The wants of the mind

The wants of the mind
is the ‘maker’ of externality
in a thought of self lack.
But nothing is external
to what Mind is.

The source of ‘what Mind is’, is within
yet beyond - all sense of self and object.
“Father” to all that is.
All that we Are.

In this acknowledgement lived,
nothing is lacking.
Rest you in peace,
Heart desire fulfilled at its root.


From such realisation
comes only expression
of unconflicted truth.

Within this current
all guidance flows
without opposition.


The wants of the mind
attended to,
is the forgetting
of the heart.

Within this forgetting,
opposition seems true.
Sometimes desirable.
Sometimes intolerable.

A song of a self,
in mad adventure
sung to your own ear
over and over.

Turn attention within,
and the song dissolves
from lack of value given.

With the eyes and ears of within.
See and hear truly,
and be glad.

Awakening with Jesus to Non duality

Awakening is a modern term for what Jesus meant by ‘the Kingdom of Heaven’. Jesus’ life and message has inevitably been interpreted through the filters of human ignorances; the predicate beliefs by which we think we already know what and where and who we are - and what anything is. This is not to deny the glimpses that are recognized, but to remind us that we can grow in our capacity to listen and accept truth, and live by the guidance of truth.

The mind in the world is ‘looking outward’, yet our experience of the world is effect and reflects what is active within our hearts and minds. Until love is welcomed in the heart, fear locks attention to face out and is the resistance to looking within.

This rigidity is a kind of self protection by means of a self limitation, but is based on a sense of self that is itself judged and judging, limited and limiting, lacking and ‘unlike love’. Such is a sense of sin - and the attempt to deny, hide, mitigate, displace and dissociate or indeed overcome, fix or heal - all by our selves - is the act by which sin is made real to us.

God is a term that can be used to point to the unspeakable Intimacy of life that is the current Gifting of Being itself. God ‘Speaks' All That Is - yet to be directly in clear receipt we must be still of our own thinking, and of the desire to be the determiner of all meanings.

Such a wish or desire is the root or fundamental error from which self illusion stems.
The belief in ‘sin as Reality’ is the substitution of our own judgmental thinking for the felt relational discernment of the current moment in a heart that listens in an unalloyed trust.

Discomfort is the inevitable and inherent experience arising from the attempt to hold ourselves ‘out of true’ - for it is a condition of unrest to assert or engage wishful thinking in which we 'be as we are not'.

But in an unquestioned desire or wish to continued exerting a private will, we will inevitably interpret such discomfort as opposition to our ‘self’, and attempt to control or overcome it.
The result is a ‘war on Self’ that brings experience of a shattered or broken trust, pain of abandonment and separation, guilt of punishment and loss.
This is such intolerable and chaotic experience that the mind in reaction seeks to limit and control. The partition and suppression of such confusion in fear and illusion, gives rise to experience of a pervasive yet largely unconscious fear that erupts or leaks into all sorts of events and relationships - despite all attempts to create or enforce order by any and every means.

Yet such is a story - engaged with will and passion, founded on a secret wish that is an idea that can be accepted or released - and not the proof of a separated existence - though such will it seem to be for the one who wants it true for them.

Nothing can be as it is not but that we tell ourselves so and pretend that ‘it is telling us’. In Truth All Is - As it Is.

The power of the mind can be used to create experience of limiting ourselves, but that in no way limits the innate power of the mind - excepting within the mind that believes its own judgement.

The willingness to release judgement and allow our mind into alignment with truth is realization and awakening of the mind to its true nature.
Because the true nature of mind is inclusion, our dream of a life is not obliterated, attacked or in any way judged against. Rather, it is transformed, translated and restored to extend and share the mind at one with itself and therefore with all.

This we find as a process of healing and awakening within the human story of the separated self - by which the mind is guided to the undoing and retracing of the steps by which it believed it made itself as it is not and suffers accordingly.

The guidance of original mind is what Jesus referred to as the Holy Spirit.
This guidance and presence and identity may seem at first to be external to a mind that has externalised itself - but is the Voice of your true nature, mind and desire. Guidance has no ‘self’ in terms the world understands - yet understands your self for you and to you - from an altogether present perspective.

Holy Spirit Mind uses all that is already in your mind - in your experience - to teach you - as you are willing to hear, to listen, understand and accept. Our innate Teacher uses all teachers, and all opportunities of event and relationship and thought, to guide the mind from fear and fragmentation, to love and unified inclusion.

Yet ‘in the world’ the voice of the ‘independent self’ or ego - is loud, distracting, coercive and persuasive - and Holy Spirit guidance is as a still small Voice in the wilderness.
To make welcome for the spirit of truth is a willingness of heart that must become the new directive for any who desire the peace that only resting in truth can give.

We are not called to fight evil, nor to overcome the world in its own terms. We are called to listen in trust and discern the truth of love in place of the mind by which we had deceived ourselves. Such is practical wisdom.

No step is really small or large - but is the expression of a growing light of willingness in a mind that had come to believe darkness to be the truth.

No one comes Home alone - for remembering you are not alone is the Condition of love. But love is not a 'doing' so much as we are its instrument.
In this, truth realized, is not merely freedom from fear - but freedom to be love.

Dramatis personae

Conflict can offer a drama that we can feel impelled to watch - take a side - switch allegiances - in page turning fascination to see the turns and twists of the plot.
While it is seen as ‘between others’ it can be engaged as a gladiatorial tv show, or a ‘reality tv soap’ upon which we may ‘enjoy’ exercising our opinions of the contenders and their merits and demerits. A ringside seat with only the frisson of a virtual engagement through the proxy players - enacting and re-enacting the endless scripts of jockeying positions within malcontent. Such intent attention feeds the arena with roles that tend to compel the other into acting out the fantasy.

But consider this ... the dramatic roles are assigned within one mind in split mode and do not have independent reality. No victimiser can exist an instant but a victim must cry foul. None can be unfairly treated if love’s inclusion remains extended.

Bad behaviour is simply the inevitable expression of split mind thinking.
The behaviour itself may be controlled - but this is not itself healing.

Conflict arises from the imposition of good-bad judgements. Good-bad is unknown to the mind of God. In God is none such judgement in personal terms. Absolute-ly not.
Yet once asserted, good-bad mind splits that which we call good - the aspects of life we may attempt to grasp, with that we call bad - the aspects of life we tend to recoil from or push away.

In vain illusion that such a conflict can succeed - we pull and push at all things as if we were a ‘self’ that exists separately from the polarities of all that we meet. As if only the ‘good bits’ that conform to my private specification for life are to prevail - and the bad bits are to disappear - fade from sight - or be overcome. Enormous effort is expended - great force applied - great attachments made - in sheer folly.


Absence of the conflictedness of ‘split mind’ comes from neglecting to energise and identify our current perception. For a disconnected perception is our wish and judgement made tangible upon the experience of a polarized sense of being.

Being ... of itself, is not polarised into good and bad, it simply is as it is.
It needs no champion - but loves your mind as its Own - regardless of thoughts that are entertained. Your Being never leaves you.
The remembrance and desire for such Grounding Love arises in the heart that is stirring within the dream, and from this comes willingness and promptings to open to a fresh perception - a joined or connected perception. Out of a wholly present relationship embraced.

The mind of good-bad is exchanged, step by step, for the mind of true-false, whose determinations are not made by self-engaged thinking - or even according to inspired teachings - but is accepted as outcome of the experience and willingness of opening within. Even as a wave-surfer accepts the dynamic flow of balance that embraces all polarity in riding the wave in a single relationship.

True-false mind simply can not be wielded as shield or sword or invisibility cloak. It is the surrender of the mind of defended self interest into a greater trust that speaks the heart of a single un-split relationship. It cannot be rendered into words or teachings, it cannot be owned by religion - nor can it be attacked, defiled or coerced. It is our own Right Mind - our Holy Spirit. The link of God-truth to a wandering attention, lost to its own self fascinations.

Else-where and else-when may seem yet to be our flowing now - while perception plays out. Yet as we ask and receive we find in this very instant the Light that restores the Ground of the heart to a mind that forgets - and forgets again! But we give thanks for that we are, that anything is, and that all is as it is.

Letting our split-mind lose appeal is letting our true mind be - and be through us. There never can be an outcome that settles all into tidy satisfactions, but the habit of self-competition settles as an old toy no longer employed.

“In my end is my beginning” *

In Peace

Brian

At that moment the Prophet felt his mind enraptured and taken away to be replaced with an astonishing secret. He was placed in the Fields of God's Eternity and Endlessness. In the first he found no beginning and in the second he found no end. Then God revealed to Him: "My end is in My beginning and My beginning is in My end." Then the Prophet knew that all doors were absolutely closed except those that led to God, that God cannot be described within the confine of a place in speech, and that God encompasses the everywhere of all places. This is a secret that no tongue can be stirred to express, no door opened to reveal, and no answer can define. He is the Guide to Himself and the Lord of His own description. He is the Beauty of all beauty and the speech by which to describe Himself belongs to Him alone.

Excerpt found at:
http://www.naqshbandi.org/library/angels/angels_13.html

To arrive at the beginning

Joy when evident - is much appreciated.
May an increasing sense of innate safety continue to dislocate the over-busy mentality of defence.

I know in myself that once a defence program is activated, all events are interpreted in terms of threat, ally or irrelevance - to a 'self definition'
that is reinforced by the program itself.

I have a sense that a conflict based mentality runs in emulation within a larger unconflicted awareness. Like TV it can become a loop of attention and distraction that feeds upon itself but is ultimately unfulfilling.

Joy is fulfilment but tends to be interpreted in terms of the self-defining program running as conditional to the outer circumstance - ie sharing life and dancing and singing.

I have a sense that there is innate joy just in being temporarily free of the self-limiting mindset - so I watch the activity of mind and identify patterns that express outmoded or ineffectual force and allow them to be replaced with the original or underlying harmonic patterning - that was eclipsed while the program was actively engaged.

Such calming restores perspective to non-local awareness - simply being - which can then express as freshly relevant local intelligence.

It could appear that long standing deeply held habits of mind and behaviour are unchangeable. But that is not more than a thought which can be observed, accepted or questioned.

I observe that the mind runs faster than anything I could imagine and that attention can be engaged and mesmerised by processes of thought.
However this doesn't change what the nature of mind is - only the activity of attention within it.

When driving my car, I tend to relax at a speed that is without haste and enjoy the moment I am in. This feels like a sort of timeless edgeless flow - because it is not incessantly engaged in past or future concerns.
I occasionally notice drivers overtaking and stressing to overtake - cursing or suffering frustration and friction in an ongoing drama of conflicted outcomes along with a sense of self importance that blinds them to appreciation of life all around them. I know from past experience that when I drive like that, it dislocates me such that it takes quite a while after physical arrival - to 'catch up with myself', reintegrate or re-orientate.

Journeying is the same, but the experiences of each mode of travel are very different. One is fulfilling a rested and free attention, the other is obsessed with unquestioned thoughts that are unconsciously programming a polarised addictive experience.

How to contact the mind that is intent on drama and release it to a true or direct relational awareness and appreciation.

(That last sentence posed a question until I saw that it was in fact the heading).

You ... were never born - and never died

"When You awake, You will discover that You were never born and never died" ~ Raj



Your own awareness is already light - your very heart is already the seat of all meaning.

The proofs of unawakened self are merely the assertion of you as you are not.

While you are 'in character' I may not get a message through.

While you are on a role - I cant get a word in edgeways!

But "Remember Home" is a present remembrance and not of the past.

Though before time was - Home Is.

There is nothing to understand here - this is a dawning of realization that the world is not your truth - and from this comes the willingness to let it be used on behalf of truth's realization of itself - as it is.
- - -

Idea based sense of self is not going to wake up and nor is it ever going to have an understanding of what awakening is. But you may the play with and try-out of any ideas about it as part of an ongoing fascination.

In our thinking we may postulate all sorts of questions and look within all that we have ever imagined or experienced for possible answers.

That you are not what you think you are, is not to say: you are not!

But the you that is - as it were - revealed - by the disregard of the meanings of images and concepts that are associated as your sense of 'you in form' - is direct experience. It may be afterwards portrayed as experience happening to you but- at the point of knowing - there is no such separation of knower and known.

- - -


The dimension of unawakeness is a like as a surface perspective gotten from a surface of no depth upon an infinite sphere.

As the surface is disregarded - depth arises - as awareness knowing its own nature.

The Depth is not - can not - really be absent - but has been rendered as if invisible by a timeline that stretches as if unbroken from past to future. An identification with a self made limitation that remains your intent of attention - set in motion by desire. You know not what you do.

Yet the arising of Awareness is not the beginning of awareness but rather the falling off of a temporary engagement of attention within which identification occurred. It is the abandonment of the proofs ‘you are not awake’ - within a Living Context of Relationship.

It is ‘awakening’ relative to bondage of illusion - but Truth is already true.

The desire for experience on your own terms has become confused with you as ‘a life’. This is a story you may tell to yourself - but is not you.

Truth is not the annihilation or destruction of you. For the ground of awareness does not come and go when attention becomes bound to consciousness arising with its objects.

You may be looking to survive in time - yet none truly lives in time - All life is of One Eternal Instant. Yet the illusion of time need not be attacked or destroyed for now to be experienced in its own terms. Illusions can only be dispelled by noticing their nature as illusions. Such is the gift of truth - its giving is that it is in no way withheld.

Life in concept is a way of making a personal sense of continuity-consciousness that acts as a limited identity.

All sorts of experiences seem to come and go yet all of then share a common father - which is the wish you be as you are not - and the wish to experience such thought as a creation. For this you must forget to laugh, believe you have lost Light and protect your thoughts in the darkness from misperceived light. The judge finds itself judged - until the act is realised meaningless.

- - -

Everything Spirit is offering you is serving you coming to the point of awakening again and again and yet again.

This will often be below the radar of your own assessments - it initiates change in the ground of your sense of self that is also a releasing or loosening of old habits of belief and reaction.

To open the mind without the heart is but a further example of an ego alien adventure.

The view may be relatively expansive but the fundamental illusion of polarized reality remains the starting point.

The heart is the context in which the mind becomes safe - to itself.

Its Nature is perfectly relational. Yet nothing comes in from or goes ‘outside’.

The desecration of the heart to the mind in darkness is an intolerable suffering.
But this is the recognition of the need to accept healing - now.
Truth answers its own and you cannot be a total illusion - only given to illusion.
There are no terms on earth for that which is eternal - yet the eternal can be reflected here as you release your attention to a desire for a wholly present revelation.

Not born - never died - is as the eternal - timeless Father - and nothing is but is Son.
Son is of like kind in all respects except Son is the Expression of Father. Beyond compass - yet is perfect Compassion.
Feel for the taste in all that aleady speaks of joy - and open to the feeling against the suggestion of all that seems to demand the abandonment of joy.
Whenever you remember this is the feeling that identifies you in undefined and unwithheld presence

Synchronicity and the Parking Angel

Singularity of desire is held for us in trust while we engage attention and identity in false or conflicting desire.
It can be accessed in any moment of true willingness or trust that may note a felt desire and then surrender it to the outcome that aligns with Highest Good. Singularity of desire is impossible to ‘use’ coercively – for it is the living expression of One.

I have a handicapped daughter – Emily now quite grown up – and she was staying when we had a rare very hot sunny day on August Bank Holiday - (UK has had two almost non-summers in a row by the way). I actually found her willing to come to the beach with me and set off a mere mile or so. (At that time she couldn't walk very far at all). But the mile or so was a crawl of cars to the point – where our beach is. They were also crawling to come back down this spur of a road but probably because they had failed to find a parking place at the car park at the end – and come back again.

Sitting in a stiflingly hot car at a slow crawl with many stops – my time with her was running out before I had to take her back. And the inspiration to swim together felt fragile amidst the 'evidence'.

But there wasn't any ‘going back’ - so come what may, I gradually drove along – nose to tail – to the car park. But I kept my desire and my heart open in a present appreciation. I also realized that I would be willing to park illegally and pay whatever penalty in order to share that morning on the beach with Emily - but I did not let that thought make me wilful or reactive - it was just a sense of value recognised.

As I got to finally turn into the car park I saw there was indeed a queue all through all of its lanes and out again. (I don't usually venture into such places at peak holiday times because this sort of thing is what many end up doing with their family on a beautiful day – queuing!).

But to the right as if invisible to the other drivers ahead and around – was a legitimate place – admittedly part on a kerb – but every other possible plot legal and not legal - was covered in cars! So I just drove calmly in and we had a really wonderful swim and sunbathe together.

I did not ‘create’ the movement of this desire – but it came to me with an inspiration – which I stayed alive with despite thoughts that were quite justifiable in terms of the then ‘known universe’.

Any attempt to create such desire in reaction to any sense of scarcity, lack or problem is likely to muddy the water and feed the problem from which it originated. Yet a disposition of happiness and willingness is often open to little prompts that are - in a sense – from the More of You to help grow the appreciation of You as You Are.

Because we identify self with body to such a degree – it is hard to realise that You Are one with relatedness itself – temporarily expressing through a mind that has limited itself by using unrelated thoughts and becoming identified with the experiences they bring.

When miracles do not occur as part of our day – should we not pause and consider that we have lost touch with our willingness – and then uncover our desire to find it?

Life is already the Miracle of Love – it is the release of the (identifications with) fear by which the singularity of love is remembered.

But let desire be your guide and discern truly – so that you can grow to trust yourself not to play mindgames at the level of your integrity.

in Love's blessing
Brian

Secret or Esoteric Knowledge

One of the reasons that spirit knowledge has been and often is hidden or secret among those who come to awaken is because its realisation is hidden or secret from the ego.

Why?
Because ego identity = collusion to be secret and hidden from God-Awareness-Love.
= refusal to look within.
For to look within = to see only the Christ.
All the hate-fear-guilt-shite is the barrier to looking within that is designed to be effective in protecting ego from truth’s awareness arising in ... you.

Such a distorted orientation sees not the love – but only fearful heresy.
Such a mentality sees not innate innocence – but sin and guilt.
Such a mentality sees not – but is fascinated by its own denied thoughts and intentions.
And ‘loves’ to hate them.
And is ‘exonerated’ by their 'destruction' or excommunication.
And has ‘peace’ that evil is allayed and held without.

Thus Jesus, love incarnate, truths expression - was killed.
In belief of his death some came to accept this, seeing only validation of the old mind in fear and judgement.
For they yet worship death as giver of meaning, with power even over life.
Because the symbol of the killed love serves their desire for divine favour in ‘obedience’ to ‘Scripture’ where they can hate, fear or deny in 'righteousness'.

But love is not dead.
Indeed is your only Life.
'He' shows you where to look.
Why tarry with the dead?
Here is a feast that grows by its sharing.

If some hold that God created them separate like a clay figure and blew life into it – then anything that undermines that symbol of separation may be seen heretical – demonic – fearful and hated.
Therefore it may be both unwise and uncompassionate to suggest to them directly:

That Gods Gift is our life – and never leaves God to become fenced off around a separated will
– EXCEPT –
by the continuance of the desire to exert such a will – and then
– ONLY –
to the mind that thus chooses to engage the wish.

But should any come to you and are shown by promptings and signs to be willing – then let flow as Spirit directs. This may be to speak entirely in pottery terms! - that isn't important – but the sharing and acceptance of love is important.

Let people believe as they choose – but in peace with them be willing to teach from the Spirit awake in you – as you are moved.

You know you are moved by Spirit when you are shown your brothers and sisters in Spirit. For unless you see their worth – how can you give them what they have denied themselves? For such is the way of salvation from self-made self-apart.

The desire to teach according to yourself with or without scripture is an old desire and it is as tares among the wheat.
Beware the desire to judge yourself or you will judge all and know them not nor the life in you.
Reach beyond the way you know, in humility and yet in faith of One wholly worthy of faith.

Watch with Me, as we together walk, from shadows into Light.
Forgive yourself for sleep, though again and yet again – for sleep is the nature of the world unawakened.
The past is gone as you release it – and the self you let Me grow in you through your giving is of eternal being.

So Be it.



In Peace

Brian

The oneness of you

Spiritual teachings and exponents of teachings may speak of awakening into oneness.

The mind that thinks it thinks, takes such communication as self-thoughts or concepts and tries to imagine how they can be true - or how they will be realized in another moment than this. In such attempt, the mind is thinking in its own terms, which are terms that derive from a description of ignorance of oneness.

In order to allow into the mind, the experience of its oneness, there must be the realisation and observation that the thoughts on which it builds its sense of self are meaningless. For the seeming density and continuity of thinking generates a false experience of self to itself that is groundless, without cause, and without actual or direct relationship and connection.

The thinking based experience is shallow yet can depict any and every kind of drama by which it becomes compulsive and necessary to the actor who is set up within its script as the 'self' to which the experience is occurring. While this is accepted as currency worthy of attention, identification and desire, it continues.

Regardless of such activity of compulsion, the living context of all remains unaffected by any thought or experience. This living context is awareness and it is you.

To yourself in self-thinking, this can be neither understood or accepted, but you are not as you think you are and you can recognise and accept yourself as you are because you cannot wholly break connection with your truth.

In engaging thought based experience, it is _as if_ you take a journey away from yourself into an imagination that has itself made you. The result is that instead of resting as inclusive awareness whose peace is the light of being itself, you experience as if a limited mind within materiality of otherness.

This imaginary mind is predicated on differentiation in order to preserve itself as the thinker or determiner of reality. For such is the activity of following thought in order to experience the thought as tangibility.

Experiencing such thought based reality is limitation. It can be engaged only at expense of current appreciation of oneness by an ignorance - a willingness to look from out of an imagined but self-determined perspective.

Such limitation is inherently dissonant. It carries a pervasive pain of incompleteness - an out of centre or misalignment that would naturally remind you to release such a private intent and be restored to truth in which all is appreciated as it is. But if persisting in thought unnatural to truth, the same dissonance can be interpreted as oppositional conflict and guilt.

By such imaginary means can a mind experience itself as identified with ideas that separate or differentiate from truth itself - and suffer its own beliefs as unquestioned experiences to which it is essentially victim.

When you choose not to believe your own makings, you will have stirred, and the releasing occurs by which one truth rises in place of conflicting wills and realities.

Instead of using the mind of judgement which selects, compares and rejects, there is the resting in the awareness of the exactly discerned.

In such vision, the foggy soup of impressions, likenesses and differences is released of authority and in its place the shining awareness of a wholly present appreciation restates truth to you as you. You need not claim it or name it as you - but your acceptance is your wholeness of embrace and receipt. In this will you be one with the experience itself and not a ‘getter’ of a packaged experienced as anything fundamentally separated from you. Nor does it define or limit you.

The journey into illusion is one of following a wish-thought and becoming enamoured of its reflections as if it were your life. But you are simply sleeping to the reflected glory of one truth whose nature is without conflict and whose attributes are never separated from you or from each other.

The awakening is as a gentle teasing out of the knotted mentality of judgement and conflict into a willingness for light or awareness in which acceptance replaces rejection.

Every step or moment of willingness contains and expresses love of truth and truth of love, the peace of joy and the joy of freedom to feel.

Yet only within the limits of your acceptance can love be recognised and allowed its shared nature. Thus truth may seem a while to partake of the nature of your world in illusion in order to reach you and lead you from illusion to you

This is to bring you to the realisation that you have been mistaken in yourself and therefore are in need of truth above all else.

Having taken on a part in a script of your own making it is now your part to release and give over your part to the expression of that which speaks for you as you are and not as your thinking believes.

The recognition of the path you no longer desire to take is the reaching of you to you - through the veil.

It is Grace because it is already true, its acceptance is your acceptance of you as you are - in all events, circumstances and relationships.

Only the Grace of the truth of you can serve to guide you from self illusion.

What form this takes is for you to discover - though it is not ultimately the form that matters. Reading examples may console and encourage, but they will be used by the form bound mind to make ever more subtle judgements by which to validate self-illusion as replacement for you.

It is Given for you to know the truth.

The Now - the Flow - Guiding Intelligence

When thoughts and images associated with past and future are not invited or used to impose meanings upon the now, the experience becomes more self aware - as a flowing of parts within a whole.

We 'come from' or are the Flow of now and yet we are mentally programmed to run as if we come from yesterday.

Separation from the now is like 'separation from God' - in that one can be distracted from awareness That Now Is and believe and act as if now were not here - but one cannot actually make it so.

Likewise our being arises in and expresses the All-ness of God but we are humanly programmed to run as if we are somehow arising inside a physicality that itself expresses a loveless mechanism.

Our minds have wandered into miscreation such as to be blocked with making the self image and its story the centre of attention. Yet our Spirit calls us Present from within us and yet beyond the scope of our concepts and definitions. This is already happening and can be noticed and joined with. Which is becoming present as feeling awareness rather than defining a past present and future from an imagined mental objectivity.

The climbing example in the last post is a simple example of where the 'need to know' - held as desire - without letting fear or carelessness intrude - invites the Intelligence of the Guide to work through.

We may not be able to investigate such events when they are happening because it is an act of 'getting out the way'. Yet in such a 'flowing now' we are aware of feeling for the routes or the words or the steps to take - and do feel for a channel or equilibrium of mind such that the signal is not lost! - Because it Is our desire in action.

Oneness and the 'work' of willingness

In ideas about oneness I may blind myself by thinking I am am listening to the Holy Spirit (guide for truth).

In the oneness all things are in and of the whole because they are accepted prior to being judged through the mask or veil of a self.
Apparent polarities can here be embraced as part of oneness and a path is given or arises that is of the oneness with regard to all that it is.

I am / you are - already the language of oneness in the actual willingness to be its expression.
Love requires few words or none to offer recognition, appreciation and acknowledgement to its own.

Climbing a steep place - the mind holds focus exactly on each step and doesn't imagine in front of behind the now.
In every instant, 'feeling the route' as it appears out of the terrain.
We call it ‘intense’ when we are required to pay consistent attention for we have identification with thinking that likes to 'stay in' and ‘think about’ rather than actually immersively participate in relationship. But this is because we have not become altogether without the urge to control and define.
It is the attempted management of outcomes that introduces strain and debilitates.

At times it takes great effort to resist the force of temptation to ‘be out from’ the desire to follow thoughts of the old self habit – yet the ‘effort’ is that of keeping a channel of willingness and receptivity open despite a current of a habitual reaction to which – as a second nature - we have become accustomed to exerting.
An enormous effort and an amazing feat – to keep hidden the truth from my own knowing!

The addictions of man are subsets to the addiction of lost Self (God our very Light, Life and Source). We seek every and any thing as our wholeness – salvation – sustenance - fulfilment – and have become lost among the many fragments and apparent levels of experience. It runs mechanically from its starting premise.

Yet the Light is not lost and is with you through the feelings of peace that you know but cannot understand in terms of your world and the self that seems to be in it.
Yet while your own understanding and judgement is your god to you – you will not accept it – nor follow its direction.

And when you do accept that there must be a better way and give willingness to find it – you will still be carrying the habit of fighting and defending against truth dawning in you of itself – until it is recognised and laid aside.

So there is the ‘work’ :

• Ceasing to disown the habit - by which endarkenment is maintained.
• Allowing the undoing of this by noticing but not following it suggestions.
• Actively welcoming and cultivating the enjoyment and appreciation of life in the heart – without introducing or following possessive mind.
• Growing in the capacity of trust as the essential touchstone and ground of all that you are – such that life works through you, by your freely given invitation and welcome extended to all – as life itself directs – without making a ‘self’ of such apparent accomplishments. But according or accepting all praise and Glory to God-One – God in all Creation.

Work is the 'curse of Adam' – after he ate the fruit of judgement.
For what is given freely – in love – in service and recognition of all honour and worth – can not be work in the sense of ‘irk’ – though by our human evaluations we are often tempted to intervene with ‘our story’ - where we try to tell God what reality is rather than let God heal our perceptions.

There are times and seasons in which all things seem to have their moment: doing little or doing a lot – keeping tidy or trusting amidst the apparently chaotic – retreating without rancour or advancing to give witness.

So how do we know how to relate?
It is given us to know.
As a function of all That we are.

How did I lose trust in my own knowing?
By believing my own un-forgiveness.



In Peace

Brian

Darwin's theory has to give way

A friend was alarmed at an atheistic slogan near where he lived. His dismay prompted this response:

To rest in God is our protection from need of any help against bogeymen.
The Spirit works in all ways with all things.
I cant always see this, but our (innate) Holy Spirit sees for all of us – including me – and Darwin too. He is more than an ape – and so is an ape!

Is it not enough to accept our own path and meet others with a welcome and willingness to listen?
There is much in religion that has perpetrated lovelesness; brother upon brother and upon the world.

Some find a way that arrives at the Loving by other routes than religion.

Much of the heart’s way is grown in secret – within – and touches the hearts of others without fanfare and bluster and show.
Who are we to say we can judge another ?

As for ideological wars...
Wherever there seems to be a Tweedledee and Tweedledum – there is an agreement to quarrel.

The mind of mechanism is only an evil when made into a god.
Then it becomes like unto a devil - but only while we fight it.

Looking at mechanisms as to how things appear to work is something that the mind can engage in.
It seemed to promise a new dawn but increasingly leads man into a maze of meaninglessness. Because of it’s starting point.
Nothing can become other to its starting point.

But I trust Holy Spirit will use the ‘scientific mind and its symbols’ for awakening as we allow and accept and trust Holy Spirit into our mind.

Mechanisms can be seen, in partial glimpses, that seem to offer strong evidence in support of a machine universe that reflects the mechanical mind that initiates the search.

But whatever we are engaged in can become a structure by which we awaken self awareness.

Darwin abhorred human slavery and was strongly motivated to show men were of one family.
The scientific map is showing an interconnectedness of all things – but as if observable from outside the One.
This is where theory has to give way to Divine Experience.

In Peace

Brian



“You kept me from believing... until you let me know”
Leonard Cohen

The mind can linger

The heart’s notice is a natural touch – and can see the form – yet sees through the form.

In recognising it’s own light as one in all is a rapture.

From the heart’s noticing and dwelling in such reflected glory can the mind grasp as if it is independent and can possess.

By such unrecognized habit of association - the mind can easily linger past its ‘sell by date’ of love’s recognition; a joy; an insight - or whatever is the nature of communion expressed.

In identifying with the grasping through attention of desire, the mind suggests or insinuates a sense of lack. And while it is maintained - is identification held within limitation.

God is Always now – but we can be still holding the forms or traces or echoes of ‘was’ - as if it were a handle on truth; a map of or gift from the IS to validate our attention in applied will – and give it priority. and so we forget the Source and Condition of Life by mind play.

Yet the mind can only linger in the thought-form – as symbol – an image of life that might seem wondrous – but depletes as it is exploited and becomes the hollow witness to the mind of guilt – where we can have a sense of having cut ourselves off - or of being cut off from Light of Being: Love’s Innocence.

All of my thoughts are such bits of ‘past’ - they are all empty of the Living One.
Yet in opening my mind to Holy Spirit in love of truth that is Life – my thoughts can be used for the purpose of awakening, healing and joining in a mind that has forgot.

When mind is allowed to be leader – 'I' am always ‘going somewhere’ – ‘becoming something’ – ‘orientated toward a moment that is not actually here’ – even if it seems just past or just about to occur.

When the heart leads – it is the wholeness of the flow working through whatever serves its Movement – and I am always in a sense of living joy or connectedness that just Is. It’s language is everything – and will use our lives as well as our thoughts for the truth of the wellbeing of all – as we allow the channel to be opened and become our very life - in place of grasping for possession.

‘Abide in me as I abide in you’ is the disposition of peace. Extending the open hand of welcome; to hold all in willingness of welcome in my heart and accept the welcome of every heart in any degree or instance of discernment.

Let truth be revealed

Let truth be revealed rather than determined.
Let words tingle our intuitions rather than carve out territories.

Victimizer and victim take turns.
Both act out parts that reflect a mind in judgement.

All things can only serve the desire active in our heart and mind – they cannot dictate it.
If we discover we have given such power to conditions then it is ours to reclaim by allowing power to be shared rather than wielded.

Aligning with truth to let truth be my mind’s Master.
Show to me - such love of truth – that is in me as the truth of love.

I release my own attempts to decide reality and accept one will for me in peace.

I inadvertently choose

I inadvertently choose to experience as if separately every time I allow the mind to wander in loveless paths.

I become lost to my own heart’s light in my preoccupation with a will by which darkness seems to obscure light.

Loveless paths are only a way of thinking that isn't true – there is not such a path nor one compelled to walk it, only a currency of exchange that is created by what I give and receive.

But lovelessness cannot be received in truth for there is none in Truth.

What then is the stranger that seems to intrude upon our hope of peace? What then the pass by which we come to the end of our capacity to prevail?

It is the touch and whisper of love yet veiled by the veil of distortion – for the awakening of the heart of you to your light.

Yet to the will that lives in the dark must it seem the stripping away of all that it believes gives it strength and safety.

To be amidst the world and release its value from your grasp so that the heart is freed from the conclusions and definitions of the mind is to lay aside thought and listen anew.

What is here at first may be seen only as the absence of what I have become accustomed to – and such a void can be prone to fearful thought.

Yet even as eyes become attuned to a sudden change after a period of adjustment – so too to the discernments of light return to the mind that releases darkness.

The companionship of light is not other to what I am – and yet is not mine to control.
I am not mine to control.
Very God is not for God to control.

Following a thought to know all by myself – brought me to be as if myself alone.

To know I am not alone restores me to love’s knowing – always given and received in perfect trust.

The refusal of the experience of aloneness is the direct embrace of uncensored experience now.
Before judgement comes into play.

Only thus will the gift of love flow through the laying aside of my story.
By the reception of this gift will I recognise, beyond doubt, that I have received as has been given through me. In gratitude and love will the Source of love be known by love – as love - in love. When all things are spoken thus – I must be silent.

Surrender thought and listen now

The willingness to surrender thought and listen now – is surely within us – or we would not meet here.
(Or indeed really meet anything directly but our own thinking).

I can sometime feel this as the truth floating of itself to its own awareness.

Like as if all the stuff that seems to keep truth denied has to work against the natural buoyancy of the heart.

Miracles are the unselfconscious expression of a conscious willingness.
I haven't felt that I need or should become anything – for that seems to be the idea that made suffering.
So I release as I feel able and willing – which is to say as awakeness offers to my acceptance.

The false cannot be a foundation or a real cause so I don't have to do anything about it - but the desire to see it as my own cause or foundation and proceed to identify all things accordingly, is the sticky point where I will follow the guidance of the false.

But if I try to force myself to surrender I will feel deprived, so, in some ways I feel to be consciously tolerant of that I yet choose to act in story rather than truth. The consciousness is the level of willingness freely available and gives a very different experience than becoming eaten by illusion.

Allowing unjudgemental awareness into the arenas of resistance is a release of Thou Shalt Not! - yet is in some way holding relationship with spirit in a way that reminds me of Joni Mitchell singing – Will you take me as I am?”. Ego loves this sort of thinking as it can feel ‘allowed’ to indulge – but that isn't what I am saying – for the context that makes the difference is the desire and willingness to grow in self trust.

Meeting the self-death in all sorts of ways – is meeting and embracing all the places in me where I would give up – run – hide – go insane – fail – die. The unforgivable or intolerable.

They don't need to be dramatized – for drama is a way to keep from letting peace be. But they are like the coastline where I end and the unknown begins. The threshold where the Eternal wakens to itself as the 'more of me' than what I thought to be.

The self-death is story. Without my story I am in cold turkey – in bleaker street – in desert of abandonment. But this is of the initial illusion of loss that I believed real and sought to protect against – and thus made real to my own mind. It gets re-enacted over and over but also gets hidden so as to not be recognisable.

So comes the time when I’m done with the desire to come from this place of self protection – even though the habit is sometimes strong. There’s a different call in my mind and there’s a different response.

I thought today about things I do which have no justifications or basis in the mind that measures – and how part of my work is to keep alive the path by which I can enjoy the freedom of giving – and not let the measuring mind undermine it.

And then I thought ‘what becomes of it?’ and immediately felt that the capacity to be in the joy of freely giving is growing in me and this is what I teach myself and any I meet in the giving. If they find joy then they will be drawn likewise – even if at first they seem blind to the light and only grasp at forms.

The belief that there is something I have to do or undo in the future – in some other moment is a distraction from enjoying the Holy Spirit light in all things now.

In order to wake up, one must have an object of one's affection

How will love awaken but that it is openly flowing as the giving? A giving without limit of self.

To give as God Gives is to be aligned with and one with God.

This is what we have forgotten.

Though this may have material aspects it is perhaps better to consider giving in terms of your thought and attention - your mind. When you give feeling-attention to another in the true willingness of love, healing or joining - then you have found the way to 'transcend' ego - for your attention is restored to the divine function of beholding the truth of all that is - as it is.

With another human being we can see everything 'about them' become irrelevant and even disappear and the light of their smile; the soul in their eyes - the joy of their shine - unmistakably and recognisably the Beloved. This may as yet be glimmerings of intuition or the fullness of shared recognition - but it is the same in that it is not focusing on or recycling 'my impressions, comparisons, likes and dislikes'.

People yearn to find love yet it is always simply ours to give - and only by giving can we keep it in awareness.

All things are known in the heart. The mind-based strategy is always trying to find some way to make things 'work' without having to open the heart - yet when finally the heart - you - simply open to life - to the more of what - you - are, it is always recognised - you have always been you and yet the story in which you had become identified led to a forgetting in which otherness seems to justify fear and defence.

Attention is placing value - giving attention to anyone or anything gives value - but if coming from a loveless place we see a world of others and things - maybe seeming better or worse but none indivisibly alive with us. So a sense of joined heart with guidance, with gratitude, with trust extended - makes of our attention a blessing - because we give out from a place of connectedness.

Such vision of is a spontaneity that arises from a willingness to be joined. An acceptance of life before it is judged is to let judgement go by not following it to see where it goes.

Generally, most of us are heavily defended against such an occurrence - and restore 'normal service' if reality should undo or temporarily suspend ego identifications.

But if you are reading this - you are likely to be one who is already touched or stirred in desire to awaken - no matter what other baggage may try and come along too. Such is the recognition of truth in the heart. Valuing this desire and growing it will naturally extend as 'what is the truth here?' a curiosity born of the intuition that, what seems to be so, is just that - a seeming.

Who has given their heart to the world can only fear such a vision - for it renders their investments as nothing - but yet discerns and keeps all that is love or of service in rewakening love - and gives it to us as the world of love and awakening and forgiveness. A portal through time to the Eternal God. Who - once recognised in the object of your affection - extends as truth of all that is.

But one step at a time - as freely accepted. Holy Spirit is Gentleness Itself. In contrast with the cruel self judgements we yet hold in secret and in fear - that bind us and blind us to the Voice that knows our truth is of love - and can show through you -to you - as you are willing to receive.


Notes:
An example of material aspects is when one trusts the movement of love and gives even in the world - and yet discovers no loss. For the living principle is that true giving and receiving are one - whereas in the world's thinking, giving is either seen as losing or a sacrifice made in order to get something deemed better.

(The title of this is a saying of Raj - who is a voice for awakening.
and this posting was slightly adapted from a response to a request for comment and clarification).

Guidance and delusion

1. Honesty and self trust are one – they are part of each other.
While we are ok with our minds using ‘self validating presentations’ that are dishonest – we confuse our mind as to who and what anything is.
We muddy our own stream and teach this as a ‘way to live’ to ourselves and others.

2. Why would I want to delude myself?
Because I have not yet fully accepted the love-less-ness in my mind for what it really is - and I fear it – calling forth and finding distraction and diversion to avoid looking at what I yet fear to see.

3. Why would I open to guidance from beyond my own control?
Because my own control has brought me to a dead end, an unfulfillment, joyless suffering, meaninglessness or an insanity of realities in which I cannot cope or find ground and so I do not want it.

And because on every occasion where I have found my willingness and accepted the way to let a greater life in – it has not condemned me – but has renewed and awakened the heart in ways that have also been helpful to me and joined me with others and life itself.

4. What if it was the devil or my own delusion speaking to me?
This is already an ongoing habit in terms of 2. But we have made a ‘culture’ of it and in many ways such activity has become invisible by mutual consent.

But it is also easy to see that fear mounts on fear and feeds itself.

So to make relationship with fear when it is felt or recognised in any form – is to undo the self perpetuating feedback by which the mind can seem to trap itself.
To acknowledge that fear is felt – and pause - is a step beyond being immediately programmed by it.
That I notice fear and pause is a working step from which another will come that leads to discovery of.
But what fear tells me I am is a means by which I keep from knowing truth presently.

The desire for power over or against, is not associated with the fruits of sanity, love and joy – but is a mistaken intent arising from a sense of lack.
The attempt and intent to use anything and everything for the triumph of self will over opposition is the lovelessness that we fear to see within.

Yet to see it as it is,
is to see it without the voice that tells you ‘this is you’.
And will see through to the judgement beneath it, by which an identification with limitation and lack arises.

Such is the Gift of our Holy Spirit.
But you must love the truth with all your heart.

For it is also the Gift of your Holy Spirit to reveal that you are such a love.
And accepting this is your release.

I can see my human life as many moments of such acceptance – surfacing through great or small resistance.
And yet such a life revealed is a joined life – a shared life – in which the capacity to discern and accept love grows as the desire for self determined experience diminishes.

Is around and a round - poem

being aware
is

beyond definition
for

defined defines
and

limiting limits
to

un-conscious-ness
by

fixing attention
in

identifications
with

self forgetting
of

Perfect love
is

Always already
as

being aware
is

beyond definition
for

defined defines
and

limiting limits
to

un-conscious-ness
by

fixing attention
in

identifications
with

self forgetting
of

Perfect love
is

Always already
as

being aware
is

beyond definition
for

defined defines
and

limiting limits
to

un-conscious-ness
by

fixing attention
in

identifications
with

self forgetting
of

Perfect

love

is

Always already
as

being

aware

Is




( brian-in-a-moment ;-)

Thoughts that arose upon considering ‘guidance’

The whole deal is that communion becomes your ongoing realisation and experience and expression.
If there is still something you want to manage all by yourself then that is what will maintain the sense of ‘all by yourself’.

So guidance is an expression of trust – of innate intelligence. If you read the single quiet thoughts about the guiding force and the driving force – I feel they say something very succinctly that is at the very heart of our being.

A secret heart must abide in the dark to maintain its seeming – an open heart looks always to the light to discover it’s source and meaning.

There’s no need to get hung up on terms like guidance because the way the guiding heart moves in us each is different at different times – and it – guidance – has no ‘self’ that requires being outwardly validated by our names for it.

It need not be surprising that ego expresses itself through every and any kind of spiritual concept – but it doesn't really matter what other people say or do about their guidance or lack of it – but that I receive them through mine. Then I find I have trust that, whatever appears to be going on – I can connect with them as being at the threshold. We are always at the threshold but we often find we have been caught in the traces of a past that isn't here.

To the separate self sense – guidance will tend to be cast as a separate special thing – even though it’s living moment it is your heart’s knowing Itself.
Many have likened it to a guardian angel – an ever-present Friend, God’s Voice, Jesus, The Holy Spirit – or they keep quiet about it and yet learn to trust it implicitly as an inner knowing they can trust.

We usually think God is going to fit our idea of what we are and what the world needs. We think guidance is an extension to our capacity to function in the world as we believe it to be.
But that’s only while we grow the courage to realise and begin to embrace that we had it the wrong way around.

- - - - - - - -

The belief that there is ‘something we have to do’ seems almost unchallengeable in the mind of the one who knows not what he does.
And this can equally express as ‘the sin we must not make!” - or else!

The belief in guilt fear and punishment is everywhere to be seen – until ... it is no longer validated, joined with, or used as a system by which to ‘play the game and come out on top’.

The possibility that I can ask for and have as I ask, is a fantasy to ego who thinks forms are reality.
Yet it is the law that cannot be escaped – but can be made unrecognisable.
At the level of form based reality this cannot be seen, for ‘I’ can ‘want’ and get, different to my asking.
Indeed we can seem to want so many things that all work against each other.

To risk asking and discovering the prayer of my heart – is to pass by the terrors of the god of fear and vengeance. It is hard indeed to hear guidance when we are afraid the answer will condemn us!

Growing trust is the dance of relationship.
In all symbols of our desires is a spark that yet lives innocent – even though in the world’s distortion it may express awry.

- - - - - - -

I can act upon the basis of what I think I want as if that was actually what I want.

I can think I want differently than I want, in order to cloak desires that are otherwise unacceptable, so as to mask my fears as well as masking the desires themselves.

In this way I can make a presentation not unlike the bonds traded with sub prime mortgages – in which I can make something out of nothing at the expense of everything.

When the ground is discovered not beneath my feet – I am awakened to a need to know.
Ideas based on ideas are no longer currency but are seeds of confusion.
The bedrock is found by accepting only that which is true and putting illusion aside.
Ideas may serve to guide but are not Truth itself.
The intimacy of your own heart is yours to open – as you accept.
Yet as this is allowed – the currency of love is discovered to be flowing.

One can dip into this many many times – and withdraw to the ‘securities’ of the old ways.
Yet only to grow the honesty and courage by which to release the old ways.

Sexuality and Spirituality

When something is made into an answer to a problem it becomes another expression of that problem.

That is why the problem needs to be undone rather than solved in its own frame of reference.

When trust is restored - it is extended. To meet in trust is to be without attempts to make another be what you want them to be - it is the release of fantasy relationship. We can make fantasy upon a body and sacrifice or subordinate - but we can only surrender consciously into relationship. Love.

To be with oneself truly is to be with all - in specific terms this means that if I can be present in relationship then I cannot but be open to the movement of relationship. If I try to control the flow - I become distracted and out of alignment - If I notice then I can just bring attention back to you.The moment is Here - unbroken. If I persist in asserting or framing an outcome I get dissonant and can infer a self that isn't true to be using and used by - guilt. Hollow, mechanical and meaningless. If I persist in self assertion from the premise of guilt I will attempt to deny it and project it in self protection and become vacant, lifeless, or cruel.

Touch is a most primary sense. There is a saying that 'the body' doesn't lie. You can feel when someone feels you feeling them.
You know when you are received. You know when you are touched with love as you accept it you share it. But of course if one depends on the 'past' to teach and guide - then one doesn't know that one knows! And defends against life because it feels uncontrollable.

Because we live - mostly - such an out of touch existence - in separation and in illusion - we have strong impulse toward touch - yet this is also often associated with confusion, guilt and sin - or a feeling of wrongness - to such a degree that many are inhibited from experiencing the delight of physical expression in almost any way.

Because in confusion we seek and assert strategies of control, denial, dissociation and mutual contracts of partiality, we are often loveless in our relationship - substituting the pursuit of pleasure for love's fulfilment. Yet there is nothing so wondrous as being in the company of one you can altogether accept as they are and feel accepted - as you are - not fatalisticly - as in accepting I am this or that - but livingly in being without fixity of definition. 'What would love have me do?' is not for thinking - but the native impulse of a heart at rest.

Behold I make all things anew! How about never making love with the same one again? Not because you seek experience - but because you surrender into and seek God. In such a loving you cannot reenact the past and feel anything other than dissonant - caught up and and separated in thought and experience. That's good news if you can let go of the goal orientation and just be with - be present and give as you would receive; receiving as you choose to give. Is it a 'miracle' to see emotional terrors evaporate? Not really - it is the simple effect of releasing wilfulness recognised.

6. Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong. ~ ACIM

When the mind is not engaged - there is no defining of body and parts - no need to get anywhere or achieve anything but every incentive to be drawn present. The secret of making love is to be already making love. If touching or mingling of selves becomes the thread of expression - nothing essentially changes - when the focus changes out to include other threads of life - love is still the condition - the environment in which you both move.

Because our relationship with God is our relationship with each other and in any relationship are all held.
Trust is often associated with an outcome - "I trust you not to abandon me" etc. But trust is - allowing the truth of what you are to be itself and to grow in the willingness to learn of you in truth's terms instead of in terms of me and 'what do I get or have to give. Freedom is the gift that elicits the honour of loving.

Isn't this what we are afraid of? - becoming 'trapped' into the 'sacrifice' of self in love.
Well there it is - am I willing to look honestly at myself in relationship or am I still comitted to 'keeping my options open'?

All the options of the world are the same. Its hard to credit that but it is true. Sure some things have a longer sell by date and some things seem better than other things - but all of it is the desire to remain in hiding - on the run - homeless. No matter how impeccably it is presented. For what does it profit to gain the world but lose Soul?

They cut bodies up looking for the soul but didn't find it - but the mind in which they presumed is already asserted in a body, cut from the life Energy it expresses and subordinated to the blind and tyranous intent of loveless expression.

Restore the 'body' to its function in truth and discover that you are wholly communicating - there are no private worlds - but only an unconsiousness in which all is misperceived as fragmented entities and things within a mind that plays with the idea of difference and has become enamoured and forgetful in its intent.

The feeling of the Light is known in the heart. The heart may have a focus in the heart area but is of wholebodily radiance and receptivity. Nothing is excluded - for nothing intrudes upon indivisibility. Until you think - and invest with identification.

Yet the dance of love is also the willingness and faith by which we hold to the compass of our heart and forego or repent of the loveless in the willingness to receive anew of the Spirit by which we live.

Spiritual path is not really to do with externals - but with the engagement and heartfelt involvement in your life - now.
So there is no need to get there - but all the need is to be with what is already here in a way that is guided by love, truth, joy and self mercy of acceptance - such that no matter what - here is a good place to start. Let the heart be turned. Give welcome as you would be welcomed. Let gratitude outshine the fear that would grasp life and lose it.

The undoing of guilt is the release of wilfulness or self-willed assertion in OneSelf. Not an intellectual premise upon which to assert another set of definitions that are just as much of a blindness to Light of Innocence in all things because they bypass the Will of God - the movement of truth in our heart - in grace and gift of which I see in you beloved.

The Holy Spirit Mind uses all things on behalf of truth's awakening - if you give them up from being secret, private, self.
It is Awareness - knowing Itself - and is so one with all that you are as to be completely outside any range of focus that the mind in limitation can encompass. Yet its effects are everywhere to be seen and in their recognition, acknowledgement and acceptance are You Found Home, Recognised, Acknowledged, Welcome.

It all can sound too holy, too spiritual, too 'not like it looks like from here' - so I finish with a reminder not to take ourselves too seriously - to laugh and allow fun - to be out from definitions without making 'new rules' for freedom!

And all things shall be added you.

in Love's blessing
Brian

Cataclysm, prophecies and signs of doom at the end of days

The more the world appears to ‘fall apart’ the more I am called to rest in peace ; to open my heart to the flowing moment in trust and make my home in its presence.
This does of course embrace the world – but not as it is portrayed by the mind of the separated self sense – but as the movement of the fulfilment of God.
This I would learn to discern and accept as the Abundance of Truth – in which all the qualities of Truth are beheld in gratitude, glory, wonder and delight, recognition and awe.

This may seem impossible to believe – yet I tell you the world you see is impossible. But the very light of awareness remains as it is – and not other than as it is – no matter what thoughts are engaged.

To look out and interpret anything from a separate self sense is an illusory insanity – no matter how many seem to share the will to do so.
That we have done this may be a habit hard to shed, but the value of a redeemed and restored heart and mind cannot be overstated – for by the use to which you accept for the gift of life, will you know Creation – as its Son or Daughter -or suffer your own illusion – as a mad and tormented secret thing.

Reality is altogether now. Time is altogether not here.
Holiness is altogether true. The mind of sin is not now.
As we sow – or give, so shall we receive – or reap.
This is true Now and need relate not at all to a past or future.
Herein lies the open secret of salvation.

All that you are receiving is the same measure and kind as what you choose to give.
It does not seem to be that you can choose because the past seems joined to the future.
But you are here, now with me and no matter how thoughts and feelings may swarm or charm or seem to harm – the power of decision is your own.

To look on stark insanity may be the recognition that you are looking in entirely the wrong direction. All things serve the mind that loves truth – and the truth in every mind is such a love.

Blow the embers of truth that it grows and glows.
In such a light will you see aright.

Allowing the heart expression in the day at hand

How is it that I write and you read – and a gift is shared?

I can look into my own heart with regard to what is revealing itself to me.

Perhaps I should say ‘I can look into the heart’ because I speak not of the broken or wounded heart that seems to be within the human drama – but the heart that simply knows, sees, intuits or discerns – whenever we are still enough and curious enough to ask of it - and trust what is uncovered.


If I listen and discern in the heart instead of recycling old judgements and reactions - I find sense of something alive and feel a movement within.
It’s like - just noticing something – in a present sort of way - and acting unselfconsciously from a natural impulse that arises from within it.

Such impulses are opportunities for gladness and they also can be easily overlooked and become unnoticed and ‘unconscious’ while we are otherwise engaged in following what we think we should be doing according to some stratagem or other that became complicated instead of actually fulfilling us.

So in between thinking about anything I write - do also simply look into your own heart with regard to what is revealing itself to you!

in Love's blessing
Brian

Am I - or do I see others as awake or enlightened?

Personally I find that person based statements miss the mark.
The idea of separate persons as awake is not how I would refer to Awakened Perspective.

To person based thought there is presumed something to ‘get’ or understand’ or ‘attain’ that differentiates asleep with awake.

But it is the person based thought that is subscribed to and invested in, that hides the wonder and the truth of You from your awareness via person based existence.


Jesus became a human conduit or transparency of communication and the communion of Divine love. He ‘saw the Holy Spirit in all whom he met’.

Person based thought inevitably ‘made him a special Person’ because to accept the Divine Expression as Truth ... is to release the world as a thing apart from God and ourselves apart from God. God is the only Life. Any other is imagination.
The western notions of God are also tending to be person based – often portraying a Cosmic Ego.

Our thinking minds are literally substituting for the direct appreciation of Reality and the inferred ‘thinker’ is imaged by such thoughts and ‘protected’ from thoughts that are believed to be in conflict with ‘me’.

Yet such preoccupation with 'me and mine' is at the cost of awareness and appreciation of the Living Moment.
I sometimes call it masked reality; Reality seen as it is not.

In any instant where one neglects or forgets to assert the mentality of the ‘me and mine’ there is some sense of simply being. This can be experienced in any kind of activity as being of a different order of consciousness, essentially of being held, lived, transported, perfectly coordinated, spoken or written or acting in a manner beyond one’s own historical capacity.

It may be instants or it may be for periods of time or become the normal state – but it is not really that someone has become awake – but that they have become unobstructed to that which is awake.

There is said to be a no return condition where the option to be obstructed is no longer available. Such a one could be called awake permanently – but is this a person who is awake so much as an Individuality who has realized its own Mind is not in any way limited or limitable.

Such realisation comes only to the perfectly trusting – and therefore free of any trace of guilt or judgement. Yet this Mind is Already Yours!

Those who allow the truth to give through them, have. To these will be added; ie: We grow in our willingness and acceptance.
To those who deny the gift in guilt and wilful miscreation, will be taken away even the little they have. Not because illusion is taken away – but because it is a little seeming that cannot abide and does not bear creative fruit.

Individuality is of God and that which is our Individuality is of the same. Yet the person is as a mask layer which must be translated. A bit like a thick black outline of enclosure and differentiation becoming lighter, more diffuse and evaporating – as our experience is one of widening circle of identity and participation in life lived. (Which is fact lived through us).

I offer this in simple sharing of what is helpful to my own ‘being with’.

And am grateful to have read it!

in Gratitude

Brian

Undoing guilt by choosing from peace

When we notice that our spirits are about to dip or diminish because of something that we are about to do or that is happening or seemingly done to us ... pause ...

Guilt is only unconscious insofar as our mind is so quick in its programmed reaction – and that it was set up as a defence and is ‘hidden’ by clever means not unlike magicians who distract attention while doing something out of ‘sight’ but in front of our noses.

By pausing within what might otherwise be - a done deal – I allow an opportunity to notice and consider from a place of my (and therefore everyone’s) innate worth for love and peace in practical terms.

Joy is not too difficult to allow in all sorts of moments and situations – and from the appreciation of joy one can easily start to immediately recognise when it is undermined or lost.

Though there are things that seem to justify loss of joy – I hold that it is an act in my own heart and mind by which it collapses and I densify into the ‘necessities’ of whatever seems to call for sacrifice.

Until we awaken we are as slaves to fear in ways that we may or may not recognise. It is difficult to allow this into awareness without self judgements – but that is what is needed. To be able to just notice – in the act – what it is we are doing – and within that noticing – will grow guiltless awareness – from which you will clearly see a choice – when you see clearly.

In family disputes we can lose it and say and act in ways that hurt - and then catch ourselves and say truly that we do not mean hurt – and repent of it and resolve to choose better next time. Well sometimes it takes a concerted and consistent willingness held over many occasions to bring that resolve to bear fruit in the manner that one envisions – because every time our buttons are pushed we react before we realize that we are acting out of a history tape.

So don't worry if it seems to take lather rinse and repeat – just remember in your heart that you desire to learn of peace, how to accept it and be guided within its ways. Such a desire will not be long unfulfilled in answer – even if the answer is a step along the way where you realise what is also desired is countering the desire for peace.

The thing is to keep it moving – which is to say to not judge and get stuck in conclusions.

These are my words offered - but of course use your own understandings!

In Peace

Brian

Simply leave a 'burning house' as you notice that there is suffering

"I will tell you how to consider any person you meet. Look on them as being like a man whose house has caught on fire. Would such a man cry, 'I'm not leaving until someone tells me why God made this happen.' No. He runs out of a burning house as fast as he can. The same is true of suffering. We must show people how to run away from it as fast as they can."
~ Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment by Deepak Chopra.

This posting is not an explanation of the text above but is an offering that arose from a willingness to consider it, in response to an enquiry from one who asked - in terms that may share a living consideration in the heart.


The mind in ignorance is mesmerised by its own confusions such that there is an illusion of having a life of one’s own, being hopeful of gaining fulfilment in a world of impermanence in which all things are arising, change and pass.
But this is actually a state of needless – unnecessary - limitation and discomfort.

It is a state of suffering arising from the attachments and beliefs that are held in heart and mind.
And the means employed in ignorance to overcome, distract or alleviate suffering will tend to further enslave the mind we share to the false identification from which the suffering arises.

Therefore when you meet one who seems to be an ‘other’, be willing to see his limitation or suffering as one with your own and do not seek to merely join him in suffering by making him NOT a brother. For that is the collusion by which truth is denied.

But allow truth to resolve the suffering that is within your own thought immediately and show him that he is awake by being the witness to his peace through your own.
For truth is peace.

Do not indulge taking thought beyond the willingness to drop into truth – undefined - and allow expression of intelligence of free awareness as called forth by trust itself.
For by letting life use mind and body to a shared goal the root of the separation fallacy is undermined and the bright clarity of selfless love stands clear as that which is – as it is.

The burning house is an illusion of compelling danger from which the mind will hide if it does not first calm and look at its own construct. For only by seeing it as it is will it be obvious that there is no one in it. Such realisation expresses as selfless service, compassion for all life and joyous and serene demeanour – that spontaneously awakens others to remember their true nature and so cease feeding and following false desires in ignorance.

But the nature of the fire is fuelled by thinking and false desire – and in order to look upon them in clear perspective, one must first exit their claim upon you as you. In this sense LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.
Only valuing the discernment of the heart can alert to illusion such that you simply desist, drop, desert or deny it.
Not denying illusion as if it is a power to be feared and resisted – or a problem to solve or a phenomenon to be understood – but to give it no further attention whilst maintaining active desire that is in alignment with truth –as presently FELT, or realised. Desire to be only of truth and to see the expression of truth.

It is the release of error that allows truth to dawn.
As love of truth sees only truth.
There is nothing that can assail it.


The entry into awakening arises from the realisation that one is in the fire of suffering – and that – no matter how it is presented to oneself or others – it is suffering – and the nature or cause of that suffering is the result of identification and thus attachment, to desires that define and confine the heart to illusory denial and exile.

Until one can be a demonstration of freedom, one cannot be the presence that spontaneously invites self awareness and transcendence or realisation. The desire to show others the way must be the gratitude to others as the light of the way itself – or else it is a game played out within a house divided.
Compassion is an expression of one-mindedness.
You who are of truth, do not desire in truth to suffer.

In Peace

Brian

Ego identity is a mind trap

Ego identity is a mind trap. In software terms it is called an infinite loop - and it runs mechanically on until a different desire (program) replaces it as the active creative intent. At this level there is the freedom of true desire or the unfreedom of false desire. This is not really a choice! - but from following the false desire we have created the illusion of choice - and while we believe in it - we must consistently choose with willingness for truth - or the program of self illusion runs on until the next window of opportunity that notices or is called awake.

I recall the mediation image of sitting as the witness watching the river of all that arises to awareness and the meditation is simply to allow observation of all that arises without push or pull.
The actual practice may tend to be that of identifying with thought processes and waking up to that attention has been completely preoccupied for a period of thoughts. But that is the re-wakening of present awareness where the practice simply resumes. Whatever arises - allow it to be. In this process insight arises and can be allowed in the same manner but if the observer and the observed cease to be experienced as separate states then it is like the one in the sidecar with a fake steering wheel is not here. What is - Speaks Itself and knows itself.

When we awaken we see that there was never a moment when we were absent. For absence of Is can not be.
The only reason this is not obvious is by virtue of preferring to think you are the thinker.
In identification with the objects of your thought, you engage your attention within your imagination presenting perceptions faithful to your investment.
But there is only empty forms here. Not a life at all but a dream of a life.

Yet every instant of Life is a noticing - an awakening - to a direct awareness that bleeds through from time to time because we are not capable of suppressing life totally for it is what we are. Inescapably.
But it is soon wrapped and filtered in the world terms such as to be absorbed as part of the dream which is seeking to protect itself in your name.

What the world calls love is designed to keep an underlying hate denied. Denial is an ability made by the ego - so we let it be re-purposed by Holy Spirit who can use it on behalf of our truth instead of against it.

We give as we receive. And we receive as we give.
Though this can be seen within time its potency is always addressing our present.
Without denial the mind would recycle insanity-nonsense forever.

Deny access to anything whose purpose and intent is the undermining of your peace in which you discern and feel and know the love that you are.

Or in A Course in Miracles terms: 'deny the denial of truth'.

The Way to Remember God

Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth.
If to love oneself is to heal oneself, those who are sick do not love themselves.
Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are denying to themselves.
If they knew the truth about themselves they could not be sick.
The task of the miracle worker thus becomes to deny the denial of truth.
The sick must heal themselves, for the truth is in them.
Yet having obscured it, the light in another mind must shine into theirs because that light is theirs.

This goes on very fruitfully with regard to denial and to anyone reading who is interested - it is taken from:
A Course in Miracles: Text: Chapter 12. The Holy Spirit's Curriculum. I. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit.

A Course in Miracles earliest editions are not copyrighted and can be read or downloaded freely online or bought from most bookstores.
One of many where it can be read online is http://courseinmiracles.com which I randomly googled as a convenience in case you want to follow from this page.

Entranced in limited separate experience

The ego or false sense of self is the act of suppression, distortion or denial of truth.
That is its job description expressed in reverse terms to its maker.

Who is its maker?

Its maker is the thought of a wish - to assert illusion as truth - that you are attending to.

What thought?

The thought is a ‘what if? thought that is taken to “what would it be like to experience the ‘what if’ - as if it were real”, which then leads to "I wish to experience this".

Wish for what? Experience of what?

The thought of "what if truth is other than as it is". "What would it be like"


We are free to use our mind to have experience of limitation while the wish for it is enacted. Because this can be asked for and received as asked.
But once we engage and believe the experience - we immediately forget who we Are and do not recognise that we can accept this gift of experience we chose, as completed, and move on with the living desire that is in our heart now.

Why do we not recognise?

Because we experience limitation as separation and as if it is being done to us in return for what we believe we have just done.

What do we believe we have just done?

Our experience is one of loss of wholeness, loss of light, conflictedness of thought and desire, doubt of existence itself. It came as a direct result of the activity in our mind. It may not immediately have hit guilt and fear - but assertion of will always meets opposition. The use of raw unbridled assertion of will is blind and self attacking - but we experience ourselves as attacked and justifiably aggrieved.

Why don't we release it and allow truth to restore us?

We know we have willed differently and we treasure its experience in which we can assert and explore our seeming power and do not want to release it - but rather would use it to overcome the chaos that we suffer. This entrenches our enslaved identification further as we develop abilities to overcome or manage obstacles by further assertions of will and imaginative ingenuity. We become proud and think we have made a self in a hostile world that has limited power to tame it and live in it. But any peace is short lived and all defences have to be constantly maintained. The whole thing is an insanity of necessity amidst confusion and suffering. And we are afraid.

Why doesn't our Wholeness recall us to True Reason and Sanity?

The heart's knowing is and does call you and uses all you believe to show you that you are not as you think and reality is not as you perceive. It is ever active in gently loosening and undoing the blocks that you erected to defend against undoing of your own judgement. But can only work with your freely given willingness.

Direct awareness is denied attention from fear of loss and retribution - or it is denied from rage of abandonment. For the Truth does not and cannot play this game and sees it not.

The god that the ego makes is in its own image - so it is believed a separate Power to be placated. The belief in external reality takes the mind to believe that it is almost powerless. Yet seeking to harness and exploit all perceived powers to its own intent. But it is a process of depletion and for all the ingenuity applied - it runs out of capacity to function because there is a limit to the pain and suffering and meaninglessness that will be endured at which the ego stops and you ask in the heart "There must be a better way". The listening for the answer is the willingness to receive.

New Testament reveals your awakening - as you are willing to accept

What is it that makes your life Alive - and leads to a greater fuller appreciation and participation in life?

Joseph Campbell’s famously invited his students to 'follow your bliss'. This was meant profoundly in terms of a very soul sense of vocation or calling. Doing so might not fit into the structures of social expectations - but always expresses the passion and presence of being.

Joseph Campbell is known and valued for his work exploring myth, symbol and story as the evidence of a common spiritual intelligence and calling, in all of humanity, from its primitive beginnings through to the higher consciousness or transformative realisations of spiritual awakening.

I see this common spiritual intelligence as many in form and yet as one in spirit and I call it Holy Spirit - though It doesn't mind what terms or symbols are used to bring your attention present within.

Know that the Holy Spirit is yours and is you, and so it is within you. It is your own guide that leads you from the prison you have made to the freedom that you are. Seek no place else, except within. Seek within your own Heart for that which you want, and ask it to lead you to your place of freedom. Then go with it as it asks, doing as it commands, seeking not for another way to be free. For it is your Holy Spirit that remembers freedom for you, and so it is your Holy Spirit that will lead you to return to it there.

~ NTI Acts, Chapter 12 1. (See footnote below)

The above is from a book that I have the highest regard for and have welcomed as an ongoing companion: 'The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament, A Course in Understanding and Acceptance'. (NTI in short - New Testament Interpretations), it was written by Regina Dawn Akers within a process of guided listening. This book is literally written from a place of open willingness in trust and its message speaks directly to the awakening in our minds - because that IS the true message of the New testament - as well as the ONLY function of the Holy Spirit. That is my witness - but don't take my word - or its message - as truth. Listen in your heart to discern whether your truth is speaking to you.

The approach of ‘Holy Spirit Interpretation’ is that of using the symbol and story in our mind to teach the mind what it is, and what you are not - for our own minds have become confused and act as if they are subjects to their own thinking. We have become those ‘who know not what they do’.

Do we not each tend to believe and experience ourselves as if we are in fact the central character in our own version of a script that we interpret and accord reality to?

We may not on surface think we are trying to think or make reality - and that we are just ‘being ourselves’ - but if being in silence brings restlessness, discomfort or agitation, it is a symptom of a running program of compulsive thinking that has as part of its purpose the function of covering over your truth with what you are thinking. It is as if our so called conscious mind is defended against what truth actually is - and what we actually are - in order to maintain a wish to act out and be in its own determination of truth.

One aspect of false ‘self’ is that it is a mask. A presentation that is designed to serve a purpose or desire in the one who adopts it.
As a masked presentation we may get satisfactions from maintaining and strengthening our mask - but these only serve to deepen our identifying with it as if it were our self.
But the only real fulfilment in life is felt in the heart of who we actually are - and can never be experienced or accepted in who we are trying to be - or indeed attempting to 'not be', in attempt to escape what we fear we are or judge against.

The masquerade is demonstrably a way that we can use our mind - but equally obvious is that it does not bring the experience of joy freely shared - for it engages in self limiting thought - so at some point it always inevitably runs out of juice. We might experience this as crisis of meaning or identity and, as a result, begin a process of reconnecting with our Original Mind or the True desire of the heart. And learning to live from a restored sense of Grounded life.

Unlike the complexity and self-identifications of our own thinking processes, movement of true desire, arises from our peace or wholeness of being - and though we may 'hear it' in terms of the content of our mind, it carries a tone and quality that transcends our our fragmented and dissociated sense of 'command and control' self - and restores a sense and awareness of communion, connection and purpose arising from the heart itself.

In terms of the human world-mind, following our calling will shine a light and will also be the path that we accept in which light is seen - where darkness seemed to be.
‘Light’ here is used for inspiration, joy, truth, passion and presence.
‘Darkness’ is used here to represent ignorance, belief in guilt or unworthiness, fear, conflict and facade.

Here is a snip in from NTI (New Testament Interpretations - NTI for short). It arose from searching within it for the text 'true desire' and choosing the first findings that offered a sketch of the book’s message. It is - as I say direct and to the point - but never coercive. It is in your own heart that you discern and accept truth. This is your freedom and it that is itself true.

"This is how death and resurrection are to be acted out through you:
Truth cannot die, so Truth need not be resurrected. Truth simply Is, and it always Is without beginning and without end.
What is it, then, that must die? What is there to be resurrected?
Your belief in illusions must die so that your awareness of what Is may be resurrected through you. (v. 7 – 12).
Your belief is expressed through thought. Above all else, watch your thoughts. What are you allowing your thoughts to think? Are you thinking of the illusion of the world as if it is real? If so, you are expressing your desire to accept the veil of darkness. Is this your true desire? If not, why do you permit yourself to express it through the activity of your thoughts?
Watch your thoughts. Ask them to express your true desire. Your thoughts must do as you ask, because you are the thinker of your thoughts. Let them express your true desire, and if they do not, let them go. (v. 13 – 15).
Fix your eyes and your thoughts on the true desire of your heart, not because it is your hope for the future, but because it is your reality now. You are what your heart tells you you are. You do not see it, because you do not focus yourself there.
Focus on the world, and you will believe the world. Believe the world, and you choose to keep the veil, which hides your truth.
Focus on your heart in all of your thoughts, and you choose not to choose the veil. You choose that the veil may be lifted, so you may see your truth and your brother’s truth, and to know in the joy of your heart that it is true". (v. 16 – 18).

from "The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament" 2 Corinthians, Chapter 4. (See Footnote below)

The New Testament itself is rich in inspiration but also controversial and often confusing because it is interpreted by minds that are not free of guilt and fear. Holy Spirit is free of guilt and fear and can translate and interpret the mind by which we believe them so as to release or undo the false mind that arose from making judgement.

The term 'Holy Spirit' points to the living Voice for God - or Living Truth - for even as the human mind seemed to separate in the ‘fall’ from Eden, our truth remains that part of our mind which never left nor can leave its Source. And to the mind experiencing separation, serves the function of guide and awakener to restore your self to You.

It is this Voice and Mind that Jesus felt, heard, discerned and gave witness to - and became one with - and called (down) to our attention. It is not an external 'Authority' that can be used in the world for manipulation - but is the Guide within that - according to your willingness - reveals your true desire to you. It is holy because it is altogether present and without guilt and is spirit because what is, IS - beyond belief or concept - but is known by its effect or fruit in our heart and in our lives.

Desire is the creative force. What you hold in your heart will call forth and govern all that comes from it. But to release the heart of your demands and listen for the movement or prayer that is already there is to awaken to the life that is. Waking up is not something that the ego mentality does - it is the dawning in the mind that the ego mentality is an ego mentality - and nothing need be done to it or with it. It is put behind and released regardless of its recurrence as a habit.

The voice for ego is legion - yet it is all one illusion. It is that which hides love from you and hides you from love. The most significant thing that can be said is that when you look upon it - you clearly will see that you do not want it or what it offers. It is this that withdraws its only support.
Yet it will attempt to use your mind to convince you not to look on it, and it is bringing and maintaining willingness to persist in asking the heart amidst temptation to fear, doubt or judge against yourself or another in your stead.

"When you do not seem to know how to become an empty shell, it is because you are focusing on your head, or better-said, on your thinking mind. Your thinking mind will not teach you how to not think. Your thinking mind is interested in its own survival, so it will take the time you give it to think some more.
When you notice your mind is full, and you want to become as an empty shell, you must refocus your mind from your head to your heart. Your heart will teach your mind the way of release, because your heart is love. (v.s 1- 3)..
Your heart, being of love, knows one purpose, and that is love. Your head, being of thinking, knows many purposes, because that is thinking. Let go of the confusion of the head, and focus yourself on the purpose of the heart. Focusing on one purpose leads you clearly in one direction, but focusing on many purposes does not lead you at all".

From 'The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament',
(NTI) 1 Corinthians Ch 8

I trust my enthusiasm has not made my invitation in any way an attempt to persuade.
That is not my desire!
In Peace

Brian


Footnote: Two chapters of the book - Mathew and Acts are freely downloadable from the web address below and there are online resources where much more can be read and discussed if interested.
In the first instance I felt to just bring it to attention and sense that some of you will be glad to find it.


"The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament"
Copyright © 2008 by The Foundation for the Holy Spirit, Inc.
http://www.forholyspirit.org
Regina's Website:
www.reginadawnakers.com
NTI study group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NTIStudyGroup/
NTI discussion group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NTIDiscussionGroup/

My review of NTI - at the publishers site
http://tinyurl.com/3olyvw

Allowing the mind to Rest

Do you know that dormitory or sleepover thing - where we are all not being able to get to rest and let sleep come?

"Ok - no more talking"
"OK - from now on"
"Thats it then"
"Shhs!"
"Quiet"
"You spoke!"
"Only cos you did first"
"I thought we decided to go to sleep now!"
"Oo bossy!"
"takes one to know one"
"clever clogs!"
(pillow flies across room)


That sort of dynamic reminds of the mind that wont settle.
I have felt it like a feather that almost lands but a sudden updraft spirals it again.
Something in the mind that just wont let go of one more thing...

It is not easy to play repartee alone - so the more who rest regardless of apparent stimuli - the louder and clearer is the invitation to rest.

The world does not look like it will cease to be a stimuli for reaction anytime soon - so that suggests nipping reaction in the bud and depriving it the first blow. This is easier than turning the other cheek - which can be a profound demonstration of defenceless acceptance without judgement.

The first blow must - to be a blow - find a target.
Yet that can not be the truth of what I am.
So if I feel upset or interrupted of my peace,
I must be wanting something that deprives me of resting in the Truth.
In seeing that what I do want is to rest in truth I also see that I am not under threat - and nor have I an investment that needs to be defended.

What of the apparent behaviours?
They cease to be seen from a me position and can be addressed - if they need any overt response - in whatever way fits the capacity for communication in that moment.

What of 'irksome people'?
They never left the mind that created them! - but become a source of gratitude to Holy Spirit for raising awareness to regain its remembrance as awareness.

Do I get annoyed?
Well I sure have and still can - but it has become so clear to me that this is a perpetuation of pain and futility made dense - when I know I love joy and freedom are Who I Really Am - that I don't allow it anymore.

The Who I Really Am is enough of what I identify - that I do not find the resources to engage and maintain and fight - for anything.

Yet amidst such incapacity for conflicted being - a moment of sharing truth can occur that draws Whole and Present engagement and response. So I am All here - but conflict - as something I can believe - is increasingly Not Here.

In its place is a game the mind plays.
I guess if it was juicy for me I would still 'go for it!'
But without that carrot is the present expanding and casting off its fetters.

And the desires that arise in and of this presence carry all the power and strength for their fulfilment within themselves and have not enemy or obstacle in truth - as the step is taken.

brian in a moment

“This is my Child – Who is my Joy Extending”

Jesus came to fulfil the law and yet transcend the law in love.

That is what came to my mind when I considered that, though the term ‘Holy Spirit’ may be particular to specific teachings, the living experience of this One is of Intimately recognised Friend who has never not been with us, within our thought and heart through all our days. But had not been discerned so directly, for the way had not then been made straight!

But as with the parable of the wheat and the tares, our experience of the world mixes and confuses the false with truths. For a time they grow together until at harvest they are sorted.

As the truth of our heart’s desire breaks through and is felt more clearly, so the desire of our truth becomes the seat of our identity and we find we will not tolerate loveless-ness as our truth - but that it is too alien and uncomfortable to make a home in – much less a fortress - even though our temporal experience may seem to proclaim it real.

“There must be a way – a better way – a way of Life not death - and I call for this out of a faith that I find in my heart of hearts”.

“I am the willingness to be the instrument of the Way of Life which I – of myself - do not and can not know – but will be shown me – as I ask – in love – of my Father.”

“This is my Child – Who is my Joy Extending”.

--
The devil or Satan was the symbol for which we now often use ego – and as the term 'ego' becomes associated in our minds with a power of guilt and fear, it too will become limited in its usefulness.

The tempter is that wish and its voice that sees all things in terms of ‘me, myself and mine’ and will use the teaching even as it already uses the Kingdom of Heaven – as a basis for substitution for establishing its own self illusion.

Picking out truths and presenting them so as to get a sense of position, wealth or power – yet the final temptation of Jesus in the desert reveals its bottom line – ‘Worship me and take dominion of all things’.

This is the ego’s promise and we who listen still are yet deceived that we are in control and that we can get the good - or get out from the bad - by our own power – not realising that this act is the loss of awareness of true Power in which the Good is guaranteed and the evil is - not here.

But must I turn from the voice of division and put it behind me or I choose to be deceived.

In The Urantia Book – or was it one of the other Gospels? – Jesus had begun teaching, and doing the works of love and yet become sore in his heart that none were actually thirsty for Truth and this led him to go out into the wilderness and confront and reject the false or self will, inevitably associated with the disappointments that stem from asserting “I want it thus!”.

Somewhere in A Course in Miracles, Jesus likens ego-perception itself as a temper tantrum (an tempter trauma) that expresses “I want it thus!”.

To begin to discern that such a voice has us by the ear is to begin to release it - and let the Light correct our misperceptions of all things.
- - -
This posting arose out of a shared study of the Bible and of the Holy Spirit Interpretations given in NTI.

This is sharing the journey in a like manner to how the NTI came to be.
I am enjoying reading a passage a day and walking with others who are doing the same.

The reading schedule is only 4 days in and can be gotten here as a pdf or as a word document inside the yahoo group.


The 1st Book of NTI Matthew is freely available Here as a pdf.
And we are discussing it Here .


in Love's blessing
Brian

Are we God's "virtual reality"?

This question was asked and instead of answering no - I felt to write whatever came up from pondering the question.



The life we think and believe we have is not LIFE.

The human reality lived through the mask is a counterfeit - reproduction - a virtual reality - something that appears to be a reality but isn't.

Our True Location is God; the Process in awareness of being - and this simply is.

The experience of a limited mind in a body in a physical world occurs within awareness.

Our experience in the world says our awareness is a freak or unknown phenomenon - or gift from a mysterious God - arising from a process of merely mechanical events that result in an embodied ‘survive and replicate’ mechanism that has self awareness - is conscious of its own existence. You know that you are.

But the voice for the world is the justification for and an expression of a masked mentality. It is the private mentality and assertion of will - that is the survive and replicate mechanism which the world reflects to any who engage it.

What we generally call thinking is like static - a constant commentary and distraction from that which is below the active focus of attention. The thought or belief that is held in the heart - whether it be held deeply in secret or pushed down in secret denial - is the filtering distortion that prevents acceptance of all that is - as it is.

It is not inflicted upon us by another nor is it something for which we can be held responsible as a sin - for it is simply the result of ignorance. But we are responsible for the use to which we use our minds and what we choose to focus our attention on we give priority and value to.
We are teacher and learner - but can only extend the thoughts of original mind or the thinking of private self interest - which is adept at masking itself as love, concern and well intentioned help.

The mind is never really set or stuck or fixed for there is nothing but its own thought in which to be limited by, and it is absurd to believe that a mind could actually be trapped in its own thought - for it can change its focus and release the thought at will. Freedom is the nature of original mind.

But mind can seem to be trapped - when it interprets all things according to its own judgements in contradiction to the nature and truth of what the mind actually is. And it can therefore have the experience of suffering any degree of good or evil in its own terms - but cannot make its interpretation real except to its own wish - for it is a fiction. You remain as you are created - not as a human being - but as a presence of awareness - an individuality.

Heaven, Creation, the Kingdom of Heaven, these are symbols for the absence of guilt, fear or lack and any of the mis-creations that proceed from them. It is not in the past but is eternally present as the Flow of being. All is as it Is and Intimately Knows All is as it is. This is as like a river that is the process of pure awareness - for it is universal and yet aware in every part. It is not static - yet is unchangeable. Its Movement is always Knowing itself in all that arises as its Thought. Its Expressions are its own extension but do not leave the mind or be different in their same creative freedom to extend awareness - except in one regard - that they do not create themselves but are created.

All Expression of God is the Son - the Effect that gives Fatherhood to God as Cause. This Singularity has no existence in temporal dualistic terms. It is not located in time or space or consciousness - but is the underlying Unified Field of which time space and consciousness are perceptual distortions appearing as distances between what remains indivisible.

Leaving Eden is an imaginary exile - but it’s motive force progressively continues in the same impulse or seed desire to dislocate until it becomes intolerable - when there is no place left to hide - or dislocate - into.

Indivisible Singularity has no opposite or conflictedness - it is unspeakable and can only be hinted at in “Is” or “I Am”. No one sees God and lives because only God knows God.

But to see or recognise the Son in another is to see the Father - for the Son is the Father’s Expression. The opening to guiltless vision is the Light in which One Self is intuited at the heart. There is one love that knows itself infinitely and intimately - and this is the very Ground of your being revealed in your willingness to release all judgement and allow the present to be wholly itself.

But this is the way of release from a compelling and fearful identification with uncreative thought. I will call it the wish to judge and determine from a private perspective. To make things in your own thought as you would have them be.

I have written extensively on this elsewhere so in brief - to engage in loveless intent has all the effects of attacking the mind and rendering it both victim and guilty, powerless and clinging to a wish for power, ignorant of Divine order and compelled to assert order upon itself and all things to protect itself from what it does not know. Yet it only knows its own grasped mind of getting and what it fears and does not recognize - is its Self.

For the Divine is veiled to the mind that looks through the lens or mask of judgement.
And the drama of conflicting powers amidst separated fragments of being seen as whole but separated beings and things is without any meaning or visibility to Infinite Love.

They are mutually exclusive - but The Divine dispels illusion entirely if they are brought together. Therefore the mind that seeks protection of its illusions will justify any means to hide from Truth by presenting a mask - an image of itself in story.

The mask has two faces - one is turned out to 'the world' as the image that is presented to oneself firstly, and to others secondly, in the attempt to validate it - to make it 'real'.

The other is that from which we (usually unknowingly) seek to hide from in terror and which impels us to make perpetual and ongoing presentation of defence to mitigates or limit the otherwise untenable dis-ease of conflicted heart and mind. This could be called unconscious guilt, hatred and fear. But it is never altogether hidden but that it leaks - for it is subverting and distorting all things until the heart awakens.

The imperative of a mind intent on maintaining separation is to make safe amidst believed guilt and fear by means of denial, hiding, distracting, pretending and wishing to believe anything whatsoever that serves its purpose of 'surviving'. It uses its past to interpret the present and does not connect directly - but always via its particular associations and desires.

The mask is a mind-lens or filter that disrupts Communion of Self in God while it is employed - and interprets all things in its own image for that is its intent. To make a 'self upon a world' that is itself made upon the denial of God.

Yet I is altogether lonely without God - regardless of anything the world can offer - it will not fulfil but only inflame or deaden if used as substitute for love. God is no consolatory belief but the awakened and connected heart and mind that knows love, peace, joy, gratitude, glory, wonder and awe - as the very life that is shared through me in order that by giving - I have.

Th refusal and release of the mask of judgement and control is the turnabout from self interest to enlightened self interest. Relationships become the means to give - and receive - instead of a means to get by force or by guile - or through mutual bargaining.

All things of the world take on a different purpose and perception as the mind is aligned with the heart.

Nothing needed to change but the source from which I chose to be guided.

As you sow so shall you reap

As you sow so shall you reap.

“You made your bed and now you have to lie in it!”

If we lie to make our bed, we will tend to believe that we are actually in it and then interpret all things as if our view were true. But we cannot be out of accord with our hearts without suffering discord. We may be ingenious in our ways to manage this - but lack of peace in the heart is simply the cost of being out of true.

Peace of heart is not a mere quiet - but is the capacity and presence to behold glory, the spontaneous rising joy in freedom, a countenance divine. This is life - and the wages of sin are death because this life remains unrecognised, unshared - though it is all around!

The idea of divine punishment is insane. It perpetuates insanity. God doesn't do it so it must be a twist of mirrors and shadows and smoke. To be out of accord with our own truth - our own essential nature - is uncomfortable. The Intelligence that is divine offers this warning so as if to say; “Stop trying to do what cannot work and return to your right mind”.
And if you return your mind to the heart and be rested you will find the discord is not here.

But in wilfulness we may persist in spite of warning and continue to engage in privately asserted agendas that express “I want it thus!”. And perceive the dissonant warning as an obstacle to be overcome, a threat, an enemy. And so we make war on life in order to get our way - and suffer our own attack. Yet though we diminsh and become worn down by travails we fight to retain the right we think is ours, to determine by our own judgement, what is good and what is evil - according to the particular goals we have set in our seriously imaginary experience. Imaginary - because it overlays the present with images of the past, and with anticipations of the future. Asserts reality itself to be disconnected bits that can be arranged to suit, and makes a story of itself that becomes more dear than life itself.

Sowing and reaping need to be brought present and then they do not need to relate to a future retribution or reward - but to the now.
As you are sowing so shall your harvest be known by you.
This is the heart of the Golden Rule - give as you would receive - for it expresses truth.
You set the measure and are measured therby. To give as God gives is to let no measure be set and to practice this is to teach as you would learn.

What I choose to learn and teach now sets the criteria by which all else will either be revealed in light or hidden in the dark. What do I want?
There are many who think they want to stay hid in the dark, but I trust they will change their mind as I allow my own to be changed - for we share one mind.
Giving is simply the unwithholding of the thought or life we receive. It comes to us eternally new and pure but we have mostly forgotten it in our mental shackled movie house.

The mind that makes cause and affect into a punishment is that which believes its own guilt and sees it everywhere. It is the mind that knows not what it does. It is your mind and yet by light you are and know and have your being. You have not left your Cause.

Remembrance is the Heart's sanity restored to the mind.

Suicide

Suicide

My firstborn child took her own life at age sixteen, in 1995.

This posting is from responses to one who had recently lost a loved one to suicide.
I found myself feeling for what in broad terms to offer to one who was in some ways living through something similar to what I had also lived.

It came like a prayer:

“May we be gentle with our self in acceptance of our feelings that cut deep and open the heart to raw Feeling.
For though we may believe we are undone, the Light is here and in the purity of feeling it is known as love - even if the mind can only see love lost.

May our grasp on all things be loosened, in gratitude, in love, and in appreciation of the gift of perfect freedom,
release the need to understand by our thought, by accepting our true desire to align in love as God loves.
To love anyway. To love because that is the truth of our heart.

And so may we let our minds be found anew by the understanding of the Heart.
Let peace guide our thought, our prayers of love, and our hands that reach and hold and hug”.

Such was my heart's guidance.

Allow, feel, express, allow, feel, express. Being with what is moving in us without adding or taking away is a natural process of revelation. The witness awakens and light is allowed in the mind.

The heart and mind are often not at one in humanity - the mind tends to be used to deny the feeling being that connects us at Soul level. The emotions are triggered from the pictures in the mind. These things are not usually part of our education but when one’s sense of life and world is ripped open - we are in the rapids of a territory that is always here - and yet we may simply drown in confusion and close the door in reactions of guilt, fear or compulsion to create meaning from meaninglessness.

The love that my daughter Elanor brought and opened within me is of eternal Light.
Will I accept death of This?
No. That's nonsense.
So that left me with the 'death' of what I thought I was, and what I thought the world was for.

The mind that absolutely cannot 'handle it' even by using self destruct or insanity must relinquish its ‘control’ into a process of forgiveness, acceptance and release, of all that seems to witness for un-love or insanity. And not theoretically - but while it is 'in my face' - undefended against.

The willingness to release and be released of the grasp of our own wilfulness and its attendant suffering and limitation doesn't come easy to one who sees only loss of loved one, self or world.

But the love of Truth - the truth of Love - these are the current in the heart that have roots deeper than the forms, scripts and dramas of our human doings and identities. This is the nature of Divine being - called from a mind that has been exposed to its own seeming groundlessness.


If we grow love in our heart by living its ways in little things then the pattern will be set that deals with the big things.
Tragedy and calamity can kill our spirit or bring us to renewal in Spirit. None can make this choice for another. But we can witness and join with Life.

We are free to accept life in truth or to deny it in illusion. But we are not free to alter or undo what it truly is.
When the mind or world seem insane - don't believe those thoughts - but go within to the heart and make your peace and regain its perspective.
Trust the heart and not the mind that thinks. The heart can guide the mind as the mind surrenders in resting.
All things work for good - despite all appearance to the contrary. This therefore is spoken in faith that holds that purpose in order to accept it's truth.

I don't write any of this as if you don't already know all that you need to know - but arising out of a desire I feel to be connected and sane - amidst the felt intensities of the heart-mind that feels loss and confusion.

I used an ‘Emmanuel's Book’ quote in Elanor’s send-off :

"When you find the Light within you you will know that you have always been in the centre of wisdom.
As you probe deeper into who you really are, with your lightedness and your confusion, with your angers, longings and distortions, you will find the true living God.
Then you will say: “I have known you all my life and I have called you by many different names.
I have called you mother and father and child.
I have called you lover.
I have called you sun and flowers.
I have called you my heart.
But I never, until this moment, called you Myself.”

in Love's blessing
Brian

Reach for your Sanity - Ssh.... ? ... :-)

Whenever we simply let the 'thinker' mentality fall way, then Life - simply felt or known - flows and expresses itself tangibly through you.

The static noise of thinking mind is a mask and veil over Living awareness.
I call it Living because we do not make it or define it with our thought - but by it we know that we are and that anything is.
And because it simply is - such awareness is of a shared or open mind rather than a withheld mind and is our Life and the source of inspiration and guidance.

Letting the inspiration flow requires trust of self and life beyond the bounds set by thinking. For that little mind will come back in and say “No - you are supposed to be still!” Or - “You don't have any right to express or embody spontaneously because you are flawed, separate, ignorant, impure, unenlightened”.

So at some point we become willing to trust into a flow of being that is not privately or exeternally self-authorized or self-validating - but allows Life in Its Own Terms - even if it may still look like the same life from a conventional perspective.

Our enlightenment expression is denied by the assertion of a separate thinking mind that identifies itself within a body. The self-apart or ego mentality.
To mimic Life is the ego's speciality - except it doesn't and cannot know what anything Really is - so can only assert its own definitions and meanings to the forms of your experience.
Yet to risk into flowing with life is to feel or relax through the emotion backed images of ego and allow the clarity of conscious awareness to rise exactly as it is.

The more we let spirit through us the less we are able to buy into or be hoodwinked by false desires and loveless thinking, pieces of nothing that cost our appreciation of joy.

Whatever gets us to open to living truth connects us with the inner knowing - which is awake as guidance within - even as you listen or read or practice in the world.
And its purpose is to reveal you to you - as You.
One step at a time.
In freely given willingness, awakened desire and restored trust.

It isn't a getting there so much as a giving from an awakened Here in order to remember Who You Are.

Brian Steere
2008/04/24


"You are assured of success, because That Which is Divinely Sane never successfully became insane. … Reach for Your Sanity by shutting up, … becoming curious, and Listening.

And do it. Do it! Do it throughout Your day … – throughout Your days. … …
Raj

What is fully open consciousness? how does it feel?

nothing added.
nothing taken away.
is trust

no comparison
no anticipation
is at rest

Perspective
restored
of wholeness

Release
thought-map
of its thinker

Allow
Accepting
Presence-ing

Feels exactly
unboundedly
as is

Speak all things one
behold Glory
Is clear Love-Light!

No secrets to
no hiding

open is
not closing

full is
perfect engagement

Attention
relaxes to its
Source Condition

Giving wholly
as receiving

Consciousness
of no inward I

Lets the come and go
come and go

Abides with
Heart Knowing.

Freedom is
without constraint
nor bound to aught
but itself


- - - - - - -

Partially closed Consciousness
is experience-able fantasy within a mind
made to have such experience in.

It is a moment of no moment
for Here is given over to other moments of not here.
Attention shifts to forms accorded densities of meanings
whose only meaning is a wishful mind
scripted amidst its own disguised reflections.

What if truth were other than it Is?
for so a wish within a judgement seems.
And hiding itself that it might persist
is mind possessed of its own grasp.

Allay! - O clarity of being!
This movie's for a private showing.
A story told behind a mask
that multiplies diminishment
in fragmented limitation
a loveless self
sharing loss
to bitter dregs.

is such self-killing real?.

no.....


What is Real says no.
I didn't say it - it said for me.
And I feel the truth unalterable.

Even here.

Everything that is
is as it Is
and thus I now desire

to be undone of wishing my
step by step releasing
allows Reality
its Universal
Appreciation


In this place
on this chair
by this screen



brian in a moment





(Thankyou for inviting me)

Dancing with Friedel Kloke- Eibl

I have just returned from a dance weekend with Friedel Kloke- Eibl - a Sacred Dance Teacher who as a young ballet dancer trained with Bernard Wosien - who brought Sacred Circle Dance to Findhorn Community 32 years ago from where it has spread internationally. Friedel exemplifies the dance as an art and as a path of initiation - not merely an outer form that is acquired, mimicked, traded or collected.

I felt that Freidel communicated a warm and clear presence of no nonsense and in grounded but natural discipline. It was we who were expected to embody the willingness to bring attention present to what she offered. Her expression is of a directly felt conscious response to music and life and she held faith in us as dancers in process of discovery and awakening.

Freidel’s demeanour throughout the process was calm, present and considered in the light of her clear sense of purpose. Her joy was evident in her love of dance, her patience was acceptance of where we as students were currently at, but always inviting, a greater involvement than that which the current mindset or approach of the student allowed. So she was also willing to ‘trick’ of tease of drop the dancers into the deep end - or experiences of chaoticness - but she herself held and communicated a calm and connected composure and expressed confidence in all that she undertook even when we did not feel it in ourselves.

Circle dancers who are used to accessibility, exhaustive step maps in advance and motherly inclusion, as well as dancers used to being fed exciting and challenging dances had to let go of that expectation of habit - or be disappointed. Freidel used many simple movements as exercise for stilling and centering as well as using them as basic components of a more elaborate dance forms later in the session. Yet many of the dances she shared - most of which she herself choreographs - were precise in their intent and used hand and arm and gesture that was ‘just so’. This was challenging in a different way as it was really something to open to and allow or discover - rather than something to impose upon. Though Friedel would often comment on where some or all of us were not getting it or were asleep to the actuality, she never acted in any way that demeaned the dancer or worked to undermine their trust - though she was quite capable of simply not supporting a dancer’s expectations or demands and obliging them to take self responsibility.

Freidel would usually give a brief demonstration of the dance with an also brief and not very voluble description of sequence and then drop us - the dancers in it. I sense that she does this according to her sense of our capacity and not as an act of indifference. Although she would often answer questions with a warmth and patience that felt very loving and encouraging - she would often do so in ways that indicated that she wanted a greater trust from us for ourselves and her, and her composure discouraged casual questions or indeed acquaintance. but also she would repeat the dances many times and at each time we would be given further help or instruction as to our readiness.

Because of her approach we would often experience shortcoming and even chaos - which brought us into the arena of control and the lack of it but also of where the control is coming from. For the attempt to control life must yield to the heart if the dance is to become presently embodied and alive. In this and so many other ways she gave maximal opportunity to awaken to and from from our mental patternings and their interference with the dance. The manner and the art of travelling was emphasised as the dance and not the getting there - yet not with adding decoration or embellishment but rather of expressing innate qualities.

The workshop overall was rooted in and from a poised appreciation of one’s own relationship with ground and above - our vertical, and from there opening relation with others. Many of the dances were danced without hands joined - often to facilitate less distraction when learning and more freedom of movement. The social element was economized throughout the event excepting during breaks or outside the hours of practice. Yet Freidel would often express humour - particularly in her demonstrations and exaggerations of what not to do! She also took a few opportunities to read poems or talk about the dance. Being a large group in a large hall made active listening essential but even so we could not often hear as we may have wished. We did receive copies of the poems though.

Her sense of honouring the dancer was tangible and she worked with many at various times without showing either partiality or any lack of care to any - yet also she was spontaneously present in many moments of gesture , look or touch. In being so clearly the centre of our attention she also deliberately also made herself absent from being a replacement for our own responsibility - often leaving the circle - even before the dance began. her manner outside the circle was never one of scrutiny such as to intimidate but of a happenstance meeting with general attention to us on many levels and some periods of having her back to us so that we were not in the emotional dynamic of being seen or exposed to being seen. Yet she was also acutely open to opportunity for supporting her dancers and would not hesitate to engage directly in the most understated but direct expression of approval or a very subtle disappointment that itself seemed not to matter for what was gone but invited ongoing willingness to persist in the process of mastering the form in the heart such as to meet her in the spirit in which she teaches.
Whereas in circle dance we may often be used to a menu of dances whose intent is to be a journey of self fulfilment often using ‘known’ steps that we may exercise in boiler plate fashion, Freidel’s dances were more aimed at grounding and awakening us to aspects of where and what we truly are via the journey through what is obscuring that expression. The degree to which we are able to be willing and accepting-expressing truth is simply where we each and all are at any moment, but her willingness to serve and grow in willingness for such work was tangible. Her choreography extended and attuned the movements of dance but also returned again and again to the most basic stances or positions - as in classical ballet.

For a collector of dances Freidel’s workshop may have had a gem or a few such - but the experience was much more that of deepening one’s own dance and growing more present as the movement consciously expressing. This is not merely about dance - but speaks of life itself.

As such Freidel is not merely a dance teacher of professed sacred forms or notions but is in service and mastery as a demonstration and relationship in spiritual practice - a spiritual teacher or catalyst and invitation to wake up to Life. As with the dance, there are levels to pass through in uncovering and embodying a spirit unalloyed, and Freidel is accepting of these as with dance as stages that we pass through and not marks of status or specialness. Her teaching is expressed in dance and not as mental constructs to be asserted, refuted or chosen from.

My impressions here are my own. They may not resonate with others but they do express my experience. As my first meeting in dance with Freidel I am gladdened and encouraged to find such capacity and willingness at work in the world and I trust that something of what has occurred continues to be nurtured and grow through my own living and dancing.

Many look at Freidel and see a form that they could never hope to match - but this misses the point. The outer form is an expression of an integration of heart, mind and Spirit that will express uniquely and appropriately through us as we allow and discover the same within ourselves. A perceived or believed lack of self-worthiness is an obstacle that would bar the gate against grace being allowed expression through our very self. But if such thinking is put aside and the experience is embraced and allowed in, then we will discover more of ourselves than we could have ever found within the bound of such thought.