my yearnings to be satisfied because I've become addicted to the yearning. Or maybe in not getting what I want, I hope to manipulate someone either to give me what I want, or feel guilty because they treated me so badly that I've turned out a "failure". Or yet again, I may use feelings of dissatisfaction as proof to myself that "I'm not good enough..." If all of this stuff sounds loony, you may be surprised to learn that the dynamics I speak of apply to a lot more than material wants, and are a lot more common than you may realise. A condition of Incompleteness can be created to control and manipulate someone or something else.

OUR LIMITING BELIEFS

Underlying all feelings of dissatisfaction and incompleteness lie some limiting beliefs that are corrupting all our efforts to live more abundantly. If you want to find out what they are -- it's not hard.Here's one DIY exercise that works for me.....

The next time you catch yourself getting bent a bit out of shape, or having a wee whine, or feeling sorry for yourself about something or other, grab a piece of paper and ask yourself --

What kind of beliefs would someone have to have

That this would be their experience?

Think about yourself in the third person, as a good friend that you know well. The beliefs can be about anything at all -- about himself, about others, or about the way life is. Whatever occurs to you, no matter how illogical it may seem, jot it down. There cannot be any wrong answers to such a question. Don't censor or evaluate anything on any grounds whatsoever. That is so important. This is a treasure hunt, a process of self-discovery, not a therapy session And don't stop at two or three. Give yourself time. The really important ones often prove to be some way down the list. Aim to have at least 10 on your list: more is better.

Don't force this exercise. Let the "answers" come in their own good time. It's a good idea to leave the question open for several days: have the paper handy to jot down anything that comes to mind. Remain aware of any emotions, images or other memories that come up. Don't do anything with them; just notice them. Nothing is off-limits. Nothing is irrelevant. Nothing is wrong.

When you do finally review your list, it's possible that one or two beliefs may leap off the page at you, or encompass some of the others. Just notice that much. These may well turn out to be Controlling or Organising Beliefs that define and limit you and your life in some way. See whatever you see. Notice whatever you notice. Feel whatever you feel. And allow everything to be the way that it is. Nothing needs to be changed. Nothing needs to be fixed. As each new thing comes to light, allow it to take it's place in the Completeness of everything. Let it fill out the picture. Nature wants you to be and to have everything. Yes -- every thing! It's the things you say "No" to that clog up the works for you. The problem is that we arrogantly think we know best what is good for us. If there is anything we are saying "No" to, then Completeness is going to elude us. Nature indulgently smiles, shrugs her shoulders and takes her goodies elsewhere, where they're appreciated.

Being complete is, first and foremost, a matter of consciousness. Whether or not it happens in reality is, in a sense, irrelevant. Of course I'd rather be money-rich than poor, but there is never and end to it. There is never "enough" for the human ego. On the false promise that it will let you feel better when it gets what it wants, ego always wants more of something. The trick is to be OK that it is that way. We will never feel satisfied and complete with getting everything until we first learn to feel satisfied and complete with what we've got. The irony is that, when we're complete with what we've got, getting or not-getting more is no longer a matter of any great concern. In my travels around the world I have seen people well endowed with this world's goods who are happy, and those who are suffering. Likewise, I have seen people with nothing to speak of who are happy, and those who suffer. In my own life I have been both rich and poor. How happy and complete I feel has ever had anything whatever to do with my physical, financial or social circumstances.

YOU -- CREATOR!!

How many of You are there?

In every role you play, you display a differing mix of qualities, characteristics and impressions. You are not one person: you are many. There is You --

• As Husband/Wife
• As Parent
• As Child/Son/Daughter
• As your career role
• As your social roles
• As Friend..........

...... and so it goes. In every one of the roles you play, you have a distinct identity that you have invested a lot of your time and energy in creating, modifying and maintaining. Each identity defines your self-image, your cache of formative experiences, your hierarchy of values and your behaviour while you are engaged in it. Switching from role to role, you relate to those around you quite differently. You are a creative actor, adopting a range of characters and improvising. You can switch between your creations with remarkable rapidity -- in a split second if needs be -- but you cannot play two roles at once (only God can do that).

At one level of consciousness, these roles are real. At times of great stress, they could not feel more real! At another level of awareness, however, they are fictitious fantasies -- superstitions. Their power over us lies in the extent to which we believe them to be real.

At this heightened level of awareness there are no "you's", there are no "me's", there aren't even any "us's"; there is only One. The One that is All. The totality of all living experiences is having the experience of being both "you" and "me". In this realisation lies our power, the power to heal the dis-eases of separation, the power to access all that is known, the power to master (not control) our own destiny, the power to make a difference. The realisation of this Oneness can be accessed by unconditionally embracing all of the "Me's" that we think we are. The choice to adopt a state of unconditional, forgiving lovingness leads to a space of being where all that is left to us is to surrender to being just as we are, and just as it is. That is Completeness in action. In this final resting place is where new life begins.

You are, among all those other things, the sole Creator of your experience.

Sit for a moment with that........

Now sit with this possibility........ Your individual role on this earth is to manifest certain desires and experiences that are available from the smorgasboord of being human at this time. Which desires? Which experiences? The ones you have. No need to go looking for alternatives; these are the ones you came for. Why do you avoid what you came for? What you're looking for lies within the challenges that confront you. You are already attaining what you came here for. Everything you created is happening. Everything you need next is available. What is stopping you? Some voice inside you that cries "No. not this!" It is a false voice. Don't be discouraged; even Jesus Christ had trouble with it. Trust the process that has got you this far. It will not abandon you.

When you surrender to What-Is, your perception of yourself as Creator expands until you realise that all your best lessons in the past came from troubled times that you willingly engaged with, and everything you needed at the time was available to you precisely when you needed it. That will always be so, provided you are willing. This realisation leads to a perception of complete perfection.

You have complete free will. All possibilities are open to you. No power is greater than your true Self. These things are so. But you can keep telling your self those truisms until you're blue in the face; it won't make them so in your experience. Such verbal affirmations just pump up bubbles in your deflating ego. they have no lasting substance. Free will, infinite possibility, dominion and completeness only show up in a level of being beyond ego, where you shift your point of view and choose to allow the present to reveal itself to you differently.

We can begin this shift by surrendering creatively to the present, acknowledging that it is the way that it is, and our perceptions of it are the way that they are, and by embracing the possibility that, as uncomfortable as it might be, there is something vital to be gained from it, and it is needed for the growth that we desire. It is perfect that it is this way. Life is working for us.

We have tried conquering the undesirable. We have tried engineering for success. And we have come a cropper, thanks to hidden beliefs and mindsets that now call to be brought out into the light (ie. "enlightened")

There is work to be done. For example, I am financially poor. If someone gives me money, I can pay my bills, but I will not automatically be released from the conditioned mindsets that created my fiscal poverty. If, however, I come by the money via a process that increases my self-awareness and "enlightens" and motivates me to redefine the dynamics that are holding me back, my experience of poverty is likely to become a thing of the past. As tough or as easy as this process might be, it is perfect in and of itself, perfectly timed, perfectly appropriate and complete in this moment. There is nothing missing. If my current situation is catastrophic, it may be because there are lessons I have been ignoring to the point where it is taking a stick of dynamite to get my attention.

Completeness arises from choosing to embrace what we get when we get it.

Completeness is getting to know who and what you are and making each new discovery OK.

Completeness is saying "Yes" to all that happens in this world, then working effectively with anything that can be worked with, both "out there" and "in here". All transformation begins, oddly enough, with saying "Yes" to everything, even things that are blocking change. When that idea was first proposed to me, I resisted it. "There's something I want to change so I have to say "Yes" to it!!?? That's arrant nonsense! It flies in the face of common sense!" Then I began to look back and realised that my resistance to things had never changed them, or me, one bit! It also occurred to me that, in saying "No" to any part of Abundance, I might be repelling the whole of it. Maybe there was something to this absurdity. I gave it a try. In most cases nothing changed, but my life was somehow transformed around it; I got happier. Then one day I realised that what I had been resisting was no longer my enemy. I don't recall when that particular bogeyman disappeared, but I just noticed one day he wasn't there any more.

I worked out that, in first allowing, then embracing life circumstances I don't like, I transform my experience of them and my relationship to them. Whether the circumstances change or not, changing the quality of my relationship to them means I never have to suffer the same way over them ever again. When we no longer resist, things don't persist.

This ability we have to alter our experience of a given condition is the essence of Mastery and the doorway to Completeness. Whatever is happening, first welcome and choose it.

If you want what you get, you will always get what you want.

Being complete is THE natural state, and far more enjoyable than any of its alternatives. It brings a lightness, a carefree surrender, gratitude and even celebration to your life.

UNITY & WHOLENESS

Anyone who has the tiniest speck of self-awareness is heading, however haltingly, toward a perception of Wholeness and Completeness. I know only too well that sometimes it doesn't feel like that. It can feel as if you are falling apart, and that can be truly scary. At such times it can be very helpful to have someone by your side -- someone who has been where you are -- to reassure you that you are really OK and that the process of dis-integration is actually creative. What's going on is that something that has ceased to work is undergoing a radical transformation. Years of changes, plug-ins and add-ons have produced something of a dog's breakfast that has slowed you down and finally produced a system crash. Your person-ality is being dis-assembled so that it can be re-assembled in a more productive way. Take heart; the process is creative. You are OK. The process knows what to do; you do not need to intervene. Allow what is happening and support yourself with healthy eating, drinking and sleeping regimes. Get supportive help from someone who knows in experience what is happening. Most of the discomfort you are feeling is due to your ego's resistance to the renovations. Resistance to anything ramps up the pain level -- next time you have a flu shot, relax your muscles instead of bracing against the anticipated pain; you'll find it won't be anywhere near as painful. Allow Let it be OK that this is how it is for now. It will pass. And this experience here/now is necessary to get you where you want to go.

To "complete" with any one or situation is to let it be just as it is and give it a deep, unconditional OK, to declare your relationship with that person or event whole -- nothing missing, nothing to be changed. Wholeness and Completeness are interchangeable labels for the same experience.

Wholeness is a state of overall embrace, a deep appreciation of all experience, and a growing sense of pure, unjudgmental awareness. In a state of Wholeness and Completeness, we still see the differences and the possibilities for improvement (unfinished business), but at the same time we see the wholesomeness and perfection of this place along the way of becoming, and of the environment that holds it all together.

I find it difficult to perceive Wholeness when I.m trying to "get better" and "grow". That betrays a lurking implication that the present is incomplete and not-quite-there-yet. That happens when I slip into an old habit of thinking that life is about getting better, gaining more wisdom, more maturity, more calmness..... more anything. I need to remind myself that renovations happen as a consequence of waking up from one state of reality to the next, and the next, and so on. Life is about being reborn every moment from one state of perfection to the next. It's about giving up struggle and aggressive defensiveness in favour of becoming spontaneous and vulnerable. That's hard to do, because we've bought the lie that vulnerability equates with powerlessness. Nothing could be further from the truth. Vulner-ability is a precursor to all transformation, Mastery, beauty and freedom from fear.

How do you feel about this kind of freedom? Is it too much? Is it too scary?

One of the reasons we cannot see the true nature of things as they are is because we have given way to the habit of grasping after things that we like and rejecting things that we don't like. We segregate experiences, reject anything that doesn't fit our particular idea of what's acceptable, and then wonder why we feel split apart. Completeness does not lie at either extreme of a scale; it does not even lie anywhere between. It is the whole scale. The easiest place to access that totality is to find the balance point in the middle, and say "Yes" to both sides. Your mind may go crazy, but you won't die. On the contrary, you may begin to live.

At the entry-level of consciousness, Discrimination is a vital survival tool and part of the experience of being human. But at higher levels of awareness it becomes a liability. How do we live with that dichotomy? Firstly, by NOT discriminating against our need to discriminate. Like everything else we encounter in our life -- "It is just so." We are saints and sinners, higher and lower, roses and thorns. We love and are indifferent. We are both our positive and negative self-image. Life is a mystery and we are part of that mystery. All mystery offers to be embraced and experienced in its totality; not dissected, sorted out and solved.

This may not be the wisest thing I have ever done but, by way of example, I am prompted here to share with you my Positive and Negative Self-Images. This is how I see the "I" and the "Me" I have created myself to be:---

Positively ---

• I am a responsible, allowing, caring courageous, playful adventurer, and an open, innocent, intelligent, gentle explorer.

Negatively ---

• I am an irresponsible, incapable, selfish, addictive, callous, cowardly bully; a closed-off, stupid, narrow-minded, guilty, intolerant bigot; a phony, deluded, head-fucking bore, and an arrogant, controlling, dogmatic, sadistic, style-less, win-by-losing user.

I am all of that. (And those of you who know me will probably be nodding your heads in agreement at some aspects that you have encountered in your experience of me.)

However, every one of the above qualities -- positive and negative -- is a self-imposed judgment, not a fact. But I can no longer afford to resist or avoid any part of it. What I can do is give up the struggle of hiding what I don't like. It no longer matters. I no longer need to know why I am the way that I am. I'm happy to be the riddle -- the mystery, and to experience once again -- this time consciously -- the completeness of it all. Theories, beliefs, attitudes, opinions still crank away, but only as part of a wider truth that has become more important -- the whole of that which is so.

What has happened since I began making my self-image OK is nothing short of a miracle. To the extent that I make my self-judgments (positive and negative) OK, I become free of their hold over me! I no longer HAVE to be that way. Other options present themselves.

We can never get to know the real nature of anything by resisting or attempting to avoid any part of it. Now some people can be quite happy with a reduced existence, and there is nothing wrong with that. I once said to my mother -- not long before she died, "There were too many unanswered questions in the life you proposed for me." She replied, "You father and I had no need to ask those questions." And that worked for her, and for many like her. She was as happy as she wanted to be, and I decided there and then that I had no right to interfere with that. But for me.......... it was a different story. I wanted to know more. I was just compulsively curious. (And for quite a time I believed that there was some kind of salvation in suffering -- silly me!)

In a state of Completeness, what we behold in all directions is our own awareness. Creation becomes a mirror, showing us to our selves.

A world suffused with your awareness becomes indescribably intimate to you. Without stretching out a hand you can feel the texture and smell the aroma of a distant object. Touching a tree or a star becomes a sensuous experience. Since everything in creation is basically thought-organised, there is nothing in creation that is not your Self. You, me, and the tree outside are all of the same Thought. Just organised a little differently, that's all. Just ask any geneticist.

If I may use an analogy --

Imagine an Antarctic explorer brewing a billy of tea. He is surrounded by many manifestations of the one thing -- H2O. There is the water in the billy, the steam rising from it, the snow underneath, the ice below that again, the ocean on the horizon, the clouds drifting above...... Each has its own special characteristic and ways of behaving --- soft, hard, hot, cold, light, heavy, blue, white, clear, visible, invisible, fluid, gaseous, solid, flowing, floating, moving, inert...... these are all different manifestations of one basic substance -- H2O. Because of what he knows, the explorer can manipulate some of these forms into others. By applying a bit of heat he can make ice into water, water into steam, steam into vapour clouds......

The State of Completeness and Unity goes one better. And this is the kernel of my message here. Any aspect of reality can be strengthened or changed, by playing with the fundamental level of Awareness that ties all of creation together -- Pure Thought. In a single, breathtaking stroke you realise that, by changing your consciousness and knowing that the world is made of the same stuff as your mind, your world changes when you change your mind. Experiences evolve from the level of conscious thought that gave rise to them. Low-level consciousness = low-level experiences. Higher-level consciousness > Higher-level experiences.

From this heightened state of awareness we can see that there is no longer a "pathway" to anything. There is no need of it. "The Path" is a creation of our ego/mind; the one that separates and creates boundaries between "here" and "there", "you" and "me". To this ego, a path is always sought to connect what it has separated. There is no pathway to what you want because it is already here, at the subtle level where Self sees Itself. The Self I speak of here is the pure, silent Awareness that watches with detached interest all that is going on in and around each of us. The relationship between Me and That-Which-I-Am is far too close to leave any room for a path. The apparent separation disappears when we say "Yes" to the whole of it.

Say "Yes"". Could it get any simpler? Could it be any more difficult? For over four decades I came from presumptions that proved in daily practice to be decidedly shaky, convincing myself that "Oh well, one day this will work." It took calamity to make me realise, "This isn't working!" Only then did people show up in my life who challenged me to drop some of my pet assumptions and, without prior proof, try some new ones. I now challenge you to try another presumption. not because it is "right", but because it may give you a different outlook, a different viewpoint, a different perspective. Try this.......

Presume that the experiences you are having right now, and your relationship to those experiences (ie. how you think, feel about and react to them) ARE the very truth of yourself. A friend of mine with whom I travelled for a while once said, "You know, when I started on this I thought I'd become a better person." I think he nailed it. This isn't about becoming a better person. We have tried to become better, faster and smarter. That produced small, incremental benefits, but nothing in the way of the major shift we were looking for.

Presume instead that Change is not the way to transformation, and start door-knocking right there.

Being complete does not have a template. There is no pre-existing model for it. My present experience IS what it means to be Complete -- for me -- at this moment. Your present experience -- whatever it is -- no matter how valid or invalid -- is what Being Complete means for you at this moment. Our experiences are the answers to questions we may not remember having asked. Say "Yes" to that possibility and start from here/now.

Being Complete is not something to think or do. It is about stopping thinking and doing out of a consciousness of "incompleteness"; letting go of a habit of trying to make up for some supposed defects in the current situation. Completeness is the potential or state of being in which we think, feel and do whatever we think, feel and do without remonstration or sense of lack. Completeness is a state of being characterised by a lack of incompleteness. Even feelings of incompleteness, if that is what you have, are allowed to complete that experience.

Completeness is not something to be learned; it is what we become. We forge a connection with all that is in such intimacy that It's breath is our breath; It's life is our life. We are many, and we are One.

Just let go of the need to change something. I know that is the opposite of what appears to be common sense. It is. That's the whole point. If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you've got. Just stop. Put down your sword and shield, and take a break.

Yearning to be complete leaves us ......... yearning to be complete. We crave evidence of our completeness, and go looking for it from incomplete others and from our incomplete interpretation of our circumstances. Yearning for anything separates us from a state where it already exists. We ARE complete. Yearning may get us started on a journey of discovery, but it must be dropped. Otherwise we run in tight little circles around the starting line.

Completeness is a realisation life bestows on us as we dare to live closer and closer to the unknown in each moment. We willingly deliver ourselves up to an experience, demand-free. This is where we welcome, and are content to let be, all mystery, contradiction and paradox. Those riddles invite us deeper and deeper into what is unknown. This is the Great Gift of being human.

Every time we come to the immediacy of Now, the being of Completeness comes to us as a benediction.

CREATING THE SHIFT IN AWARENESS

How do we set up for the shift in awareness that brings about Completeness, Freedom and Power?

1. Let your Desires flow freely. Don't let them get snagged on yearning or doubt.
2. As much as you can, live contentedly in the present moment. Keep coming back to Now every time you notice you've strayed into the past or the future. Don't chide yourself for that. Some habits take time to replace with new ones. That's just the way it is sometimes. Let that be so, too.
3. When things don't go as you think they should, let go the "shoulds". Let What-Is take precedence over What-Isn't.
4. Relinquish any attachment to particular results.

The only real obstacle to freedom is our enslavement to ideas that keep us small, incomplete, insignificant and helpless. Every consciousness (Victim or Master) fulfills its own expectations. That is Law. Ignorance of Ruthless Rules of Reality like this one does not vaccinate you from their influence. You may not know about Newton's Law of Gravity, but that isn't going to protect you if you jump off a roof. You may not know Einstein's Theory of Relativity, but that isn't going to affect the speed at which light finds you. If you are ignorant of the whole nature of your Self, then a false self jumps into the CEO's chair and shrinks you to its ideas and beliefs about yourself. We all know that one!

We have resisted and denied suffering in the past in order to avoid it. Right? Well, how well has that worked for you? Me neither. For any person engaged in strong denials of pain, anger, fear, guilt etc. there awaits only more pain, anger, fear, guilt etc. (Another Ruthless Rule of Reality -- "Whatever you resist -- persists.") Any move we make to avoid pain will hurt. Every move we make to avoid anger will annoy. Any move we make to avoid danger will expose us to calamity. It seems we just can't get enough of what we don't want! Maybe it's time to examine presumptions we may have around avoiding, resisting and denying. Maybe there's something there we got wrong. Ignorance is the most circular of all circular traps.

Awareness, on the other hand, is the source of all healing. It's that simple. Be aware. As Colin Hayes often said -- "The seeing is the movement." Become aware, and be honest about your awareness. Inner Awareness is "I am" without the "I", a sense of "am-ness" that no-one and no-thing can sacrifice or destroy. This seed of "being-ness", beyond language, beyond thinking, beyond feeling deep inside is something we all have. We just don't go there very often. And that's a great pity, because it is truly who we are. And it is the genesis of all evolution.

1. Let Desire Flow Freely

Electricity isn't intrinsically good or bad, but we can do some pretty constructive and destructive things with it. Of itself Desire isn't either good or bad either. At my age there are some desires I'm very satisfied to still have, whether they get gratified or not! I don't claim any moral superiority for this lucky happenstance; I can thank advancing years, diabetes and depression for some help here. What I can see in hindsight is that an insistence on getting my Desires gratified lured me into a number of addictive traps, which could then make Desire my enemy. Desire becomes subverted when we allow it to take control.

A Desire for more out of life is perfectly natural, and a useful catalyst for growth . When our desires match up with real needs, we get a sense that, if desire is what we have right now, then desire is what we need. That's it. Desire for its own sake. Stripped of all complexities, pure desire is nothing more than an expansion of some real need. An addiction is a distorted substitute for a real, legitimate need (how's that for an understatement?)

Desires arise so that we can learn more about the nature of our true selves (true and false selves). Since our true Self is totally free, unbounded, fulfilled and blissful, natural desires move in that direction. All our squirming, hurting, conniving, hiding and hollering to avoid our experience of What-Is arises initially from a natural desire to be totally free. But we get scared that we won't be able to handle that experience, and addictive about avoiding the inherent lesson and the whole process gets bent out of shape. So, instead of freely letting our Desire to be Free run unimpeded by any necessity to do something about it, we get involved in trying to make something happen. We look outside ourselves rather than within. We avoid and manipulate instead of engage and embrace the feelings. In order to be free, we un-free ourselves.

Our conscious desires are often codes for something unconscious. I'd love an E-Class Mercedes Cabriolet. But is that really my primary desire, or will it become the Merc's job to deliver me something even closer to my nature? If I get one, what do I think it would it bring me that I don't feel I have enough of now? Convenient transport? Comfort? Style? Self-esteem? A feeling of safety? Prestige? Maybe these latter qualities are calling for attention. If I decide that an E-Class Merc is the ONLY way I will get them, and I won't get them UNTIL I have the Merc in the driveway, what do you think my chances are of being happy right now? Nature doesn't work that way, except sometimes by accident.

Where did we get this notion that the goodies are supposed to come before we can feel good about ourselves? From very early on in our journey, when we discovered that we could get our needs met by withholding our wellbeing. All we had to do to get attention was to cry, and some of us are still doing it decades later, bunging on unhappiness to get happy! Of course it doesn't work, but it seems we can't help ourselves.

The big problem with pegging our self-esteem and feelings of satisfaction onto external things like wealth, health, success, social status, appearance, relationships and intellectual acuity is that these things are on temporary loan and can be taken away from us without warning. What happens to our self esteem then? The effect can be devastating.

Look at how the whole of Nature works. First, assume that a Desire is covering for a basic need, and find out what that is. Then say "Yes" to that need, and surrender to all possibilities for how it might be satisfied. Allow your desires to align, or not align with that workingness. Allow them to align, or not align with your higher, deeper Self. Let your desires flow freely. Put out for what you want and gratefully embrace what you get.

2. Live Happily in the Here and Now (as often as you can).

Completeness is a state of being, a Context that arises spontaneously when we remove all barriers to communion with this moment, when nothing is more important to us than Now. Resentments from the past and fears for the future pale into insignificance when compared to the simple aliveness of Here and Now. This unfettered Here/Now is real: everything else is hearsay and superstition.

While we are living happily with this moment, we are aligning our Desire nature with all of Nature. Desires are coming to us as guidance from our higher being. Respect your desires. Notice any compulsion that may have attached itself. See the Desire, and any Compulsion for Gratification as two separate things, and allow them both to be. Allow gratitude to flow through you for what you have. Allow and let go of any judgment that something "better" should be here for you right now. Until you can comfortably have what you've got, you're unlikely to be given anything else.

Mind-sponsored concerns about the Past and the Future are always incomplete. We can complete WITH them (ie. let them be exactly as they are), but we can only do that in the Now. When we are totally in a Now moment, we are out of mind; therefore there is no possibility of any thought about incompleteness. We are in a state of "never mind."

But there are very few people who can manage such detachment for any length of time. Does that mean the rest of us who get caught up in our mind stuff are doomed? Far from it. Simply acknowledge that you are remembering and forgetting, remembering and forgetting -- and be OK with that. Slipping out of the Now moment is allowed. Is it OK with you that that is so? Good. You are complete. There are no "shoulds" around Completeness.

3. Let Go of Your Shoulds

While we are locked onto any "should", our possibilities from there on are curtailed. When we are satisfied with the way it is, all kinds of new possibilities open up to us.

I know this is the polar opposite of the way most of us were taught the world is -- that change comes about through opposition and resistance, and by huffing and puffing a lot, insisting that things be otherwise. But I look at the last 60,000 years of history and find that, despite all our clever discoveries and gadgets, we're still just as unhappy and insecure as we were when we were living in caves. Maybe it's time to do something different.

Perhaps we could give this a serious trial -- turning towards and embracing both sides of all the paradoxes of life and death, living them all totally as one experience. We could try letting go of control and contraction as means to forcing someone or something to give us what we want, and surrender to a process of Desiring and Allowing What-Is -- Becoming...........

Here, try this on for size..........

The best thing that can happen to me just now is happening right now.

How challenged do you feel by that?

Every experience has a lesson for us. Nothing in this universe is ever lost. If it is hard for you to see that at the moment, remember that part of the condition of being human is that we cannot see the Whole Thing at once. That's just the way it is. We have to move around to different points of view, and check things out a bit at a time. Until you're ready to change your perspective, you'll never see much further possibility at all. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It is reported that the native medicine men of the eastern coast tribes of the New World didn't see the three ships Christopher Columbus arrived in -- they had no conception of "sailing ship" and were blinded by their ignorance. But the ships were there.

Here is another viewpoint you might like to stand on for a while, just to see what you can see from this place ----

• Nature is intrinsically complete, affluent, abundant, unbounded and immortal. We are a part of Nature. There is something about us that has all of these qualities. The reason we don't always experience completeness and all the other goodies is that we don't allow our desires to course joyfully through our awareness, our psychology and our physiology. We spasm and get hung up on Results, because we've bought a belief in Limitedness and Incompleteness, and we've forgotten that, inherent in every desire is the mechanism for its fulfillment. All we have to do is watch how it happens.

4. Relinquish Attachment to Results

To get something new, we may have to let go of something old. First to go might be the naivety and arrogance of Getting There on our own terms.

There is a paradox that must be embraced. The purpose of every Desire is to start a process. Create in your mind's eye the result you want, THEN LET IT GO. If you keep your attention fixed on a particular result, you will miss the Process. Without the process, there will be no satisfactory result. If you remain in the Process, a fulfilling result is guaranteed; a result that is aligned with you deepest desires. Guaranteed.

When life does not seem to be working, it is working. Trust the process. Hang on and go for the ride. This is not a matter for belief; it is a matter of pure Awareness.

Here's a question for you to stand in: Who is the richest person in your neighbourhood? Is that person the one with the most stuff? Or the one with the least needs? You decide.

THE FINITE AND THE INFINITE

We have two dimensions of living in us simoultaneously -- the Finite and the Infinite. We are both. The finite and the infinite are continually matrimonising in us to incarnate New Possibilities. The most mundane, as well as the most intense experiences together lead us to greater aliveness if and when we come to more moments present, aware, available and transparent to whatever is going on.

That which is finite in us is personal, time-bound, always becoming, needs feedback and reward, avoids punishment, and looks for a sense of progress. The Infinite in us is impersonal, not bound by anything, whole and complete, needs no feedback, reward or nourishment from outside of itself (there is no "outside" of itself). The Infinite is complete in itself and perfectly contented to allow the "incomplete" part of our nature to exist unmolested. The incomplete, finite aspect of our nature is always molesting the infinite. The Infinite, like a tolerant, loving parent, watches the Finite and welcomes the experiences -- unfazed and delighted.

In Completeness we touch the Infinite. When we remain aware, alive and available to a now moment (how long is a now moment?), completeness descends upon us. We experience a trust that something very close that lies just beyond our awareness is taking place for our highest good. There is another Knowing that knows what our deepest Desire is. Just be aware that we are being abundantly provided with all that we need from moment to moment.

When we contact our infinite nature, three things happen ---

1. The quality of our desires changes
2. Our desires do get manifested more easily
3. Goodies come to us before we consciously notice our desire for them.

The more often we touch Completeness, our desires become less personal and more universal. We start wanting to help others fulfill their deepest desires. Eventually we reach a point where Nothing -- the Nothing that is Everything --satisfies us. Every desire is enough in and of itself. That is true transformation! We have moved from a space where nothing satisfies us to a space where Nothing/Everything satisfies us. Nothing may have changed, but our perceptions have undergone a radical transformation.

In our Infinite self we already know Completeness, and have known it all along. In that place nothing we have ever desired could be wrong because it comes from the awareness of that completeness. It knows we are not the thinkers; that every thought comes from nature. Every thought and feeling is nature-al. This is the cosmic pole of our awareness.

RHYTHM AND SYNCHRONICITY

When all is complete, we are in tune with Nature in all its forms, for both Becoming and Completeness together are the nature of all creation. Standing against nature provokes stuckness and incompletion -- DIY misery -- the harmonics that add the richness of tone that is human condition.

We get into rhythm and sync with our nature through meditation.

My preferred flavour of meditation is more tantric than yogic. I have tried stretching and twisting my body around like pretzel-dough. I have stood on my head and whirled like a toy top. I still love chanting. They are fine disciplines and offer ways to reach some amazing spaces. If you haven't yet given them a serious try, I urge you to consider it. But I'm lazy, and they are hard work. My meditation is one of awareness. Whatever is happening -- whether I am harmonic chanting or doing the laundry -- I "do" awareness, noticing what is going on in and around me. What's happening in my peripheral vision? What sounds are happening that I've been screening out? What have I been focusing on? What am I now focusing on? Now scan around outside that narrowed field of focus for what I've been missing. Zoom out to wide-angle. See if I can intuit the blankness upon which the holograph of my experience is being projected. Listen for the silence the contains all the chatter; the silence over which the noise of my life is broadcast.

I love the silence particularly. In that silence lie all my desires and possibilities in un-manifested form. I can go there and enjoy them now. No waiting. Out of that deepest of silences emerges a rhythm, a thin interface between my wishes and the pure, absolute consciousness that contains their fulfillment.

To go out and work, earn money and buy what I want is one form of rhythm. For many years it was the only one I knew. It was the one I was taught, and it was played by all the other members of the orchestra that surrounded me. It works, except sometimes. But it is a very cumbersome and clunky way of getting from Desire to Achievement. Working can be a fun thing to do for entertainment, if you don't HAVE to do it to get what you want. Why do you think so many people have hobbies?

Most of us are very familiar with our Finite way of doing life. For the moment I'm going to take a peek at the lesser-known Infinite in each of us, and the possibilities that exist out of that reality.........

An easier way to get our wishes met might be to sit on our behind and ask someone else to do it for us. Let's just drop the automatic judgments that may have arisen just now and acknowledge that, for the sitter at least, it is easier than busting a gut each day. (at least for a while until we have to start paying the price for that kind of inertia). There is a neater, tidier rhythm to that kind of manifestation.

But what if we could go one better and have the experience of Thought and Fulfillment fused into one single process ........... Thoughtful/Fillment? Instant. No need to add water or stir. The desire arises with the fulfillment echoing along. Would that not be the Big Bang of all time?

Tapping in to such full-blown Synchronicity begins each day as we awaken; we already do it. As daytime consciousness returns we habitually boot up the bio-computer between our ears with all of yesterday's stuff. We re-member all our negative self-programming about both the past and the future and, before we even swing our legs over the edge of the bed, we have already manifested pretty much what the rest of this day is going to look and feel like.

Time to do something different. As soon as you reach the required level of awareness, stop. Don't move. Take a moment or three to scan your awarenss and see how you are. Don't try to change that. Let it be as it is. Just tune in. Notice your breathing. Note your feelings. Check out your body internally. How is it with you? Don't judge it against some ideal; let it be just as it is. Tune in to your self and the world around you.

Once you are settled with just that much, gradually widen the field of your awareness. Take in the bedroom and anyone else in it. Then the rest of your abode, then anything coming in from outside. Make it all OK. then gently move your body out into that world, remaining aware of everything you notice. Nothing is missing. Everything is as it is, for now. Perfect. Complete.

You will be amazed when you start doing this, how different your world looks and sounds, and how much a part of it you are.

At the very core of our being there are no concepts, no opinions, no beliefs or "shoulds". These are peripheral artifacts. Your body can function perfectly well without them. They are unnecessary ballast. Barring specific illness, you can trust your heart to beat, your lungs to breathe and your digestive system to digest, all without any interference from you. Why don't we all live our lives like that? Why do we interfere? Our lives were designed to work perfectly well all on their own. All we need to do is get in tune with the perfection of it all and go for the ride of our life.

Life was designed to work, otherwise it would not have lasted this long. Your life IS working, even when it feels otherwise. So is mine. Anything that throws us out-of-tune is costing us heaps, and giving us a bumpy ride. We can tune in to our Complete nature right now. It is there. It has always been there, waiting for us to wake up to its presence. All we have to do is nothing. Stop interfering. Let come what comes; let go what goes.

Even when we stop short of perfect synchronicity, our desires are still being fulfilled, but with a time lag. Whatever we put out for, consciously or unconsciously, will show up. Fear not! You will make it to tomorrow whether or not your desires are gratified today. And if you don't make it though tonight, it won't matter any more, will it? In the meantime, get happy with what you've got. We spend so much time resisting what we've got, we never get to really explore what it offers. If there's anything we are resisting, we are not experiencing it and learning the lesson; we are experiencing resisting it. There's a huge difference, and we cannot graduate to anything else while all that squirming is going on.

Our lives are sustained by a steady growth of fulfillment in a continual stream of Completeness.

When you're grateful for life

Life starts giving you things to be grateful for

Janine Shepherd

The experience of discovering completeness may, on occasion, be a little unsettling. We may sometimes get the sensation of being taken right back to the beginning, suddenly knowing nothing all over again and feeling a little disoriented without our usual props of what we thought we knew to lean on. The resistance to not-knowing comes from the wily mind. Note it as only part of the picture and let it be. When it happens to me, I usually see the funny side of going back to kindergarten again at my age. The laughter takes care of the tentativeness. This feeling of disorientation, seen without the negative overlay of fear and resistance, is the feeling of Newness and Vulnerability -- the kind of Vulnerability that is unassailable. Don't worry; you will get used to it very quickly and soon look forward to it.

In a more meditative state, the heavy traffic of thoughts slows down and thins out to a mere trickle. Those that do waft by cause fewer and smaller ripples than before on the surface of our awareness. We become profoundly less disturbed, and whenever things do get a bit ruffled, we don't get disturbed about it. A thought -- even a desire -- comes and goes in crystal clarity. There comes a point when we realise that the only desires that do call by carry with them the force of their own Intention; they are self-fulfilling, so we let them go by to do their work without interference from us.

Completeness is the space that our soul jumps into, from which it can see the soup of low-level experience we were priorly drowning in. As things stand now, most of the thoughts that pop into our heads aren't actually our own wishes and desires at all . Most of them are more likely to be un-intentional wishful fantasies concerned with release and avoidance of some stressful condition or event, rather than intentional, clear impulses towards what we DO really want. This low-level flotsam drifts in and out of lower-level consciousness. Impelled by our past experience, we latch onto them, blisslessly unaware that, by doing so, we are condemning ourselves to slavery to our past-conditioned reality, condemned to repeat our past experiences over and over again.

Look, this is really simple -- we get what we focus upon. That is Law. When whatever we focus on is a function of what we don't want, what we DON'T want is what we get. It's time to wake up, don't you think?

When we finally learn to assume authorship of our experience moment by moment, we become the Master of our Self. This marks our transformation from slavery to freedom, from incompleteness to completeness. The difference is enormous, but it begins subtly in the domain of our inner awareness.

Rhythm and Completeness are not ploys for getting more money, more prestige, more possessions, more knowledge, more happiness --- more of anything. Both More and Better are small change. Completeness -- no more nor better needed for now -- produces something more radical and revolutionary than change. Transformation.

Specific goals expand, and then limit abundance. The more specific they are, the more limiting they become. Getting into the rhythm of life and completing each moment are about expanding the TOTALITY of consciousness -- at both higher and lower ends of the scale. The limitation comes about when we focus on isolated goals and forget the overriding goal -- the overall evolution of our Self Awareness.

We are already, and are becoming Sovereign Beings, each in our own light. But even the most powerful and masterful sovereign must first ask for something in order to get it. And he must go through the appropriate channels. It's really not very productive to ask for Happiness, Satisfaction and Completeness from the Minister for Worldly Success or the Secretary for War. Those things are fine, but they aren't the main game. Even Kerry Packer found that out before he died.

Each of us owns the totality of universal creation. It's just that, right now, we don't know where to turn to get what we want. We suspect, rightly as it turns out, that it isn't where we've always looked in the past .... somewhere along the road of struggling, striving and manipulating. Efforting seems to produce the Horizon Effect -- no matter how fast we run, what we desire stays elusively just out of our reach.

Every step, every moment along the way is where we will find what we want. Goals are fine and fun to go after, but not at the expense of complete satisfaction with the Now. Being in the present moment with our present desires is the best thing we can possibly do. In fact, it is the only thing we need to do. Everything else is entertainment.

Completeness is not something to hope for; hoping is postponing. If hope is what you've got, then make that OK, too. As often as you remember to, be Complete. Completeness is here and now, ready to suffuse into pure awareness any instant.

Keep your desire turning back within,

And be patient.

Allow the fulfillment to come to you,

Gently resisting the temptation

To chase your dreams out into the world.

Pursue them into the heart

Until they disappear into the Self

And leave them there.

Maharishi

Be simple.

Be kind.

Be all of what you are. Add everything that shows up. Omit nothing. Censor nothing. Withhold nothing. All is complete.

Be content.

Allow your love to nourish yourself as well as others.

Remember, it is sufficient to be quietly alert and aware of your needs, your wants and your desires. Do what you do that best expresses your true nature. In this way way, life is complete, moment by moment. It proceeds naturally, all by itself.

Life is here. Now. Enjoy.

There is nothing missing. All is complete as it is.