It's all a dream!!

(a whimsical but direct approach to Truth)

Let me introduce myself -- My name is nobody! I am proud of my name because there is nobody to be concerned. What you are about to read might not make sense to you, but it is all true as far as what we call ‘real’ is true. You will find as I did that nonfiction is often fiction covered up to look nonfiction, but in truth it is all made up. Can you tell what is true from what is false? I see people suffering from nightmares or rage and believe it to be true but yet is it except in their mind?

The funny thing about death, which is our greatest fear, is that we take it seriously as if we are alive in some world we created. Imagine the average person going to work 9 to 5 and on the way to work reads the newspaper about the sordid news of the day as if it was real. By the time he starts ‘work, he is already living in his dream believing it to be real and acts accordingly. He unconsciously carries himself throughout the day doing his ‘thing’ and then goes home and watches TV for some relaxation. What was real about that day? In fact, what is real in this world, period? This sounds as if I am being cynical or skeptical, but it is the other way around. I am real because I know it is all a dream. You see, what we take to be real, isn’t. What we take to be unreal such as nothingness, is the only real ‘thing’ there is.
Are you with me so far? Well, if you are, are you making sense of what I am saying. As far as I am concerned I am making sense simply because nothing I experience is real and that, paradoxically, is my freedom. Freedom makes great sense to me. That is, freedom from fear, anxiety, self-concern. “Freedom?!!” you gasp, “how can seeing the world as a dream be freedom? Oh my friend, can’t you see that when we take anything to be real it becomes our cross, our pain and our hell? Did you ever notice how all the things that brought pain it was because you made it real? For example, people worry and they believe in their worry and that’s why they worry – got it? If they knew it wasn’t real, where’s the worry? Many people get up in the morning feeling the dread of facing the day and yet what they are fearing is the dream made real. You can see that, can’t you? My freedom emerged when I saw the truth and that is – everything is a dream, an illusion and nothing is serious! The one who is watching the dream is not the dream, just like watching change happens to be the changeless that is watching. We dream at night but when we get up we continue the dream, however, we see it as reality and that becomes our cross, our horrendous pain.

So what is real then? Here is the paradox my friend – nothing is real! Did you hear that clearly? Did you understand it? Nothing is real. So, we can deduce that only the ‘nothing’ is real. How glorious, how liberating, and how explosive it all is. The ‘nothing’ that we fear also known as spirit or essence or source is the only ‘thing’ that is real. It had no beginning and it has no end and yet all seeming reality emerges from it. However, what you see and sense is merely the effect of the cause which is Nothingness.
So many people fear nothingness but the moment it is embraced we call it ‘awakening.’ Do you see the kick in the pants? Why!!? You may ask? -- the answer is so simple and so obvious that it escapes the complicated mind. Let me ask you this? When were you the happiest? Wasn’t it when you were nothing such as not having any identity; not being this or that; not concerned about your body and personality; simply when you were absent to yourself – wasn’t that your highest moment of aliveness? Feel it right now! The first glimpse was many years ago during sexual orgasm and I felt ecstatic and yet there was no one having that orgasm but that momentary ‘fullness’ of absence of self. It is like the guy taking a free-fall from a plane before opening his parachute and enjoy that ‘kick’ of just being nothing swirling in space. It is that rush that momentarily takes your mind away from self-concern. It is this nothingness that is real simply because it is the only ‘thing’ that was never born and will not know death. After all, how can nothing be born or die? It was when I discovered this ‘nothing’ to be everything that I experienced my true aliveness and saw everything else as a dream. Now I see myself as nothing and it is wonder-FULL!

By now you have gathered that I am writing about nothing – there is no plot, no story, no structure and yet this nonsense from ‘nobody’ makes more ‘sense’ than the so-called real. There is a part in you that reads this with curiosity or intrique hoping to get some meaning, while at the same time you are getting the meaning hidden between the words. It is all a dream and its realization didn’t come suddenly but gradually through a period of observation of my own thinking processes.
As a child I was often dreaming, as most children dream, however my problem was that I took the dream seriously and so I suffered. Many things happened in my life that brought suffering but in retrospect nothing happened for here I am…it was all a dream and still IS!!
We like to pat ourselves on the back for being realists and even become skeptical, questioning and agreeing or disagreeing and enjoy the arguments…but it is all a dream of the mind! Nothing is real and that’s paradoxically is waking up from the dream while seemingly in the dream. Oh how we judge right and wrong, good or bad, should or shouldn’t wasting precious time when this ‘now’ is so enjoyable and exhilarating and filled with fantasy and dreams that are not real. The greatest joy is having illusions and seeing the illusion of it all and then you are truly free. Why do we enjoy the theatre or our dreams at night or movies and TV. Aren’t they all made up. The ‘real’ which is nothing is the most glorious adventure of them all. It is the greatest fear of the illusory ego that makes the world real, and yet when fully faced it is so immensely and absolutely wonder-full that it takes direct experience of nothing to see how enjoyable and ecstatic it is.
How can you fear nothing? How can you worry when it is all a dream? How can you even experience stress or discomfort when it is all a play of consciousness?
Did you know that happiness is nothingness? Did you know that love, true love, is not emotional but nothingness embracing nothingness as itself. There is no one to own or possess or even have a relationship with – there is only nothing with nothing making nothingness known as Oneness of IS!!
Have you ever known of a marriage or relationship that was really happy? The only relationship tha works is when two nothings merge as Oneness. You cannot own another or make them your own. Our attempt alone brings misery and pain. Love is nothingness and that’s its beauty and unconditional nature.
How we crave for peace. What is peace but nothingness known as a tranquil mind?
When you see this clearly you’ll start playing like my cat does and purrs so loudly with true enjoyment. I pull his legs or arms and he purrs; I jump with him in my arms and he purrs; I swing him around and he purrs – why? -- simply because he knows it is all a play!

Our biggest concerns are about our body, self-image and identity – but truly now, let’s stop kidding ourselves, where the hell are these items? Aren’t they all a dream? Did you know that your identity is but a self-image. Did you know that self-image is just an image, imagination? Is it scary or liberating? I leave that up to you to consider.
Come on now, see it for yourself. And if you fear nothingness then stop and see – how can you fear nothingness when there is nothing to fear? And that, my friend, is the absolute truth and it is all here-now itself called heaven. Believe it or not, it is the only Truth!! Buddha called it Nirvana. Jesus called it 'The Kingdom of God within' and said, "I am in the world but I am NOT of this world!"

What is Truth, really!!?

If you are truly interested in knowing, beyond even the slightest doubt, a peace that has no conditions or limits, if you are truly interested in knowing a freedom that has absolutely no boundaries at all, if you are truly interested in coming to the end of all seeking, then please consider, very slowly and carefully, the following: (take as long as you need.)
Awareness is everywhere and always.
It is always here. It is always now.
You are this NOW itself!

Someone asked me, ”If it is being which is doing everything because everything is being then isn't that total free-will but on a much deeper more encompassing level? Or am I right off track?? It doesn;t feel to me like free-will is a construct of the ego, it feels natural.”
(His email was longer than the above stating that in his experience he has complete free-will.”)

Yes you are absolutely right. However, understand that ‘you’ himself just like Burt himself is a Oneness. In this seeming individual called Burt or ‘you’ there is no true choice or freedom because these individuals are conditioned concepts just like the waves of the ocean seem separate and individual and unique and yet they are the product and action of the ocean (Oneness). For 27 years I played teacher and even had my own TV show and wrote a book that sold well. Yet in the year 2000 I 'woke up' and realized that Burt was just another concept I created. Waking up is not an attainment nor an accomplishment but the beginning of seeing clearly -- yes my friend, just the beginning -- and this seeing is this -- there is only NOW eternally and you are THAT!! With "THAT" you have freedom, choice and complete control but it is not individual control. It is at this stage that one begins to understand what could never have been understood. It is this realization of Oneness (NOW) that we know how to laugh, how to enjoy, how to love, how to cry, how to be free. You are a human being, a duality creature made up of two opposing forces. These forces are totally opposite...the human is after "ADDITION" and the BEING is all about SUBTRACTION. Thus when all has been subtracted such as fear, guilt, suffering, ego and false ideas and beliefs, what will stand out is BEING that which has always been there before time itself. This is the real freedom, joy and happiness beyond imagination. Most people who strive towards awakening have no idea what it means. Awakening means there is no such thing as getting anywhere, getting anything or accomplishing anything but seeing that you are NOTHING. When you finally see that you are NOTHING (awakening) then you also see that you are everything. If you have understood this then I truly congratulate you my friend.

Perhaps the most difficult thing for most of us to understand is the simple, and if you examine it directly, most obvious fact that there is no such thing as a solid, separate, stable entity that I can call “myself.”
Nouns (labels like teacher, writer, doctor, lawyer, man, woman, human being, body and so on), proper nouns (my name, your name, personal pronouns like ‘me’ ‘mine’ ‘myself’ and ‘my life.’ Often combined with mental images of your face and body at various ages, morphed together with various role models and anchored by muscular contraction and other physical, mental and emotional sensations such as self-defense, self-protection work collectively to create a fictitious life. It may be convincing on the surface, and there may be the security and comfort of habitual perception, but if you investigate carefully and directly, you will find nothing but unsubstantial memory and fantasy edited by a motive and attitude. Nowhere in any of that is there a real, verifiable “you” or “me.”
This is what waking up means – it is seeing the truth for the first time and it is usually a shock and often results from a situation of suffering that has no ‘way out.’
Waking up to the Truth as it is, is no picnic. However, in seeing the truth, which is true, you are faced with NOTHING. You are nothing. But then something else happens – you see clearly you are everything because you are the NOW (Oneness) itself. You have had many changes of being a baby body, a child learning to walk and talk, a teenager who thinks he/she knows, a young adult, a mature body with accompanying personality, beliefs and ideas based on conditioning and finally seeing that it is ALL an illusion. So what happens faced with this predicament – you are the very BEING you have been chasing after all your life wanting to be special, different and to be ‘somebody’ and when finally woke up discovering your true essence you will see that it has all been an evolution towards subtraction and NOT addition. It is in this subtraction that you discover you are everything you ever really wanted – freedom, love, joy, peace and above all, Oneness (Now) itself.

The most fearful question is this initially, “If there is no separate me and no separate you, then what is left?”
My dear everything is left. You look around: in the absence of mental and emotional editing, there is nothing but awareness and everything that arises in it. Everything that you can see and hear and smell and taste and FEEL and think and otherwise experience. There is nothing but this NOW, this whole, infinite, everything.
Someone complains, “But this scares me!!” -- yes, and just imagine being without any fear whatever? Imagine that death is not possible? Imagine that misery, suffering and all bondage was your creation as it never existed?
The self you thought you were was a deception, a habitual unconscious guilt filled with judgments, gossip, pettiness, cruelty, fear, self-centredness, loneliness, sorrow, worry, stress, anger and find all that subtracted from you. Then what is left is laughter, joy, freedom and a life that is aligned with God (Oneness).

After writing the above it occurred to me why the video #5 was so popular…
http://youtu.be/nfWTmjWaIFA
It is because the people who are awakening are seeing thatTruth is simple, obvious and liberating, it is subtracting and not adding and the way to that subtraction is through forgiveness. When the word, most powerful word for healing, is discovered to be ‘forgiveness’ then we understand what it really means – there is nothing to forgive – everything is divine and okay!!

The Course says:
“All the vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates be gone through forgiveness. And all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns of Heaven to our sight, to lift us high above the thorny roads we travelled on before the Christ (Being) appeared.”

burtharding@shaw.ca

The Three Laws of NOW!

You say 'now' is perfect but all problems whether past, present or future all happen now. So what is so perfect about 'Now'?

You are confusing 'NOW' with the 'present time.' The present time is where everything happens whether recollection of a past hurt or the anxiety of a future condition. The 'NOW' itself is timeless. It is a Silence like the center of a bicycle wheel that supports the spokes of the wheel and its motion while the center remains still. In the fury of a storm upon the ocean surface lashing it about there is still the Silence of its depth. Similarly, within the present time of frenzied activity lies the quietness of the timeless NOW!

The 'NOW' is a stillness beyond time and space and within lie the two most powerful laws of human experience -- Self-recognition and Self-organization. The Awareness of Self-recognition helps us realize our Oneness since every human on earth knows that he/she exists as awareness itself. Yet, awareness does not belong to anyone. From this Self-recognition emerges Self-organization where the law of synchronicity plays its glorious part.