Past, Present and Future

The new motto or focus of my life is to stay grounded in all areas, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, etc. When I've thought about the "power of now" or staying in the present moment, it's been more of an attempt to almost "stop planning" or "stop looking at the past." While all of that is well and good... I mean we should just "be present." I completely agree 

with that.

What Is Time?

Time is not a resource as it cannot be measured.

Time is inherently unlimited because it is an illusion.

There is only the present moment and it has no limit.

I cannot say I do not have enough time, because I cannot lack in what is imaginary.

We live in the eternal now.

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This photo (http://bit.ly/PhK2ft), “The Passage of Time” is copyright (c) 2008 Toni Verdú Carbó and made available under a Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license (http://bit.ly/4DjovT)

Poem for a Weary Traveler

Poem for a Weary Traveler

O, Weary Traveler!
Take off your shoes and come rest
In my home, you can rest easy
In my love, you can relax
For the burdens that you carry
Are made of tiny feathers to me

My Thoughts on the Spiritual Life

I decided to make a rather large post that contains a bunch of notes that I have jotted down over the past 9 months or so.  These notes are on a variety of topics and are some thoughts I had in the moment.  These are unedited, unfiltered and... you get the idea!  Enjoy!

The Two Sides of Spirituality

In this podcast, I talk about two sides of spirituality, truth and love.  The truth side is knowledge beyond mind and one way of expressing this truth is that I accept everything as it is, as I perceive it, both the good and bad, light and dark.  The love side is that enlightenment is possible, my essence is pure love, and I live my life in pursuit of an ideal.  A miracle occurs when we allow these seemingly paradoxical sides to co-exist in our being.  I will further explore these two sides of spirituality as well as talk about how living this paradox shapes us on the spiritual path

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The Paradox of Awakening

"Awakening is beyond time and is more a state of realization that we can come to that is the nature of who we always were."

A recent "thought" occurred to me that paradox is very important on the spiritual path.  Our brain has two hemispheres, right and left.  The left hemisphere is where most logic and reasoning takes place and the right hemisphere is where most creative and holistic thinking takes place.  My theory that I would like to propose is that ego lives primarily in the left-brain and that a move "mind to heart" on the spiritual path is a movement from left-brained to right-brained thinking.  In this theory, I propose that paradox is a tool that we can use to help confuse the left-brain and encourage right-brain function.

Embrace Who You Are

"The way you are, the way you feel right in this moment is perfection."

All spiritual teachings approach spirituality from different viewpoints or planes.  For me to approach spirituality from a different plane does not invalidate other teachings, it simply just offers teachings from another, different plane.  Truth is inclusive, not exclusive.  It is possible, when truths are contained on different planes, for all truths to be simultaneously true.  It is with that awareness that I write the following.

Beyond Heaven and Hell

In this podcast I explore what it would mean if, instead of thinking of heaven or hell existing in the future, we thought of it existing in this present moment. What would this mean for us in our everyday lives? I also talk about duality, what it means to transcend duality and the ultimate goal of the spiritual life.

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Tying Up The Strong Man

In this podcast, I give my own meaning of a parable that Jesus told that I call "Tying Up the Strong Man" and interpret this in the light of other spiritual teachings. I also explore why we need to label thing, people and experiences in our life and what it would mean if we stopped doing so.

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The Purpose of Religion

In this post, I explore the purpose of religion. In the process, I also define terms for related topics, such as the role of love, our basic nature and others. This is a very high-level discussion and touches on quite a few areas. Enjoy!

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Unitive Consciousness and Christianity

This is my first podcast so please bear with me while I work out all of the details! For now, I will go ahead and post these with regular blog updates so there is one place to go. Thanks for listening and I welcome any and all feedback!

This post explores a New Age concept called Unitive or Non-Dual Consciousness and how it relates to Christianity. This is my first ever podcast so I also talk a bit about how I personally define some of these terms. I wrote this post to show how one major religion fits in with New Age themes and hopefully to show that all religions have a common element of truth that undergirds them all.

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The Illusion of Beauty

"Beauty outside ourselves is truly an illusion"

If we look at that statement first glance, it may strike us in a discordant way. This is because it flies in the face of our material world. Everything within our material world has been set up to exalt beauty, in any form, as the ultimate thing to strive for. Beautiful homes, beautiful cars, beautiful men, beautiful women, etc. It can be argued that even money is a means to an end in the quest for beauty: beautiful make-up, clothes and other things that will make us feel or look beautiful. Of course, there are other things we strive for such as safety, fulfillment and other non-tangible things.

Someone recently told me that all of the quest for things outside ourself can be boiled down to one quest. The irony is that this quest can never be achieved. In fact, just stating it makes us feel a bit insane in even embarking on it. The quest for us all in some form is to try and turn spirit into matter. This can not be done. Whenever we are striving, desiring or craving anything outside ourselves, we are trying to turn spirit into matter. Isn't this crazy? Yet, there is something inside us that pushes us towards this fool's errand.

I submit that the reason why, like magicians, we are constantly trying to turn spirit into matter, love and happiness into objects, is that we are, in fact, spirit. On our deepest level, we know we are spirit. We know we are eternal beings that are traveling through this life. What we have forgotten, however, is that our quest for beauty is also a quest for perfection. Beauty and perfection reside within us. We run around life like vaporous spirits trying to consume anything and everything yet this passes right through us. It is when our bottomless appetite and unquenchable thirst is directed to the abundant and unending supply within us that we are satisfied.

How do we do this? It is by right knowledge and experience. We realize that we have a bottomless and fathomless supply inside us and then we experience this through a spiritual practice that resonates with us. For some this could be meditation, painting, writing, making music, walking, or some other activity. The only requirement is that this be something that stills our mind and lets us touch the deep peace and wide love within our hearts and souls. The experience of this miracle supply brings things within proper perspective. We truly realize that we are enough. We see anything outside ourselves as cheap imitations of the beauty and perfection within.

Coming back to the topic of beauty, beauty is an illusion because objects themselves are not beautiful. They simply remind us of the beauty within us. The lie is that the beauty is intrinsic to the object, but the truth is that beauty is intrinsic to you. This truth brings more meaning to the statement: "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Love and beauty cannot be separated. It can be said that an object that makes us feel emotions pertaining to beauty in actuality is also helping us feel loving emotions. Beautiful objects, people or making ourselves appear more beautiful is an attempt to increase the love within our own hearts. This makes us feel more loved.

Beauty, as such, should be recognized as pointers to our internal beauty and not as a quest. We, however, do reside in a material world and have been socially conditioned in many ways that are even outside our consciousness. We simultaneously value beauty outside ourselves for what it represents and also quench our desire for external beauty with our inner source. Yet, there is inner tension that exists in this paradox and that is part of the human experience. Of course, we can and should value anything beautiful that we wish yet it is done so in the proper scope and not made into a quest.

We stop trying to turn spirit into matter through quenching our desire for the intangible and spiritual through journeying within. It is when our spiritual life is our first and foremost priority that we realize that beauty outside ourselves is truly an illusion. This actually frees us to pursue whatever we wish in life and begin to separate ourselves from unconscious urges and drives.

Love and Lead Your Self

"Only through simultaneously loving and leading these ego "silos" will they be united with our Self into one integrated whole."

After breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"
"Yes, Master, you know I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."
He then asked a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
"Yes, Master, you know I love you."
Jesus said, "Shepherd my sheep."
Then he said it a third time: "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was upset that he asked for the third time, "Do you love me?" so he answered, "Master, you know everything there is to know. You've got to know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my sheep." (John 21:15-17)

I want to offer a commentary on the above Bible passage that is probably different than most. Since I do choose to see more of a symbolic meaning to most religious writings, I look for a deeper meaning. I see Jesus as a man that was so identified with God that that line of separation was erased. His main mission, in my eyes, was to teach others that they could achieve that same higher state of consciousness and that God dwells within all people. It is the in-dwelling of God that unites us all.

I freely interchange references to Jesus as references to God and also interchange these terms as references to Self. A deeper meaning or question in this passage is "Do you love your Self more than any other internal or external structure?" By loving the Self, we are simultaneously loving ourselves and all other people, as our link to God through the Self, is also shared by all other beings.

It appears too that Jesus used the repetition to illustrate a point about Peter's love: that it was conditional on Jesus acting in a certain way. Peter was reading into Jesus' repetition, that Jesus doubted Peter's love for him. The symbolism is that Peter was upset with himself because he doubted his own love for himself. By using repetition, Jesus was also stressing the importance of the message.

I find Jesus' response interesting and interpret "sheep" or "lambs" as the different states of ego. By asking Peter to feed or shepherd, Jesus was saying that he needed to do two different things in order to love his Self. He needed to love these parts of himself that were compartmentalized or perceived to be separate through caring for them. He also needed to unite these separated parts of himself through leading them with his Higher Self. Just like a shepherd looks at his flock with love and compassion, cares for them and leads them, so are we to do the same when our Self, as the observer, notices fractured parts of the ego within us. Only through simultaneously loving and leading these ego "silos" will they be united with our Self into one integrated whole.

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The Mystery of Religion, Part 1

"Love is perfect because it exists above duality."

This is definitely going to be a multi-part post, because this topic is fairly large and touches on many of the things that I have posted about previously.  In a way, I feel that my approach to the "mystery" that ties together various religions does also tie together many ideas I have put forth in my writings (although based off of and inspired by many spiritual teachers).  That is my draw to writing about spirituality in the first place; it is writing about the ideal.  We can never fully express an ideal, because it is ineffable.  But we can approach it from various angles.  Each approach offers a glimpse of the ideal for a brief moment.  And it is the assimilation of these glimpses that begins to paint a vignette of the ideal that helps solidify our faith.

I cannot help but notice that religions all can be expressed in terms of us being reunited with God or the Ideal.  The ideal is a state of perfection, that I simplify as a state of love.  However, the idea of God is esoteric at best and it is difficult for us to conceptualize this Deity.  We may lack the motivation for performing certain acts now for a future payoff.  All of these things: God, heaven and other spiritual concepts have a vaporous quality to them because it is difficult to imagine them (or how they apply) in the here and now.

With a slight tweak to religion, however, we can experience a paradigm shift where spiritual teachings take on a whole new meaning.  Since we are waves on the ocean of God, we are also a part of God.  I invite you to look at a return to God as a return to your whole Self.  Looked at in this context, things start to make more sense for me.  And this is not to devalue religion at all but simply to offer another view of it.

If pursuing God is also pursuing a whole, complete me, then what do I have to lose?  I am actually investing in myself through pursuing God as I am really pursuing my Self.  This also brings up a paradox, which I do believe is the unseen's main device for spiritual truth.  All of nature is an outward manifestation of our inward reality.  When spiritual teachers say "the kingdom of heaven is inside you", they really do mean that the entire cosmos is also in your Spirit.  Our human bodies are containers for a limitless space that exists within.  The physical world is a model of what lies within us.  So, yes, countless galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets and suns exist within us.  In fact, our soul spans infinite depths.

That is also why I believe that the entire spiritual world also exists within our Spirit.  God and the angels reside within us as well as demons.  However, this is to realize that angels and demons are not the same.  There is no opposite for God and no opposite for love and, therefor, no opposite for angels either.  Any dark force is actually tied to the temporal existence of this world and exists on a different, lower plane than ultimate truth and love, which is the highest plane.  This is also why, if you stay in the present moment and embody love, that we do not have to fear anything.  I have gone into this previously a bit but will touch on my belief that the shadow that exists in individual and collective unconscious is the psychological component of dark forces.

This next idea opens up pandora's box because it is paradoxical in its very nature, but, if we choose to look at things from one plane alone, that is the physical plane, religious ideas can be theorized about in the following manner.  This is also a nice exercise to do when you are reading any religious writing.  Read it from the perspective that God is your Higher Self.  In other words, God is a restored, whole You that lies within the perfection of love.  You see, love does not reside in the intellect where we can say this is wrong or this is right but is seated in the emotions and extends into the spiritual realm.   That is the perfection that we are talking about.  Love is perfect because it exists above duality.  Read anything that talks about dark forces or spirits from the perspective that these lie in your shadow.

If we continue with this idea, angels, then, also reside within you as different parts of your personality, different loving qualities that offer guidance to you.  This theory begins to break down a bit when we get to shared spiritual experiences, where spirits are manifest for many people.  I believe this is because the spirits come through our senses, in other words, manipulate our senses so that we can perceive them even in a group setting.  So, belief is absolutely necessary when talking about the spirit world.  If you do not believe, you block even your perception of such things.  The paradox of this is I do think there is some cross-over where physical reality is changed through a spiritual dimension but that does not change the core of this idea much.

There are many more implications of looking at spiritual matters through this lens, which is the physical manifestation of these realities through humans.  To summarize, there is much value in considering restoring our full humanity as achieving unity with God.  This makes spiritual matters practical.  This is not the only plane on which we can consider truth, but a valuable one and one that is often suppressed because it is considered "heretical" by some religions.

Victors In Life

"We are victors in life when we receive bad news with as much joy as good news and see the blessing in trials. You have risen above this world and cannot be moved."

This is part of the paradox of spirituality.  To many, they look at a statement that we can be happy during sad times and do not understand it.  This is foolishness to many.  This is because there are many hidden truths that undergird this statement.

Since we are spirit, in essence, we do need to fear anything.  We will live eternally without any effort on our part and we cannot lose our lives.  If we consider our earthly existence to be our life, then we have something to fear.  However, our earthly existence is but a shell for our spirit.

A recurrent theme that I am experiencing now is learning to think outside of duality.  Some say this is how supreme consciousness thinks, and that this is the ideal we should all aspire to.

The essence of suffering is attachment to outcome.  Attachment to outcome is being tied to our earthly existence, that is duality.  In its basic form, duality consists of labeling things.  We label this good and that bad.  However, labeling prevents us from experiencing the "subject of our labeling" fully.  We do not see it as a unique experience but want to categorize it with prior experiences, even before we get a chance to experience it!

We are victors in life when we receive bad news with as much joy as good news and see the blessing in trials. You have risen above this world and cannot be moved.  To not be attached to outcome means that we truly our joyous in all things, which is our basic nature anyways.  If we are filled with joy in trying times, how easy is it to be filled with joy in the normal, everyday life?

To have attained such an ideal, is truly living in heaven while you are still on earth.  An undercurrent to this topic, which I will touch on briefly, is the reason why we have trials.  A trial is only "trying" if it touches a part of us that is identified with pain.  The blessing in a trial is the opportunity to heal this pain through forcing us to confront why we are feeling it in the first place.

Once we receive healing for this pain, we then break the cycle of karma that led us to put ourselves in a situation that would stir the pain up.  That is the joy we must have when in a difficult situation.  Feel the associated pain but realize that it is really joy that has been disguised and that you are making progress on your spiritual path.

Four Paths to Love

I have been doing some thinking lately on the different ways that we seek a Power greater than ourselves.  We all have different concepts of what this Power is as well as a different path to get there.  It is my sincere belief that the path really does not matter.  In fact, you cannot run from this Power because even a path that seemingly goes away from it will eventually bring you back to it.  In my post "One Truth", I write that this power really is Love.  I will not go into this here but one of the reasons why a path away from love will eventually come back to it is because of the dualistic nature of our world.  If we seek after happiness that is tied to our temporal existence, it will end in sadness. This is the design that will give you an opportunity to embrace love when we are able to see this duality.

I perceive that there are four paths to Love, which I believe does not have an opposite.  I started writing this article just thinking about three paths but another one occurred to me, which is the last path.  Admittedly, there is a blending of different paths into one another yet I do perceive them to be separate concepts.  Through these paths, this leads us to eventually being united with Love.

The first path is that Love exists as an Unseen force outside ourselves.  We might think that we will be united with this Love in an afterlife, want to prostrate ourselves before this force or worship it.  On this path, there may be a lot of intellectual dogma or ritual yet it is the rising above all of this that one progresses on this path.

The second path is that Love is omnipresent and, in fact, is so ingrained into reality that one may not perceive it at all.  On this path, one may not even believe in a supernatural and focus more on one's own humanness.  This may be the most surprising path of all.  How can one be united with Love if one really does not even believe in it in the first place?  This is a bit difficult to explain but it is my belief that Reality is a manifestation of Love.  A key part of this path is one must work on developing oneself and also knowing themselves completely.  I see this as a path of continual self-development.

The third path is that Love is inside us.  If we journey deep within ourselves, we find the Source we have been looking for all along.  This is a path of letting go and realizing that we are a part of this Love, a wave on the ocean of Love.  On this path, one will meditate and introspect in order to become conscious of this Power.

The fourth path, and one that is so obvious that I overlooked it when originally writing this, is that Love is in other people.  There is a profound paradox here.  Some people lament that their Deity is not in human form and long to have physical contact with her.  All the while, God is in human form in the hearts of all people.  This is why being of service increases the love in your heart as you are progressing along this path.

All four paths are genuine paths and one is not better than the other.  Certain people may gravitate towards one path or some mixture of them and that is their prerogative to pursue their own bliss.  For me, I think the greatest power is in being conscious of all these different ways to Love and then combining them.  Rather than me proclaiming "my path" as the best, I try to stretch myself to incorporate principles from each path.  If we become open to Love and embrace all ideas (that is, we are open to all religious thoughts), then we are open to growth.  Some truths resonate with you and some do not.  Embrace the ones that do and ignore the ones that do not.  However, if we never allow the truth to enter in the first place, then we do not have the opportunity to grow.

Law of Surrender

"Once surrender takes place, this is the beginning point for Love to enter our heart and expand it."

After writing about the Law of Brokenness, I reflected a bit on why I perceived this to be a law as well as what other factors influenced it.  The more I thought about it (and a friend's comments made me introspect more on this), the more I came to the conclusion that there was a deeper law at work, which I will call the Law of Surrender.

Brokenness is a vehicle that brings us to surrender.  But surrender is really where the Power lies.  We can be broken and not surrender to a Higher Power, in which case we have cut ourselves off from this Power transforming us.  Also, we can be unbroken and surrender to a Higher Power and be transformed from the inside out.  The point is that ultimate goal is a shrinking of the ego through a surrendering of it to a Power greater than ourselves.

If someone already is not self-identified with the ego and surrenders the totality of themselves to this Power, then transformation occurs.  What exactly are we surrendering?  We are surrendering the control of our lives.

You see, as I have explored in a previous post called Illusion of Control, we really are not in control of our lives anyways.  If we deeply reflect on this point, we will see that the only practical conclusion is to give this control away.  To whom are we surrendering?  The easiest way to understand this is that we are surrendering to Reality.  We accept life on life's terms, the reality of our situation and how we can operate within the context of reality or the "flow of life."

Once surrender takes place, this is the beginning point for Love to enter our heart and expand it.  This expansion of the heart continues with no end as long as we are on this path.  We find the truth in the concept that one must lose her life in order to find it.

Brokenness and Joy

"There is joy in all things because we see the blessings in hardship."

A friend of mine watched the video of my blog post on "The Law of Brokenness" and had a very interesting comment that I wanted to explore.  The place I want to always be in life (and in my writings) is open to new ideas and changes to any idea.  I do not take ownership of these thoughts, as most of them are based off of teachings elsewhere anyways.  An important truth that I am realizing is the importance of being open.  Our Western training teaches us that truth is absolute and either right or wrong, however truth is relative and inclusive.  I like the idea of resonating.  Some truths resonate with some people and not with others.

The point was that one can surrender to joy and not only when you are destitute.  That is a great point and one that I will explore a bit.  My intention in referring exclusively to brokenness was to identify a trend that I noticed, which seems to contradict it being a law.  However, the trend is so strong that I thought it warranted being considered a law.  My immediate response was renaming the law to "The Law of Surrender."  Before I address that directly, I also wanted to point out that brokenness on the spiritual path needs to be approached from a higher perspective.  From this perspective, there is joy in being broken.  There is joy in all things because we see the blessings in hardship.  This is one point that maybe should have been more fully developed.

At the time of brokenness, I doubt many are joyful, however, so I completely agree that it is important to focus more on the end result which is surrender.  To say that the Power of the Universe only works through a certain class of people is limiting this Power.  So, in this law of surrender, I acknowledge that the path to surrender usually involves a brokenness of some kind.   However, surrender can readily occur through joy as well.

Law of Brokenness

"The Law of Brokenness is that the Power of the Universe works through the broken, through the destitute, downtrodden, and outcasts."

There are many spiritual laws that govern our universe.  These laws are similar to the law of gravity in that they always are in effect.  A law that has recently become very apparent to me, I will call the "Law of Brokenness."  To effectively introduce this law as well as describe how and why it works, I will need to start from the beginning.

We are eternal beings in a human incarnation.  This world is our playground or school to learn lessons and evolve spiritually.  The greatest tool we have at our disposal is our will power.  With it, we can literally choose living a life in heaven or hell right here and now.  We can accept or deny God with it.  This law has been designed so that it takes a force of our will to accept God, which we formally define as a Power greater than ourselves.  If God came in flashing lights and physically appeared in human form to each of us, working all sorts of miracles, that lessens the faith required to believe in this power.  Of course, this occurs from time to time but cannot happen for every person.  If this were to occur, this, in essence, weakens our will and defeats the purpose of us having a will in the first place.

For the pundits who exclaim, "there is no God because I am calling on her to levitate this table 3 feet in the air", this will not occur because of the lessening of the will.  This Power is much more subtle than that.

The Law of Brokenness is that the Power of the Universe works through the broken, through the destitute, downtrodden, and outcasts.  The reason for this is that the embodiment of Love requires absolute surrender to our identification with any part of this world, call this the ego.  If there is but one strand of connection to this world, we block the totality of Love from entering us.  This really is an all or nothing proposition.  A broken person more readily admits and knows that clinging on to Form spells ultimate disaster and is more willing to surrender the totality of themselves to this Power.

This law also calls to light that true spirituality does not necessarily lurk in a monastery, church, convent, temple, or other gathering place but in groups of people that have acknowledged their brokenness.  This is also the paradox that keeps God out of the lime-light, presenting stumbling blocks for the prideful, arrogant and conceited.  To find the Answer, we must do the seeking not have it pre-processed and hand-delivered to us.

The next time you feel yourself putting up a wall of arrogance, remember that Power is with the broken.  Admit your brokenness to others and use it as a fuel to deepen your faith.


I posted a video version of this blog post here:

http://youtu.be/mJBPmz3qkHM

Divine Appointments

"There are no coincidences in life but divine appointments. They serve to strengthen my faith; they are an outward reminder that deepen and widen my inner life."

As part of a new direction for this blog, I will disclose some recent syncronicities that I have noticed in my life.  At the risk of alienating my readers, I have decided to open things up to discuss mystical occurrences  on a more personal level. These syncronicities are, after all, part of the fabric of my life and a valuable source of knowledge for me.  One of the paradigm shifts for me that I have gone through in the last year is learning to trust my intuition as a source of knowledge.  This is quite tricky as intuition and feeling can be intertwined and, often, are difficult to differentiate.

A source of knowledge in the same vein as intuition are syncronicities.  These are divine appointments where something happens once or multiple times and you know that it is a message from the Universe.  There are no coincidences in life but divine appointments. They serve to strengthen my faith; they are an outward reminder that deepen and widen my inner life.

The interesting thing about my belief in divine appointments is that, since I have increased my faith in them, their prevalence in my life has increased as well.  The other day, I was listening to a podcast on the importance of connecting with the land.  Later on that night, I was reading some articles online and ran across one where it mentioned Red-Tailed Hawks.  It was not the focus of the article, so it stood out to me.

On Facebook later that day, one of my friends posted about seeing the movie "Red Hawks."  Then, a few hours later, my random desktop background changer switched to a picture of a Red-Breasted Hawk!  That was enough by itself but this morning I finished listening to the podcast I had started and it finished with using an example of someone that can connect to the spirit world through, you guessed it, the spirit of a hawk.

I did some reading and it appears that this spirit is reminding me to keep an aerial or God-perspective view of my situation, among tons of other things.  

The other syncronistic event was I ran across the numbers 111 prominently displayed on a receipt this week.  Later on, I woke up and saw the numbers on my clock.  Since then, I have seen these numbers numerous times and usually when I am thinking about them.  The meaning there is that things are manifesting right now and that I need to be clear about my intentions to the Universe.

But, what a wonderful thing to be open to the mind of the Universe and be able to receive knowledge in different ways!

The Weight of the World

"The truth of the matter is that I alone do not determine my fate yet am a part of a cohesive whole, which is the interconnectedness of all people and the fabric of nature."

I have noticed that, in my daily life, my mind is constantly spinning, trying to plan for this or figure that out.  In a literal sense, if I let it, my mind carries the weight of the world.  This constant thinking happens on its own.  If I allow it to happen, it continues.  My point is that I do not have to "try" to map out my life before it happens in my mind, it is a part of past conditioning and is the background noise that clouds my life.

It really all comes down to confusion about the world in which I live.  If my assumption is that my life is what I make it and that I, alone, determine my destiny, then it makes sense that I need to be using my intellect to control my life.  It does imply a sense of lack of faith but more confusion.  This is because I can have faith but can let the fog of confusion in this world seep into my life.  The truth of the matter is that I alone do not determine my fate yet am a part of a cohesive whole, which is the interconnectedness of all people and the fabric of nature.  I am not separate yet inseparably joined with others and this planet.

Another truth is that the universe is a safe, good place that is nurturing me, caring for me and providing for me.  With these truths in hand, I can see that my mind working is just spinning my wheels.  What freedom there is in realizing I do not need to be constantly scheming and analyzing as the Universe has this all taken care of.

I surrender to the Universe and relax my mind as it does not need to control me anymore.  I have faith that things will work out as they should and my role is to accept life as it presents itself to me.  I see how I fit into the grand scheme of things, follow my dreams, and rest in the comfort that I am exactly where I need to be and have everything I need right now.

A Higher Consciousness

"In the kingdom of God within every heart lies the perfection of Love, where such dualities do not exist."

As I progress on my spiritual path, one thing that I have been thinking about quite a bit is something that people refer to as a unitive state of consciousness.  I have been introduced to a lot of new concepts and this is one that resonated with me.  When I say "thinking", I mean I have come come to a place of knowing about this state and then have been attempting to integrate that into my life.

There are many different ways, I could define "unitive", so what I mean is that this is a state of consciousness where duality ceases to exist.  There are different levels or planes of truth.  This enables multiple viewpoints to be simultaneously valid, depending on which plane you are operating from.  

Good and bad, right and wrong, and other dualities live in the domain of this world.  In the kingdom of God within every heart lies the perfection of Love, where such dualities do not exist.  It is my view that this Love essence is the building block for the physical reality that we see as well as the core of our being.  In other words, all planes of consciousness collapse down to the God-plane, where there is only Love.

All in this world point towards living from the inner life as the primary reality.  If that is your reality, you see all is perfect as it is.  Even injustice is but a pointer to detach yourself from this world and live in the Spirit.  In fact, even attaching to the positive aspect of duality ensures that we encounter the negative.  The goal is to live without attachment.  All experience in life is but an exercise in detaching from this world and living a life of Love.  

The trick about unitive consciousness is we only get glimpses of it at first.  This happens through meditation or any other centering activity.  My goal is to try to live in a unitive state of consciousness as much as possible.  The challenging aspect of this is that I must act "as if" I am always in this plane, even when I do not feel like it or am really operating from a more base level.  Unitive consciousness seems to also imply something, that I will not explore here, which is uniting with others in one common Consciousness, that is the Christ Consciousness.  This will be explored in future posts.

Learning Discernment

"When I am in doubt whether I should wait or act, I should usually wait. Patience and tranquility are guideposts along my path that I am learning how to see."

No matter how many times I think to myself, it is much better for me to wait rather than act, I find myself acting.  There is always a good excuse, of course.  In fact, there is always a good spiritual excuse of why I should act.  The list usually includes me not acting because of fear or that I am not acting from my Spirit.  In other words, I should act because it is going against the ego.

It really does come down to discernment.  I discern that such and such action is "spiritual" because it is coming from my Higher Self, and so I act.  However, the reality is that my judgment is clouded, because I am not allowing enough time to pass in order for me to think clearly.  When I am in doubt whether I should wait or act, I should usually wait. Patience and tranquility are guideposts along my path that I am learning how to see.

The higher truth is that it is better for me to wait.  The higher the attachment I have to an object, the longer I should wait.  The other realization is that attachment is to the ego like a duck is to water.  I really cannot separate the two.  I am realizing that attachment should be expected if I reside in the domain of my ego.  It still comes down to constant ego sacrifice.  Patience is indeed a quality of Spirit and expediency is not.

This is a topic for another article, but I am discovering that intention matters little if an action is taken that has high attachment.  In other words, intending to not be attached to an action is trumped by the reality that an action is attached.  Here is an example.  If my stomach is filled with food and I do not intend my next bite to be attached to food, my actions show that I am attached to food.  I am already full, so why am I eating food?

Here, the higher truth is to be grounded in reality and to analyze the results of an action before taking it. I need to discern if action itself broadcasts attachment to anything. If it does, then there may be a better course of action.

This is not to say that there is a wrong or right action but to act consciously, weighing the action against the intention.   Accept the action and it's consequences immediately, receive any nourishment through learning any lessons and allow future actions to be informed by this newfound knowledge.

One Truth

There is but one truth in life. That we are all one. There is one reality, one consciousness and one breath that gives us all life. This force and power is the power of Love.

Many times I want to make spirituality complex and add theories and explanations of why such and such happens.  It really all comes down to one basic truth that I often lose sight of.  That is the truth that Love is all there is.

All of the world is made out of this Love-essence.  It is like we are fashioned out of clay and then spend our lives questioning "Does clay exist?"  There is but one truth in life. That we are all one. There is one reality, one consciousness and one breath that gives us all life. This force and power is the power of Love.

In addition to all being made out of the same building block, we also participate in a shared reality.  That is the reality that binds us all together.  And we have one consciousness yet think we are separate.  The same breath that gives me life, gives you life as well.

My ego thinks that if I admit I am but a wave on a vast sea of consciousness, that my ego will die.  The reality is that my ego will die after my physical incarnation anyways.  The bigger reality is that I am not my ego.  What I am is much bigger than my ego but a spirit, part of the Great Spirit.  This is why all religions speak of sacrifice; it is ego sacrifice that they always are referring to.  If I sacrifice my ego now, that is association with my physical incarnation, I have nothing to lose.

The beauty of living a life according to my spiritual nature is that true happiness emerges.  I am living my life by that one power, the power of Love.  I embody that power and allow it to work through me.  What enfolds are dreams greater than what I could have imagined with my ego-mind, as love manifests itself in my life in a concrete way.

The Miracle of Religion

"The miracle of religion is how the voice of the One can still come through vessels that constantly mix in ego and personality into the transmission."


Religions are systems that have been applied to spirituality.  Usually, a teacher comes along that is in direct contact with God or merges with Divinity.  Such teachers rarely write down their own teachings as they are just so content with life.  In that space, they are just content with the state of being.  Later on, people come along and interpret, recollect and paraphrase the lives of these prophets.  They create elaborate systems that were never the intent of the original teacher.  These systems are primarily intellectual in nature.  They are a way for the mind to relate to the teachings and then how to make that make sense in the light of contemporary thought and culture.


From there, generations of followers of these religions create different flavors of it; they break off from the original religious branch and create their own.  Some religions may be combined with others to create hybrid religions. In the end, it is all the same.  Religion is an intellectual system of thought that systematizes a vast body of knowledge that came about as a result of an enlightened teacher.


Some of us mistake religion as God.  We misinterpret the enlightened teacher and think that our religion is the only way to God.  We think that if we focus on the words of our religious writings, that that is the voice of God.  We do not allow God to talk to us in any other way than the channels which our religion approves.  In this way, religions can be idols that take us away from God.


A religion may be useful for the vast majority of us to bring us to the One force in this world, the First Cause at it were.  Religions make things very palatable for our minds.  They predigest the concepts of God and spirituality for us.  A system has been created that we just have to follow to achieve union with God, or whatever the goal the religion espouses.  Religion is like spirituality with training wheels.  After some of us learn to ride the bike of spirituality, we are then ready to get rid of the training wheels.


We see that the world is our religion.  Life is our spiritual practice.  At that point, we look up and see that the world is full of religions, just like ours, that are also paths to the Divine.  Ours was but one path.  We may leave the religious path and enter a wider spiritual path.


At some point, we may choose to re-visit our religion of origin and are amazed at what we see with our new spiritual eyes.  The miracle of religion is how the voice of the One can still come through vessels that constantly mix in ego and personality into the transmission.  How is it that we were able to see past the stumbling blocks of ego and narrow viewpoints that flavored our religious writings and teachings?


That is the true miracle.  That we could see through to the truth about our Beloved, despite all of the additives that were put into the mixture.  This is testimony to the Light that is inside each of us, that we can learn to discern true teachings by the light of this flame.  In a way, the light of God is able to illuminate the truth of God; light attracts light.  May we forever appreciate that the Supreme cut through the entanglements of dogma to show us her true nature and guides us on our spiritual path.