Happy New Year!

Tonight we ring out the old and ring in the new. And

more--much more--can change than simply the dates

on the calendar. You can resolve this night to change

your entire life...or any aspect of your self and your

experience that you choose - Neale Donald Walsh

Neale is spot on here.  Realize the choice within.  Realize this is your greatest gift.  Realize that it is the you from within that has the power to implement choice in and of itself.  Isn't it profound that we have the ability of conscious choice to begin with?  The amazing thing about being human is that we have the ability to witness ourselves in action and thus make changes from that awareness.  So why not this upcoming year make choices that lead to a heightened sense of self?  Why not this year choose to be a more joyous person, to become a more loving person, and to become a person that has a greater ability to make manifest the life they really desire?  The thing is when we declare that we have joy to share, love to give, and the power to create the life we want, we declare to creation itself, and inevitability to ourselves, that we are the change we want to see.

Making choices in the now changes the past and the future.  It changes the past by changing influential patterns that have dictated the course of our lives.  Making choices in the now changes the future because it opens your path up to "greater" possibilities.  So go on and choose what "greater" means to you.  This is YOUR life!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Much Love

-Chris

Love and the Holidays

The holidays are a time of coming together with family, lovers, and close friends.  It is a time to celebrate all that we have shared in this experience we call life.  No matter the religious denomination associated with this time of the year it is essentially a time to rejoice and come together. This is a time of sharing space together; of giving and receiving together, and of experiencing the unity that families, lovers, and friends feel together.  This is what makes this time of the year so very important and heartfelt.

Yet for many, it is one of the hardest times of the year.  In this time of almost seemingly forced intimacy, were we feel our emotions and those of our close circle very strongly, we are in a way “forced” to deal with ourselves.  During these times of heightened sensitivity we tend to feel feelings that we may have had kept in-check.  Typically we keep these emotions regulated due to the requirements of everyday living.  We narrow our focus on accomplishing today’s goals, yet all the while we, to varying degrees, diminish the sensitivity we have too our overall emotional experience.  Think about it, how are we to immerse ourselves in our productivity if we are always dwelling in the gut wrenching emotions of life?

It seems to me that life itself is so precious that we often try to suppress our emotions for we feel that “feeling so much” is not a pleasurable experience.

Lets feel this; we all too some conscious degree or not know and feel that life is a temporary experience…we all know that one day we will die and that those whom we love will pass on.  We know on some level, buried deep inside of us, that the experiences we share with our most cherished will somehow vanish into the immense nothingness of the heavens.  In other words...a situation is created by death that allows the human experience to be witnessed in a way beyond our current perception and experiences of the human emotion.  This is what makes relationships meaningful though…There is a” pre-determined” window of opportunity for those relating to the experience of life together…And it is in this fragileness that the human emotion is born.  Through this fragileness we come to know, really know, what love is.

{Our the emotional memories sprinkle across the universe as psychic galactic stardust...the emotional accumulations of our lives spread themselves thin over a space-time continuum that is infinite in scope, meta-physical in nature, and all inclusive.  make themselves manifest in a dimension [heaven], that transcends the physical dimension.}

We look at the cherished pictures of the past, especially during the holiday and wonder…where did these experiences go and what will become of them as they live on in me?  Those glossy prints of ink and paper hold more than the realization of what the past was but they evoke the emotional memory of what those experiences have meant to us…yet more importantly what they still mean to us…

In retrospect, with the knowing of the temporary realization as too what life is…we are brought to bittersweet tears…Yet let me run this by you…it is courageous to feel life with such intensity.  Know this and you will find the bravery within you to stand up to your deepest and most hidden emotions.  You will discover how to do this by respecting the past and allowing yourself to feel the re-processed emotions that “bubble up” from the depths of your psyche.  Honor and respect this bravery within you, for it is your guide and a tremendous source of emotional liberation.  Realize that all the love has the ability to hurt us, but it the courage within that allows us to enjoy and experience love to begin with.  The experience and loss of love is life’s greatest teacher.

We are all brave warriors to face the emotional experiences of this wondrous life.  So go on, be an emotional warrior.  Look into the past, feel it again.  Know that just like the past the future too will some day become a distant memory.  Knowing that life, this present moment, and those whom which we share it wish are precious.  They will not last forever nor will we.  Both the paper photos we cherish and the body in which we reside will one day recycle itself back into the soul of the Earth.  What then are we taught about love, knowing how precious and temporal life is?

Why not take the courageous steps in this present to feel completely what it is that you feel.  If you feel love for another person tell them…It just may be exactly what they needed to hear.  It may be something that does away with all the anger, confusion, and pain.  Yet all in all, being courageous enough to be sensitive to feel life deeply will bring you closer to understanding the grand experience of life.

But what is this all really worth?  Well, in the knowing that life is temporary and precious, in the knowing that your body will someday turn to ash, what will become of the you that does feel so deeply?  Can this than stir within you the curiosity to seek and feel “the you” that is beyond the physical form?  Does this sensitivity to life, this coming to know oneself in your inherently limited physical existence…does it push you to want to feel secure and immortal?  Well, know this…what you feel is something inherently immortal, why?  Because it is a “feeling” that we all feel, that we all have felt for millions of years, and that we will forever feel as life pushes forth.  In this unity of emotion there becomes something seemingly odd about that seemingly “temporal” life…The paradox revealed…we are still left on our knees…forever searching for peace…

To all of those that find themselves reading this.  Thank you.  Enjoy this holiday season and keep those whom you love close.  In respect too the vastness of life, too the bewilderment of life, and too the emotional richness too what life is find a way to feel fully who and what you are…you may just find yourself loving yourself and those important to you a whole lot more…

The Metaphysics of Consciousness: Intro to the Upcoming Book

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

Intro

Everything is conscious. Consciousness differs though to the degree to which it expresses itself; meaning to what degree is it consciously employed and subsequently made manifest.  Consciousness is employed and thus executed through the conscious force manifesting its will. Consider the movement within the conscious mind of a human to make decisions to bolster his or her life.  Furthermore, seemingly “non conscious” entities of existence exhibit qualities of consciousness because, as we will see, within everything is a creative life driving force that perpetuates its own existence.  Consider the plant that exhibits movement in attempt to sequester as much nutrient and sun from the environment as it can.  Everything is inherently connected when we consider the phenomena that this creative life driving force is the force that sustains all of existence through the perpetuation of the “life platform.”  Consider the movements of celestial bodies, such as the sun, the earth, and the greater cosmos as a whole.  Without the existence and subsequent movement of these celestial bodies life as we know it would not exist.  With all this in mind isn’t it probable then that the celestial bodies that constitute the heavens, in some incomprehensible way [to the degree to which we are currently conscious], become manifest so too allow for the platform too which consciousness came to know itself and thus evolve?  As we will discover life is magical for it is, in totality, beyond our conscious perception.  Yet, that does not mean that we are not striving to consciously evolve to step into and thus become that magic.  We are.  That is the point here…Too expand, and to greater degrees come to know and witness life.

This book is about understanding the relationship of consciousness to life and the varying degrees in which consciousness becomes manifest.  This book is about realizing that the more conscious the conscious individual becomes of consciousness itself a progression takes place.  The more conscious the person become of the “life force” within the more able the person becomes at manifesting a reality to which they desire.  I like to think of this as the expansion and progression of consciousness.  I am eluding to the fact that humans, as they become "evolved" and progress, they become more able to shape reality in a way too which we thought was not possible.  In a sense human consciousness has enabled us to discover and implement many great advances to which seem “unnatural.”  In this it seems as if we have progressed and evolved further than the nature we find around us.  Yet as we go on in this book, we will see that this egoic conception of human consciousness is what has caused us too separate ourselves from nature and thus create a dual state.  The renaissance of human consciousness expansion is about connecting back with the natural wisdom of the Earth.  Pairing archaic wisdom with conventional wisdom is what moving out of duality and into the new era of humanity is all about.  This is what the Ascension that is upon us is all about.

Consciousness, as it is defined today, is defined as 1) the state of being awake and aware of one’s surrounding and 2) the awareness or perception of something by a person.  Both definitions focus on the self-reflective type of consciousness that is found in a human.  Humans have the profound, yet often taken for granted ability, to be aware of their own awareness.  As well as being self-reflective beings we are also are very much “left brain” beings.  Linear reasoning such as logic, rationality, mathematic executions and language functions such as grammar and vocabulary are often times functions of the left hemisphere of the brain.  In contrast, artistic ability, creativity, and sensitivity are often functions of the right hemisphere of the brain.  As far as humans go, consciousness becomes fully integrated when both the left and the right hemispheres of the brain function equally.  This alludes to pairing both archaic and conventional wisdom that I just spoke about.  Yet as it stands currently our society has developed in such a way that conditions us to develop an over reliance on left-brain functioning.  This development has stunted our perceptual awareness in many ways.

Due to social conditioning and reliance on a left-hemisphere type of conscious expression we are, to a degree, cut off from our ability to register another sentient being’s consciousness, sensitivity, and or perception.  We have also, on a collective level, become desensitized to aspects of creation on a grander scale.  The consciousness of a celestial body [i.e. the Earth], or that of the universe as a whole goes un-noticed.  Unlike our ancestors that worshiped and subsequently communicated with other seemingly non-living entities of existence we have become desensitized to this sort of activity.  As we function now, at least on a collective level, we tend not too “register” other aspects of universal, earthly, or sentient consciousness as being self-reflective and or “advanced” in any way.  We either 1) perceive another sentient beings consciousness as inferior [e.g. that dogs are less conscious and aware than humans] or 2) we disregard “non-living” entities as even having the ability to be conscious [i.e. the earth, water, or a forest]. 

What I propose in this book is that consciousness is the all-encompassing energy of creation itself.  Consciousness is this energy that we can not only sense but also realize as our own and thus communicate with it as it extends to realms seemingly beyond us.  Consciousness, the energy that moves evolution, is a phenomenon that exists to infinite degrees.  From the seemingly inert rock, to the seemingly unintentional movement of dark matter, to the deliberate intent of the human being, consciousness is expressing itself.  Therefore when we look at consciousness in this way we expand on the conventional ways in which we define consciousness.

This book will explore consciousness to greater degrees and observe how we can become not only more sensitive to aspects of our own consciousness but also how we can expand our sensitivity of other realms of existence and thus understand the connective force general to life.  In this way we will understand consciousness not only rationally and execute perception from this domain of awareness as we typically do, but we will learn to become more sensitive to consciousness and expand our experiential perception of the “oneness,” and thus execute a life that is more aligned with the greater divine.  When we live our lives more attuned with the movement of consciousness itself we become a human conscious beacon of divine creation itself to infinitely higher degrees.  We become more experientially focused as opposed to just being conceptually focused.  This is how we will partake in consciousness evolution on an individual scale thus facilitating the greater ascension process that is under going at the collective level.  We will witness our connection to the greater divine through our consciousness and thus enable ourselves to live in sync with life.  Instead of living life with all the challenges and turmoil that is often apparent to left-hemisphere dominated living [egoic living], we will discover the ability to step into consciousness itself and thus realize the fact that we are and were always divine, connected, and unified.  Therein lies the key too the human dilemma.  This is how consciousness evolution and the subsequent ascension leads too liberation, freedom, and peace.

Freedom From Ourselves

We all want to know how to be the best version of ourselves.  We want the world outside of us, the world that "happens to us" to be nothing but wonderful.  We all want to be loved.  We all want to be appreciated.  We all want to be a success.  We all want answers.   Essentially, what we are all seeking, to various degrees, is a sense of self that makes us feel complete and subsequently "free."  This desire to be "free," to feel as if we are moving towards settling all the inner and outer desires of our life, is what, we believe, pushes us to become who we desire to be.  But how are we to be "free" if we are always pursuing something?  How are we to be free if we always desire something?  It is only human to desire, right?  It is only human to keep pursuing, right?  Let's look into this...

Our anxieties, our self-incrimination, our self doubt, our feeling of lack all derive from something so simple...

Through the conditioning of our culture we push and push and push to reach some sort of inner and outer achievement, acquisition, or status too where we feel fulfilled.  Our freedom than becomes dependent upon our accomplishments or some specific status we desire to achieve.  We say to ourselves... "I will be a good man, unburdened, when I do such in such"..."I will be a great woman when I find the way to calm my heart."  Freedom, in this state, is contingent upon the success of the goal we seek to accomplish.  Seemingly, we are "more free" from the burden of ourselves, of the inner self that judges, when we can cross off our personal checklist that too which we desire to do, have, or become.  But let us examine the logic in all of this.  If we are trying to work backwards, attempting to negate the desire born from within by accomplishing something...from where do we start?  The answer is that we have been conditioned to believe that we will always have something to which we seek to achieve in order to achieve some "better" status of who we are.  Subsequently, we always feel as if we have something missing in our lives...we will than always feel as if there is some gap between who we are now and who we believe we are to become.

Please be aware...If we are conditioned to find freedom in doing, having, and or becoming...how are we ever to be free?  This game of always having to do, be, or accomplish something is never ending, is it not?  You say you will be free when you attain such and such amount of money in your bank account, you say you will be free when you run off too your piece of land, you say you will be when you find love etc., but the mind that is always chasing freedom in pursuits and accomplishments is simply that...chasing...and is a mind that is always chasing peaceful and at ease? 

{As a side note, can we see how the entire consumer society is based upon this conditioned principle?  Are we not feed, in a conscious sense, a seemingly infinite amount of advertisement that tells us what to desire, tells us how to behave, tells us how to love, how to eat, how to have fun etc.?  We are taught to seek freedom in our indulgences, but how free are we if we are tethered to gratifying something that is in a perpetual state of desire, that something being the conditioned ego?

Where did this sense of indulgence that we feel even come from?  Is this something innately human or is it something that is conditioned into us?  I will leave you to answer that, but question this...would money exist in a "free" society, would "better" and "worse" exist in a free society, would "rich" or "poor" exist in a free society...would war exist in a free society?  Only when we become aware of this conditioning process can we begin to move forward as a society and as individuals.  Well, what is "moving forward" anyway...well, I will leave that for your heart to discover...I digress...}

The individual that does not look into ones own mind to witness the conditioning, is always going to be tethered to some idea or too some notion of having to do something.  The idea we have about ourselves is conditioned into us.  Of course we all display unique temperament, but to what degree is the "John" that we have come know a product of social conditioning?  Are you not more than the "mental box" to which the conditioning keeps you in?

This clinging onto a projected image protects us from actually being with the "what is."  The image propels us into the fantasy world and the world of the ego.  The ego, the idea of oneself or what that idea of oneself is "soon too become," is an illusory energy formation.  When we concentrate on the ego and live from this place we believe we are warding ourselves from misery, loneliness and the like, becuase we believe we are giving our lives some sort of direction, some sort of identity which to follow.  Yes we are giving our lives "direction," but are we even aware of where this "direction" leads us, energetically speaking?

Again, are you aware of the conditioning?  If we are directing ourselves constantly to be attaining more, seeking to become more, seeking to have more of anything, whether it be love, money, sex, or social recognition, etc.,...are we not declaring to ourselves and to the universe that we have a void to fill?

In actuality, the ego, which we believe is guiding us to freedom is actually doing the reverse to us.  It is keeping us tethered to wanting, to desiring, and the like.  The ego wants more of itself...it wants more "me" and will seek this through attempting to satiate its desires.   These ideas of how we should be, what we should do, what we should attain etc., are nothing more than "mind stuff" which projects us into the future and away from the now.  How can there be any freedom when we believe salvation exists in attaining something that is bound to the future?

The ego and the isolation it presupposes is the illusion that leads us to believe and see as fact that we are "islands" amongst each other.  Yes, we are individuals, but we are more than that.  We are both individuals and a collective human race simultaneously [as well as collective living ecosystem which extends to the cosmos and beyond].  Yet, the consumer society and those who benefit most off of it, have a vested interest in keeping the illusion of individualism alive.  Our true nature is that we, as individuals, inhabit an ecosystem, an Earth, that is inherently interconnected.  Each part, whether that part be a single human individual, an ocean, or a chimpanzee in Africa are tied in some way or another.  We do not need science to prove this to ourselves.  The feeling inside knows this truth.  Yet, if we have been cut off from this feeling within through mass conditioning, of which has influenced us to live primarily from the mind and not from sensation, we get lost in the endless abyss of the mind and thus lose sense of this feeling within.

As for the sake of humans, there would be no society without the individual, yet there would be no individual without the society...When we cling onto the ego for individual identification we become unaware of the great connection we all have.  It is this connection, when lost, that we leads us to feel an overwhelming sense of isolation and subsequent fear.  The "I" must compete against each other to secure what the "I" needs.  The elite in control of media [who live solely from fear] have us believing we are "one nation under all" yet, when nations are pinned against one another it becomes, in theory, a global race to the bottom for resource acquisition.

The thing is, if we as countries are competing against one another we are inherently competing against each other as individuals even in our own countries.  The profit motive, the motive which is conditioned into us, is what leads us to believe that war is a "normal" way of life.  We egotistically wave around our nationalistic flags while we have been conditioned to become desensitized to the brutality that all this has all caused.  [And as a side note, do you really think that you were not conditioned to believe that "terrorism" is some real threat to our sovereignty as a nation?  Has the media not attempted to condition us through their relentless campaigns to fear dark skinned bearded men living in caves half way around the world? - seek to see how the media and those who control it have tried relentlessly to keep the ego illusion alive and you in fear].

The struggle we see in ourselves, as well as the world, exists becuase we believe we must compete against another, we must be compared against another.  It is the comparison and judgment of another that leads us to act to fulfill the conditioned desires of the ego.  It is the comparison and judgment of another that leads to us believe that we are indeed actually separate and not inherently connected.

All of our insecurities arise from this separation and we try incessantly to be, do, or accomplish something in order to override this insecurity.  We try to become better than that person, we try to become more cunning, smarter, richer, etc., than the next person.  We try to be "freer" than the next person.  Therefore, if the mind only knows and acts from this separation, from this conditioned sense of self, how can we ever as both individuals and as a collective society ever be free?

What is freedom anyway?  If there is always a desire to become something, to accomplish something, to figure something out etc., is there freedom?  If we are in a perpetual state of trying to uphold the image to which we believe we are can we free?  Are we not limited to the image?, the image being the conditioning of ones life...How are we free if this conditioning attempts to project one forward in their life in a way that keeps our minds in the tomorrows of what we are going to become.  Does this image than, this conditioning than, put borders around oneself, whether those borders be ideological, and such?  If there are borders than around oneself...can you really be free?  Go deeply into that...not with your mind...but with all of you.

Is freedom than the cessation of "having" to do something, "having" to be something, "having" to feel something?

What is it than to be free of desire?  If there is nothing left to be, do or accomplish, we may state that we are no longer human, we are not living...But go within here, and feel this...can the mind really understand what it is to be free?  What is "free" anyway?  Of course the mind can analyze, interpret, and make rational and logical deductions as too what this experience can be like...but how can any attempt to know something of which is beyond mind be understood by mind?

So where do we go from here?

Simply be aware...and see what you discover.  Witness the conditioning mind and how it is simply an accumulation of the past.  Let go of this by allowing yourself to be who you are in this moment without any judgment.  You do this not by trying anything, not by applying any formula, not by seeking any guru or the like...you do it by simply becoming aware.  When you become aware of the process the awareness burns through the unconciousness like a light into the darkness.  When a tought comes up, just be aware of it.  Witness to see if you judge anything, yet do not seek to change this, just be aware.  This takes a diligent mind, a focused mind...but that is what it is to be fully awoken.  Just be you...your awareness is inherently patient.

Know that you needed to become conditioned to know what it is to live beyond your condition so that you may know, on a deep and profound level, how expansive the human experience can be...so you could know what freedom really is.  This is all a part of our soul's journey...mine as well.  You may not find words, ideas, notions, and the like as too what this experience brings to you.  You may not find the "holy grail," you may not find just what you were looking for...but you just might find the feeling that tells you everything!

The Experience of Transcendence: Understanding Oneness Even Further

When you perceive something and interpret it with your mind, the object or thing that you witness becomes the word, idea, or the concept that you interpret.  What you are seeing therefore becomes the word...therefore you experience the mental image, the mental word.  This is the basis of subjective truth.  Subjective-ism occurs because there is a separation between the observer and observed.   When you see something for what it truly is, without interference from the mind, you experience the observation simply as it is.  Herein lies the experience of absolute truth for the "observer" and "observed" mend into one, into one experience.  Observation at the level of duality creates a cognitive truth whereas the experience of reality without the interference of mind creates the experience of absolute truth.  The latter is the experience of transcendence.

Truth cannot be uncovered by any formulation; through any means of cognitive understanding.  Truth is.  It is nothing more, nothing less; for truth...really...is undivided experience.  Undivided experience is when experience is whole.  Undivided experience is.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Truth, absolute truth, therefore is experience that is untainted by the mind because it is the mind that taints experience by creating separation and thus ending the "undivided experience."

The separation occurs because, through the product of the conditioned mind, the observer sees the "observed."  The observed becomes something to be named or identified.  This is the basis of duality.  However "real" this may seem, it is only real in the cognitive sense.  We must realize that "real" is subjective.  Absolute truth, as the experience that it is, cannot be defined through a word, a idea, or an concept.  The mind cannot touch experience.  Only perception, untainted, can touch and hence taste absolute reality.  We will go deeper into this as we proceed.

Concepts of the mind do not reside within the physically perceived reality.  Abstractions [thoughts] are only observed because they are projected onto what we observe.  Yet, how can something that is seemingly untraceable within the physical world, that being thought, dictate the way in which we experience the physical world?  Yes, the mind is useful, but its utility is based purely on how it makes sense of stored memory [the conditioned mind].  To live through the mind, to perceive solely through the abstractions of the mind is to perceive and witness life through the past.  Why than should an experience that is isolated within your own mind become the basis too which you see the world as it is now.

Living through the lens of the past, through the conditioned mind, we separate ourselves from the now.  The past and the now can not overlap.  Go deep into this...not with your mind...but with the sense of self that senses.

The observations we filter through the conditioned mind creates a sense of self that is separate, that is "unique," that is "individual," and yes this is "real," but do you not see how this "realness" forbids us from experiencing the grandeur of the undivided experience?  Do you not see how this sense of mind separation is the basis of duality, and hence the ego?  How are we to experience the truth of the undivided reality...the reality which is...if we are too far removed from this reality because we live through the abstractions that the mind and the ego create?  How can the ego, which is an accumulation of all of our yesterdays, come to know and fully experience the now?

...The mind cannot touch the now...

Yes, "I" may be writing this, but at the absolute level, this is not "I," this is something collective coming through me.  The experience of me writing this is an experience in the now, not necessarily a formulation based on the "truths" of yesterday. Yes, it is "I" that has had to focus and decipher between the ego me and the collective me, but if I divide this experience from you it becomes utterly meaningless.  For these words are for us all.  A writer without a reader seizes to exist.  Do you see the profoundness of that?  Do you see the beauty when the object and the subject, the outside and the inside, the You and the I mend into one experience?

The now inherently transcends dualism.

Yes, the object and the subject, the outside and the inside, the You and the I are perceivable...but this perceptibility does not render the dualism of this conceptualization as truth.  Again, truth is.  The truth is the all-encompassing phenomena of now.  Is and Now are inseparable.  They are verbs, not things to be defined.  The now inherently transcends dualism.  Dualism still exists, but only within the whole, within the oneness.

Do you get this?  If not, witness the workings in your own mind.  Witness how it seems that what you are reading is outside of you.  Because "I" wrote this does not mean that it is not "yours."  By how could this writing here, this piece of "intellect" be "something" if it were not to be received by "something," that something being you.  This "conversation" implies unity.  And it is this unity, this bond, that is beyond words, and beyond the mind.  We can say it is a bond, a unity...but this definition does not undermine the experience of this bond...can you notice the difference?  Do you feel this?

Feel this...do not think this...feel this...What does unity feel like?  It goes beyond the word, does it not?

Now you see...there is something that is greater than the You and the I.  There is something that is beyond all of this.  This "something" that is beyond allows this experience to occur, allows this transmission of information to occur.  Yes, this "something beyond" exists in tandem with the world of duality, yet, this something beyond allows us to perceive this duality and go beyond it.  This is where undivided experience can be perceived.  Are you beginning to realize the nature of transcendence that is all around us of which actually shapes our reality?  But when, as a society, are we going to actually let this sense of transcendence shape our reality, or "norms" and our mode of collective being? [This concern is for another post]...

Typically we see the world and perceive it, and hence create our conditions, our norms, and our ways of being through the realm of perception that is just a step beneath the realm of transcendence, of "oneness."  This is the realm [the level] of the mind, of abstractions, of the ego, and of duality.  The concept of you and I as separate is real only insofar as we believe it to be.  The conventional experience of "you" and "I" as separate is supported by this belief and therefore perpetuates the duality between you and I.  Do we not see then how "belief" tremendously shapes our "truth?"

Is it possible to see that this "truth" [the truth of duality] is upheld by a subjective truth...that is that our experience of each other, of the you and I, occurs because we do not allow the something beyond to be perceived.  This experience of transcendence then only becomes something we know about in books, in fantasy, or the like.  If we try to understand transcendence with the mind we simply get more mind.  Transcendence is an experience.  It is a feeling.  It is the feeling that allows you to experience the "something beyond."  In this feeling is the experience that there is something beyond you, something beyond I,  and something collective too where no division occurs.

Undivided experience is something you can see and feel, but it is not something which the mind can understand.  It may try, but the actual trying only keeps the illusion alive that this "something beyond" does not exist.  In reality it is this "something beyond" that is the fabric of our world, of our lives, and of our experience...that is if we choose to experience it.  How do I know this?  Well, I don't.  I feel it!

Eckhart Tolle refers to this "something beyond" I speak of when he talks about the formless and timeless reality as the unmanifiested that animates the fabric of our world:  He states


“In the stillness of your presence you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form.  You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature.  You can look beyond the veil of form and separation.  This is the realization of oneness.  This is love.”

So how do we choose to experience this?  How do we feel this?  Well, I suggest you stop seeing the world through the conditions embedded in your mind.  Simply see the world.  Allow yourself to experience the world without a dialogue in your mind which is defining this experience moment by moment.  It is the dialogue of mind that creates the duality, the separation, the loneliness and the rest of it.  It is the dialogue in the mind that labels the tree and thus experiences the label.  Yet it is the perception, of which is whole and alive, that connects  us all with the something beyond.  The tree than is no longer a tree...it becomes an experience...it becomes you, and you become it.  This is how experience is ultimately undivided.  This is.  This is the feeling of transcendence.

Go on...and melt into your reality...

Divine Synchronicity at Occupation Wall St. Tonight: Therapy at Liberty Plaza

During yesterday afternoon's general assembly a spokeswoman from the medical team was addressing the need for volunteer counselors at the “Occupy Wall St.” site.  This instantly caught my attention as I felt a calling to be involved [amazing how the internet can connect us to virtually anything going on in our social world at any given time].  Given my background as a therapist/coach I knew this could be something very suiting for me.

When I arrived this evening I went straight to the medical team located on the east side of liberty plaza.  A very nice woman who was eager to get me involved greeted me, took my information, and told me she would be in contact with me by the end of the day tomorrow. 

[Now here is the kicker…read the following carefully and see how this all divinely fits together]

I asked her “what type of help has been needed here, what have you seen?” She told me that, generally speaking, the people who have been occupying this space are starting to really feel stressed and warn out given the constant high energy of the environment, rain, and general stressful conditions.  She also told me about an incident involving a man who was in serious need of attention from the night prior.  She told me he had lost his wife a few months ago and too cope he was using a heavy cocktail of painkillers and drinking heavily.  She told me that he was brought to medical last night after an incident of self-abuse.  She digressed and I assured her that I was ready to help in anyway possible.  We discussed a few ideas of how we could address general mental health issues in the plaza and shortly there after I left the medical area.

The night progressed; I met other occupants and participants.  It was a very cheery night filled with a lot of passion, courage, and non-fear sentiment.  As evening General Assembly meetings commenced I made my way to the GA area were everyone gathered to listen.  At some point during the GA meeting hunger struck and I walked over to the “kitchen” area to grab a donated dinner.  At this point I started to talk with a man who was also feeding himself.  Let’s call him Anthony for the sake of confidentiality.

One thing led to another and we started small talk.  I asked him if he had been occupying the space or simply coming down to visit during the day.  He told me he was coming here every night, but for reasons that I found out later, he was “busy during the day.”  His demeanor was lethargic and it seemed as if he drunk, not completely out of it, but he definitely was a little cloudy.  Regardless, he started to share with me his life story.  I got the feeling he trusted me and felt comfortable to open himself up.

He had told me that he had been out of work since June.  I asked him “why where you laid off?”   ...    He paused and then looked down at the ground… “It’s complicated, my wife died in June.”  He had been out of work and homeless since then because his life was to much to bear due to the emotional realization that the love of his life, his wife,  was no longer was alive.  He was a bartender before all of this occurred.  To give you an idea of his family situation: the day his wife died he called his father to tell him.  His father’s response was “Go to work, lets talk tomorrow.”  With nothing left in his swollen heart he resorted to pain killers and found himself unable to “function” in this “normal” society.  He was around 30 years old, homeless, and hopeless.  Occupying Wall St. seemed to be a suiting fit for him, given his knowledge and belief that corporate America is destroying the liberties this country was founded on.

{At this point it all hit me! Here is Anthony! This is the guy that the medical team told me about! And out of the thousand or so people that occupied the plaza I met him…I firmly believe there was a divine power that brought us together…so much so that in that moment, despite his tragic story, my ego lifted, and I was fully there with him, fully immersed in his journey…

He continued to tell me his story.  He told me how he used to love going to the super market with his wife because she was a great cook.  She was Northern Italian with blue eyes and blond hair and she cooked up a mean lasagna.  He told me how perfect she was, how beautiful she was, and how she was an angel to him because she kept him on a straight path. 

He seemed to be really relieved to talk to someone who was not placing judgment on the situation and allowed him the space to simply speak his truth and too speak his experience without any worry. He even showed me how he was self abusive the night prior.  

He told me of the tragedy of how she died, and to respect both Anthony and his deceased wife I will not share the story here…but let’s just say it is extremely tragic as she died in his arms.

We talked more for a short while before he told me he needed to find his sleeping bag because someone stole his the night prior.  I knew that at this point he had expelled enough of his experience.  He was now ready to step into the "moment beyond talking about his pain."  As we stepped away from each other he looked at me and stated, “Yo man, I feel a lot lighter right now, thank you, let’s talk again soon.”  My heart was filled with life and I looked at him and said “Thank you Anthony for sharing your story with me.  You are filled with great courage!” We walked away, and I realized that for that time I was lifted out of the intensity of the plaza and into something moving, serene, and divine.

Given my “position” now at the medical team at liberty plaza he knows how to reach me.  After this encounter I went over to the woman who told me about him and I told her about my “random coincidence” with bumping into him and having, pretty much, an impromptu therapy session.  We were both blown away by the divine synchronicity that had occurred! 

I will be down at “Occupy Wall St.” most of my nights, connecting, giving, and receiving from all the real compassion that is unfolding there.  This is not some “hippy” movement.  This is a real, progressive movement, of loving folks who want the causes of injustice and profits over human need to end.  It is not just about reforming our economic system…it is about waking up the world to show everyone and each other that we are part of something greater than each individual…to realize that we are part of humanity and we should start acting like that and create a society that respects this fact to its highest degree.  I will state it here…Living and acting for the sake of profit will only divide us and destroy the world in which we inhabit…It is time to seek a different way…and that is what this movement is all about!

The Wall of Mind, the Freedom of Body

There are countless times when we condemn situations and experiences in our lives. From the little things like the troublesome reaction to a loud firetruck that passes by or something larger like that of being disappointed with a current life situation [i.e. your work situation, or something of that magnitude]. Yet, what is it that makes one situation more pleasing than another, or more desirable than another? Is it not the mind that passes judgment on such experiences? And if so, what is the mind using to assess the situation?

What other than mind is the aspect of self that witnesses the world and judges it? Yes, the body reacts, but the body does not judge. The body does not label anything, that is the reactionary endeavor of the mind. Yes, the the mind may decipher for the body what it is feeling, but can it accurately do this? Can words convey the entirety of the human experience? And if the mind does try to do this may it not create a reality for the body that is based on the accumulated past? The mind is the repository of memory, and hence is of the past. So how can the mind, which knows only the past, dictate for the body what it is feeling, now, in this present moment? Yes, the mind may observe the body and find it to be familiar, but is this familiarity not than directed into the past and away from the present? Is it possible than that the body becomes a prisoner too the mind? So how do we figure this out? How do we find out what is really going on here and how to break the chains between mind and body?

To figure out what is going on one needs to simply be aware. Be aware of the thoughts, be aware of the body, yet hold an awareness that does not let the mind control what this awareness means to you. I read in Osho last evening that the body has its own means of intelligence. Simply observe animals. They function with much greater ease than we do, and that is becuase they do not have a self-reflective mind that tries to circumvent this body intelligence. The animal is in a constant state of meditation...that is the animal is in a constant state of body meditation. That is what awareness is...it is a sensitivity to body without an interference of mind projections upon that body. The thing is, any mind projection is always inherently a projection upon the body...for the body is the vessel of the soul and the mind is the mechanisms which was created to understand soul [the fountain of human experience].

The mind is not here to understand intellectually what this soul experinece is all about in the way of analysis and deciphering, the mind is here to understand the aspect of soul by allowing the soul to be projected into the world with conscious intent. The soul does this by discovering what the body is doing and how it is reacting, nothing more. It is as if the human experience, and what it could be about, is to experience the "being" experience [the sensitivity of body experience] in a heightened experiential way. The rest of what we have let unfold is the the constant judging and criticizing of what is...This is the ego.

When we observe a situation with a negative reaction what is occurring, unconsciously, is that the ego is attempting to try and do away with a situation by judging and reacting to it in a way. Why would the mind, the ego, act in a way if it did not believe it did not have some power to control the situation. This is obviously an irrational action, for this sort we cannot control the exterior world with out minds. We can only control the internal reaction to the exterior world.

Yes, this is where the point lies between the creation of a new world or the perseverance of our ego centered world. Yet we should not be of concern of this, for we are only have the ability to control the inner experience. And to what end do we serve, but none other than feeding the ego if we believe we can actually change the world? Yes, great leaders have held this notion and persevered into great depths of social transformation, but I would propose that these great leaders understood that real change occurs from within, from having no attachment to results, nor expectations of how their work will proceed. In this they became self-less, they became ego-less.

So when you find your self judging the exterior reality...ask yourself and be aware...how does this judgment serve you? Yes, it may perpetuate your sense of individuality, but too what cost and too what pain? Can you imagine a reality where you were connected to the all that is, as opposed to observing the world as something outside of you, that you wish was different? Are you than, in a sense, not condemning yourself when you judge the exterior world becuase that sense of condemnation comes from a place within you? Maybe that is the wish of the ego, so that its sense of existence may continue. The ego, the mind, unconsciously clings onto the notion of individuality so that the exterior world can be something to which it can be defined against, yet when we step out of mind and into body we may begin to realize something so profoundly beautiful...It is a feeling that brings you home and brings you back to being...Only you than will know what that feeling of inter-connectivity is like...

Here is the kicker...both your individuality and your unity "with the all" exist at the same time. When the body senses this the ego will be put in its right place. It will be put in its place of simply observing the "what is" without any desire to change it, for the change is within you...not without. And a human race that realizes this is set free from mind, liberated by body awareness, and brought back into unity...but a type of unity that is beyond anything we have felt or experienced yet...so be excited...becuase eventually we will all end up there [in fact we are already they we have just yet walked into this realization as a collective society, but you can now!]...this is the inevitable destination...and what it feels like I cannot describe...Just simply be aware...and let the cosmos unfold the destination of your inevitable spiritual progression!

Expansive Uncertainty: A Look into the Foundaiton of Existential Anxiety

We often hear the saying, "the only thing constant in life is change." However cliche, this is extremely true, yet we hold on dearly to some type of "normality," some sort of mental comfort, in attempts to keep our minds from fleeting into the grand infinite expanse of "what if," or "what could be." Embracing change has nothing to do with choosing to see this or that as some change in ones life. "Change" can be conceptualized, it can be enumerated, and it can be assessed, but this is not necessarily the type of change I am talking about [although it is a part of what I am trying to get at]. Yes, we can witness change in our own lives through observing oneself walk through a rite of passage, change a job, change a hobby, enter into a new relationship, etc., but this facet of change is the by-product of the elemental essence of change that I am trying to illuminate.

What I am saying is that "change," which essentially is just a movement, is expanding infinitely. In attempts to reiterate, the mind tries to grasp and understand this change, follows it to no end only to realize that the analysis only brings us back to the ageless attempt in which we attempt to calm the mind through identifying with abstractions and fleeting notions of what we believe reality to be. Because life is always influx [not just in the social world which we have come to be so completely immersed in], the mind can only attempt to "follow" this change by identifying change with notions, ideas, and words of which are all limited [for the mind cannot fully grasp life through abstractions].

What we typically do is pull ourselves emotionally into the identifications that the mind creates and we subsequently build emotional energy bridges between the notions we hold as truth and the emotional body. Yet, when faced with the expansive uncertainty of life we become anxious for we fear that life as we know it now, as we are comfortable with it now, is subject to change, even drastic change. So therefore it is the identification process, the process that comes about by holding onto the reality as it is now, that causes the existential anxiety.

It seems that we identify inherently. Most, if not all of us, are conditioned to believe that the thoughts we have, the ideas and concepts which we pay homage too, are who we are. So it seems that freedom lies somewhere in between acceptance and letting go of what we thought we are and what we thought life to be. But than again, is it the mind that will try to know what "freedom" is to ward it self from the expansive uncertainty?

The person declares inwardly..."I want to be free...free from my anxiety, free from my misery, and free from the troubles that arise in my life!" Yet, what is freedom than but another word, idea, or concept? The declaration within oneself that says they seek some change within oneself, however noble to help them get on track with discovering what it is to be outside the conventional thought of man, is nothing but another abstraction, another idea...of which cannot grasp with the enormity of change and with the expansive life which is inherently uncertain. So than were does freedom lie?

For me, at least, I have found it in the glimmering moments of when I remind myself to step aside from my identifications, from the idea that all the choices in my life that I make are permanent, and when I see myself identifying with my feelings and my current life situation etc...This is not too say that my feelings are not real or that my current life situation is not real...but what I am saying is that these feelings too are subject to the ever flow of change and the expansive uncertainty that lies within these "walls of change." Feel it, acknowledge it, and move on...Feel it, sit with it, go within it, and seek to see what happens to it, not necessarily allow it to be identified as something permanent or something intrinsically me. This takes self trust and a faith that all that one is witnessing within oneself is their to transcend beyond...Either to transcend to greater depths, greater understanding, greater joys, or too further dismantling [of which in itself is a form of transcendence]...

Like the winds that flow through the seasons of change...so too, do you within the expansive and beautiful uncertainty of which is life. One only has to look to the sky to realize how infinitely uncertain life is...For the way in which the light colors this earth, the way in which the clouds move around the sky, and the way in which the air feels are always different...that is if one is observant enough to look past the identifications of what we think reality is and allow themselves to feel it as it is...

Forgiving the Past

Not all relationships are easy. Often times challenging relationships come into our lives to help us understand who we are. We come to experience ourselves by relating to these relationships. In regards to a challenging relationship, if we work hard enough (and if it is right) we move further into our own essence when we accept and forgive those who may have troubled us.  When we enable ourselves to integrate the understanding of another into our own sense of awareness we gain perspective.  With this gained perceptive we are then given the choice to have empathy for those who do challenge us.

I am only beginning to realize how much I have stagnated emotionally because I have allowed myself to stay identified with a particular set of emotions.  I felt they were justified given my past...but I question myself...how long do I want to stay tethered to the past?

I come to this post in a time in my life were I feel I am starting to forgive someone in my life, who at times, released his anger on me in ways that I found unforgivable. This person is my father. And as I work with the past lately, really work with it, and allow it to be felt...I found that I can actually come to an understanding as to why my father acted in such a way while I grew up. This has enabled me to feel a sense of forgiveness for him and has given me the courage to talk with my father in a way that I never felt I could have. Yes, we are extremely different people, yet we love, and we love passionately. We express this love in very very different ways.

I have seen that his anger has resulted from a deep fear he had.  Simply put, he just wants us all to be "ok." To him that is his way of loving.  And sometimes securing what he needed in order to have his family be "ok" meant that he became full of stress and anger.  I may not agree with everything he has done, but he did it in the only way he knew how too. The actions that I deemed, even as a young child, as very damaging, I am finally allowing myself see that they occurred as they only would because of who he was and how he dealt with his emotions.

I am now beginning to see how this all has related to my emotional development and self-worth. I realize I am only peering beneath the surface of a very deep matrix of emotions, yet I allow myself to stand humble and be here now. Not judging were I stand, only observing it and accepting it.  I am far from perfect in my own trails of self-development.  But here I am, humbly accepting my faults, my prejudices, bouts of anger, sadness, anxiety, and frustration. At least I feel courageous enough to believe I am accepting things as they are...

It seems though, that as I work through my stuff it allows me to open up to people, in this case my father, in a way that is not only healing for myself, but also for others. Maybe we can humble ourselves too see that the world is not necessarily attacking us, but merely that the world is afraid...afraid to loose its foundation, its security, and its glimmering experience of love...

The Movement of Conciousness

You cannot force consciousness to be conscious. It must first dwell within the realm of the unconscious. Consciousness is a movement, it is your enlightenment. Yes, intention brings you inline with consciousness so that the process flows...so that one becomes aware, but if we are to try and force consciousness, force it through will, we simply are left with the experience of forcing consciousness. What needs to occur is processing. We must process consciousness so that consciousness can become known. The process is inward observation. Simply that. So sit with oneself, when one is quiet and still the unconscious can begin to move, can begin to stir, and can become to be known.

Silence requires nothing. Therefore the evolution of consciousness, in a sense, requires nothing. It simply requires a release...an environment that supports the movement of the unconscious into conscious awareness is an environment that respects utmost the inward experience of living. When we do not go within, we go with out. And simply, if we are to move towards "realization" we must simply realize. Consciousness evolution than is the product of awareness, internal processing, acceptance, and subsequent release. This is the movement of human conscious energy that goes unchallenged by dogma, thought paradigm, and the definitions of self.

Repetitive Patterns in our Relationships: Enhancing our Conscious Awareness of Self Through the Mirror of Relationship

At the core of each and everyone of us we desire to be loved. We also desire to bring love into someone else's life. Typically we are graced with these opportunities throughout our lives. Some more so than others although it is not the quantity of relationship that matters but the quality. One person may acquire as much love and experience from one relationship as another would from three separate ones. It is all about intent. Yet often we find that our intent makes itself manifest in repetitive patterns in our relationships. There is an unconscious element to this.

As it is, we are always in relationship. There is never true isolation. Even when we are alone. We are in constant relationship with the environment and its people around us. Our inward projections, our emotions, reveal the unconscious and conscious feelings that play themselves out in our relationships. Many of us, if not all of us to a certain degree, are still in relationship to the past. This is where the unconscious element is found. For we would not relate to the past if we were fully conscious of this. Yes we may be sentimental to the past, but this is not what I am referring too.

The relationship to the past consists of the emotional "residue" [emotional body] that was created through the interaction of our inherent personality with the experiences of our entire lives, from our infancy all the way to the present moment. It is this emotional body, along with our individual mode of expression, that influences the way in which we interact with everything and everyone.

It is the emotional body that influences the "conditions" of our relationships. The conditions being our emotional responses to the variables of our inter-personal relationships:

What is important to conceptualize is that we filter our relationships through our emotional body. This causes us to create conditions that play out our intra-psychic energy [intra-psychic meaning it deals just with the relationship to oneself, as opposed to inter-psychic which refers to our relationship with another]. What I mean by "play out" is that we reflect our intra-psychic processes on another to cause an energy that resonates between the two people. When both people do this to another...that is, they play out inther intra-psychic enegry upon another the couple creates an interplay to whereas ones own inra-psychic energy can be magnified., become more easily perceptible. This is the mirror of relationship. This is how we can see deeply within the reflective mirror of another into the depths of our unconscious and conscious aspects of being.

The mirror of relationship allows us to look deeply into ourselves. I think we can agree that it is the emotional body that causes us to "react" in our relationships. When we cater to the emotional body we cater to the past. We "play out" our past upon another [this is the basis for conditions within a relationship]. This is not to say that our relationships and experiences are not to be emotional, they are...very much so...but when our mind shapes the emotional body in a way, when the mind identifies with the pain and hence holds it in place...the emotion experienced becomes an emotion of the past. We repeat the past. That is if we are unconscious of our intra-psychci energy. The more we are aware of our intra-psychic process the more we can be released from the conditions we so typically put around love and walk into the experience of love as if it is a liberating exchange of energy.

We are "reactive" when we let the past unconsciously affect how we relate to the current relationship [in whatever capacity]. The emotional body is mostly unconscious to us, but the more conscious we become of it, the more we are able to walk more deeply into unconditional love. I make such a broad connection based on the observation that in my own life, the more I have become aware of my own patterns and relation to my current relationships, the more I realize I have the capacity within me to move into a state of openness with everyone. "Openness" is "oneness" with another.

Of course I am guarded like anyone else, but I strive to come to accept and witness that everyone acts the way they do, including myself, in a way that acts to protect their heart from pain, from abandonment, and from lose. Yes pain, abandonment, and lose, are mind concepts of which derived from our relation to fear that has been driven into us through social fear paradigms...yes, these mind concepts are in a sense abstract and not "real" for they are the past, yet these pains nonetheless linger within us and we attribute to them their "realness" through our identification with them [which more likely than none is unconscious too us]. This perpetuates the emotional body and enables it to be "real." For if the mind "knows" that this fear is real, than it becomes our experience [and we suppress aspects of ourselves, we let lie dormant aspects of our conscious awareness to ward ourselves from our sensitivity...becuase when we are sensitive in a fearful world...we embody it very deeply.]

The emotional pain body is unconscious to us for there are painful things that we wish not to deal with. But I promise you this, when we become brave enough to look beneath the surface we grant ourselves the opportunity to liberate ourselves from the unconscious impulses that keep us in repetitive patterns in our relationships. And it are these repetitive patterns that create the conditions of our relationships. And conditions, only limit the love, put a box around it, and diminish its ability to heal. For healing is growing and growing sometimes is not always pain free. But "growing" is freedom, for this is what the soul yearns for. Remember, the pain only comes from the witnessing of our unconscious reservoir, but it is a reservoir that is not infinite and can be cleared. Unconditional love is possible for us all.

What exactly is unconditional love? I can use words to try to describe it, but it nonetheless evades definition. For how can the most profound act of existence itself be contained by words. But I can say one thing...it is a love that makes us feel more alive, it is a love that encourages us to keep evolving. Maybe conditions will always exist...maybe the unconscious reservoir will always exist; maybe that is the purpose of the relative world. Yet what I am saying is that there is always something too move towards. There is a karmic and spiritual purpose for growth through the mirror of relationship. It seems to me that the purpose is too allow ourselves to shed the emotional past so that the soul of self, the absolute self, can transcend the conditions that the emotional body and the mind create. The mind, and the ego may always "be here" with us, for they "should," for they allow us to know what we are transcending, but when the "should" is transformed into "irrelevant" we have moved closer to world peace and harmony [do not think that world peace does not exist through the mirror of relationship. That is the only place it exists].

So allow yourself to take a step back. Witness another. Witness their defenses. And what you may begin to see may profoundly transform you. For in that moment you may realize that their condition, there inability to unconditionally love you stems from the psychic pain to which they identify with. The past has held a lot of pain for us and when we witness this in another we begin to see how they unconditionally love to ward themselves from the preconceived pain that they "may" receive from another. In a world of "what if's" and "possibilities" we protect ourselves from the pain too which we feel is inherent in relationships. We have been conditioned, through the pain of our parents, to see that all love contains conditions. It is a pain body that has moved with us from generation to generation and is also contained with the social norms. Yet, when we become aware of this pain within another we are given the ability to see it comfortably within ourselves...This is not a selfish thing, this is not a cop out. This is just the mirror of relationship. Because to see something in another means that we give ourselves the opportunity to see "it" within ourselves. It is all about opportunity, for the opportunity of unconditional love, or love beyond the conditions that the pain body creates for us is within our reach.

Knowledge and Understanding

Is there a difference between coming to knowing oneself and understanding oneself? These two words, knowing and understanding, I will use, as a matter of semantics, to try to observe something about human nature. What than is it to know oneself? What are we "knowing?" What is it to understand oneself? What is it that we are "understanding?" In many ways these two words can be used interchangeably. But for the matter of this post knowledge will imply a thought form, a solidified, agreed upon [however subjectively] fact, either about a person or about a situation. Understanding will be more feeling oriented. The understanding of something is an assurance through the witnessing of oneself.

When we come to know ourselves through some idea, some concept or such we find "salvation," for no longer do we need to search. We are confident for we know who we are. We are a "________," etc., but could this salvation, this confidence of self, be nothing more than ego gratification [ego gratification in the sense that is puts us in a psychological state where we become more so desensitized to our effectual core and its existential need for liberation]? Could this declaration of who we are be nothing more than a mere distraction? Does this declaration of self not limit the reach of our existence within a cognitive framework? Are we than not distracted from witnessing the real experiential self that is boundless, that escapes all definition, of which is a part of the flow of nature?

When we declare a "knowing" about our selves we structure our identity around some cognitive formulation. This cognitive formulation than, in a sense, is what we declair as "truth" and becomes what we pay homage too for we give it our attention. When someone "knows" that they are, for instance, a Christian, they see themselves within the cognitive boarders that describe, to the person subjectively, what it is to be a Christian. There is a confidence from such a declaration for there is a sense of salvation. "I know thyself" the ego declares! Due to the religious nature of this declaration the ego feels important, if feels as if it belongs to something greater than itself. Yet, in the religious sense, there is a declaration of what is holy, what "I" belong too and such, and in a way there is a salvation that is born, for the self declaration, the self "knowledge" assures the person that they no longer need to seek, for they know! There is peace. But is this peace, is this knowing, not derived from an abstraction?, from a reliance on some sort of authority? Is it a distraction in the sense that it gets the mind to perform the illusory trick of believing that it knows what is actually going on. Yet can we really come to know the totality of life, the totality of our existence through words and identification with them...can we really know when we declare we know...or do we only understand when we put aside our knowledge and come to feel what it is to be you, what life is, what the mystery of the expanses are?

Is God a word or an experience?

Spirits in Nature

When the Native Americans, or most indigenous people for that matter, witnessed nature, for example say the wind, they held the notion that there was a great spirit moving the tree. To the indigenous people the wind is a spirit form. Today when we see the wind...we see the thought that the word has created, and typically we bypass the witnessing of the actual experience becuase we are so tied up psychologically thinking the word. Our perception of the world outside of us, in this case observing the wind move through a tree, becomes a mere thought instead of a "witnessing".

Furthermore, what is the difference between observing the wind as some causal event or as some intervention from something divine? Is the scientific observation of the "wind" not merely a description of what is unfolding? So than how does the observation of something, the scientific analysis of something, render it not divine, or not meta-physical? Because we lack the science to understand the non-physical that does not mean it does not exist. One word: Love...is that a creation of the physical? - or does the spiritual energy of "the divine" make itself apparent in the manifest and subsequent experience of feeling love.

When we can witness the "wind" without our observation of the nature around us being filtered through the cognitive creations of symbolism, linguistic interpretations, and such, we see the totality of the experience. We feel it with our eyes. When we see the "wind" around us...rustling through the world...when we observe, with our hearts, the pulse of this experience we see that the divine is here and always was. This is what the Native American people meant that the wind was a spirit. For them witnessing the wind was a spiritual experience. They did not so much focus on the words and identifications of things. They experienced them.

Yes, we can abstract but can we listen with our hearts and gaze with our eyes? Herein lies our ability to know how to abstract reality, but furthermore how to experience reality.

The Inner World of One Self

Ultimately, our perception is our reality. Yes, our perception is shaped by the collective society, but the way in which we are conditioned is nonetheless under the governing influence of ourselves. The social conditioning which I speak of takes form in our identification with symbols; words, ideas, concepts, etc. It is the identification with symbols, idols, and concepts that drive the separation we have with the inner voice within, for if our focus is in the mind, through the imitation of some ideal our actions become mere repetitions. Our being becomes an imitation of a thought paradigm and hence we stagnant for we loose our self in the word that we believe we are or the word that describes what we are doing. Identification with words creates a separation from our experiential experience. This separation diminishes our ability to be here Now.

In regards to the "past," we can become conditioned to believe that the words in which we use to describe a prior experience are actually who we are. We can allow our selves to hold onto certain things we find true about ourselves even when they are born of the yesterdays. This "certain thing" is the emotional energy tied up with the word or experience which we identify with. This energy, of which is a stored emotion from the past becomes your now. We can claim that we are the way you are because of what happened to us, or who our parents where, etc., etc...and this may be "true," but it is as only "true" as to the strength to which we give those convictions, those identified with conditions.

Once you assume that you "know" yourself, and you declare that there is something about you that is "real," you lock in place the perception you hold about yourself. Yet, could it be possible that we are beyond the symbols, words, concepts, and ideas we use to attribute a sense of meaning to our lives? Could it be possible that the words in which we try to assume meaning from are inherently limited in their ability to describe the experiences they are symbolized after, created after?

Furthermore when we declare that we know ourselves we are nonetheless using the past as a marker of who we are now. Yes what we have accomplished and experienced in the past becomes the energy of who we are now but there is also something about each and every one of us that escapes time. And it is this aspect of one self that escapes time that is really who we are. This aspect of oneself that is not bound to any time, or to even any experience is the absolute nature of your spirit. It is free of time in the sense that it will always exist, it always existed, and yet it exists right now. This is soul. And this the energy that is you beyond the collective emotional build-up of your past experiences.

Ultimately it is our choice that dictates whether or not our mental and spiritual energy gives heed to the collective energy of the past. Yes, the past is what it was, but it was, it is now no longer. So how can the words of the past touch the vastness of the now, of which is beyond words, for it is constantly taking shape, constantly becoming defined?

In regards to the past traumas and ills of our lives, they remain if we decide to leave the stone of our unresolved energy alone. If we use words and symbols, ideals and idols, to meander our perception around the things we wish to leave unobserved we become more entranced by our conditions, more repetitive in our actions, and we subsequently become more attached to mental identity forms we cannot come to move away from. For how are we to move away from the things we believe we are if we cannot move away from identifying with words and ideas? The past now an idea. The past may have left an energy residue that hinders your joy, but it is our identification with this energy, our identification with the words and ideas of that energy that either keep it alive and conscious to us or alive and unconscious [for words cannot touch what is conscious]. Yet, in either case, the "pain body" is alive.

Yes we must look, but be afraid not, for your past cannot inherently hurt you,...that is unless you choose it too...It seems "plausible" that sometimes we must unconsciously choose to first experience the pain, which in turn creates the need for our defenses. Yet, from a long term perspective, this enables the experience of, what it is to know experientially, the birthing of the "new self."

[did your emotion react in anyway to this; why not observe that if so...
also note how I said "your emotion:" implying that it is your creation...]

If we can look and honor whatever it is that comes up in us we allow for life experience to come through with our psychological defenses diminished. When the defenses are down we inherently accept the "what is." But how do we do this?

Defenses become as aspect of our intra-psychic reality that influences our perception of things by filtering the way our emotional body witnesses the world. Our "emotional body" becomes the reservoir of our consciousness, for consciousness is our spirit. Spirit is what enables consciousness to be and express itself through the physical body.

Our consciousness, our spirit, may be closed off to certain "avenues" of intra-psychic expression because we circumvent our conscious energy away from aspects of self that we hide from. The thing is that the aspects of self which we do not like, the aspects of self that are tucked away and hidden, are there. They are always there. They are just hidden. Yet, they are only hidden in the sense that they are unconscious to us. They nonetheless "occupy" psychic room in the inner workings of our spirit; for everything, that being the totality of our lives as well as the life of the universe, is known by spirit. And if the spirit is potential everything...it is inevitably everything.

To know spirit, to know thyself, on a deeper level one must let go of the "old karma" that is weighing them down, keeping the conditioned body unchanged, and keeping us living within the boundaries of the same defenses. To do that we must ultimately accept, but to accept we first must "purge" the emotion(s) that are withheld in spirit and which are unconscious to us [Remember: because spirit is inevitable everything].

To do this we must witness "it" [it being the "hidden"], be aware of it, and walk into it. Our emotions will come up as they do, but why not experience this with courage and have faith in the notion that whatever it is that is coming up is not to be ashamed of or judged as an inferior aspect of self in anyway? For we will see that these "old aspects of you" are what enable you to know yourself the way you inevitably want to know yourself.

Purge the emotional bodies that are constructing fictitious boxes around the inevitable expansion of our awareness. Remove the conditioning of the "thought paradigm" you witness all around you. Remove the tension that conditioned life has instilled upon you.

That tension is the spirit saying to body that there is disharmony present. In this case the spirit is trying to tell mind and body that there is an experience that is occurring that is "out of the line" with the natural order of things. The more we evolve consciously we become more sensitive to harsh realities of our day. Which may in turn build even greater tension within the mind and body of someone.

There are "breaking points" were our unconsciousness becomes so pressing that it forces, sometimes by "accident," our life into upheaval so we are forced to make changes. Yet, honor these upheavals. For anything you experience you should honor...why not honor your life? But more importantly than all...forgive yourself...always. Do what you need to to. Be "crazy" and do what your impulses call for, but why not direct these impulses [and be conscious of ourselves instantaneously] in a way that honors your life, not damages it.

Jump in the cold ocean and scream with fits of furry if you feel. Do whatever it is to allow yourself to love yourself enough to forgive the past that haunts you. Release the stored physical energy of, what Eckhart Tolle refers to as, the "pain body," in any way that feels passionate to your being.

Allow yourself to release your past through "careful catharsis:" careful in the sense that you know it is right in your heart not to hurt you or anyone else around you. For you know, in your feeling of love for oneself, that your rage will seize, your past will be forgiven, and you will come to know a "new" you. A you that moves beyond the past by living in the Now...

And to live in the Now, fully, we need to let go of the chains of our conditioned past. By allowing yourself to forgive those who have hurt you and subsequently "changed" your life, you ultimately alter your perception of things and you open yourself up to a higher aspect of yourself. You experience your self in a lighter fashion. You become of a higher, more ethereal vibration.

I guess the experience of going the deepest into now brings us to the point where experience becomes everything and we become immersed into something way beyond our being [this is "God-Realization;" or closer to knowing the "God experience", for God is always evolving too {this is the same movement that runs through us, and the same way in which we come to know thyself}].

The work to be done now, by enabling ourselves to drop our defenses [of which were put in place, by the choosing of our own soul, so that we could experience higher aspects of oneself through experiential catharsis and subsequent perception expansion] we again, move into higher, more realized, versions of one self.

[our expansion into the now: our ability to go into deeper moments of the now both in an intra- and inter psychic manor is thwarted when we label our selves in ways, or "know" things about "who we are." The ideas we have about ourselves are essentially who we are, but our self forgiveness and our self understanding will grow when those ideas no longer limit oneself to perceive oneself beyond the analytical and rational creations of the thought realm. Is maybe "who we think we are" our shield from coming to know the sense of self beyond all these concepts and ideas? This I am not particularly sure of, for we are all different, but I know that it is true that the longer we stay "inside" the ideas of who we think we are the more distanced we become from actually being able to "change." When we change we do indeed stay the same [for we are always our essence but we do nonetheless grow. We move into the now more so of our "emotional presence."

That "Emotional Presence" is your soul.

And again, when we step into soul, we step into the deeper reality of our own inner world. When we step into deeper experiences of the now we step deeper into the womb of reality, into the womb of Earth and the Cosmos. For we are understanding, experientially, what life is all about...Expanding consciously, the Emotional Presence of Self.