TO CONTRADICTIONS, PARADOXES AND MYSTERIES....

Thank you for reminding me that there are some things that I'll never be able to figure out with my mind.

CHANGE THE WORLD

Do you want to change the world in some way?

Good luck!

Already you are opposing something the way that it is,
Creating a "You -v- It" duality.
By so doing, you certainly intensify your sense of "I",
But you also focus on, and empower the very dynamic you want to change.

We've tried Change by Opposing and Imposing......... haven't we?

We've assumed for eons that to be happy,
We have to get the world working our way.
That hasn't worked,
Either for us or for The World.
Perhaps we've got it back-to-front;
Maybe a world that works
Begins with your world working for you,
And my world working for me.

Try this instead ---

Before you attempt to make the rest of The World work the way you think it should,
First get your world working for you.
Fall into the centre of your self
And, from there, take a fresh look at what already is.
Then Create that to be
Exactly as it is
Now.
You can do that, can't you?

If that sounds silly, look again --
Don't we all go around finding things to be unhappy with?
Stumbling across things that aren't "quite right" --
Your partner's mood over breakfast,
The morning traffic,
The weather ----
We spend precious little time actively creating or finding things to be happy about.
And that's a matter for choosing.

All creating begins with Choosing What-Is.
(This is the step we usually skip)

You will never be able to create anything else
Until you can first successfully and comfortably create what-is.
What-is so, for any of us, is whatever we choose to see,
And however we choose to see it.

Whatever you choose to see, however you choose to see it --
That is What-Is for you.
Create it to be this way.

When you're ready
Without attempting in any way to change the reality of how it is
Change your perception of how it is.
See it another way.
For no-one else but yourself
And for no reason other than your own freedom:
Find another perspective on it.

On a crowded commuter train one morning, 3 young children were creating minor mayhem and considerable annoyance amongst the commuters. They were pushing through the throng, thoughtlessly shoving and upsetting people, and inappropriately yelling and squealing at the top of their lungs. Their father was sitting quietly near one of the doors, seemingly oblivious to everything around him and his children's disruptive behaviour. At a station stop, one gentleman could stand it no longer. He called out to the man -- "Hey! Will you please ask your children to behave themselves! They are creating a nuisance!"  Some of the other passengers nodded, one or two muttered "Hear, hear!" The man looked up, and seemed to come back to the present. He called his children to him. Then he addressed the other passengers -- "I apologise," he said huskily. "We have been up all night at the hospital. My wife died this morning, and I guess they're having trouble coming to terms with that. To be honest, so am I."
The carriage fell silent.
Nothing had changed, but something profound had shifted.

When you change your perception of what-is
You change your experience and your reality of what-is.

When enough people change what-is for themselves,
And create that to be so,
What-is changes
Without bloodshed.
I cannot explain how that happens,
But it does.
I have seen it.

A NEW KIND OF FREEDOM

What if.........

What if life is about living in this moment,
Whatever it might be,
Now
Spontaneous and vulnerable.?

What if it's not about Happiness
But about Waking Up?

What if it's not about Winning or Losing
But about Giving Up the struggle?

What if it's not about Success
But about Growing Up?

What if it's not about Competing
But about Creating?

What if it's not about Finding Your Feet
But about Riding the Rapids?

What if it's not about Solving the Problems of life
But about Living the Mysteries?

What if it's not about Growing Wiser and More Mature with age
But about Being Reborn every moment?

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

SIGNPOSTS TO SERENITY

• What is -- is. What ain't -- ain't. When What-is takes precedence over What-ain't, suffering ceases.
• Whatever happens -- happens. How you feel about it is up to you.
• You invested yourself in suffering in order to get some needs met. How's that working for you?
• There's nothing to get and, ultimately, you'll get it.
• Whichever road you take, you'll get to where you're going to.
• When you want what you've got, you'll always get what you want.
• The meaning of life is the process of living every moment itself, whatever that experience is for you.
• The key to Happiness is Gratitude. Ungrateful people are never happy. Grateful people are always happy. Hadn't you noticed?
• Attachment is the only cause of suffering. Resistance is an attachment. Need is an attachemnt. Addiction is an attachment. Whatever it is that's hurting you, whatever it is that you're attached to -- let it go. Nothing is worth this much pain.
• If it isn't joyful, it isn't useful.
• Most people would rather be "right" than happy. Is your righteousness worth what it's costing you?
• Are your resentments worth more than your freedom?
• Where you come from is where you're going to.
• Be yourself; everybody else is already taken
• No matter where you go, you'll always have to take You with you. Get to love what you've created.
• Uncertainty is a good sign of progress. There's no growth or nourishment in certainty.
• Serenity lies down the road of Mystery. Understanding is the booby-prize.
• What we don't know is available if you know how to ask.
• Experience is what we came here for. Which experience? The one you're having, and the ones you refuse to have. Get on with it. Others are waiting.
• There are no mistakes.
• You have every right to be here, and you are. Own the ground you stand on. Claim your space. What you do with the opportunity is up to you.
• You are much more than you think you are. More even than you can imagine. Can a caterpillar imagine itself as a butterfly?
• How you see the world says nothing about the world, but it proclaims loudly the state of your Awareness.
• Life is full of surprising twists and U-turns. Get used to the idea.
• Mastery begins with Acceptance.
• A soft, open hand gathers more goodies than a hard, clenched fist.
• If you continue to do what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always got.
• Love your neighbour. You're looking into a mirror.
• If the teachers are in your face, you're ready for the lesson
• When you're ready for the lesson, the teachers will appear.
• We teach others how to treat us.
• You make yourself feel. No-one else on the planet makes you feel anything without your connivance
• You are the sole creator of your reality.

FEEL INTO ME

Whatever we perceive, we are.

If there is anything we are not,
Then we could not see it (recognise it)
In anyone or anywhere else.
So whatever we recognise -- we are.

Become what you perceive;
Bring it on home where the perception belongs.
Be altogether
Together.

Whatever I see in you, I am.
Whatever you see in me, you are.
Own the reflections.

Just for a moment
Please don't try to communicate with me,
Or ask me to communicate with you.
For that presupposes some difference between us,
That you and I live only on opposite sides of some duality.

But maybe we can be closer than that --
More intimate;
Let's experiement
With Intimacy (Into-Me-See.)
Let's stop talking for a moment,
Let's not even touch.
If the honesty's too much,
We may not even look at each other for a while.

Let's stop communicating.
Let's just be with each other
And enter Communion
With each other and with the space surrounding that holds us both in its embrace.

Gently feel into me;
Feel me open up to you.
Let go into me
And allow me to let go into you.
Let's allow whatever arises to flow and ebb between us,
Without comment,
Unhindered.

Breathe.
Conspire.

This is Trust.

When communicating stops
Communion can begin.

We are one.
When we let-go into each other,
We allow the one-ness
That is.

BLIND ARROGANCE

The blindest arrogance
Is to look at life from one favourite point of view,
Without allowing or exploring any alternatives.
Such arrogance finds it so hard to allow others
To see what they see
And to be as they are.

For the Bigots
There is only One Truth --
The source of all limitation.
They'd rather be right than alive.

OUR MOST LIMITING ADDICTIONS

Pleasure & Gratification

Favourite Emotions

Fulfillment

Control

Growth & Enlightenment

Purpose, Significance & Meaning

Connection

Acceptance By Others

Freedom from Addiction.

Do you notice something?

Most of our addictions can be traced back to basic human needs that have bolted out of perspective.

We have Needs;

We have Desires; 

We have Preferences

But we don't have Addictions.......

Addictions have us.

TAKE WHAT YOU GET.....

There are certain things about ourself that we don't like. Right?
So we emotionally reject our "stuff"
And go searching for something more, something better, and/or something different,
Leaving the old stuff behind,
Buried where we won't have to look at it any longer.
What was it for you?
For me the coffin contained anger, frustration, resentment,
Boredom, jealousy,
Grief, hurt, anxiety and fear.
Quite a pile!

BUT

The journey kept bringing me back full-circle to the gravesite,
To find that some dog had dug it all up while I was away.
There it sat,
And there some of it is still,
Waiting to be integrated with all that I have learned along the way.
It is not until we at least begin to integrate and embrace the old
That enlightenment can possibly occur.

Are you in a job or a relationship that has lost its magic?
Do you want to quit?
Naturally! I can relate with that.
But if you quit while you're disenchanted,
You're just going to go out and create another just like it.

I'm not saying "Don't quit."
Some relationships and situations are toxic
And we need to get away.
But you must earn your exit....
Before you quit
Look at the stuff -- your stuff --
That killed off the magic.
It will be lying around just under your nose.

What is it that you tell yourself is wrong about this relationship, this situation?
What is it that you get to be right about by creating this situation to be the way that it is for you right now?
What are you telling yourself your partner is? Your boss is? The situation is?
What are you telling yourself that You Are?
Whatever is wrong about the way your partner is,
Whatever is wrong about the way your job is,
Whatever is wrong about the way your situation is......
Those are not The Problem;
The problem, for you, is that you don't think you can handle them being that way without getting upset about it.
That's your problem;
And that's all you have to deal with.
Fortunately.
(If your partner, boss or situation has to change for your life to get better, you may be well and truly fucked)

And.....

If you don't clean your stuff up before you quit,
You're going to take it all with you into the next relationship/job/situation.

Have a look at this possibility..........
This relationship,
This job,
This situation that is bugging the crap out of you
Is offering you the insight and the opportunity
To discover the crap you need to clean up.

Who knows?
When you clean up your stuff,
Maybe the situation won't be like you thought it was.
And even if it is,
You can break clean.

And that's the good news.
You might like to look at the possibility of being grateful 
For the opportunity this situation is giving you
To get out of the rut you're in.
No, I haven't lost my marbles --
Gratitude for What-Is, if you can allow it in, is the magic ingredient "X"
That will transform you life!
If you can't find gratitude for the situation just now,
Don't worry;
You can still do it.
But gratitude makes the job so much easier.

CHANGE & EVOLUTION

The weekly shopping is not one of my favourite chores,

Least of all when I get home and, try as I might, cannot add everything into the freezer.

Eventually, I have to empty the whole thing out and start stacking from scratch.

Amazingly, when I've finished, there is ample space left over.

Your Life, whether you feel it's working for you or not,
Is already full to the point of choking.
Cramming in more desirable behaviours and disciplines
May gloss over the dysfunctional mess within,
But ultimately they're also adding to the chaos.

To change the metaphor,
Adding desirable or deleting undesirable characteristics

Does no more to transform life

Than do alterations, or extensions to a house.

Sometimes of course, change is enough;

But there comes a time, after years of modifications,

When the house becomes an architectural and functional nightmare

Of lean-to's, additions and work-arounds.
But we won't let go of it.
We're too emotionally attached to the dysfunctional slum we've created.  

Usually it takes a new owner --
Someone without any sentimental attachment to admit the obvious,

Bulldoze the mess to the ground,

And start over.

So it is with our own lives.

We retain sentimental attachments to parts of our life

That ceased to work for us long ago.

Transformation is called for,

Meaning that we must emotionally detach, empty out and die to old ways of being

And create completely anew.

Look at the process of Evolution.
Change is not the sole feature of evolution.

If gradual change was the only process on offer

We'd still be living in caves, but maybe better ones
Illuminated and ventilated by burrowed chimneys,

And still subsisting on raw meat and vegetables.

The evidence of Evolution solely by Gradual Change

Is too full of holes -- "missing links". 

Evolution is a game of gradual change AND a game of quantum leap-frogging --

Instant generational jumps to a new way of being

That leave the old behind

To die out.

Change is incremental and, frankly, cyclic --
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Change has a short-term place in the grand scheme of things -- and --
Transformation is the name of the game.

NOTHING TO WORK ON

I approached the transforming challenge thinking
That, rather like renovating a house,
All I'd have to do would be to whip up a to-do list
And fix my "problems" one by one -- eg. my relationships, my anger, my low self-esteem. etc. etc.
But we humans are not compartmentalised --
Human growth does not work like "fixing" the stove today, the refrigerator tomorrow, and the plumbing the day afterward:
Everything in the human condition, just like the rest of creation, is connected to everything else.
I can not work on my relationships without involving my self-esteem,
Nor deal with my anger without affecting just about every other area of my life.
When one area of life changes,
Everything changes,
In and around me.
And that's very good news --
If I had to turn my life around department-by-department,
I'd need a lot longer to do the job than my so-called "three score years and ten".

Furthermore, during transformation,  the original "problem" becomes irrelevant
In a larger and deeper process of re-creating everything.
In truth,
I've found there is nothing to "work on",
Away from embracing it all and finding a deeper balance.

Our "problems" offer us an avenue, a way in, an access point
To break into the wheel of repetitive patterns
And open the treadmill up to discovery and transformation,
Providing an exit into the wide world of Possibility.

The trick is not to focus on "the problem".
Drop it.
Your problems are not The Problem:
Focusing on anything keeps you hooked into it.
Give your attention rather to a process of inspirating, becoming aware, allowing, conspiring
And integrating "the problems"
Into a greater level of Be-ing
In an atmosphere of reverence, trust, gratitude and love.

ALL OR NOTHING


We humans are almost universally and inexplicably addicted to the entertainment of low-frequency experience.
So inured to it are we that,
Faced with the possibility and challenge of transforming the very basis of all our experience,
We may encounter an overwhelming urge to flee, deny, suppress or blow-off an opportunity for up-leveling.
Oh, we're prepared to change all right!....
But only the bits we want to change.
The rest we want to hang onto --
"Don't touch that, that's me -- that's who I am!"

Even the threat of having to give some things up feels like death.

Transformation doesn't work like that.
There's a Law of Life that goes --

When you give it all up,

You'll get it all back.

And everything is brand spanking New.

Unless everything is up for renewal,
Nothing will change.
When everything is up for change,
Life transforms.

How do you feel about that?
Hopeful, or fearful, or both?
Some changes are earth-shattering, some are subtle --
But transformation changes everything.

In transformation

There is surrender, death, gestation, and rebirth to a new form

That does not even vaguely resemble the old.
We die, to be "born again". 
And nothing changes.

HUMAN LIMITS

We are limited
By what we allow to define us --

Outdated values, principles, beliefs, concepts, goals,
Opinions --
(Our own, and those of others we allow to matter);
Ideas about, reactions to--
Self-images, expectations
Fears.

We will become only what our expectations allow.
No more than that.

To break free of any rut we may be in,
We need only work on ourselves --
And our self-imposed limitations.

THE SOURCE OF SUFFERING

We live perturbed lives
Because we use ego-identity as a reference point
And forget our divinity.

Looking our through a vast picture window,
We allow ourselves to be distracted
By our fingerprints on the glass.
We focus on smudges in the foreground
And lose sight of the view.

EXPERIENCE

Experience arises through the expansive Heart
Seeking to flower and flourish.

The frightened Mind, at best, trails behind,
Pretending it is in charge,
Taking notes, classifying,
Limited and limiting,
And ceaselessly carping and commentating.

The body enables the experience
And deals with the consequences.
Of the activities of both Heart and Mind.

Awareness watches it all
Without comment.

THE JOURNEY -- FROM HERE TO NOW

When I look back along a time-line of my life, I see that the whole journey for me has (so far) been circular. I started off realising with horror that my father and God (very closely related) might be right -- I might be a Nobody. So I struggled through decades of trying to be a Somebody, and now find myself arcing back to being No-thing, and discovering that "nothing" is another name for Infinite Possibility.

Nothing......
No thoughts that matter,
No feelings that matter,
No matter that matters.......
Just the Is-ness of being Empty-full.

I've just had open-heart surgery. Boy, oh boy! Does that return me to a state of nothing but the absolute immediacy of Now?!! There's no-where else to go! In the pain and confusion, there is no past that matters any more. There is no room for contemplating any future. My resources are fully committed to dealing with this moment. Everything, from a cough to a walk around the block, requires awareful choices and decisions, gathering of resources, and fully-focused love and attention. This is the absolute immediacy of life as-it-is.

I've also discovered something in the fine print about Goals. There was a time in the past when they helped be get off the arse of my ignorance and propel me into some kind of conscious authorship for and of my next moment. As a passive also-ran, I needed Goals -- rather like one needs all the prune juice one can swallow in order to get things moving after a heavy anaesthetic.

But there are riders to goals -- they must not be allowed to limit our thrust. Goals are only useful while they keep opening us up to New Possibilities and fresh lessons. If life takes us suddenly in another direction, we do well to drop the goals and make up some new ones. And don't get hung up on attaining our goals. Life as a human being is all about The Journey -- the destination will take care of itself, without any input from us, and there's bugger-all we can do about that. Heaven is not what we think it is, and is not a prize that has to be earned; it's where we came from and where we're bound. Hell is a man-made option that lies somewhere in between where we came from and where we're going to. Judgment Day, if we insist upon having one, is today!

Outside of our ego's individual me-ness, there is no judgment.
There is only Attention --
A presentness, availability and ever-deepening creative relationship with the Now.
Wherever we turn our attention, there is Creating,
And there is Love.
In this kind of fluid, flexible awareness
Notions of "success" and "feeling on top of it" become irrelevant.

When we become available and attentive to deep questioning,
We will always be brought to places that we do not know
And that we did not know that we don't know.
Attention will thus radically alter our relationship
With what we think we know.

And wasn't this how we were in the beginning?....
Before Innocence got confused with Ignorance
And we got pressured to grow up and get "knowledge".

I'll settle for Innocence over ignorance,
And for Knowing over knowledge.

ABSORBING AND REFLECTING

A red rose absorbs all the colours of the spectrum, especially around the blue (faster) end of the vibration scale, and reflects its (slower) redness back to us, so that we see it as "red".

So we, as humans-being, absorb what we will
And reflect back upon others what we choose, unconsciously, not to absorb.

Similarly, we see others refracted
Through coloured spectacles of our own making and choosing.
If we see our world through "rose-coloured spectacles",
The reds will appear to be even redder,
And the blues will turn a drab grey, and may disappear altogether.
We decide.
Unconsciously.


When we were very, very young,
Without thinking about it,
We began filtering and colouring our experience
When we got frightened
To see, and be seen, as-is.
It was our way of protecting our selves.

But we got used to the hues and assumed that the world really is just as we now see it.
How good is the news
That we're mistaken about that??!

The filters we put over our seeing
Limit what we knowingly see.
Our unconscious filtering decides for us what it will allow us to see.
(And in our ignorance we're so sure we see all, just as it is!!)
Our past decisions now "decide" us:
We are now the unknowing, unwitting victims
Of our own limiting, filtering programming.

Become aware.
Remember that we do not see --
We think that we see,
And it is the "thinking about" that is the problem.

Awareness is enough.
Remember the filters....
In awareness, the filters will gradually dissolve
So that we can absorb more of it all
And see more clearly.

HONESTY

I've been spending some time lately on a dating site. There would hardly be a single profile that does not cite "Honesty" as an essential requirement in a prospective partner. That's hardly surprising.

But what is the writer's definition of "honesty"? And why has it become a "must-have" for the seeker? Is it because of past hurtful experiences of dishonesty? How seriously has the seeker looked "honestly" at her contributions to that past trauma. What work has she done to clean up the likelihood of creating/finding dishonesty in future partners? How aware is the seeker that:

Whatever we resist will keep showing up in our face.

and.....

We always find what we're looking for.

and its corollary............

Whatever we've got we, maybe unconsciously, once put out for.

There's some self-responsibility called for here. If someone has a belief that "Men/women/other people are dishonest and will betray me", then they're going to get to be right about that, sooner or later. 

It's not my responsibility, or any other person's for that matter, to show up in their space and prove them wrong. In my experience it's near-futile. No matter how long we live together, there will never be an end to it. Sooner or later I will do, or neglect to do something that will be interpreted as being dishonest. Worse still, the harder I try NOT to be dishonest, the more likely I am to slip up.

When I lift the covers I find, in around 80% of respondees, that "honesty" equates to an absence of deceit. Well, that's OK as far as it goes, but it's a limited, passive perception of what it means to be honest. In my lexicon, Honesty is much more than a mere absence of dishonesty. Honesty embraces  states of being like openness, forthrightness, self-awareness and a willingness to open up to new ways of seeing, scrutiny and discovery. Honesty goes beyond the facts of a situation to exploring all the truths that surround it. True honesty calls on traits like courage and a willingness to open up to every possibility and stand alone in your own light.

Honesty is more than mere "not-telling-lies". It is more than just "telling the truth". Honesty is a way of being, open to all truths, and acknowledging the truth of all those experiences. Honesty involves the ability to incorporate and embrace all truths comfortably inside ones own skin.

If you want honesty in your life, start by creating it. If you find yourself demanding honesty, there may well be some dishonesty going on in you about which you haven't yet faced the truth.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I place great store by first impressions
And none at all in snap judgments.
How do I tell the difference?

Until something better comes along, I rate what I get on two scales --

Feeling -----------------> Thinking

Maybe Possible -------------------------> Damn Right!

First Impressions generally hover around the left-hand end of each scale: Snap Judgments sit squarely on the right-hand end.

It's a guide, that's all.

SOVEREIGNTY -- NOTES ON AN EXPLORATION INTO........

t

Why am I afraid

To let go of what is keeping me rooted to the spot,

To jump into space

And own my sovereign power?

SOVEREIGNTY SPEAKS ---

You are attracted to me,
But you are distracted by the route you must take to find me.
You look to me as a source of Power and Control,
But they are not what I am.
Somewhere deep inside, you know me,

Yet you are afraid that I am dangerous.

You think that if you come too close to me, "you" may disappear!
You are right.
But by losing who you think you are
You will discover what you truly are.
But your ego trembles --
From where you stand at this moment

I seem like a bottomless abyss
And you are afraid that , if you come too close, you will be gone -- forever.

So, to be afraid of me is natural. 
I am a Possibility for Being -- a no-thing,
And who, in ego, is not afraid of a no-thing?


It is a habit for you to fear me,
But you cannot escape me either.
Wherever you may run to, I will haunt you,
I will perturb you, even in your safest moments,
Just to remind you that your destiny still awaits 
Beyond. where you are at this moment.


I look at you now and I see
A sovereign being..... creating......
Creating your Now experience.
If you now feel you are the victim of some circumstance or condition,

Remember that every sovereign is allowed to create whatever he/she wants, 
Including bogeymen to frighten and enemies to challenge and chase him.


You are already Sovereign
But you do not realise it yet.
That is as it should be......
As a fish cannot "know" water until it is out of it --

Consider............. possibly ............
You are using your sovereignty to create an illusion of Not-Sovereignty,
So that you can come to know what you are -- Sovereignty

When you are ready,
Come close
And see What-Is.
You will find as you gaze into me
That you are looking deep into your self.
The "You" that you've always thought you are
Will disappear, 
And your True Self will be there.


Let go.
Flow
Like a river that flows eventually into the ocean from which it once evaporated.
Yes, the river disappears and becomes the greater ocean.
In its essence, it is still the same watery stuff,
But its form is now different,
Greater,
And it has contributed to that "greater-ness".


Let go of your "smaller-ness"
And allow yourself to flow into the "greater-ness". 
You will not be diminished. Far from it.
In truth, there is no going back; 
How can a river go back upstream?
Does a river seek to return to its source?
How far back would it have to go?
What is the Source?
Is it the brook in the mountains that feeds it? Or is it the melting snow that feeds the brook? Or is it the winter snow and rain? Or the clouds that foster the rain?
Where does it begin?
There is no "source"
And every stage in the cycle is Source.


To return to the ocean is the river's destiny.
To be the ocean is its nature.
The river is the ocean becoming.


Let any fear and resistance be there
And go with the flow anyway.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Every one of us is a sovereign being. 

The only question is whether we real-ise it, or not?
Why would we not?
Because we'd rather manipulate and control
Than be Sovereign.
A sovereign being has no more excuses
For withholding his sovereignty.

A realised Sovereign Being --

• Is empowered by nature
• Is empowering - nature-ally
• Gives authority to ....
• Authorises ...
• Gives ability to ...
• Enables ...
• Permits and allows ...
• Is authorised by the author of his/her being, to be effective in this world .

A sovereign being has a deep sense of all the levels of Self, and of how the self creates and adds to the quality Life -- his/her own, and all other life around. A sovereign being knows there is no separation between him/her self and other selves and the environment which supports and nourishes them all.

 A sovereign being knows how the condition of being human puts certain rules and limits on his/her  divinity, and chooses to enjoy that game rather than get bent out of shape by it. He also knows that, whatever the prevailing weather conditions, the game goes on. He knows, too, that sometimes the game conspires to eradicate temporarily the memory of his Sovereignty. He is induced to think the game is "real", just to heighten the level of entertainment.

What are some of the Characteristics of our Sovereignty?

1. Sovereignty is not physical. It cannot be found in any particular place; and it can be felt in many places simultaneously.
2. Sovereignty is not bound in the confines of Time. It remains changeless in the face of constant, relentless change.
3. Sovereignty is not understandable; it can only be known by declaring it, and becoming it. Sovereignty is not capable of being proven, no matter how insistently our minds may demand it. Like a lot of things, Sovereignty just IS. We cannot see it or prove it, but we can see the evidence of its presence.
4. Sovereignty is not judgmental. It allows. To be sovereign is to be wholly open to all that is. It judges no-one and no-thing, not even the harshest critic. Nor does Sovereignty experience Itself as being judged by any one or any thing. It is above all that petty stuff.
5. Sovereignty assumes the perfection in every situation. For a sovereign person, nothing needs to be eliminated for any reason; and nothing can be eliminated without destroying the integrity of the whole. 
6. Sovereignty is larger than mere mind. Life for a sovereign being isn't a riddle to be understood or  solved, but a mystery to be lived, and the perfect answer to every question that has ever been asked.
7. Sovereignty is the power to limitlessly and unconditionally let-go (forgive). It knows that any resentments destroy its freedom.
8. Sovereignty is the power to create and dis-create on its own authority.
9. Sovereignty is willing to fully play the game of life by going along with the pretense that it's not a game. While the game is on -- it plays "as if" it's real, but when Mum calls us home for tea, game over.
10. Sovereignty is willing to create intrigue by pretending not to know, thus making exploring and learning a willing entertainment.
11. Sovereignty is willing to allow comedy, intrigue and drama by pretending not to love every one and every thing absolutely and unconditionally at all times.
12. Sovereignty is the One-ness of many facets.
13. Sovereignty is the source of all natural knowing.

In a state of Sovereignty, life has magic. Results happen at the wave of a thought. We are loved, admired and respected (and maybe also suspected, misunderstood and feared), without any effort on our part. That's right, life doesn't change more than usually, but it does become magical -- simply miraculous. Each new moment is experienced as fresh and unique. We stop using faulted memories about experiences of the past to determine how we're going to feel and act now.

As children, we were originally Sovereign but we sold out on it in favour of getting some immediate needs met. We vaguely noticed at the time that something had gone, but we didn't realise what that was.
We had handed our personal sovereignty over to authority figures -- firstly our parents, and later -- people like teachers, priests, God, the school bully, parking police and bosses. We began to revere and fear the power we had given them, and even managed in some instances to feel threatened by it and guilty in its presence..

By pushing away our sovereignty, we put our selves at the mercy of capricious overlords with their own issues and axes to grind that have little or nothing to do with our welfare. We felt vulnerable to seemingly meaningless and destructive winds and currents of outrageous fortune.
That indeed was a fall from a state of grace

Looking at the state of Sovereignty from the bottom of the pit we've fallen into,
It's impossible to remember
And difficult to imagine what life might be like for a sovereign being.
We cannot visualise ourself in that place.
We're bound to feel threatened, or powerless, or resentful, or jealous, or guilty
In the presence of anyone who is sovereign in their power.
It never occurs to us --
a) that we once had what we now feel victimised by; and
b) that we can get it back.

BE WHAT YOU ARE

Sovereignty is not just for an elite few.
Sovereignty is everyone's birthright.
Reclaim your inheritance.


SOVEREIGNTY #101

1. There are no rules for attaining or maintaining Sovereignty. All that you need is the Willingness to let go of Victimhood and be sovereign once again,  Awareness, a creative relationship with all of life, and a growing love for the truth of yourself, including all of your contradictions and uncertainties. Without these basics, however, forget it.
2. The return to Sovereignty does not necessarily mean your circumstances will change; it calls for a change in your view of, and attitude to them. If you take on a quest for Sovereignty to "better yourself", you're in for a rough time and possible disappointment
3. Sovereignty is a no-thing. I cannot point it out to you on the street. We cannot pick it up and handle it. But we can certainly recognise someone who lives in it. It is a state of Be-ing.
4. Sovereignty begins with choosing whatever is to be exactly as it is - for now. When you feel light, be light. When you feel dark, be dark. Whether it is day- or night-time outside is irrelevant.
5. To be sovereign, you cannot be passive, but you must be surrendered -- ie. engaging creatively with what-is. You can surrender to a Purpose, a Stand, a Context, a Vision, and/or a deeper level of self Commitment, all of your choosing. You choose them for no reason other than they appeal to you as a new way to live your life. You are re-learning how to learn -- from your self -- in the very areas where no-one may ever  have taught you how to learn.
6. A sovereign person stands, relatively happily, in Uncertainty and Discomfort, knowing that they are signs from the ego that new ground is being broken (something egos don't like), and that he/she is creative enough to surf on through the turmoil. A sovereign person knows deeply that the discomfort arises from the fact that our ego's inability to embrace the largeness of what is going on, and its unwillingness to learn growth lessons, are being stretched beyond previous limits, bringing us more and more into an unobstructed and more creative relationship with ALL that IS.
7. As a surprising and paradoxical consequence, Sovereignty will not help us feel either secure or invincible. It may instead bring us often to the door of Frustration and the apparent impedance of our desires. We may hit The Wall, and there's a creative reason for that -- Frustration and Impedance present an invitation and a challenge to review our predetermined expectations of the way we thought this would work out, and to re-evaluate our relationships to life and to what and who we think we are.
8. Uncertainty is a good sign. A sovereign person stands in Not-Knowing and Discomfort, calmly confident that he/she is available to infinite creativity. 
9. Not surprisingly, Sovereignty is therefore the road less traveled. Human minds will do anything to avoid Uncertainty and Not-Knowing. While almost universally present in pandemic proportions, inner confusion and anxiety are not popular topics for cafe conversation in polite society. They remind others of their denied discomfort. "Friends" are defined unconsciously as "someone who'll go along with my lies,as long as I go along with theirs." In fact, most of us would rather DIE than tell the truth to anyone (including ourselves) about just how unsure we are. But this road is one of transformation, where one is challenged to surrender all ideas and projected images of self, and yield ones life up to unknown and unprovable possibility, without any reassurance of outcome. Here we face the biblical Eye-of-the-Needle, the Gate of Aloneness, where we have to leave all our baggage behind, and where the motivation to pass through comes less and less from outside sources, and more from some inner light.
10. Sovereignty in relationships is a balancing act. While not being anybody's doormat, a Sovereign being commits to a relationship with life and others that says........... I will not withdraw from an open-minded, honest and vulnerable relationship with this (person). I will be available and attentive. I will seek to see and stand upon the other point of view, and allow that it is also mine. To the best of my ability at the time, I will accommodate this "other", even as I consider my self. 

When I started down this road, the way seemed to lead towards increased physical and heightened psychic powers and wisdom.
So I thought anyway
The value of taking this way seemed obvious and, at the outset at least, I had many companions on the journey.
But along the way, the topography has changed.
The way now leads me more into an open, immediate relationship
With all that I am and all that is -- weaknesses, warts and all.
On top of that, I have to greet each day with a growing emptiness of not-knowing.
All that I thought I knew is rapidly becoming irrelevant.
In this place, despair occasionally lies nearby, just out of sight:
I turn to face it.
We nod an acknowledgment of familiar friends
And continue on our way.

As I venture through the Gate of Loneliness.
I find myself resisting loneliness,
Looking around to see if anyone else is taking the same steps
Looking for confirmation from others,
Looking for Approval, Reassurance and Recognition,
So as to assure myself that I'm on the "right" track,
And that I'm not alone.
Eventually this, too, has to be surrendered:
The journey is no longer being made for anyone or for any purpose
Other than the journey itself.
I do not know,
Cannot know,
Nor need I know if this is the right way.

I'm still supported by a few true friends and relatives.
They cannot know what I'm going through
But they love me enough to hover nearby anyway,
Knowing that their company is important to me.
Alone in company I walk on,
Yielding to the fullness of my Unknowing.

To be Sovereign
We have no choice but to stand
Naked and defenceless in our own light,
Yet in rapport with all that is.
There is nowhere left to turn aside
For we are enveloped by Is-ness.

Sovereignty is a state of integrity so demanding
That when anxiety and despair occasionally come to sup with us, we ask in anguish and radiance --
"Why this? Why me? How did I get here? Is this where I'm supposed to be?"
There is no answer to that.
Just the awesome silence of What-Is.

At this point the  roller-coaster has broached the crest;
Gravity has taken over;
We have passed beyond the place of choosing either for or against.
Living solely from the immediacy of this experience here/now,
Without any props of past ex --perience or future assurances to sustain us,
We are no longer able to act from any conviction of being "right".
Even the old crutches of hopes, visions and fantasies
Crumble to dust.
Even they are a rejection of the omnipotent, omnipresent Is-ness.

In Mastery we engage with life, meeting it on its own terms;
In Control, we disengage from life and separate ourself from it and the source of all being.
A sovereign being truly sees
That he/she has never been in control.
In Surrender he finds Integrity.

CHOICE AND CHOOSING

A lifetime of choosing is leading to Choice-less-ness.
Having committed to live a life of awareful integrity,
It came as a bit of a surprise to discover
That my only other creative choice
Is whether or not to choose that I have no choice.

We are invited to surrender to a fundamentally wiser process
That is organising the flow and direction of all life.
This wiser intelligence cannot be demonstrated nor proven,
But becomes miraculously real to us when we surrender
To choicelessness.
Without that surrender, ego keeps dancing distractedly around on the spot,
Blocking the view.

To choose Sovereignty acknowledges an inner realisation
That there will come a time when we can no longer continue life on our terms;
The intelligent person surrenders willingly as soon as possible and gets on with living -
The stubborn person waits until he's forced by catastrophe or failing health and strength,
And resists dying, all the way to the grave.

There's more on offer in Life than not-dying.

The instant we surrender our ego to the flow of life,
Questions of Choice and Free Will fall away,
Subsumed by a feeling of one-ness with Life and Purpose in its deepest sense.
Sovereignty awaits us inside.
Hidden behind Choice awaits the infinte possibility of Choosing;
Hidden behind Free Will awaits the Freedom of All Will.
(The notion of "Free Will" is loaded with "Won't"s -- hadn't you noticed? The Freedom of All Will is that it says "Yes" to every possibility.")

Once surrendered, I found that life on MY terms had been severely limited
To what I could think of,
And what I could imagine.
No wonder then that life resembled a cracked record/cracked record/cracked record...........
The best that I could think about at the time
Brought me back time and time again
To struggle against crises and suffering.
Every time.
How about you?

When I finally gave up the struggle
And surrendered "my's" insistence that life turn out as I thought it should,
I began to discover how surprising and wonderful life can be.
When we stop pestering, interfering, controlling,
When we get out of the way and let life happen --
Life opens up to us.

Our choice is always
To choose the road that empowers, or the road that disempowers.
How do we tell the difference?
Discerning one from the other isn't as hard as it may seem.
One road looks safer; the other feels scarier:
One road looks "right"; the other sports a sign that says "Wrong Way -- Go Back".
Operating on the principle that "If I do what I've always done, I'll keep getting what I've always got",
I now usually choose the road less travelled --
The one that looks like the "wrong" way, the scarier of the two.
Ultimately, of course, it doesn't matter which branch you take --
You'll get to where you're going to whichever way you go.
But the fork less travelled is always far more interesting, revealing, and possibly quicker.

The Will we have to access to plunge deeper into Be-ing
Is not the same "will" we need to push life around for attainment.
The Divine Will packs possibilities
That become activated when we give over our "self"
To the process of living and to each other,
In such a way that there are no considerations of  "winning" or"losing".
The Will of Ego and the Divine Will are polar opposites.
One difference between them is that the Will of Ego cannot contain Divine Will,
(Ego thinks it IS God!)
Whereas Divine Will allows individualistic Will to be.

LOVE THY GODNESS; LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR

Something got lost in tranlsation.
I have a hunch that, when these famous words were first uttered,
They were less of an admonition to "Obey this, or else..."
Than a statement of What-is......
"This is a fundamental fact of being human --
We love our divine nature,
We love each other;
And the way we love others is exactly how we love ourselves, and vice versa."
This is What-Is.
There's no choice about it.
There's nothing noble or esoteric about it;
It comes with the condition of being human.
At the cost of your own alienation from yourself and others,
You can deny or ignore it until the cows come home;
But the fact remains that you, me, god, the person in your face, and all the space in between
Are all of the same stuff and indivisibly interconnected.
How well our lives are working has a lot to do with
The level at which we acknowledge and co-operate with this state of affairs.
It's a reflection of the level of our attunement
To the highest, finest energy of Existence.

GETTING BACK INTO BALANCE

A truly sovereign person is sufficiently poised, relaxed and empowered
To stand alone in an unobstructed, free-flowing relationship with all people.
When you lose your equilibrium
Take some time and space out for yourself,
Re-consecrating yourself...

"To all that is, and to the watcher within."

As our power returns, so does our consciousness of our place and purpose in the scheme of things.
We know we  make a difference in the world
And we set about joyfully doing just that,
Empowering and enabling others along the way.

• Being Sovereign is a result of choosing -- choosing to engage creatively with whatever is happening, while it is happening.
• Being Sovereign is a result of a personal commitment to live as much as possible in the Now
• Being Sovereign is a result of celebrating that you are what you are, and you aren't what you aren't, and seeing in gratitude the perfection of that.
• Being Sovereign is the result of saying "Yes" to what happens, and "Yes" to what doesn't happen. That includes saying "Yes" to your Yeses, and "Yes" to your No's. Resistance is not only futile, it's the kiss of death to creative and permanent change. "Revolution" and "Evolution" are different  words for a very good reason.
• Sovereignty begins with first giving an unqualified "Yes"  of acceptance to what is so in your world, and an equally unqualified "Yes" to what is not. If something needs changing, a Sovereign works first on him/her self, seeking to change in himself whatever is being reflected out there. Having dropped all resistance to the situation he is then free to deal creatively with it. A Sovereign knows how radically our world transforms when we do.
• Whatever a sovereign being fears or resents (or any other feeling reaction for that matter), he says "Yes" to the feeling, and chooses it to be so. He fully and gratefully embraces the experience of it as a message from his emotions, telling him where some housekeeping remains to be done on his addictive programming. That which a sovereign being fears/resents/ is jealous of..... may disappear; it may not. If it disappears, he says "Yes" to its disappearing, and doesn't trawl back looking for it. If it does not disappear, he says "Yes" to its non-disappearance, and drops any expectation or addiction that it should be some other way than just as it is. He does all this without any rationalising or efforts to explain "why". For a sovereign, What-Is .. is; and What-Isn't .. isn't. Period.
• Being Sovereign is the result of choosing to creatively surf the events of your life.

Contrary to popular folklore, the circumstances of our life do not need to be changed in order for us to be Sovereign and Happy. We have tried that many times over -- tell me, how is it working for you? Being Sovereign is very much about how we choose to experience and deal with the circumstances of our life. It's a matter of transforming our relationship with the circumstances and events of our life, It means doing whatever we have to in such a way that we're no longer the victim of what happens. No matter how many people take it up as a lifetime occupation, Victimness does not work..

There's a paradox to get comfortable with here --

• You are the source and creator of all your experiences; and
• You don't have the least control over what happens..

Choose what is happening. Decide to get creative with it, and use it as a learning tool.

When you want what you've got, you'll always get what you want.

Once you can embrace the paradox, you'll find that your life circumstances DO change, without any pushing and pulling from you.

It may not be easy at times. But it is simple....................

Create with what you get, when you get it;

Don't sweat what you don't get, when you don't get it.

Got it?

BEING HUMAN -- SEEN AS A HOLOGRAPHIC REALITY

• What we assume is "real" is a 3-dimensional image created by the interference pattern of two "lasers" -- Mind and Spirit? For this holographic reality to work, one laser beam must be a pure and coherent reference signal, against which the other beam interferes and interacts.
• The resulting image is 3-dimensional, but non-material. There is no "thing" where the image is seen and felt, but we see and feel it anyway. We think it is real.
• When the holographic plate is smashed (Big Bang), the whole image is inherent in every fragment of the plate: every individual piece of the chip carries the imprint of the whole. (If we could really get a grasp of this phenomenon, over half of our suffering and all of our illusions of powerlessness would be over in a trice) 
•  In smaller fragments the image may diminish slightly in distinctness, but it is there. When the smashed plate is restored to wholeness, however, its time-space properties will not be the same as before. (I think God would be pleased about that.)

SECOND CHILDHOOD

Oh! To be as a little child!
In an undifferentiated
And undifferentiating state of consciousness,
Gazing shamelessly
And appreciating unjudgmentally
The whole of experience
Simultaneously.

But we follow instructions and "grow up"
To live imperfect, fractured lives
Because we use Ego-Identity as a reference point
Instead of our more natural Divinity.

Having tired of "maturity",
We return 
To learn all over again
How to intuit the whole puzzle,
All of the time
Rather than piece-by-piece.

THE FULL MONTY

Have you ever seen a partly pregnant woman?
Me either.
We cannot transform selected bits of ourself --
It's all or nothing.

I-DENTIFICATION IS LIMITATION

Any thing we give our attention to,
We enliven.

But any aspect of our self that we I-dentify with
We separate from the whole,
Claim special ownership to
And fix into the foreground,
Preventing it from ebbing and flowing back
Into the vast awareness from which it energed.

A part of our self  is not the whole of self --
It is a limitation -- less-than.....

So when we I-dentify with any part of our self
We I-dentify with Less-than,

Cut it off from the Source,
And suffer.

PRO-DOTES TO FEAR

When we create the future as frightening, the things we do to make ourselves "safe" eventually destroy our peace of mind.

How's your level of fear at this moment?
That's not a glib aside --
Check. On a scale of 1 to 10........?

A new awareness embraces energies that are represented by words like ---

• Trust
• Balance
• Allowing
• Appreciating
• Gratitude
• Surrender
• Love
• Humility

 Go back to the top of the list again. "Trust". It's just a word -- some squiggles on an electronic screen. But there's an experience behind it -- an experience that is very personal to you. Say "Trust" to yourself now and feel into whatever it evokes in your solar plexus. Say it again -- "Trust". Keep saying it and take what you get. When there's a shift, move on to the next word -- "Balance" --- and so on. Add any other words that pop for you. You're looking for a real, multisensory memory experience.

Done? Good.

How's you fear level now?

SEPARATION & RELATIONSHIP

It all started when Thought thought about itself:
"I Am" said "What am I?"
An illusion of Separation was created --
So that One-ness could look at Itself
And have a relationship with itself.
Then Oneness found the image in the mirror boring,
So it created different manifestations of itself
By simply becoming them.
This is more fun! Each manifestation can experience its godness in a different way,
And can experience other manifestations of the same godness, each having their experiences.

The purpose of relationship is so that "we" can compare notes.
For the fun of it.
Without the illusion of Separation,
Relationship would be neither necessary nor possible.

Ego is obsessed with division and relationship,
Departure and Destination
Me and Not-Me
Togetherness and Separatedness
"I" and "Me"
Internal and External
Right and Wrong
Left and Right
Up and Down.......
...you know how it goes.

In school we were instructed in the realm of Facts --
The territory of absolutes, definitions, differentiation and distinction.
There's nothing wrong with that, except that isn't all there is.
We acquired intelligence and knowledge,
But little experience of Knowing.

Now that we have graduated from the classroom into Life,
We are challenged to dissolve the boundaries
Between self and experience
Between what we think we know,
And How we come to actually know it.

Ego is my relationship with all that I experience:
"I am", though, is the detached Awareness of all experience.
No separation. No other-ness.
No relationship

I-KNOW-SENSE

(a.k.a "Innocence")

Ego is the world-weary, ignorant adolescent in each of us,
Who knows everything, and experiences nothing.
Further knowing, other realities and possibilities are denied.

"I-am" is the innocent child in each of us,

Who simply knows nothing and experiences everything,

With no pre-conceptions of any kind --

No concepts, ideas, opinions, judgments, beliefs, mind-sets, prejudices or conditioning patterns

To limit, modify or classify the experiencing.
In Innocence all knowing is available . In Ignorance, none is possible.

In the divine state of Innocence, there is no separation and, therefore, no need of relationship.

THE THOUGHT THAT THUNK US

You and I

And the stars above and the earth below

Owe our very existence to,

And are given definition by

Another dimension --

The Thought that thunk us,

The thought-glue that holds us altogether in its mighty embrace.

This is why it is possible for human consciousness

To go beyond its human-ness, 

To meet up with a divine origin-ality

That orchestrates all that is. 

We connect with it by simply noticing the evidence of its presence.

But this only can happen while we are awakened and alive to that connection,

Sensing into the Knowing that is beyond the human body/mind,

Feeling our way into higher frequencies that we cannot see or hear.

We have a level of consciousness, one that has been asleep for decades,

That is capable of sensing vibration that is too quick

For normal consciousness to notice.

This new sensing has nothing to do with straining to listen and hear. 

It is something that comes to us when we stop efforting at finding.

When we stop the quest for Finding, we will be found.

Nor is this new education about intelligence;

It is my experience that logic and reason divert us 

Time and time again,

Away from the realms of "feeling-into".

How is your level of Trust?
Limited as you are
By knowing what you think you know --
Can you now drop your Awareness in to the void
Of the unseen, unheard, only-felt Thought/Force of all-that-is
And experience its unconditional love, knowing and support?

In this divine space
You will discover that you know nothing

And you will instantly remember the higher levels of "In-tuition"

Where we meet All-Knowing ----
The Thought that Thunk Us.

MASTER CLASS

What do you want from me?
Tell me.
If I have it, I will gladly give it to you.
Do you want Answers?
To what?
Have you formed your Question yet --
The question of all questions.

Whatever it is,
That Question is for you.
I have no "The" answer to it.
For I am not you.
Only you know.

What I do,
And all that I can do,
Is to conspire in your life
To keep on throwing you off-balance
So that you can find your own way
To a new equilibrium.
I have to do that every day for myself;
Now it is your turn, for your self.
Find your own Questions --
You already know the answer.

I do make this commitment with you --
I will join life in a conspiracy FOR you;
I will stimulate you, tease you, poke you,
I will slap you silly,
Provoke, tickle, press, squeeze, seduce and insult you.....
Anything to knock you off the concrete pedestal of your present viewpoint.
Not because it is wrong,
But because it is not the whole vista
And you have been loitering on it for far too long.

UNDERSTANDING

An orgasm is on offer --
Would you rather understand it, or HAVE it?

Understanding truly is the booby-prize.

Understanding is an attempt by the Mind to get a fence around the boundless,
To control the uncontrollable.

The illusion is that Understanding affords Security.


Life was never, ever designed to be to be understood;
It is meant to be lived! 
The search for understanding is OK as a pastime;
It rates somewhere about the same level as crosswords and Trivial Pursuit
I know one or two people who understand everything;
They are true arseholes,
And they know nothing.

Understanding is a blunt scalpel that kills the experience,
Like the botanist who dissects the flower --
It's structure is comprehended,
Knowledge has been extracted
(At the expense of Knowing.)
Now its beauty is butchered  and its perfume has evaporated --
The flower is dead.

To know a flower
Be first the poet who loves the flower,
Then be the awareness that becomes the flower.
This is how God creates and knows all things --
She becomes them.

To truly know any experience,
Set your mind to watch from the sidelines;
Then immerse yourself into the experience, and
Be-come it:
Allow that to happen

TRANSFORMING & THE SOURCE OF SUFFERING

Fear and dis-ease arise when we try to set or hold on to parts of our identity in the face of the winds of change.

We think of "me" as a fixed entity. It isn't. Like everything else around, "I" and "Me" are a process, within the larger process of life and living. It is the forgetting of the process, the resistance to its ebb and flow, and the illusion of a constant me-ness that causes pain, surprise and confusion.

When fear and doubt arise, it's a signal that there may be some fixating to let go of, so that re-balancing can take place.

This re-balancing is automatic; all of creation is in a continuous process of adjusting and re-adjusting. We do not need to concern ourselves with it, any more than we need to think about how to digest our food: it is taken care of.

"How" is an interference of the rational mind. Embracing transformation is not like learning algebra; it could be likened more with learning to walk or ride a bicycle, and discovering Balance.

Does your mind still demand to know how? OK, try this.......

HOW  =  WHAT + WHY

You know WHAT you want -- transformation into a state of Unconditional Love

You know WHY you want it -- (fill this in for yourself)

Now ACT. Do what is there to be done; let your focus be on that, and let the "how" of it take care of itself.

Let go of time, too. Creation and Evolution have never been in any great hurry.

Let your daily experiences be the answers to all your questions.

You are living the answer --

Feel into your now-by-now experience.

You see, transformation cannot be understood; there is no pigeon-hole in the mind that it will fit  into. 

Tell me, would you rather understand an  orgasm, or have one?

Understanding is the booby-prize.

If you insist on understanding either an orgasm or transformation, you will never have either.

Got it?

The communication of transformation is telepathic, not lingual. Transformation is radiated and infused, and picked up by a sensory mechanism beyond our ordinary five senses. The evidence of its passing-through can be seen, heard and felt a little while later.

In the meantime --

Be still and know the movement of I Am.

MORE ON UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

The warning bells go off when I read about "Unconditional Love" as a must-have. That, right there, is a condition --

(My unconditional love is conditional: I can't be with anybody who puts conditions on me.)

And it is likely to attract yet another conditional suitor --
Someone who says "Yeah, I'll have some of that unconditional love, too, thanks very much"

Unconditional Love, by definition, allows conditional love to be.
If there is anything -- anything -- that unconditional love cannot allow
Then it is no longer "unconditional".
Unconditional love ALLOWS.


(Right there is the answer to the question "How can God let this happen?" God ALLOWS. Thank God she allows, otherwise I wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell. Ah, but you want God to allow this, but not that? That doesn't sound like God to me; that sounds like somebody's ego. God allows ALL. She can afford to because she IS All.)

Are you still so sure that Unconditional Love is what you're looking for?
How grand is your allowing?

I don't see Unconditional love as static. I see it as a moment-to-moment journey, a process that involves making mistakes and taking risks. It also involves giving up my attachments to excess baggage, like my most cherished old ways of feeling -- anger, resentment, jealousy (haven't felt that on in a while, thank god!), grief, hurt, embarrassment, righteousness, disappointment, self-pity, self-importance, rage, and winning --- to make room for some new experiences. Fortunately the payoff for allowing these bags of ballast to drop off the trolley is a closer connection with harmony, balance and the power of finer energies. Going back to the limitations of the old ways becomes less and less attractive. Occasionally I get flashes of re-cognition of how things used to be for me. It feels  a bit like looking through an old photo album -- quaintly interesting, but irrelevant now.

We were all born out of the womb; to physically return is impossible. There just isn't room back there any more! And there really wasn't anything back there then that is worth cranking your head over now.

Moving right along..............

Unconditional Love is no better or worse than any experience, conditional or otherwise, that we have had before. If it were so, then that would be a judgment, a comparison, and therefore no longer unconditional.

Love is not better than anything. Nor is it better than anything else because there is no "outside" of love to be "else". Love embraces every experience unconditionally (including the experience of not-embracing). Once we experience that kind of allowing and appreciating, it makes looking at your old ideas of what love was (like in any soap opera) rather like watching those jerky old movies of flying machine experiments that never quite got off the ground long enough to fly more than a few metres. Quaint, crude and, frankly, a bit of a joke.

How will you know Unconditional Love when you experience it? 

Well, for one thing, your mind will stop saying "This ain't it."
And for another thing, your mind will stop saying "This is it."

In fact, your mind will be absent,

Because wherever anything unconditional is

Mind, and anything else it considers itself to be,

Cannot be there.

Mind is a Condition that is conditional and conditioning.

Love is like --

A daily commitment to celebrate

And permission to go deeper, higher, wider and beyond...........

Beyond even this limited perception.

BE ALONE

Inspired by the words of Baghwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho)

Alone is what we are --
And there is a knack to it.
Learn the art of being alone.

Unless you learn the art of being alone

You will never stand alone;

You will never be individual.

Being individual is a "valuable phenomenon",

But is not encouraged.

Governments, religions and families are against the individual.

The "black sheep" is a threat to their dominance --

Being individual is the greatest privilege, 

and the greatest challenge.

Until you can be individual and alone with your self,

You will never truly be

With anyone else......

You crave relationship? Why?

Because you cannot be comfortably and completely alone?

That is the worst of all possible reasons.

To be in a successful relationship,

Aim to be alone -- together

It is a paradox -- 

Only when you are content to be al-one,

Are you ready for real-ationship.

 It has been said many times,

We came alone; we will depart alone.

Even our most intimate lover cannot come with us when we go inside.

Adventuring inwards, we go alone.

Always.

Our hurts, our joys

Are absolutely private.

LOVE

Love delights in objects outside of us,
But does not require them in order to be.
Love delights in someone noticing it,
But does not require recognition.
Love does not require the world to respond in any particular way,
But delights in response anyway.

Love is a lightness,
A way of seeing and being
That blossoms for its own sake.
Love is the bird that sings in the bush,
Even when there is no-one to hear.

Love
Like all things natural
Is divinely indifferent.
There is no "special" love for some "special" person or thing;
There is no precondition for it to exist.
There is Love,
That allows us to create an illusion of "Not-love" if we wish --
Love is All.

Love cannot be earned;
It is a Given of Life,
Given evenly and freely to all that is, without consideration or favour --
To the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly.
Love is intrinsic in Being --
Unconditionally.


Mind cannot understand such love;
Love cannot be contained
in something so small.

Unconditional Love
Is not a static state;
It is a continuous process
Of letting go
Of anything and everything
That restricts our ability
To totally embrace the fullness of Now.
Unconditional Love
Allows.
It is
A state of awareness, without judgment,
A state of embracing, without reserve,
A state of allowing, without limit,
A deep appreciation for every experience.

And it is the opposite of all that.
All-so.

NO FORMULA

Our logical mind wants formulas for being
So that it can feel safe and secure.

Life presents us with mysteries, paradoxes and contradictions
that invite each of us
to go much deeper into experience than mere mind.

We are called to risk chaos
in order to discover the cosmic harmony of all Creation
and our part in it.

How will you get through the threat to the mind of dis-solution?

There is a leap to be made
With no way of imagining where you are going
And with no hope of ever scrambling back
To Mind.
This is so hard, because you have no recollection of a time without Mind.
Mind has easily fooled you that This is all that there is.

There is more, though.
You know it. You don't know how you know it,
Or what it is that you know.
You just --- know.......
Mind cannot recall it for you, because it was not there when you knew it before.
The "more" you long for
Is found in no-mind.

Evolution has always gone with the curious, the bold, the adventurous, the cheeky, the takers of risk....
Of course you are afraid.
That's why we were given the gift of Courage.
You do have to follow the urge,
Dare
Trust....
Not me, Not God,
But the river of life, and your self in the flow of it,
Without the reassurance of any prior proof
That there is an ocean.


Lifetime after lifetime
You have struggled to this point,
Only to lose your nerve --

Will it be this time?
If it isn't -- no problem;
You can go 'round again, and again, in a spiritual holding pattern.....
Until you're ready.

ANOTHER BLINDING FLASH OF THE BLOODY OBVIOUS

We all have a pretty good idea of what our most obvious negative emotions are. Mine, for example, are Anger and Frustration. But are they our Dominating negative influences? Are our obvious demons just a cover for a hidden reality that is far more powerful in its insidious influence against our well-being?

What feelings are we avoiding? In my case, by feeling frustrated and angry, am I trying to avoid feeling something far more painful?

Ever since the day I was being born (and possibly before) I have automatically used Frustration and Anger as ways of greeting the challenges of life. Life, for its part, has very kindly given me an open invitation to deal with it, and has seen to it that I'm rarely left wanting for provocation. 

My fall from bliss started, as far as I know, with an inexperienced obstetrician who panicked when I charged face-first down the birth canal at high speed. He grabbed my head with a pair of forceps and, despite the protestations of my mother, pushed me back into the very space I was hell-bent on getting out of He then wrenched my head forward and dragged me out again, unable to see where I was going and gasping for breath. I picked up on his panic, my mother's anxiety and felt breathless, frustrated and angry. And I survived. So my mind put it together -- "If I feel threatened, all I have to do is churn out Panic, Anxiety, Breathlessness, Frustration and Anger and I will survive." 

That's how our minds work.

Then Life gave me a father who, despite the fact that he'd never done it before, faked certainty about knowing exactly what was good for young children and how to get it from them -- severe restriction, fear, and the certainty of painful punishment for our sins. It's not his fault -- that's what his parents did to him, and he knew of no other alternatives. The point is, I chose (unconsciously) to respond to him, however he was, with panic, anxiety, breathlessness, frustration and anger. That upset him and made him angrier. Our future relationship was set in granite.

But only one of us was allowed to overtly express Frustration and Anger,  and it wasn't going to be me.  So I learnt to sit on them and  rely on my gentleness and niceness to get me by. I suppressed my natural rebellion against restriction (aka. my urge for Freedom)  by turning it inwards onto my self, with very good reason -- my physical survival. My giant of a father who jammed the scales at their maximum of 26 stone,  had absolutely no tolerance for opposition from anyone on the planet, especially his firstborn, and a vile bent for physical violence with which to vent HIS frustration. I learnt very quickly to keep myself hidden.

It didn't work, of course. The more we try to suppress anything , the more it will pop up in one form or another somewhere else, like a waterbed. In my case, the "popping up" took two forms. The first was in covert rebellion. Despite my watchfulness, a part of me -- the bit my mother called "the very divil in you" -- periodically forced me to do sneaky stuff that broke the strict rules. My father always found out, of course, (he and God both had spies everywhere), and I got a right belting and kicking for it every time. The second form of breakout came in a permanent case of the shakes, nightmares, and a propensity to throw up whenever stressed. Untreated, this turned over the decades into full-blown chronic anxiety, panic attacks, depression, overweightness, diabetes and coronary heart disease.

I've been aware of this for the last 20-odd years, and my accelerated inner growth in that time  has helped me to have my anger and frustration without needing to inflict it upon others. But my efforts to transmute (ie. complete with and transform) frustration and anger have met with only mild, incremental success.

I think I've found out why........

THE BLOODY OBVIOUS

All of the above has been by way of preamble. I thought if I told my story, then someone out there may learn from it and avoid the effects and consequences of my ignorance that I must now take care of (viz. open-heart surgery -- the body/mind does have a sense of humour!)

We all have, as part of the Self that we construct, a set of  internal organising principles that determine how we go about doing our lives. One of mine goes like this --

Because I feel Grief and Hurt,

I alienate others

in order to get Validation and Honour

Now, how we arrive at our particular fundamental operating principles is not up for discussion here -- that is something you and I would have to do together, one on one.. The reason I mention it here is that, having made this discovery 20 years ago, I forgot about Grief and Hurt.

In a blinding "A-Hah!" moment of remembrance earlier today, a question popped -- Am I using Frustration and Anger  (whipped up by my Mind) to avoid experiencing the greater pain of Grief and Hurt (felt in my Heart)?

Something immediately shifted deep inside. That's a feeling I've learned to trust. Maybe I've been working on my mind when it's the heart that's faulty!? 

I can certainly feel that there is Grief and Hurt behind my anger.  And I can see, too, that anger and frustration are only bringing me more grief and hurt. Perhaps if I feel into the Hurt and  Grief, the Anger etc. will resolve themselves.

This might be interesting!

By feeling what you're feeling, what other feelings do you get to avoid?

INTEGRITY, AND BEING RE-BORN

Our emotional stances --

Joy, sadness, fear, calmness, anger, equanimity, hate .................

Are just low-frequency manifestations of our potential for Love.

They're not "wrong", they're just on one end of a see-saw where both players are sitting side-by-side. One of you has to venture up to the other end. Then you can have fun!

Each of us has two dominating negative emotions that we avoid  (mine are Grief and Hurt).

Avoid no longer;

Your dominant, dominating negative emotions  are the way through that you have been seeking all this while.

Come through.

When they come up next time, meet them. Breathe into them, breathe them into you. Welcome them home. Integrate them in to You; Integrate your Self into them.

You created them; bring your children back home.

While this is happening, your mind may think that you are being destroyed.

Not so.

Something is dying alright --- what's dis-appearing is the Not-You, the False-Self that you put up front after you banished the bits of yourself that you thought, mistakenly, that you could do better without. When you did that, you lost something very precious -- your Integrity.

INTEGRITY

Integrity is often confused with "honesty". They are related, but not the same. In much the same way as all elms are trees, but not all trees are elms -- honesty is part of integrity, but Integrity is much more than just honesty. Integrity is all of it (including dis-honesty). When a system, process or person has Integrity, nothing is missing. Everything possible is there, integrated and balanced. Any thing without integrity becomes un-balanced (something missing), unstable and teeters unpredictably.

We yearn for Integrity, but discard and reject the stuff we judge as "not-what-I-want-to-be". Every rejection, every resistance, throws us further out of balance and out of Integrity.

I know this is not what your mind wants to hear. And you are free to reject it. But next time you feel your life getting out of kilter, look at what you're saying "No" to, including the "no" to the feeling of being out of kilter.

For those of you who are so divinely pissed-off with lurching through life like a drunk on steroids, here is a gateway to a new life --------

Accept your stuff. Breathe into it. Integrate it back into the Not-You that you've always thought that you were. Open up the not-being part of your Be-ing to welcome everything that comes to the door of your awareness. Take notice. Ignite everything with the fire of your loving attention.

Your life will begin anew,

Blossoming forth with the Love That You Are

In to the Love of All That Is.

LOVE IS....................

Love is.........

whatever you add after the dotted line.

Something to do,

Something to have,

An IS-ness to be in.

When we get the Is-ness of Love

We get the Gift.

There is nothing undone to be done, nothing not-available to be acquired.

We have it all.

PAIN

The greater Energy of all life and living
Flows through the whole of creation
Unimpeded,
Until
It is constricted by resistive ligatures of thought and feeling -- the old, habitual ways of fulfilling ourselves.

(I resist; therefore I exist.)

The constrictions they cause are too tiny for the Energy flow;

At the point of contraction we experience Pain and Dis-ease.

Mind rushes around concocting strategies,  potions and disciplines
designed to avoid, salve and anaesthetise,

When all that is needed is to let-go.

Allow

Surrender

Relax

Release.

Breathe through the pain to the Energy,

And connect with that which is.


Whenever I do this, I experience the thought and the feeling loosening,
I feel the energy flow as the movement of some larger reality that I cannot even guess at
Surging through me and supporting me
In a heightened and deepened awareness.
I am the conduit
Completing a circuit.

My heart is quivering, but not from fear;

I am shaken from my foundations, but not out of panic;

My mind freezes: but not in depression;

And I know -- somewhere inside of all this --

Everything is OK

And I am alright.

COMPETE OR CREATE

There are two ways to have the tallest building in town:--

1. Build the tallest building in town
2. Tear down anything that's taller than you.

Both ways are effective.

But with option #.2., people quickly get wise to you and see you coming with your big lead wrecker's balls.

With option #.1., there will be people who may want to help you, and maybe rent some space in the finished building.

Ruthless Rule of Reality -- Where you come from is where you're going to.

People who Compete come from a reality of Scarcity and Lack. So they'll end up in............?

People who Create know there's Enough for all. So they'll end up in......?

I know who I prefer to be with.