IMAGINE YOUR LIFE BEGAN TODAY

Having just arrived here

Imagine your life began today. You woke up in this whatever-year-old, whatever-gender-you-are body, in the place where you presently are, in the midst of a collection of shauris whose import you understood not at all, having just arrived here.

Look about you. Could you find anything to be grateful for in the circumstances that surround you?

Thank you for space. I have lots of space. I have physical space to stretch out, I have spaces of time in which to do nothing but contemplate.

Thank you for space

I have the power of choice. The fact that I am able to observe the goings-on about me tells me this. When I observe something going on about me, I am the presence observing. Since I can observe this situation, at once this tells me that I am bigger than it, and I could also choose not to observe it.

If your life in this body started today, if you were transported from greater reality into this physical dimension today, the last thing you would have would be emotion. Pain, anxiety, stress, blame and so on. These are all learned behaviors that don’t belong to your pristine self.

Curiosity: the first thing

The first thing you would have would be curiosity. It would be like setting foot in a brand new country that you knew absolutely nothing about. Everything could well be different. You would decide to pay attention and learn as you went along.

If you woke up here in this body today, you wouldn’t have any personality traits at all. You wouldn’t be silent, you wouldn’t be loud, you wouldn’t be shy, you wouldn’t be depressed, you wouldn’t be overbearing, possessive, disturbed, handicapped, or hopeless. You would not know what any of them meant. You would be nothing but consciousness observing. You would understand that you were consciously observing, and that what you chose to notice would increase.

Seeing the vault of heaven for the first time

Let me adopt this posture when things start to get difficult for me. When I start to feel fear for any of the reasons I have practiced, or when I am observing a situation and feeling anxiety, worry, stress and fear hovering around. Instead of this micro involvement, let me dissolve these emotions at once, and instead imagine myself as a channel between the observed situation and divine energy, who was waiting to bless it, but lacking only a channel.

Be the channel

INHABIT THE OPPOSITE

Whatever way I am feeling, I can just as easily feel any different way I want.

If I am feeling worried about any situation that I have been paying attention to, I can just as easily give thanks for the situation, exactly as it is.

If I am feeling cheated, I can just as easily feel freed from expectations.

If I am feeling bored, I can just as easily feel peaceful and calm. Let me take a moment to make these, and other, adjustments.

You can give thanks for everything, just as it is. Observe the permutations, the constant changes of your world, the same way as you would observe the passage of a train very far off from you. You may regard it with love and wish it well, but none of it involves you.

A distant train in a far valley

Not knowing, not caring its provenance

Every feeling represents a decision. When you are aware of a bad feeling in you, perhaps anger, jealousy, or fear, first acknowledge its presence in you. Then feel its effects, the racing thoughts, short breaths, hatred. Now that you know what they are, deliberately search for their opposites. They would be a quiet mind, slow breathing, and love. Take longer to feel these opposites. Do this as often as you have a bad feeling. All too often you are content to live with it, wrapping it around you like a tattered gray blanket, not knowing, not caring, its provenance.

This is unnecessary, brother. When these gray ghosts, these bad feelings, begin to intrude on your consciousness, take a moment to see them and greet them.

You could say: Jealousy, I see you. You threaten my ego. You make me mistrust others and believe they have something I want. Jealousy, you make me deft and passive aggressive. But there you are; it is jealousy. I see you. You wind me up so easily. You can make me worry and plot and plan for days. You have been ascendant over me.

This is going to change now.

Let me inhabit you and find your opposite. My stomach should be calm and easy; my breathing deep and long. Let me pause now to make these adjustments.

My shoulders should be loose. Keep the breaths coming extra long. No tension can get a hold in a fully breathing stomach; there is no place for it; it is whooshed out with the breath.

If I feel a hatred for the usual round of activities, let me replace that with gratitude for the calm and respite I am experiencing right now.

If I feel negativity of any kind, even before my mind has the chance to find a reason for it, let me send it away. Thank you for making me aware of you. You may leave now, forever. You may leave now, fear. You may leave now, regret. You may leave now, irritation. You may leave now, all negative feelings. You have been let go. There is nothing for you to do here. Thank you. You are off the payroll now.

Instead, we decide to experience eternal calm. This starts with a decision within you; what do you want to experience?

Let me inhabit peace and calm with no opposite. Let me inhabit peace and calm forever. May they inhabit me. Let me be beyond all possibility of upset or fear. Traveled on, leaving them as in a vast desert landscape with no roads. Gone. An eternal peace in their place.

Inhabit gratitude

ANGER AND FEAR: SHUN THEM

In my worst moments, I feel panic. I wallow in sadness, which leads to a parade of other emotions. Fear and anxiety walk right in and all over me. Then am I lost, lost, completely overtaken by these strong emotions. What a pull they have over me.

Let us dismantle that pull.

Simply by putting it into words have you diminished it quite a bit already. Remember it is your destiny to choose. Could you visualize a state in which you had ceased to entertain anger or fear in any guise? You simply pointed a finger at anger and fear, two large, skulking prey animals who had taken up possession uninvited in your home, contributing nothing and consuming everything.

Leave my house now, anger and fear

I have entertained you long enough. No more. Go through this door and leave.

Thank you.

What if you make this decision up front, before any other situation comes along to test it? Make the decision to kick out the parasitic twins of anger and fear. Then, let unfold what may.

This is a decision I could make.

Be vigilant in banishing anger and fear. They will try to skulk back. Treat them as you did the little mice who made a nest in your walls. Sorry, you’re in the wrong place. You have to go. This is not negotiable. Thank you.

You are in the wrong place

The act of naming anger and fear is the first act in containing them, which is the first act in disabling them completely. Whenever you feel fear’s sickly embrace again, send it packing just on principle. It doesn’t matter what the fear seems to be occasioned by. Fight with fear no more; it is not worthy of your attention.

And then turn your attention to whatever situation you want. First make your light clear by ridding your world of anger and fear. They are no more than static that prevent you from hearing the true message.

When armies are evenly matched

the one with compassion wins

Lao Tsu, The Tao Te Ching

Verse 69

SOVEREIGN : THE NUTS AND BOLTS

This is in answer to the how of becoming sovereign. This is the nuts and bolts. In every process you are involved in, that you want to see do well, to succeed, you willingly involve yourself in the nuts and bolts of the business. What follows are the nuts and bolts of the business of becoming sovereign.

You have been told to ask. “Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, He will give it to you. Hitherto have you asked nothing in my name.” John 16:23,24

But you don’t know how to ask. What are the nuts and bolts of asking? First of all, what it is not. Asking is not anything you do with words. It is all too possible to use words one way, and have a totally different meaning in your heart. The language that speaks to the field of all possibilities, which you wish to access, is the language of the heart. This is the energy that surrounds you at any time, that you give off. Your energy field is your asking. So, how to have an effect on your energy field?

Just because

First of all, never stop giving thanks. Give thanks as much as possible, in every situation. Appreciate every little bit you can. If you want patience, appreciate every little example of it that you see. Even if you can’t think of anything else to be thankful for, you can give thanks for any situation just as it is. Because just as it is, have you brought it into existence, so that you can forgive it, transcend it, just as it is. By training yourself to give thanks for what you previously took for granted, you are learning to fuse giving thanks and taking for granted. This is an important new skill.

Second, assume you arrived here today. Here on earth, in your present body, situation, location, region, whatever shauri you see yourself in, you arrived here only today. You have no memories of the past to draw on to judge the present and react with fear. You are not motivated to blame anyone. You have no ego to protect, no story to advance. You see the situation before you in the fullness of that situation. You are able to regard and accept it fully, confident in your Source ability to figure out any conundrum. In fact, you look forward to the conundrums, because you know by now that your Source always has the most elegant, win-win, beneficial solutions.
This is immense. This is what exists before the race memory of original sin. A kind of clear-eyed candor accompanying perfect confidence. You just arrived here. You will do whatever is best to do in the present situation, to bring it to fruition and highest good. As though you had arrived here yesterday.

Is it possible for you to both thank for something, and simultaneously take it for granted? Because this is where you need to be.
When you deliberately try to create a situation, by imagining it, affirming and so on, you try too hard and miss the mark. You need to relax into the role, friend. Instead of willing it to come to you so hard as you do, lamenting its absence, wishing hard, and so on…instead of what you presently do, narrow your focus to one small detail that implied the edifice had come into place. Instead of willing your perfect home to manifest, being motivated, working hard, crossing items off lists and shaking a stick at the sky in all your other various ways, instead of this, occupy your mind with a pleasant problem that implies the manifestation had already taken place. Will I paint my bedroom in rose cream shabby chic, or bleached sand southwest? In my garden, should I focus more on food to eat, or food for the eye? Why not both? And so on.

In this way, you change your entire frequency with what is basically a turn of the mind. This little trick is one of the nuts and bolts.

Consider: how does the martial arts expert break a concrete block with his hand? At the moment his hand is going through the block, his mind is already out the other side. He focuses on the bottom of the block, how his hand will feel after the feat is completed. (Analogy courtesy Gregg Braden.)

That is, in his suggestion, he assumes the work has already been done. And how do you feel when something has already been done? You lose all tension about it, it fades into the background, it becomes taken for granted.

And this is the genius shortcut way to creating a different reality: simultaneously give thanks for it, but take it for granted. Relegate it to part of the background by occupying yourself with some loving detail of the reality you wish to see manifest. With love, occupy yourself.

God is in the details

AN END TO DIVISION

A country produces the leaders it deserves. This is true whether you live in an oligarchy, dictatorship, democracy, republic, or total chaos. Did Saddam Hussein create Iraq, or did Iraq create Saddam Hussein? People choose what will lead them by what they hold dear. Do the people hold hatred and division dear? Do they look for ways to blame each other? Do they mistrust each other? Are they disenchanted? Then they will choose a leader who embodies all of that. He will seem to them as though he is speaking the truth when he affirms hatred and division, and promises to punish violence with more violence.

After such a leader has led them into more ruin than they had any idea of, a people will wash their hands of him, and look for alternatives to anger and its spawn, division.

But wouldn’t it be easier to look for those alternatives before driving into the ditch?

A people chooses what will lead them. Imagine that among a people there was massive distaste for personal attacks. They recoiled anytime they heard them. Personal attacks sounded wrong; they regarded anyone who would use them the same way we regard a public nose picker. Beyond the pale.

Could someone who habitually made personal attacks attain to any prominence in such a society? Friends, he would not be heard. People would close their ears to him as to chalk squeaking on a blackboard. He would be as a sounding brass or clanging cymbal.

A people chooses what will lead them. Imagine this, that a people had learned a big lesson about division, that they had soberly regarded all the fruits of division in their history: the wars, distrust, ancient hatreds, displacement, despair and loss, and called them by the proper name of division. They recognized division in all its forms. They were sensitized against seeing others as different from themselves, against characterizing other groups in any way, against judging, punishing, and blaming. These things sounded wrong to them, and woke in them an ancient memory of suffering. They wholeheartedly renounced division.

Could someone who consistently spoke the language of division make any headway in such a society? He would be shunned and ignored. People would recognize in him the embodiment of all their previous trials. They might thank him for reminding them of what they wished to forget. They might thank him for making the choice before them so stark and easy.

Mi casa es su casa

Our house is the same house

Division is the belief that in any way you see your interests as apart from someone else’s. Here is the source of all trouble, the belief that in any way, our interests could diverge. Mi casa es su casa. Our house is the same house. I cannot live over here in comfort and safety, while you are over there in suffering and despair.

Imagine a people who had learned to associate miseries with division, and had renounced division. Imagine a people who understood that our house is the same house. What kind of leader would such a people choose? No one preaching division would get a hearing. He would fall to the wayside like chaff; he would be blown away, a seed that cannot take root.

WHERE WE ARE NOW: AS LONG AS ONE BREATH

Every atrocity has something in it to advance anyone’s agenda, and we can expect to see this play out in the spate of editorializing and discussion that proliferates and makes it difficult for you to access your inward selves.

Let us pause a minute before the onslaught, which has the hooks to increase many kinds of hatred and fear. Let us slow down for as long as one breath. Breathe in to a slow count of four, hold for a slow count of five, and exhale for nine.

Let us pause a minute

When any strong emotion or desire to blame is felt, do this before you indulge it. The more times you do this, the more you will be making yourself accessible to your inward Self, who longs to tell you how to think about this, and how to feel about it.

It is amazing how many thoughts are pounding at the doors of your mind, even in as short a span of time as one breath. Do it again, this time visualizing yourself as part of a channel, sides opened wide, accepting, receiving what is waiting to flow through you. Life. Goodness. Health. Peace.

Goodness, health, peace

What comes through this channel will eliminate your shauris forever, as a strong rain pushing all debris before it. Relocating it. Annihilating it.

Would you not want this?

Now is the time

When you feel moved to blame some other group for any trouble, recognize what you are doing in that instant. I am feeling blame. I am blaming. Make your blame conscious to you. Blame, there you are again. Let me regard you.

Who do you blame? and why? Make these known to you. Let not one iota of the mental machinery you bring to bear in the creation of your world be unknown to you. May you attain to full consciousness in this. What a blessing.

When you have examined the blame you are now harboring, send it away like the mangy scavenger energy it is. Tell it to get gone now and never come back.

First stop blaming

We must begin with this, and the rest will follow in exact proportion to our assiduity in practicing. We must begin with this.

Let Me Maximize You

Transformational change: the least you need to know