A Way Through

How emotional pain and suffering can be used as a catalyst to make us more conscious and can be seen in a positive light to get us to where we need to be.

Pain and suffering do not last forever.  They can't as it's impossible, once we realize what is at the root.  What causes pain?  What causes suffering?  I am, of course, referring to emotional pain.  Both of these conditions rely on an ego.  They need some sort of defined image or idea about what life should look like.  A simple definition of pain would be when life does not match my own idea of it.  Suffering, then, is the ongoing, repetitive attempts to make life fit into my ideas about it.

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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Observing My Inner Critic

"As I create mental spaciousness, I am allowing my natural state of love and bliss to shine through."

I recently realized that I have an inner critic that is always reviewing, analyzing, commenting, and critiquing my actions.  These are my thoughts.  While I can always control my thoughts, it is not always easy.  In fact, I have found it is more practical to allow the thoughts to continue and just observe them.  I am not a very good 24/7 observer of my thoughts.  When, however, I notice these critical thoughts, I have recently started devoting more energy to observing them.

When they come up, I have the attitude in my observation of "here are those critical thoughts again..."  My attitude is one of a loving father observing a child that is engaged in some sort of ignorant non-beneficial, behavior.

I have only been on the "thought observation" mission for less than a year now.  Once I started it, I noticed immediate benefits (as in within the first 5 minutes). I have noticed that I am best at doing this when I have had enough sleep, earlier in the day, and usually during and shortly after meditation.  After that, I easily become wrapped up in my train of thoughts throughout the day.  I have been making steady improvements, however.

This latest realization of the need to observe my inner critic, which, in affect, silences this "voice", is the other shoe to drop on my spiritual path.  The first shoe being the realization that the spiritual path is the highest goal for me in this life.  Why is that?

My mind leans towards being very critical and over-analytical.  These thoughts go masquerading as "me" but they are far from me.  They are part of my upbringing and remnants of the past.  These thoughts want me to be "not me."  As I have brought my loving awareness to them, they have started to dissipate.  I am noticing more mental spaciousness as I am starting to hear silence more.

For example, I might be late to work.  In the past, I would think through the 5 reasons why I was late, felt bad about it, and shamed myself for this behavior. Now, I will observe these thoughts.  I will consciously expand the love inside my heart for myself and just love me for being me.  I will take the attitude that I am trying my best and that there must have been a good reason at the time for my tardiness.  I will reserve making any observations on how I can improve in this area until just before I go to bed at night.

I will take a bit of time right here to play devil's advocate and see if there is any benefit to being critical of myself in real-time. Let's say that it is useful to have this immediate beneficial information of what I could have done differently, that something else comes up that day where I use that knowledge. Or, maybe I will forget the contextual information about what I could have done differently or forget to do the self-review at all that day. I submit that these slight benefits do not outweigh the effect of these critical thoughts in everyday life. I feel worse because of them. It takes me out of the present moment as I dwell on the past. The thoughts are "caught up in the moment" and do not see the big picture of why I made the mistake. In short, these critical thoughts are out-of-alignment with life.

There is little benefit and more ill effects from me endlessly rehashing situations, events, analyzing my every move and why this or that could not have been done better.  Instead of this real-time self-commentary, I have decided to devote a few minutes towards the end of each day where I will review that day's activities to see if there is anything I can learn.  Learning from mistakes and doing self-review is important, however I have chosen to engage in this activity in a set time-frame once per day.  This is a good way to convince my analytical side that the activity will still take place just in a different way.  As I create mental spaciousness, I am allowing my natural state of love and bliss to shine through.

Feel Your Emotions

"Just as clouds form when warm air meets cold, so our emotions sit on the boundary between inner peace and outer attachment."

Our emotions are wonderful tools that guide us through this life.  Unlike our thoughts which tend to anchor us in the physical world, our emotions are reactive in nature.  They are neither positive nor negative yet simply float through our inner being.  Emotions, like our thoughts, should be observed and not identified with.

Our emotions originate in the space where our inner world and outer world meet.  Just as clouds form when warm air meets cold, so our emotions sit on the boundary between inner peace and outer attachment.  The greater the attachment to this world, then the greater emotional tumult as we journey within to a place of stillness.  If we realize that emotions are simply doing their job of making their presence known to us, we would not wish to rid ourselves of them, especially the emotions we may label as "negative" but are not really so.  These emotions are sadness, anger, hopelessness, grief, pain, guilt and other similar emotions.

In fact, the more we try and wish these emotions away or cover them up, they become trapped inside us without way of escape.  Like clouds, they need to freely move through our consciousness until they dissipate on their own accord.  Trapped emotions become part of our inner pain.  They will eventually work their way out through acting out behaviors, behaviors that we unconsciously do to bring pain into our lives.  We do this so that we will eventually confront our inner pain.

Instead, feel your emotions.  Go into them and experience them.  At the same time, we are the observer, taking an inner ride through our emotional clouds.  As we feel our emotions, they dissipate on their own, because the inner light of our consciousness eventually breaks through.  As we focus our inner soul radiance on our emotional clouds, we see that our inner joy never left but may have been temporarily obscured. We let our emotions percolate up from the depth of our soul as they expand into Supreme consciousness and are absorbed by the Love that is all there is.

As we journey within, this is why the emotions surface on occasion. Our consciousness begins to shift from attachment to this world and we run into the emotions. They are the fog or mist that separate us from inner peace. If we avoid them, we miss out on the peace that lies just beyond their perimeter. Instead, we brace ourselves and feel our cockpit rattle as we pass through them. Pass through them, we must to get a taste of Divine bliss. The joy in life is in the journey that we take to our destination.

Love Yourself

"I can always be kinder to, more gracious to and more loving of myself."

As I put spiritual truths into practice, I notice, within myself, certain tendencies that I have developed over my life. All of these tendencies had a purpose, at the time, which were simply coping mechanisms to get through life. My ego needed these tendencies to preserve itself. Now that I know that the ego itself is the illusion and my spirit is the reality, these tendencies are no longer needed.

These tendencies are critically thinking about my past or current actions, constantly analyzing past actions to try and learn from them, doubting myself and my current path, diagnosing myself as being one way or the other, and seeing myself as separate or "an abnormality" from popular society. These are just a few that come to mind. As I begin to become aware of these tendencies, I see them as an opportunity to practice spiritual truths. What would my inner life look like if I was truly loving myself?

If I was loving myself, I would only reflect on my successes. I would see ways in which I had done the right thing and try to learn how to replicate that. I would believe in myself and my current path. I would stop labeling myself and see myself as a part of the cohesive whole of humanity. This is not to say that I ignore the negative but that mistakes should be reviewed immediately after they occurred to examine how they could have been avoided. In addition, I think I should think about ways in which the mistake or negative event was a blessing. I also think that any "mind chatter" takes me out of the present moment so I should engage in the practice of a silent mind. My point is, if any reflection is necessary, it should, most of the time, be on ways in which I have succeeded and giving myself the benefit of the doubt every time. I can always be kinder to, more gracious to and more loving of myself.

Before you engage in inner commentary about things you have done or are doing, you can ask yourself these questions first. Is this self review occurring immediately after the action? Have I already reviewed my behavior previously? How can I love myself more through this thought? How has what happened been a blessing in my life?

I sincerely believe that it is much better to err on the side of love. Love yourself thoroughly and completely through every thought. It is the ego that jumps in and asks these questions. How is what I am thinking practical? How else am I going to learn from my mistakes? Aren't I just stuffing my emotions if I do not look at things practically? These questions are all designed to take you out of the present moment. Give yourself unlimited grace, love and acceptance. You can never over-do it, because there is no limit to how much we can love. At the very least, you can replace critical thoughts with the thought of "I love myself." This thought is still dwelling in a space of separation because the "I" implies separateness. You want to get to a place of Being-ness. The highest state we can attain is feeling the Love inside our heart consciously and deliberately as we observe our thoughts, whether positive or negative.

Love is Here Now

"You do not have to do anything to experience the vastness and immenseness of the limitless Love that is deep inside your heart."


If there was any one thing that I thought was a central teaching that was being taught to me in the last year, it is this truth.  The first part of this truth, I knew right away intuitively.  I knew that the striving in this world was all for naught.  Love does not require anything from us.  The part I did not know right away was what this striving was trying to achieve.  We constantly are striving to remove the veil of separation between us and Love.  What does this really mean?  It means we are trying to add things into our life in order to feel love and that we are looking outside of ourselves for this love.


The answer is that this Love has always been inside you.  The illusion is that you are separate from it.  You are not.  The truth is that the enormity of this Love is within you, however, you have lacked the awareness of its presence.  This love can only be experienced.  It cannot be analyzed, theorized, or systematized.  In fact, when you try to think about it, you are separate from it.  This love comes from awareness and nothing more.  It is a deep peace, an everlasting joy, an eternal bliss that can be felt in the depth of your being, the very depth of your soul.


The part of us that feels separate from this joy wants to do something to earn it.  We want to strive for it, pursue it, slavishly yearn to be in its presence as we feel we are unworthy of it.  We want to renounce our freedoms, prostrate ourselves, and grovel in its presence, yet this Love does not want to be sacrificed to or idolized.  This Love is You.  As long as we fear it and put it on a pedestal, we continue to put up the illusion of separation from this Love.  In truth, nothing can separate us from this Love.  Once you feel its strength, experience its magnanimity, you will understand.  We do not have to do anything to experience this love.  We do not have to earn it.  We cannot buy it.  It is freely given to all those who will acknowledge its existence.


How freeing and liberating it is to know that this "coming home" is realizing that we are already there!  It frees us from the vehicles of religion, dogma, right acts, service, devotion and countless others that easily become our master rather than a conductive channel to merge us with Love.  This freedom means that there is no one path to love but a path that resonates with your own heart.  It is a journey that you may choose to embark on, on your own volition.  This journey is not even necessary given the realization that You have.  Yet, it is a journey that we take that is motivated by the very Love that called out to us.  We cannot help but want to serve others and allow this love to percolate from our being.  You do not have to do anything to experience the vastness and immenseness of the limitless Love that is deep inside your heart.

Practice Unconditional Acceptance

"Unconditional love needs unconditional acceptance. We can learn to receive this love through living a life of gratitude."

We often speak of unconditional love. If we fully grasped the meaning of unconditional love, we would realize what a difficult concept this is. It is easy to love those that are lovable but difficult to love those that are unloveable. We love saints and popular people but dislike sinners and the outcasts. Placing no conditions on love means even loving mass murderers and other egregious sinners. This is truly a difficult thing to do, yet this is exactly how the Universe loves us. It is when we start to comprehend the scope of this love, that our hearts begin to open.

How is it possible that the Universe has unconditional love for us? Conditions upon things are attached to our physical reality. A condition means that "I will do this for you, if you do this for me." However, a condition is a form of doing. Lack of conditions means we are in a state of being. In loving us, the Universe loves us for our being, for who we are not what we can do.

If we are looking at the spiritual side of life, where there are no opposites, all in life is good. Pain reminds us that we are alive, teaches us a lesson and may push us towards the spiritual world. Death is just a changing of clothes as we move on to the next role in the Divine play. Trials are put there in our life to remind us of our spiritual heritage. We see that all in life is good from a heavenly perspective which helps us better understand the mystery of unconditional love.

The paradox is that the Universe has unconditional love for us yet the nature of our Being is that we are unconditional love. This is because God is love and we are also part of God. To feel unconditional love or, more accurately, to be unconditional Love, we must remove the things that block it. Unconditional love needs unconditional acceptance. We can learn to receive this love through living a life of gratitude.

We limit unconditional love if we ourselves put limits on its acceptance. Unconditional acceptance is opening our hearts wide open to ourselves. Putting conditions on accepting love is like saying "I will be a lovable person if I lose weight" or "...if I stop lying." We are lovable just as we are, inwardly and outwardly. We are complex, beautiful expressions of an infinite God just as we are. We do not have to learn unconditional love; we are unconditional love. We have to learn how to be empty vessels to allow this love to bubble up in us from the eternal Spring.

Gratitude is simply being grateful for everything in our lives. As we are gracious, our hearts begin to open more and more. Living a life of gratitude implies a state of Being that is gracious. Be thankful for all that is in your life. Write these things down every day; say them aloud. In doing so, your true nature emerges. To the extent that you are thankful, to that same extent you will be more in touch with your inner nature of unconditional love.

Changing the World

"Our actions arise not from a desire to change others or the world but from an inward outflowing of love for all that is."

There is a temptation to look at the state of our world and of people and want to change it.  We look at the injustices in the world, all of the negative things that are going on, and we instinctively want to make a difference.  At the same time, we might also look at another person and want to help them by sharing our philosophy of life or spirituality.  The desire to make a difference and to help our world and others comes from a good place.  However, we must make sure that this desire does not arise from attempting to cling onto things in this world.

For example, I may want to "save" someone by introducing them to a spiritual path.  However, we are all on a spiritual path, even if we do not know it, and are just in different stages.  Each person will get to where they need to go in their time of readiness.  Injustice is a tricky one, because it implies a notion of justice, right and wrong.  However, right and wrong are merely labels.  If we can help others from a place of Love, then this is a better motivation for our actions.

There seems to be a tie between spirituality and the environmental movement.  Trying to heal our planet for fear that it will uninhabitable some day is trying to cling onto the form of this planet.  Instead, our motivation should be from one of love for the planet, animals and nature.  Our identity should not be wrapped up in how environmentally conscious we are yet this desire comes from us seeing God in all things.  God is in the stones, trees, air.  She makes up our very being.  The tiniest molecules that form our bodies are held together by the thought of God as are the things we perceive with our senses.

If our instinctive desire is to change our environment or others, this should be a cue that we need to change ourselves.  Focus that desire for change on your inner life, because that is why you have the desire in the first place.  On some level, you know that there is a veil of separation between yourself and the Divine and this desire for change runs through an improper channel.  If we look at the inner life, we see that what needs to change is accepting both the dark and the light of ourselves.  What needs to change is getting rid of accumulated emotional and intellectual baggage we have accumulated in our life time.  In short, we need to accept ourselves.

Once we accept ourselves as whole, complete beings that are perfect as we are, our outlook on life begins to change.  We see that the world is exactly as it should be and we do not need to change it.  We are all engaged in this game called life.  If you wish to help others and the world, then that is what you should do.  However, our actions arise not from a desire to change others or the world but from an inward outflowing of love for all that is.

When We Are Wronged

"We need to constantly be removing any blockages that stop the flow of the Divine into our hearts."

We all have an internal barometer inside that helps us determine if we have been wronged in some way. It's a primitive fight or flight response that we have in response to things that happen to us. This mechanism becomes clouded when the entanglements of our ego come into play. Another factor may be that we have not used that instinct sufficiently or properly in the past, so we are out of practice.

This fight or flight response surfaces when others try and take advantage of us. The real trick is being able to figure out when this self-protective mechanism has been triggered by another person or our ego. Sometimes, our ego blows things so out of proportion that we think our fight mechanism has been triggered. In actuality, our thinking was clouded by our selfishness.

If we notice that we have issues with knowing when we are legitimately threatened by another, then we can work on this issue in a couple ways. The first thing we can do is continually work on diminishing the ego. We can never make the ego entirely disappear but diminish it to a size where it is not a factor. We can also build up enough reference experiences where we properly used our survival mechanism, so that we have enough training to properly use it in the future.

This does beg the question of how do we properly use this survival mechanism? There is no hard and fast rule, but, if we try to look at the situation from an outside perspective, we will clearly see that a certain level of harm was inflicted on us. You may even want to ask an unbiased third party for their input.

We may not be able to always clearly determine when we should fight or flee. This gives rise to two spiritual practices that we can undertake. We need to constantly be removing any blockages that stop the flow of the Divine into our hearts. This means undertaking whatever spiritual practices we need to keep this channel open. This will help assure us that we are operating outside our ego. We also should practice being non-reactive. If we are non-reactive, even when our imaginary "rights" are squashed, we act as if nothing happened. Of course, we should practice healthy discrimation such that we will react when we are obviously being taken advantage of. The benefit to being non-reactive is that we are doing the right thing no matter what the case is. You can always go back later, if you wish, and have a talk with the offender in an attempt to vent your frustration. However, if we had reacted and blew things out of proportion, there is no going back and reversing your actions.

Live in Love

"Goodness is not limiting your humanity but giving you the very things that are the desires of your heart."

We all intuitively know that Love is the highest aim, the highest thing we can aspire to in this life. We know that goodness and light are the realities that we can and should live in our day to day existence. Yet, we avoid Love and we avoid our goodness. We are more comfortable living in fear, shame and darkness. Why is that?

We avoid Love and are afraid of our goodness because of where we have been and mistaken beliefs about the world. We have been on a long journey that began with us being conditioned into a certain way of being. Until we are awake, we live in this temporal existence, thinking that this is all that there is. Even if we have religious dogmas that occupy a portion of our consciousness, these do not enter into our practical lives sometimes. We, at a real gut level, are living in this material world and following it's laws and meeting it's expectations. If you have done this for a number of years, you have been conditioned to live in fear rather than Love.

We also may have been conditioned that we are sinful beings, which is the exact opposite of the truth. We are perfect Beings who do not live perfect lives because our standard of perfection is flawed and because we are learning how to live a life in our Spirit, or according to our spiritual nature. In truth, the light of God is inside all of us, we just need to get rid of the stuff that blocks this light from shining through.

We are afraid to live a life of Love and goodness, because we do not understand what that is. Do you not know that goodness is what makes you happy? Think about the happiest time of your life and picture feeling that way constantly. We think that being good means sacrificing, finishing last and not being bad. It really does all come down to living in Love, where there is no opposite. In this way of living, we do not label so there is real freedom here. You do not have to live a life of not trying to be bad. Just live in Love and let the chips fall where they may.

I really cannot emphasize this point enough. Our avoidance of goodness is because we do not understand what is truly good. Goodness is saying "yes" to life and does not limit our beliefs or actions. This is not a list of things we should not do. If you wrote down the top 3 things you want in life, that is goodness. Goodness is not limiting your humanity but giving you the very things that are the desires of your heart.

It's like we have been given two pills to swallow each day. One is for love and the other for fear. We may swallow the love pill occasionally but we consciously swallow the fear pill more consistently. This does not make sense! The love pill will give you everything you want and make you happy, yet we throw it away.

Living in Love is something we can do every day. As we surrender more and more to a life of love, the easier it becomes to live this way. The misconceptions begin to fall away and we discover the freedom that is ours if we just choose a life of Love.

When We Encounter External Resistance

"We must offer no resistance to the challenges of others, because this is precisely what the collective ego desires."

Breaking out of old belief systems can take a bit of work, not just because you will experience internal resistance but because you may experience external resistance as well. This external resistance may come in the form of the collective unconscious of others. This can also be called the collective shadow.

This collective shadow is unseen by anyone who participates in it, even the givers and the receivers. This is the subtext that governs are interactions with others. What is happening is the other group "egos" we participate in: family, friends, and society at large do not like it when this group ego shrinks. As you begin to wake up, the shrinking of your ego is a threat to these other entities.

The collective egos respond through the collective shadow, using whatever tricks necessary to "get us back." Again, our family, friends and others do not even know they are doing this or why they are doing this.

If we have done our internal work of grappling with our own shadow, then we are prepared to handle the resistance of others. How are we to respond to challenges to our new way of Being? We are to respond with love, kindness, gentleness and compassion. We must offer no resistance to the challenges of others, because this is precisely what the collective ego desires. The ego grows through dissension, bickering and fighting. It shrinks through love and selflessness.

The irony is the more that we offer no resistance, the more resistance may come at first. An attempt to listen to others opinions or even confrontations without reacting will come across as "holier than thou." At its core, the collective ego does not understand freedom that comes with detachment. It is not fair to the ego that we can live a life removed from guilt, shame and fear. The collective ego wants to absorb our ego back into itself.

All that we can do on this path is be prepared when this resistance comes. Even when you have made great progress internally, you may encounter resistance in your interactions with others. We can disable this resistance through not reacting to it and loving others. Others, through their collective egos, do not have power over you anymore. They are a part of the forms of this world. Connect with those who challenge you through the Formless, see them as Spirit, and your love will transmute any resistance into harmony with others.

The Heart of Spirituality

"Loving yourself and loving others is only possible by living in the present moment."

Spirituality is very interesting, because the words that we use when talking about it seem very religious.  The funny thing is that this is the opposite of the truth.  It can sound very "churchy" and new age-y and all of that.  However, these are the most down-to-earth and practical teachings in the world.  This is because they are truth and true wisdom.  It is so difficult to communicate intangible truths to others at the risk of seeming "out there" and the simple fact that teachings are trying to make these truths concrete.  This is, of course, impossible.  No one can fully express spiritual truths in words that we can fully understand; the words are meant to be guideposts so that you can come to the realization yourself.  Any "out there" teaching can be communicated in "material" terms just as well as it can be communicated in "spiritual" terms.  In other words, the truth can take on any form so that anyone can see the guideposts.

A belief in "God" is not even necessary as spirituality can be communicated in language of this world, using only tangible things and concepts that you are already familiar with.  Buddhists, for the most part, do not believe in a god as many define that term.  We get so tripped up on these terms, because they have been over-defined, defined poorly or even incorrectly defined in some cases.  I think we all need to learn how to not get hung up on words.  We need to look to the meaning behind the words.  Even Atheists believe in a god.  Their god may be the rational mind, nature or science.  It's very silly, really, that there is this war of words when it comes to spiritual things.

I firmly believe that someone who does not even believe in a spiritual world can master concepts that arise from the spiritual world on the physical plane.  There are countless examples of this.  Just look to any popular, successful person that does not believe in anything beyond the 5 senses.  Famous actors, philanthropists, and artists are but few examples.  The reason for this is that any plane of existence, such as spiritual or physical can be explained in its own terms without overlap.  They are mutually exclusive.

The heart of what I see as the most beneficial message that I can communicate is the root of all problems in this world.  I have written about it in the past but need to address this directly.  The Western world's main problem is addiction to the mind.  You see 12 step groups for every addiction but, it is my belief, that any religion has been created to address this problem.  We are so stuck in our head most or all of the time, that we are not living our lives.  We are living our lives in our head, which is no way to live.

Addiction to the mind means that we are slaves to our mind.  We do not have direct control of the mind.  We do not know how to turn it off.  All spiritual teachings come from this one problem.  If you solve this one problem in your life, you have solved the problem that that has given rise to all religions.  If addiction to the mind is the problem, what is the solution?  The solution is self-control.  We must learn how to control the mind so that our mind is slave to us.  At the same time, we must love our mind.  Once we are able to be more present, love is then possible.  Learn how to love yourself and love others.  True love is only possible if you can quiet your mind enough to let the love through.  Loving yourself and loving others is only possible by living in the present moment.  If we are stuck in the past or future, dwelling on these endlessly in our mind, we are incapable of living a life of love for ourselves and other people.  A life of love is only possible through learning self-control.

Be Kind to Yourself, Part 2

"Your weaknesses are perfect parts of you that balance you out and make you into a complete, whole Being."

How you view the world is a direct reflection of your internal state, the way you view yourself, your beliefs, what you consider your advantages and shortcomings.  It is so easy to lose sight of this.  Our perception of reality is so inherently biased that it cannot even really be called "reality" by another person.  It is when we perceive our "reality" as the one true reality that big problems begin to arise, but that is the topic for another time.  We should always be mindful that we subjectively view people, situations and things in our life through a distorted lens.  People and things are not bad or good, but only when we label them as such.

There is not a single person who views their actions as not being motivated by "good" yet we may label them otherwise.  Who is right?  In truth, there is no right as seeking such an answer is to say there is a wrong way to live in this world.  We are all on a path and are in different states of spiritual evolution.  Each state is not better than the other yet it is just different and we are to love and respect all in the way in which they live their life.

You can use how you view others as a tool to go deeper into yourself.  If someone is late to meet you and then explains to you a genuine story why and profusely apologizes, you will accept their apology.  If someone wrongs you in some way, yet genuinely apologizes, you will forgive them.  Yet, when it comes to ourselves, we have such a different standard.  If you are late, you beat yourself up the entire time for why you are running late and feel guilty about it.  If you wrong someone, you endlessly relive the moment and try to change the past in your mind.  Treat yourself with as much love and kindness as you treat others.  You are to see yourself as God sees you, which is perfect.

Just as you are to look at the world with a lens of Love, you are to look at yourself with that same Everlasting Love.  You are a Loving, Eternal Being, full of compassion and goodness.  What does it mean to look at yourself through a lens of Love?  You are literally only able to see light, your good qualities and attributes.  It is not to say that you are blinded to anything negative but that that negative becomes a positive when looking at it in this way.  When looking at a weakness, you give yourself the benefit of the doubt as to why you have it, and you are so enamored with love for yourself that you literally see it as a strength.  Maybe there is a corresponding strength that gives rise to the weakness.  Maybe this weakness has brought situations into your life for the good.  Yet, the more that we focus on this weakness through the eyes of Love, we see it as perfected.  Your weaknesses are perfect parts of you that balance you out and make you into a complete, whole Being.  Pour love into your weaknesses.

I think it is important to note that, when looking at yourself, do not see the past or the future.  Feeling good or bad about past events is taking you away from yourself.  It is true that the past can give you clues as to your tendencies, and that is fine.  However, do not focus on specific things that happened.  They are over and done with.

For example, I have a tendency to be late to things.  This, in itself, is not a weakness, just an observation.  Being late is certainly rooted in a point in time and is focused on the past or future.  A better way to interpret this is that I tend to optimistically view things as taking less time than they actually take.  At the same time, I tend to focus more on myself, what I need to do, then how I make others feel when they are waiting for me.  So, the root is ego-based as most weaknesses are.  My associated strengths are that I am very optimistic and am more people or event-driven than time-driven.  I give myself the benefit of the doubt in that I am so focused on what is before me, I lose sight that I am disrespecting others in being late.  I see this weakness as perfected in that it is a necessary part of me that makes me who I am.  I love this weakness, accept myself just the way that I am because of it, and do not wish to change it.

The general principle is to see yourself as a whole person and have utmost compassion for yourself.  As you long to be in a relationship with a lover that loves you passionately and unconditionally, you must too love yourself.  Be in love with yourself.  It is only when you truly love yourself that you can love another.  As your internal view of yourself begins to shift, you will see that your outward perspective will shift as well.  You will have more compassion for others and will be a light that others will see and gravitate towards.