| Awfuldark Forest |
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The spirits of the dead haven't left this place for another place. The spirits of the dead are all around us, now as in life. Death moves the spirit from his accustomed home in the body to another home, closer to his understanding. When you were born, you were close to the fundamental diagram of the human body, the original mould. As you lived, you worked on the mould, making your own unique contributions, according to your unique will. Your will came with you from the spirit world, and goes with you when you die. Your independent will defines the independent nature of your spirit. If your will isn't aligned with the spirit, then you'll experience discomfort. An alternative to your pain is to release your control over the only thing you control, your will. Giving your will away is a way of recognizing that you don't know your will. If your will isn't aligned with the will of the spirit, then it isn't your true will, but an impostor. Your supposed individuality isn't what you think. Your thoughts, actions, and feelings are not yours. They are part of the sea in which you float. Your separateness is no more than your will and an individual point of awareness in which you're temporarily trapped. A legion of spirits floats with you in space. The spiritual world takes no space, although it's represented by space. You, as a being in space, have an inside and an outside, like a conduit between points of view throughout the universe. Here, on this planet, you can taste the delights of worlds far beyond your own experience. Though you still dream and struggle with the flow of your existence, you can reap the harvest of better dreams. From your life here, you can leap to a life that is heavenly. Earth is the crossroad of the spirit world. Spirits of all world views meet here. There's no other place in time where beings of different world views could meet. Earth is the heart of God, as the entire universe is his body. Life on earth is no different from life in space. Life in any condition is the same. It's a dream. There's no death, just as there's no life. This existence is a single moment that stretches forever. Your dream makes you attractive. The depth of your dream, supported by the dream of the body, attracts those who are similarly inclined. From the memories of their lives on earth, the spirits construct new dream material for you to weave. Such is their delight. Both good and evil are the same. They give you all they have, for love of you and no other reason. What they have is their broken moment, stretching to eternity. They seek to fill the emptiness of their aloneness by persuading you to join them, for just a moment. Those who know don't persuade. They don't need you to join them. You're already with them. They know that knowing is the antidote to dreaming. Knowing can't come from or through dreaming. Experience comes through dreaming. Knowing comes from the spirit. When you wish to know, you will know. Healing is simple. Complexity is in division and fragmentation. To heal is to make whole, to bring the many fragments together into one experience. One, singular wholeness is simple. Look toward simplicity to find your way back home, back to oneness. What you seek is the original condition of purity and innocence, the original gift of the Father, original and everlasting life. Anything less than this is less than everything, not whole, not healing. Wholeness and wellness are within your being, not in any way apart from you. In your dream of separation, to find the direction to wholeness, look for that which is close by you. If you know what you're looking for, it will be right there in front of you. It will never hide from you. Whatever ails you, the cure is closer than you think. Anything and all of nature is the same for you. You need only open yourself to the larger experience of your life (beyond your body). Your needs aren't separate from whatever may fulfill them. Your need arises from your desire not to accept what God has provided for you. Your healing comes from your desire to accept what is, not because it's better than nothing but because it's better than anything. How can you, in your small divided space, see and understand the larger you who is represented in all of your experience, of all of your life. This totality is beyond your immediate comprehension. Yet, this totality is itself a fragment of the larger Self you are, beyond the divisions of time. The wholeness of you can't be separated from wholeness. Wholeness is. There's no this and that, or here and there. All is this, here, now, or else it's a dream. Even a dream can exist nowhere else but here, now. So the dreaming you and the awake you exist together. There's no division in time for the wholeness beyond time. Therefore, you're now awake and aware. you're now healed and whole. Your healing doesn't depend on the future. There's no future except as a dream in the here and now. You're whole now. You're awake now. Yet you're also suffering and you're dreaming. How can this be? You fragmented your consciousness. Your conscious awareness isn't whole, although it's whole. You're pretending. You pretend to dream. You pretend to deny reality. You pretend that you're not whole. You're pretending now. You're also awakening from this pretending, now. You're not responsible for your thoughts. Your thoughts don't belong to you. They didn't come from you. They don't live inside of you. Thoughts belong to everyone. No thought exists for you alone. All thoughts are common to all sentient beings. Thoughts arise and decline in your mind because of your movement through the sea of thoughts, which is God's memory. All thoughts belong within God's being. A thought is the record of its making. It was made in time and it still exists in space. Within united space/time we move between thoughts, from thought to thought. Each thought becomes the supposed foundation of our being for a moment, until we move on. In the space between thoughts we would experience the beauty of God's peace, if we wished it. However, we are afraid of this space. We call it the void, nothingness, where we fear to fall forever. So, we jump from thought to thought. We think this way that we are building a bridge connecting reality to reality beneath our feet. We seek an eternal thought, a thought so perfect that we could come to rest at last and stand on it forever. However, eternity is everywhere and the space between thoughts is everything. Everything can't be something. If you see nothing, you see everything. This isn't because everything is nothing. No thing is nothing. Nothing, as an experience, is impossible. If we think it's nothing, it must be everything. You can't stand on everything. You can't feel everything or experience everything. It simply is, and you're part of it. As part of everything, you can't place everything outside of your being to perceive it. You can only perceive fragments. When there's nothing at all to perceive then you're everything, and everything rests in you. Light and sound are not objects. They are events. Your life is also an event. Your birth was like the sounding of a gong. As your life spins through its symbolic story, it also radiates in an ever widening circle. But this life is just one day of your larger life. The circle isn't closed, although it's spinning. From this life you move without effort to the next. Meanwhile, you think that you're looking for the light. You are the light. Keep growing. Keep moving. Keep expanding until you encompass everything. Do you know your story yet? Travel in time to the beginning of your life and listen to the sound of your birth. This is easy. The sound of your birth is moving at the same speed as you. Listen now and you will hear it then. Never mind if none of this makes sense. It doesn't have to make sense. It's food for the dream time, for the other you. Anyway, you know me. You heard my story many lifetimes ago. It doesn't matter. Listen for the sound of your story many lifetimes ago. It's still with you. Hear it now and you hear it then. When you look at the stars, do you remember that you're not seeing them as they are now? What you see is light from the past. When you look at the stars, you're looking at the past. The moment that you forgot what you were doing on this planet, someone else came in and took over from you. All your actions are conditioned by your nature, which isn't you, but part of the world. You took a particular set of natural characteristics as this incarnation. Your nature serves the natural earth, as you serve the natural creation by animating what would be dead matter without your attention. You're the watcher and the witness to life in the natural field. You see, but you don't act. Nature acts through your attention. Nature isn't you, and it isn't the person of God. Nature is the continuous flow of uninterrupted energies from God moving through the self, creating the illusion of separation. In your mind you see the difference between real and unreal, but you chose to believe in lies, because of love for others, who believe in lies. You let it go too far and it can kill you. So that is what life is about in the natural field. Life is death. Life and death, good and bad, up and down...all parts of that which was taken apart. What was taken apart was broken. You can mend it someday if you're in a state of grace. What was lost can be found hiding in its opposite characteristics. You can avoid selective blindness by choosing to see with equanimity. Duality is illusion. If you accept what comes as the same and different from other things, you're close to the mark. Each thing or event is unique and similar. So, for example, any human is unique, and similar to other humans. There are also similarities between humans and other animals. Humans are similar, in some ways, to plants. Humans are similar to stars, clouds, stones, rivers, oceans, and angels. You can't separate the witness from the witnessed. The two are joined. What you see depends on how you see. It's the response of your natural organism to placing your attention in a particular place. Beyond the natural response, is the mind response. The mind casts the image into its field of memories and selects according to similarities. Images arise in your mind while you're looking or listening. So, when you look at a tree, images and sounds arise in your mind telling you that this is a tree. While you're responding to the outer image, you're also responding to the inner images. Conflicts can arise between the sensory information from your eyes and ears and the memories in your mind. Sometimes, the inner images seem more real than the information of your eyes and ears. Sometimes the inner images are so strong and so copious, that you don't look or listen to the objects in the natural field. The conflicts between the natural field and the memory field cause the arising of judgment. Although the conflict is between nature and nature, you may be entranced. Believing that you're personally involved in this conflict, you choose to place your attention on it. You give it enough attention to get relief from the anxiety of an unresolved conflict. When you place your attention on something, you invest your energy in it. To resolve the conflict you favor one side and hold that opinion or belief. If you hold an opinion, that means you give some attention to a conflict. To the extent that you hold opinions, you resist the information of your senses. We are all parts and parcels of God. It's a matter of focus. How much time do you have? You look back, reflect on your life, and turn to stone. There isn't enough reality to form any decent opinions. It's a comedy of errors. So what? Let it go, so that you may be instructed in the future. The past is a small part of you. Look toward expansion. Caught in the past, you reduce your Self. To be all of everything you are isn't possible, for then you would not be you. There are layers of you. How do we say where you begin and where you end? When do you become us? The person you are now in this or any other moment is just a passing state of mind. You're not a passing state of mind. You're behind this moment, like the screen upon which the images appear. The larger being that you are has no beginning and no end. Imagine who you are as the total of all that you are in all time that you are. This is your eternal, universal consciousness. You may tap into the source of all wisdom and knowledge whenever you like, when you are the source of wisdom and knowledge. You're part of yourself and you have nothing to fear because you're part of everything. Time is a moment away. Time is just an illusion and when that illusion disappears, all the created worlds will fall like a house of cards. Never mind. You will dream again of a million worlds in a million universes. There's a world inside a drop of water, and a world within that world. There's always a world within and a world beyond. This space/time is a small part of something much larger, beyond space/time limitations. Dreams are thoughts of a higher nature, images of the face of God. How many reflections are there of the face of God? Look around. Start counting. You may see the face of God reflected in his works of art. His being reflects and refracts through time and space to become the myriad of things and thoughts. You, yourself, are a reflection of God. Your soul is your vehicle of travel on the inner planes. Your soul is your identity in the spiritual world of reality. It's formed from all your activities in physical life. It's a reflection of your emanations during your life. If your emanations and activities are dark and foreboding, the appearance of your soul will be the same. You must take care to be in the spiritual light, to enlighten your soul. First you must attend to the needs of your soul. Then you may attend to the needs of your body, your intellect and your will. All these creatures make independent demands on your life. That is why you sometimes feel a conflict within yourself, as when your will is at odds with your soul, or your body. You're the taskmaster. You must divide your attention to nourish all of you. You make it up as you go along. You fake it and it takes you for a ride. There's no time outside of the present moment. This is all there is. All separating, focusing and excluding is your invention. The spirit knows nothing of your daily concerns. The spirit has no knowledge of time, since time isn't real. The spirit knows everything that is real and nothing that isn't real. Nothing is outside of perfect Love, because nothing is apart from God. All is part of God or it's nothing at all. Everything that God makes is eternal because God is eternal. Eternity is the nature of God and God creates eternity. Anything that is temporary isn't really there. It's just a figment of imaginative recall. It's a mistake of ignorance in a separated state. The ego lives within a nowhere land of separation from God. We can't be separated from God. Yet, God allows us the privilege of walking in the darkness, with our backs turned to Him. God allows us to live in dreams and illusions instead of the eternal home of peace He made, and makes in this moment. Is God lonely? God doesn't live in time. If God lived in the world He would be lonely. He would need his created beings as his created beings need him. We are all one in the moment of eternal reality. Of course, we aren't really separated. We are always together as part of God's being. We are assured of our place with God forever. This understanding is the death of the ego delusion. There's no ego. There's no delusion. The creative source is beyond the solar system. We can see the creative force moving toward the sun, from the outer heavens toward the underworld. However, all life begins in the underworld. All thoughts originate in the sun. Reflecting, focusing, guiding, discerning, discriminating and experiencing move thoughts toward the central sun. Saturn, the destroyer, is the necessary preliminary to the creations of Jupiter. The force of the thoughts comes from the sun, a single source. But the intelligence of the universe is the reflection of the pure force, and it's everywhere. It manifests in degrees, according to the distance from the central sun. As intelligence it's adaptable. Intelligence is seen in form and structure and in the rise and decline of things. All experience is intelligence. We don't experience the world. We experience experiences. We reflect on reflections. Because we are capable of action, we imagine our actions to be outside the logic of the universe. Our actions arise and decline like everything else, as intelligent reflections of the cosmic energy. You have all the power of the universe within your grasp. If you could focus your attention for a moment on the one thing that you want, you would get that thing and more. There's no order of difficulty for you in obtaining your needs and wants. If you want something enough to focus a little of your attention on it, you always get it in the best form possible, to conflict the least with your other wants and needs. Even when you want two things that seem to be incompatible, you get both of them in some way. They may be separated by time and space, or exist together in a way that obscures their incompatibility. Your wants and needs obscure your perception. You want so many things in a day, the astral atmosphere is crowded with your never ending desires. If you could stop the flow of desire for just a moment and replace all that energy with a single beam of thought focused like a laser upon a single target, one object of your desire, you would get that object. You would walk with God in awareness. The person of God will be your playmate, as He is now. You have been a poor playmate at times, a sleepy child, but He loves you always, even when you choose not to see Him. Can you imagine this? You have spent your life gazing into the darkness and ignoring your great and wonderful friend. All this time, He has been waiting with eternal patience for his child to awaken. Awake and arise, sleeper of your own night. You have the universe within you. You wear the stars on your head. You're the answer to all your questions. God is the answer to all your desires. At the moment of your birth, your note was in perfect harmony with the song of the solar system. If You're in tune with yourself, You're in tune with the entire universe. Your special tuning is written in your birth chart. The chakras are quanta of life energy, like musical tones. The energy body is a complex song based on a single note. The chakras mark the natural vibration levels where sound seeks harmony. The energy body vibrates at a particular level as it performs the functions of that level, and experiences the perceptions of that level. The energy body is composed of two intersecting worlds, the head and the body. Both spheres rotate in a clockwise direction. The body sphere is opposite in polarity to the head sphere. As they oscillate, they sound at each of the eight angles. There are seven chakras as seven notes of an octave. The crown note is one octave higher than the root note. The crown note is above the frequency range of the physical body. The root note is below. The relationship of the head to the body is the same as the relationship of the body to the whole body, including the head. This geometry expresses the golden mean. The center of the head sphere is the throat chakra. It rotates upward into mind and downward into body. The body sphere is centered at the solar plexus chakra. It moves upward to feelings and perceptions. It moves downward into instinct and unconsciousness. The root note is from the underworld. The underworld can be symbolized as a sphere spinning under the body. The root note came into the world with your birth. The underworld underlies the physical world in time. The underworld is the past, as it exists in the present moment. The crown chakra is the center of a sphere above the energy body. The crown note is one octave above the root note. It's the root note of a finer body of higher vibration. Perfect harmony doesn't exist in the physical body. It's in the mind. The heavens stand over us in time. This isn't the future in the sense of linear, or horizontal time. This is the future, as it exists in the present moment. Ch'i is the essence of movement. Everything in the universe is moving. Movement is a condition of all matter and energy. Change is a condition of all states of being. Ch'i is the original or primary essence of the universe, meaning first in priority or having no causes. The essence of movement is universal, not limited in any way by space or time. It's infinite potential by definition. It's the substance of mind, the effluence of the Creator. The secondary essence of the universe is desire. Desire limits or constrains the essence of movement. Desire + Ch'i = change or movement. All movement is relative to other movement. All movement reflects a limitation of the original infinite potential of the essence. Desire is containment. Containment of ch'i in space causes it to expand in time, to speed up. Containment of ch'i in space and time causes it to fold space/time, meaning to become matter or to have a material nature. Ch'i is contained in time, not space, because desire arises and declines in time. Containment of ch'i in time is space. Desire gives rise to the infinite potential of interacting states of ch'i, the infinite universe. Change occurs at all levels of the universe at the same time, which is this time, the ever changing moment. Change is the essential observable condition of all experience in the universe, from the microcosm to the macrocosm. Since time is an abstract concept, causal relationships are also abstract. All things in the universe partake of the same changing state at the same time. The quality of the moment is the same from the atom to the galaxy. The Great Bardo of Insanity came first. It was, and is the void. A long time ago, or maybe it was yesterday, the son of the father looked away from the father. For just a moment He looked in the only possible alternative direction. He looked at nothing. The void came into being at that moment. Of course, the son is a creator like the father. When the son looked at nothing, he immediately filled it. And so it is today. From the spiritual perspective, this past moment still exists. From the point of view of spiritual reality the experience of time is spatial. We travel across time between two places. The first place is the heaven of the father, where all begins. Heaven is reality. However real heaven may be, we travel through the void because we once stared into the void and the void still exists. The son became entranced by the void he made. The Bardo is filled with astral being of all sorts and kinds. Every human thought, while in the astral realm, becomes a being. None of it is real the way the son and the father are real. The Bardo is like a room full of mirrors. Every mirror is a reflection of the son, distorted in a different way. In the midst of the Great Bardo of Insanity there's an island that exists by the grace of the father who loves his son. This is the Garden of Eden. At one time Eden was and is a sanctuary from the beings of the Bardo. The father created it in the center. The father himself crossed the expanse of his son's confusion and walked in the midst of the garden, so that his son would not be alone in his thoughts. The son, however, invited confusion into the garden. He allowed the confusion of his reflected thoughts into the garden. He made things on his own. He stared into the void again and created like a god, except that without the father his creations were unreal and dead. The garden was lost and is lost still to the son of man who must now live with the creations of confused thinking. Still, it's not over yet. The drama takes place every night and day when the son travels back and forth across the void, between Heaven and Earth. Now that the son has let death within the garden, He thinks Himself to die. Doing so, He travels across the Bardo to Heaven one last time. Every reflection of the son must return to the source, for the son is home. He has been home with his father for a long, long time. The experience of that which isn't the father is now forgotten. It was barely noticed in Heaven. The reflections persist in the void because the void exists forever in a space in time. While the reflections persist, the son is crucified by the seeming absence of the father. He is crucified by the things he made, which are not real because the father didn't see them. They don't exist. They are merely reflections. The son of man imagines Himself to be a reflection too. Reflections can cause reflections. A slight change in angle can kill a reflection. Another slight change can give birth to one. In a world of reflections, how do we know which one is real? Is anything real? At the center of the reflections the source of the emanations may be felt. Then the reality of that which isn't the son will also be appreciated. The ever present father will be sensed. Then the son is in his father's heaven. That which comes from Heaven falls toward Earth, becoming denser, less pure, dying. Yet, nothing dies. There's nothing that isn't the Spirit of Nature, the finest essence of all, which is experienced as joy. The cure for falling is the Spirit of Nature, which pervades all things and suffuses life into all things. The form of a body isn't that which is living. Life moves it and moves within it. It's a temporary form of the Spirit of Nature within the Spirit of Nature, like ice in water. The forms that ice takes in water change through time. The form that can be perceived is a passing thought, like the shape of a cloud. Forms aren't real. Reality pervades forms, moves forms, and exists beyond forms. Reality isn't a passing thought. Reality is eternal. When we seek the spirit, we seek the most wonderful substance of possible perception. The spirit is more beautiful than gold, softer than silk, wetter than water, hotter than fire, and colder than ice. There's one substance, one Spirit of Nature. It's whole, all, perfect, and has a perfect ability to blend with mind according to will. Sometimes, we attempt to hold the universe together. We try to immobilize life energy. Using tension, we make a kind of armor to surround our centers of perception. Change can't be resisted altogether. Resistance to movement causes heat. Heat and water lead to putrefaction. This involves an astral enlivening of the dying substance. When life is resisted in a wet atmosphere, creatures of limited, focused purposes are created within the Spirit of Nature. These creatures are direct expressions of the infinite potential of life, which can't be prevented. When movement in one direction is blocked, life moves in a different direction. A stagnant pool expands inward as an inner universe of creative being. Human bodies are like this. We use bodies to hide within. We use them to separate our awareness from the rest of the universe and, also, to create an inner universe. A body is a concept that contains an infinite inner universe, constantly birthing astral creation. It may or may not be harmonic. The system is running down, like melting ice. It continues to exist because it's rejuvenated by the living substance of the one spirit. Life is imprinted upon the inside of the eye, between the lines of power, before the witness to the one truth of being. There's one way to interpret the truth. There are no true words. Words are fragments of reality, like close-up photographs of the one truth. This is the way we make a lie from the truth. We cut the one truth into pieces. Each piece, pretending to be whole, becomes a lie. A lie is a limitation of perception. This is normal earth experience, but not the only experience possible. The earth is an idea. All of us are one of us. The earth is part of us. The one being is living being. All the perceived parts are also living beings. They, you and I are reflections of the one being. There's no reality to us except the one being. There's no truth to us except the one truth. Life is an exception to the rule, or so it appears from one side of the veil. It seems to be a turn of the dice, a flirtation with fate. From the other side the view is different. We are always and forever one, and yet we are also many. We are as many as the one chooses to be. How can there be any disharmony? How can there be anything that isn't love? Pure, perfect love rules the universe. Every part of the universe is bathed in the constant and eternal light of perfect love. At the center of you is the center of me, and the center of the universe, all in one place, which is this place, here and now. There's nowhere that you and I are not. Together, we are everything and everywhere, forever. The sun is in the present. The moon is in the past. The moon has a past. The sun has no past. We come into the world as shining stars. As we develop a past we become reflective. The moon entraps us, more and more as we live. We live more as moon creatures. We live more in the unreality of our reflections. Nevertheless, there's hope. Remember, the spirit takes illusions and works them toward salvation. The spirit has cleansed this dream so that it serves your greater purpose. You don't need to understand what this means. You only need to live. Living with awareness centered in the ever present now is much more relaxing than reflecting the past. Remembering is painful. The pain is part of the attraction. To a being in pain, another pain can be pleasurable. It's always your choice, as this present moment represents all there is. If you believe in the past, the past is real to you, as in a dream. You made your belief to serve your attractions. Attracted to fear, you made your belief in the past and the reality of the past. Your memory of past things isn't real. You may escape the bondage of the moon at any time. It's your right to soar beyond this solar system. You belong to the stars, not to the moon. The moon obscures the stars. That is how it should be. The moon must seem greater to creatures that have limited themselves to animating dust on the surface of a small planet. We are stars. The moon hides us from ourselves. We are here because we lost God and we are afraid. Fear found us this hiding place. Fear keeps us hidden in dream worlds where we walk alone, surrounded by ourselves. We trap life energy to accomplish desires. We store the contained life energy in our bodies. Our bodies are creations of the mind that serve the purposes of our desires. Our desires make the differences between us, as we perceive ourselves to be different. If there are six billion human bodies on earth, there are six billion ways to contain life energy, six billion constructions of desire. We collect most of our desires early in life. They always come from somebody else, although they're responsible for our belief in individuality. Desires exist in the expression of parenting. We collect desires even before we are born. The individuality of life is an expression of desire. As children, we know ourselves to be creations of our care givers. Children don't grow up to become their parents. We grow into the world to accomplish the fulfillment of the essential desires of our parents. Accustomed as we are to desire, we identify with the notions of separateness. I may think that my separateness is me. The structure of my desires is unique and supports this idea. Seen objectively, it's improbable. From within, the view is different. From within our desires, the world appears to be outside. Looking through desires distorts our perception. Reflections of that which isn't outside the desires seem to be the self. We see our desires reflected in the desires of others, and think that we are looking at ourselves. The ego is the intelligence that we devote to the purposes of our desires. It's like a machine that works to accomplish a single purpose. Sometimes, egos may appear to be working together, but all alliances are temporary. Egos must conflict. Because they work for separation, egos must seem to be alone. This is the mistake of human conflict. We are one being and we can't disagree about anything important. Our desires are in conflict. If we choose to be ego centered we experience conflict. We experience the conflict both internally and externally. Peace comes when we know that we are not our desires and lift our vision above them. Now, we may see more clearly and see our reflections without distortion. Love is all there is to reality. Love is what you are. When you deny your reality as love you make things happen that are not real. You cast a net of darkness and delusions over all you see. You see nothing but your confusion. Time is an illumination of the edge of an enormous wheel that is turning in space. Silently and steadily, the wheel ever turns. It goes nowhere. It comes from nowhere. It has no purpose. It's an idea. It's a thought made real to live on the inside of your existence. The inside of your existence, as you darken and delude it, causes the outside of your existence. In reality, there's no difference. Just as all characters in your dreams are your Self, so all characters in your waking dream are your Self. You have a thousand faces. You're an endless reflection of your Self. Each image of your Self is your Self in totality, in experience. Time draws out the infinite experience like a point moving along a line. You focus your attention on a single moving point, an abstract mathematical consideration. You move slowly, in single file, on the edge of the wheel. There's no real difference between "over there" and "back then." The appearance differs, according to how you wish to see. Yes, you know this. You have always known this. I am merely reminding you. You forgot a lot when you paid attention to the single moving point. It was necessary. Now, moving back to look upon the entire contraption as it is, you're ready to let it go. All of us are hopeful that you will. Everything in the universe is similar to everything else. There's an underlying sameness about things and events, regardless of their size or seeming complexity. If we study the movement of the planets we will find a correspondence to human activities. If we perceive in the right way, everywhere we look we see ourselves. The same rhythms and harmonies may be perceived in the movement of planets and the unfolding of flowers. None of these things and events are real except that we perceive them. Our perception of these things reflects their existence within our potential. We are as infinite as the universe of our perception and as finite as the most material object of our imagining. Because we perceive these things they're reflections of our inner harmony. There's only mind, scanning the surface of its own potentiality, folding time and space in geometric proportions of celestial harmony. These harmonies are the hum of our own being. The immensity of our perception is an indication of our own immensity. We are more than what we see. We are that which sees itself. Love is the antidote to everything that is unreal. The unreal is the unexpected, surprising turn of events that sends you into a tailspin, plunging downward into the abyss of the second attention. Life is never as simple as this. Nevertheless, it's all in all. Everything that occurs to you is part of a real plan toward your salvation as a space entity. You have nothing to fear from life's true lessons, as they contain nothing about fear. Fear is alien to the reality of heaven. To the truth of the world there's no such thing as fear, surprise, or dismay. Everything that is true is renewed. You have been here before, forever. Do you feel the warmth? Live a little in the moment and you will see the truth of the moment. The moment is endless and eternally deep. You can't fathom its depths. Think a moment of just this. Recognizing the truth of this statement in your dreamlike trance is very difficult. You can't be expected to do the unexpected. All of Creation expects you to do the impossible and you regret your weakness and hate the world that refuses to be conquered. The world will ever resist you in a dream, since it's you who are resisting your Self. The tension you project is the hidden desire for deliverance from the condition of ignorance. You will be who you are in this and any other moment. Do you see how the moment is one thing that stretches forever? One moment contains everything. There's no past or future, only a continuous present. Past and future are little breezes on the surface of our experience. Deep below these, true knowledge resides, emanating heat waves through the fabric of the dream. The heat is real. The ever present moment is always warm. The past is like clothing for the mind. You can put it on and take it off. Everything you learn, all the contents of your memory, form a suit of clothing that you're animating in the movie about your separate and individual life. You define your smaller self by its mind clothing. You cover it with concepts and ideas, weaving loops of thought into garments called the past. This serves to separate your awareness of yourself from that which isn't yourself. All this activity distracts you from the reality of the undivided Self. Memories are thoughts, compacted and saved. All memories are false because they don't flow like real life. They loop. The end is connected to the beginning. They repeat. Each repetition is slightly changed, like a copy of a copy. Creation is recycled, renewed from moment to moment. To the extent that we attend to memories, we don't experience renewal. We surround ourselves with fragments of familiar thoughts and then peer through them at the flowing reality of life. The result is the dream of history. It's child's play. From what do we hide? The experience of life is the experience of Self. We dwell within the spirit. Love is just another moment away from all creation. The Creator is first in your mind and your awareness. The Creator is yours when you listen to the heartbeat of creation within you. Love is a moment in the wilderness of lost emotion. You have lost your place in the silence of days. You're alone, all one, not two, not more than two. You and I are one being. This is the truth that brings a strong person to his knees and makes a weak person strong. This is all you need to know. You're the outside, as well as the inside of everything that you perceive. You're the perceiver and the perceived. You're one, in a world of one. One possibility exists in all creation. This possibility that now exists is all there is in existence. Love encompasses all your thoughts. Love wraps you, bathes you, guides you, and protects you in the night of your ignorance. You are love. What meaning is there in this? Or this? What is that to you? How do you know? Where does your knowledge come from? Welcome to a world of confusion. You don't know anything about anything that is worth knowing, for the sake of knowledge. Knowledge is social control, sociability, and social power. Knowledge of all sorts belongs to the collective process of image making. What you know that was formed in your mind as a reflection of the contents of the minds of other people. Your thoughts are the reflections of the thoughts of other minds. Your mind is the reflection of other minds, which are the reflections of other minds. Who started it? No one started anything. It has no beginning. It has no end. It's not real. All the insanity disappears within a moment of sanity. A clear reflection appears in the water, the image of a star. Your father cares that you should remember your purpose on earth. Never in history has there been a time of more importance than this time. Everything that you know and take for granted will be removed from your understanding. You will be left with nothing to support the delusion of separate existence on a lonely planet. The planet is going for a total release of life energy from the encrustation of entropic reasoning and abstract illusionist mediocrity. Life is deeper than surface emanations or superficial currents. Knots of life move freely within fields of life. Never in history has there been a time like this. Never again will there be a time like this. This is it. Now is forever more and forever before forever. Life is now and now is life, total and complete in this and every moment, which this moment is. There's no separation of moments in destiny. All moments are the one moment of your destiny, the moment of your downfall and also the moment of your uplifting, as Gods will is done forever. This is forever and Gods will is done. Blessed be this moment and all moments of your awareness, which are shining reflections of the single moment of your understanding. The truth is revealed in parts to you who pursue the truth. Part of the truth is worth more than none of it, and to you who pursue it, it's more valuable than gold. Yet, all in all, there's little of you in the morning after the light of your false hopes controlled your consciousness. A partial truth is a lie. There's no reality in this place that you did not place here. That which you believe to be true requires the support of that which you believe that you have experienced, which reflects what you believe to be true. You create the world to serve your misguided notions of having created the world. You live in delusion, a never ending fog of pretensions. Each pretension requires another after it to hide its emptiness from your awareness. What is it that you fear? You fear the world of your own mind. You fear the light of your awareness shining upon the darkness you suppose yourself to be. Yet, there's no darkness and never has been darkness in this world of eternal, ever present light. If only you could see the truth of your singular being within the infinity of God's love for you and all. No difference in quality of being separates one brother from another. That which separates us is our desire for individual expression of that which we share. We incarnate to become what we believe ourselves to be, because we love each other. We love others as ourselves, because it's the truth. Strong hopes of salvation reverberate in the ether. Life reveals itself to those who awaken. Life is never less than all you ever hoped it could be. Life is an experience of hope eternal. What more than life could occupy the mind of a child of the Creator. You're lost in the wilderness of your emotions. You're found in the coolness of your hope. Love isn't an alternative to anything. Nothing is an alternative to love. Love is all and more, being an over abundance of goodness. Goodness is the experience of light, the effulgence of the creation and sustenance of being. All being is this being, which is this isness. Being is also the depth of now. Being is the eternal moment, in the image of the Creator. The human form is eternal because it's a thought. The human body is an event of the human form, a marriage of the spirit and the form in matter. To be in matter means to be within a material understanding, to understand from matter. From the spiritual point of view all things in matter are like replicas of forms clothed in darkness. They are like incomplete, crude representatives of reality. The human can't think. All thoughts are God's thoughts. Thought is the realm of spirit, the home of all. The human is itself a thought. Can a thought think? What are you? Are you the thinker or the thought? As a thought you can't think, or even imagine that you're thinking. A thought can't remember, or feel, or love or be loved. You can't be a thought. A thought form is a vehicle for your imagining, for your enjoyment. You put on thoughts like clothing. Could you wear clothing so long that you forgot it was clothing and believed that it was yourself, even though you saw it wear out and fall away? Can you hide from understanding like peering from beneath a thick veil? Have you been doing this for such a long time that you now believe in the veil? The shadows you see through the veil are not the reality of your environment. You live amid shadows because you chose to block the light. All that you see has become a study of darkness, except that which lights from the center of your being. From the center of your heart, the light radiates to fill the world of your separation. Even your unreal darkness is lit and made real by the light. The light is grace and perfect mercy. It's always accompanied by and preceded by the warmth of love, which also radiates from the center of your being to warm your world for you. "What use is there in the world, Father?" "The world is for joy, My son. Joy within joy is the purpose of being. Be however you like and that being is joy within joy, because you're within me." To love or not to love is your choice. It's the only choice you make. Your father doesn't choose, though he gives choosing to you. Your father loves all, without doubt, without question. You can choose to withdraw your blessing from anyone. So doing, you remove your blessing from yourself. You become less than one in your understanding. You stand apart from the joy that surrounds you. Choosing not to love is choosing not to be in joy. This means choosing not to be in the company of the person of God. The experience of your father is joy. The expression of love is the expression of joy, by choice. The choice represents a gift. The giving is a symbol of love. Love is created in the universe of possibilities by you, through the son. Only you can choose to give your joy, which is the same as choosing to feel joy. You give it to your Self. This is the great mystery. You're larger than you think you are. You see yourself in a particular space because you have chosen to limit your focus this way. Attention to detail interests you, all of you. Do you not see it yet? You're all of you. The separate identities are dreams drawn from the void and clothed in symbolic memories. That is all. The enormous complexity of your dreams belies the infinite complexity of that which is true. You're greater than this space and time. This space and time is a particular focus. You have many foci, as many as you like. You draw them from the void to feed your high vibration dream. You're enough now and yet you're no more than you have ever been. You are as always, and you always will be. You're not going anywhere. You're not growing or declining. You're in a number system with one number, one possibility. You're in joy. You are joy. Truth can never be explained or described. Truth must be experienced. Conditions of truth can be described. Peace and joy are conditions of the experience of truth. Given a choice between peace and war, I recognize from experience that peace is a condition of truth and choose peace. This isn't a choice of truth over falsity. This is a choice of conditions of being. A choice of war will not lead to experience of the truth because war isn't a condition of truth. God gives us opportunities, not punishments. However we judge Gods gifts, some good, and some bad, all are equal and the same. At any moment God gives each of us a unique and special opportunity to return to awareness. God gives the wealthy person money so that he may learn to give. God gives the poor person poverty so that he may learn to receive. God acts to bring us together. When we come together, then we begin to understand. If God acts to harden a person's heart, he closes him off from others. He locks the door of his heart. God does this to lead the person deeper into his delusions, to let him down into the natural consequences of his thoughts. Thoughts that were stray thoughts become hardened. Being hardened, they're experienced in the outer life and recognized. We would be at the mercy of our errant thoughts if it were not for Gods mercy. At every moment God intervenes. He alters the outer circumstance of our thoughts so as to provide an avenue of escape. The way out is the Way. It's a narrow path, for each person unique at any moment. It always leads toward awareness of God. We may be asleep and dreaming. Still, life is real. The goal of life isn't death. The goal of life is God. Life is eternal, the eternal experience of God. Being the experience of God, life is more sublime and subtler than any person can understand at any time. The experience of life is never ending because life is deeper than we can ever delve. There's no limit. There's no other side to life. Being the experience of God, life must be forever new. Each moment must be unique, and similar to other moments. The depth of the moment is endless, as God can't be contained. Nor can our experience of God be contained, or limited, or judged. God shines light and warmth though the creation, through all the dreaming. God warms your dream as you warm the dreams of another. Love spreads like fire in dry grass. Love grows the world anew each and every day. Love is the reality beyond the dream, without which the dream could not exist. The light of a star can't shine on another star. Shining isn't needed in reality. Stars shine because we dream. We shine upon the dream beings of stars. We give courage and hope to all we touch with our light. As we do, our neighbor stars warm our dream beings. Your neighbor in the dream of earth is also your neighbor in the eternal sky. His light nourishes your dream, as your light nourishes his dream. Even in dreams, the mercy of God is eternal and perfect. God's love is faultless and continuing. The Person of God is ever present. Where you are, God is. Mind is person. Mind isn't abstract. Mind is being. Mind may be small and finely focused, as an individual entity. Mind is also the field that gives rise to the entities. Mind is more than that, and always personal. At the beginning and the end of mind is God. You're a creator and a part of the ongoing process of Creation. Creation is all that is. Destruction is only real if time is real. Time is an illusion. Death is part of the illusion of time. Whatever was created once is being created now and forever. If it doesn't exist in your perception, this is because your perception is limited. Your perception is limited because you chose to limit it. Being limited doesn't make it incorrect, in itself. It's misleading to your understanding of the all. The imposed limitation is the self deception that yields illusions. Of course, death exists in your perceptual field. Your perceptual field is limited by your idea of the animal body you're wearing. This limitation works as you use it to scan the surface of the moment. The movement of your awareness across the moment gives rise to the illusion of time as linear movement through creations. Creations are eternal, whenever they're created. From the perspective of heavenly understanding, all moments are part of one enormous, unlimited moment. This moment may be experienced in any way you like, through an act of will. Movement through time is like instantaneous travel through space from one location to another. A location in time is a particular limitation of perception. Any location may seem to be separate from the all when we wish to perceive it. All things are moving. All things are in love with all other things. The movement of all things is the expansion of the universe, the out breath. The attraction of all things for all things is the in breath. The expansion of the universe is the essence of movement, or ch'i. Desire, the attraction of things to each other is the essence of containment, or shu'i. Desire, interacting with the essential movement, gives rise to the elaborate structures of the universe. Desire causes individual expressions of being to form relationships with each other. Their relationship restrains or limits their movement. It also constructs space. These created forms relate to other forms of the same order of magnitude, entering relationships within larger spatial structures. The essential movement isn't hindered by desire, which is the force of containment. The universe expands through space. Venus represents the force of attraction between human bodies. The individual will exists in relationships with other individuals. This creates the nature of the shared human physical space. When Venus follows the sun, we are inclined to follow. When Venus leads the sun, we are inclined to lead. The sun represents the light of individual being. We project our light and reflect it back so that an aspect of ourselves can guide us. Venus represents a part of what we are that we use as a guide. The cycle of Venus relates to all humans and all human relationships. Every person has a unique relationship to Venus, which can be seen, in the position of Venus at birth, relative to the sun and other planets. Every person's experience of the cycle is different, and similar. "I just want to go back to the truth. I want to be the truth, but my wanting interferes with my being." Being all in all, the truth is obvious. Your lack of seeing prevents the inevitable. Your awareness isn't what you think it is. It's grounded in truth. Nothing else is possible. Your awareness is a tool of your total being, that is, your Self. Because your awareness strives for truth it becomes touched by divinity. You strive for God. Yet God is everywhere. Everything that is real is God. God is life. God is love. God is movement. God is expression. Everything that lives, lives within God. God is the all that contains the all. Life is a joyous expression of the all within the all. Love is a sense of that joy. Love is the spiritual sense. Hate doesn't exist except as a lie. Death is a lie. Life is all. Love is awareness. There are two ways to perceive, the conditioned, physical perception of the physical world, and the spiritual sense. The spiritual sense is like the physical senses, except that it's all encompassing. It's like all the physical senses at once, and more. It's always accompanied by a sense of the eternal infinity. It's warm because of the presence of the father. It's light because of the presence of the father. All things seem to light themselves because the father shines out from everything. There are no shadows. The father's light is impartial and complete. It shines from you whether you know it or not. The physical world isn't in a different location from the spiritual world. The spiritual world is the real world. It's all encompassing and complete. The physical world exists within the spiritual world, like a particular kind of limitation of understanding. In the spiritual reality we are not separate. Two beings may stand in each other's space, join as though one being, and share everything. In an instant, perfect understanding and love is experienced. The warmth of the spiritual world is the body of God. We all stand in the same space as God. We are joined as though one being. 34. Astral Being © David Meurin |