THE FALL FROM GRACE

We awake in Christ's body

As Christ awakens our bodies

Symeon, the New Theologian

But that blessed state doesn't last long.

We lose touch with Godness
And learn quickly

To become, instead, like our parents,

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

We get on with the business 

Of being human.
We forget what we are.

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

All the great lessons and adventures in life arise because

We're experiencing everything

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

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

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

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

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

But notice, too,

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

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

EMPATHY

I just saw something about empathy....

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


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

• The other's situation,

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

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

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

EXTRESSION/REPRESSION

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

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

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

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

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

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

RELIGION & PSYCHOLOGY

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

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

UNDERSTANDING

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

Understanding is not Knowing.

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

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

WAITING....

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

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

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

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

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

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

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

We cannot give away what we don't have.

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

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

Love thine enemy,

For he is thyself.

LOVE & HATE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MEDITATION

(With acknowledgment to Baghwan Shree Rajneesh [Osho])

Meditation is like cleaning our mirror

Of everything we did not come with

When we were born ---

Ideas, ideals, ideologies,

Concepts, opinions, beliefs

Morals, values and rules,

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

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

Our original, pristine innocence..

Our "I-know-sense"...

And becoming once again the undistorted mirror

In which others gaze

To see themselves.

Meditation is re-birth...

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

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

Or totally dependent on others or the environment

For our survival or nourishment.

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

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

THE "Y" FACTOR

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

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

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

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

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

Only you
Know that.

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

I have heard......

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

Now that figures!

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

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

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

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

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

WHO ARE YOU?

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


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

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

What is that?

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

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

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

Just stay with the game; and
Be aware.

JUMP.......

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Numbing myself was "killing me softly."

AD-MIRATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And be grateful for those insights, too.

THE NO-WIN BIT OF GROWING UP

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

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

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

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

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

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

FROM UNDERDOG TO TOPDOG

We become what we resist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's eating you?

GURU WHO-DO?

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

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

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

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

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

Uh......

JEALOUSY & ENVY

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

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

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

Any more......?

AN AFFIRMATION FOR ABUNDANCE

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

I acknowledge that all that is

In and a round me,

Is what I am.

And all that is

Supports me.

There is no lack.

I stand challenged to receive

The support of all that is

For all that I have created myself to be.

So be it....

WHO SHOULD WE CHECK WITH TO FIND OUT?

What is your question?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We can never seem to get enough

Of what we DON'T want.

When we shift focus OFF what we don't want

And look around us at the existence and availability

Of what we DO want,

There it is. 

It's been there all along

Waiting for us to wake up

And to drop Separation.

All we need do to connect with what we want

Is to drop anything and everything we're carrying

That is separating us from it.

Are you game?

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

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

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

Are you willing?

Willingness is all you need, for now.

The day we created Duality,

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

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

(Amongst all other dualities)

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

That we're allowed to believe and be right about

So that we can really get what hell feels like.

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

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

When an "Am-Not" thought arises

Simply acknowledge it as a former guest

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

Let it be,

And call in a thought that serves you better

To join the conversation.

And remember........

"Missing' is Opportunity in disguise.

LONGING FOR PERFECTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then I went chasing after it. 

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

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

Where are you with "perfection"? 


Perfection is what we are,

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

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

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


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

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

- AND -

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


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

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

Now see if you can picture this --

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

The sun is shining in a clear blue sky,

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

And it's a balmy 28 degrees out there.

She remarks "What a nasty day it is!"

I'm flabbergasted. "Nasty?"

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

Who am I to argue with her?

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

And she's found it!!

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

For not chorusing with her.

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

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

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

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

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