Burning Bright
Standing in the fires of hell, I look around from a platform of peace. I fully realize my part in the creation of this experience, and I choose not to feed the fire anymore. Instead I choose to love that fire as it burns through my veins, incinerating every shred of who I and others thought I was.
And even though the fire rages on, it too is dying, because now it has one less life to take. In my damnation, perhaps another will be saved. It is a sacrifice I make willingly, from a place of deep compassion and love for all who do not yet know peace, as well as for those who had paved the way for me to follow.
All that remains of me now is the light of eternal life here on earth.
Short And Sweet
Life brings us the people and experiences we need to aide our evolution. When we find gratitude for those experiences, that process of evolution is accelerated, bringing us ever closer to a direct experience of the absolute truth and beauty beyond, within, and throughout ourselves.
Being Life
I died today. I breathed my last breath. When I breathed in again, I was born into a new life. It is a beautiful life, filled with All Good Things. For some strange reason, though, I seem to be the only one who recognizes the beauty. Everyone I meet projects only heartache and pain and uncertainty. The lives they are leading are driven by fear, and I see the damage it is doing to their bodies: even this is beautiful in its own way. I have such deep compassion for them, and intense love, and most seem to breathe a little easier when I am near. I feel compelled to want to ease their fears, and yet I know that it is only by turning and facing the things that scare them most that will help them die to their fears too: but not before they are ready.
There is excitement in fear. The drama it brings can be exhilarating which may be why we hold on to it for so long. Exhilaration is one reason why we are born to this life in the first place. When we die, as I did, the drama stops, and all that remains is a deep vibration of peace. When we live again, as I am, we radiate light so that others who are ready may find the way into eternity as well.
In my last life, I was a motherless child. There was fear in that experience, but there was peace as well. I knew that I was ultimately alone, which spawned an intangible sense of worthlessness. Because I believed I was not worth having, I understood quite simply why no one would want me around once they had gotten what they came for.
But now, I am that truth. I am in fact not worth having, so instead I am being. Truly no thing can really have any thing, because it all manifests from the singular “no-thing” that is the source of all things. We cannot have any thing, because that which gives rise to this illusion of “having” already has us. It is us, and it is experiencing itself through us. It is what we are each born out of with every breath we take. It is our eternal mother and father, and now that I know the truth of my origin, I am that too.
Knowing is being, and being is peace. Compassion and joy and fulfillment and gratitude and love are all the flavors of the rainbow that permeate experience. Sadness and longing and desire and fear are here too, but they are the sprinkles on top that accent the glory, as do pleasure and pain. These are All Good Things, and these too shall pass. It is in trying to possess them or repel them that creates suffering and perpetuates the illusion that we need to possess or repel them in the first place.
That which does not pass is who we are. When we know that, we become the structure through which all things pass. Every thing changes, but our essence is the “no-thing” that remains unchanged by experience.
So when it is your time to die, do not be afraid. Step boldly into that experience and immerse yourself in the truth that essence can never die. It is in that experience of death that we are released from our fears and discover the deeply fulfilling joy of being life.
Giving And Receiving
We spend so much time and energy trying to get what we think we need or trying to protect what we think we have. Because we are coming from a place of lack, we are unable to realize the full depth and significance of what we have to give. And as long as we are clinging on to what we have, we are unable to really open to the life that is waiting for us outside of that life situation we created.
When we can open to the truth of our active participation in the manifestation of the lives that we struggle to keep and strive to improve including the things that challenge our sense of security, we can begin to experience how much influence we really have to achieve what it is we set out to do.
As long as security is our main focus, we will continue to feel insecure. That feeling of insecurity is what keeps us from realizing the power we have to manifest whatever it is we desire. Perhaps the details of our current situation may not be exactly as we had originally planned, but if we pull back and look at the structure, it becomes obvious how instrumental we were in manifesting what we have.
Those parts of our situations that had not worked out as planned are the elements that are reflecting and amplifying the level of fear that went into the making of that reality. And as long as there is fear, we will continue to manifest aspects of unhappiness in our situations.
Letting go of our fears frees us up to experience the wealth of life that we currently have. It is in this experience of abundance that we begin to look for and find ways to give.
From the perspective of separateness, we believe that it is another’s willingness to give to us that allows us to receive. And often when we give of ourselves, if we do not feel our gift was adequately valued, we will not be as inclined to want to give. In this sense, we are giving in order to receive recognition for our gift.
But when we experience the truth that all is one, we begin to selfishly give to others. In giving to others, we realize that we are really giving to ourselves. That others are just another aspect of us, and that this illusion of separateness creates the opportunity to deepen our ability to love ourself through being able to give others the security of love that we sought for so long.
Coming at life from a place of abundance, we are now able to experience the joy of manifesting the situations we desire. Without fear undermining our efforts, we give more than we knew we had to give, and we receive more than we will ever need.
Now when we look at the details of our situations, we discover a deep sense of security. Having fully participated in the manifestation of the life that had been longing to be lived, we now know that no matter what comes to pass, we have the resources available to rise to the challenge and transform it through our fearless acceptance.
In our recognition of our absolute abundance, we feel inspired to give. For the first time we are able to realize that the opportunity to give is a gift in and of itself. From the perspective of wholeness, we realize that it is our willingness to give to others that allows us to receive.
No Fillers Added
We can never see the whole picture. There is always an angle or a piece that we miss. What we can’t see, our minds fill in for us. The content of that “filler” is based largely on our perception of ourself in this life.
We hold this perception as an absolute truth, and yet for most of us, the majority of that truth is tucked away in our subconscious. In this way, we are largely unaware of the real underlying factors that drive our motivations and choices.
The choices we make seem logical and reasonable to us, or perhaps they just feel right, but so often they truly have no foundation in reality. They are only true for us, and much of the time, it is to our own detriment.
We sabotage ourselves because that most primary subconscious truth that we never even think to challenge is not absolutely true, and our being knows that. Our being uses and exploits that misconception to its full extent, causing us to suffer. This suffering is purposeful, and necessary for us to awaken to the absolute truth beyond those illusive ones that only bring us pain.
When we get on the other side of those illusive truths, we are able to see how beautiful and perfect all the trials we faced were for us. What seemingly felt like a hodge-podge of chaos and unhappiness turned out to be the ultimate recipe for the sweetest ambrosia custom made specifically for us in a way that only we could appreciate it.
In these moments of grace where all is revealed, peace pervades our sense of being, as well as a deep experience of trust. No longer do we need to guess and second-guess what we should do: instead we stop, breathe, know, and do. Without the uncertainty and the drama it brings, we are open to inspirations in celebration of this experience of life.
We are released from the compulsion to fill in the blanks of what we don’t know, and instead we are empowered to accept everything as it is without fear or reserve. Because we are not driven by our subconscious motivations anymore, our goals and desires now spring forth from pure creative intent. Living boldly, we inspire others to do the same.
Eternal Love
There is no right way or a wrong way to be in this life. Each interaction we experience (including none) holds a lesson to either learn or miss based on the degree to which we favor learning over mastery.
What is the force it takes to separate right from wrong? What is the force it takes to separate comfort from discomfort? What is the force it takes to separate happiness from unhappiness? What is the force it takes to separate grace from pain? What is the force it takes to separate healed from hurt? What is the force it takes to separate peace from dis-ease?
Why do we need to separate them at all?
It is like trying to separate love from love, and the longer we drag it out, the more stress we create. The truth is, they cannot be separated. It is possible, however, to simply allow them all to be. How? When we have realized the truth that all is love, We experience the deepest level of trust arising from the ocean of pure creative intent and we are empowered to honor the truth rather than shrink from it.
“Your happiness and unhappiness are in fact one. Only the illusion of time separates them.” (Eckhart Tolle, “The Power Of Now”)
The mechanics of the human mind give rise to this illusive construct of time, and we experience ourselves as living a linear existence. At various times we feel either pulled towards something or pushed by something, but we are always heading towards the same end result as everyone else: the end of the timeline.
This creates a feeling of urgency that we need to “have” or “do” before that moment comes. We feel at the mercy of it, that at best we may be able to prolong it, but that there is ultimately no stopping it (without technological intervention).
But by merely shifting our perception of time, we ascend not up, but out of time altogether and we dwell in eternity. Life is no longer lived from start to finish. Rather than experiencing ourselves being pulled or pushed along a timeline, we become the structure through which time passes. We no longer live life, but are lived by it instead.
And whenever we resist the truth, whenever we resist “what is”, we experience time: a separation, between peace and dis-ease. In that resistance, we are prolonging absolute grace in order to seemingly protect our separate self from seeming pain. It is in trying to hold back the pain that gives rise to the illusion that, from a limited perspective, it is even there to be experienced. From an eternal perspective, there is only love in this one eternal moment, and each illusive hurt keeps us separate from the absolute healing contained within it.
What is the force it takes to separate birth from death? The answer is love. And when we deeply realize that, the two ends that we have been struggling to keep apart all this time collide together with such intensity that we are thrown head over heals into the bliss of eternity where “all is as it should be”, and we no longer feel compelled to separate truth from lies.
The experience of duality is nothing more than an illusion arising from a limited perspective, from a mind born out of wholeness. We experience this illusion as time, causing us to experience stress. Stress is the vehicle provided us by creative intent to lead us to awaken from the illusion and experience love.
The force it takes to separate one thing from the next is equal to the force necessary to awaken us from the illusion of time to our eternal nature from which we are never actually separate. It is the experience necessary to penetrate the deepest desire of the pure force of creative intent to know itself at its deepest level, and what is revealed in that discovery is an endless ocean of love.
Perceiving Peace
What is it that makes one thing stand out as special or unique or desirable from the myriad of other things that surround us? Why is it we can want one thing above all other things? Even if that want is noble, like wanting peace, it is still a want, and since wanting is the antithesis of having, by wanting peace we are not only confirming that peace does not exist, we are adding to that apparent disharmony and therefore participating in the creation of that perception of reality.
It is the act of wanting, which is hardwired into our human mind for a specific purpose, that creates disharmony within ourselves. And if we are not at peace internally, then we cannot find it in the world.
Why is it important that we as a species should want? What is the purpose for it? There are many good and noble reasons. Because of wanting, we have achieved amazing advances in science and technology and quality of life. But the downside (at least from a certain perspective) is that it keeps us in a state of dis-ease. We are constantly striving outside ourselves to satisfy that disharmony within ourselves.
The real awakening comes when we can open to the truth that any want, whether we get it or not, can not and will not satisfy us, which allows us to move beyond the object itself to the root of why we want anything in the first place.
Through a process of selective perception, certain things stand out as more or less desirable than others. Certain things seem to “speak” to us in a way that the other things don’t, and we spend an enormous amount of energy trying to attain or avoid that thing. To evolve beyond this limited experience of life, we need to realize that any judgment of any thing is completely relative and situation specific.
To test this, we need only imagine that something unexpected comes up that requires all our attention. All the background dis-ease in our heads and hearts evaporates as we leap into action to address what is absolutely required of us in this moment. Where is the want or desire then? Gone. If we are invaded and our town becomes a war zone, we still have wants, but now they are completely different from those that we held as so important in our more simple existence. If the object of our wanting is obliterated, we will discover that even if the object is gone, the compulsion to want is not.
Only when the crisis is handled and we settle back down do we begin to remember our unhappiness and our unfulfilled wants. If it were not relative, then it would remain pertinent even throughout the crisis.
And many of us get ourselves so locked onto those wants that it creates a feeling of crisis inside ourselves because we don’t have that thing. Again, what is the purpose for it? When we are done with the game of wanting, we begin to inquire into why we “want” and how it serves our interests. What we find is that, although there are definite benefits that arise from wanting, the fundamental purpose for wanting is to make us so unhappy that we awaken from identifying with our mind-made concept of our self as a separate entity that lacks anything.
Subconsciously we want the things that will make us most unhappy. It is those things that drive us crazy with wanting that help to dislodge us from being identified with the thoughts of our self as a person that needs anything in order to be fulfilled. It liberates us from wanting, and we are then free to pursue our true desires: the desires of our authentic self as opposed to the relative wants of our mind-made idea of who we should be and what we should have.
It is in that pursuit that we experience true joy and love and compassion. It is in this opportunity to give and serve this life that we are healed. This comes with a deep experience of inner peace, and with that, we begin to see peace all around us. Wanting peace creates dis-ease. Instead, find the peace that already here. To have peace, you need only realize that peace already has you.