Inspired Writing

It's all a dream!!

2011-07-31T20:11:00.000-07:00

(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!!?

2011-07-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-07-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

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.

HOW TO LISTEN -- NOW!!

2011-06-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

For many years I studied, meditated and even taught classes, appeared on own TV show and interviewed twice on CBC "Food for thought." Despite these years of reading and study and practice, it was in the year 2000 during a conflicted relationship that I woke up to the fact that there's nothing to learn or attain but to LISTEN in this eternal NOW moment. Once we realize this then all seeking stops and we become clear, free and at peace.

Our Human Journey

2011-05-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

Why do we have to go through a journey with so much suffering when in Truth we are already in the image of God?

It is like climbing a ladder that reaches higher than the clouds. We wonder what it would be like to reach the top and find all the secrets of existence. We start climbing and seeing more as we climb. We reach the middle and panic at the great overwhelming grandeur and a part of us clings to the bottom while another part longs for the top. Finally we reach the top and realize that we haven't gone anywhere as the ladder was always here. We had gone from here to here but now we see it for the first time. As T.S. Eliot wrote, "We shall never cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring we shall arrive at where we started and know that place for the first time."
This journey is a journey of discovery. Once we see beyond our linear brain to the holographic essence that we are, we shall also see that nothing happened, nothing was achieved, nothing was accomplished but have reached HOME finally. It is a glory that can't be even imagined.

The TEACHING

2011-04-12T18:01:00.000-07:00

"What is your basic teaching?"

Here, in brief, is a PowerPoint that covers it.

Four Human Survival Laws

2011-04-08T14:00:00.000-07:00

"Why do we sabotage our best efforts especially our spiritual expansion?"

You are a human being -- just as the human is a movement of seeking, striving, wanting, needing, yet it never arrives because what it is really seeking is itself, which is the Being. The 'Being' is a zero-point and it frightens the human part. Therefore, not understanding the dynamics that what we want we already are, we search for the tangibles instead of the zero-point that produced them. In other words, all Being is nothingness, meaning no-thingness, and is a zero-point. It is this zero-point which is pure potential from which everything has emerged.
Our dualistic struggle between human and Being produces all the conflicts and sabotages and self-punishments that we experience until we realize that the human and Being can be experienced as ONE. It is this Oneness that is what we truly want and seek -- harmony, balance, peace, love, joy, meaning and fulfillment.
Here is a video explaining the Four laws. Through them we understand the whole dynamic process of growth.

What is a Direct Experience?

2011-03-03T18:43:00.000-08:00

Workshop on Direct Experience!
with Burt Harding

Let me guide you to a Direct Experience of your true nature!

Every morning I reply to numerous email questions from around the world. The subjects vary from esoteric, to personal, to relationships and to daily living.

What is the common dilemma everyone suffers from?
Here are just some recent questions…
Why do I feel as if I am doing something wrong most of the time?
Why is the feeling of lack so tenacious?
Why do I have this feeling of wanting to be right even if it makes me miserable?
I know all about Truth being love and yet I keep choosing fear unconsciously?
Why do I sabotage myself?
Why do I feel as if I am not good enough?
My childhood has been a reasonably happy one and yet I feel inadequate at times, why?
…and many other similar ones. What seems to be the problem? Why is it so universal?
Over 95% of the population have read, studied and practiced spiritual principles but they do not live from them in daily life, why?

The answer is simple – this knowledge has remained surface mental know-how but hasn’t reached the heart. It has been said that an awakened being is easy to spot. They do not talk about spirituality but simply emanate a quiet joy that has been awakened through inner heart-knowing. When teachings such as a Course in Miracles describe the teacher of God, it is described as a state of inner joy.

We are now witnessing a fast-shifting and changing consciousness, accelerating at a speed unknown in human history. Young people suffer anxieties from fear of the future and older people suffer from inadequate inner knowing and peace.

I have been asked about such a workshop many times and finally feel the strong feeling to conduct it. I am NOT a ‘teacher’ for what I will show you, you already know in your heart. I will simply act as a guide with simple tools and methods to unfold this inner knowing - not with spiritual words but with direct experiencing of the truth of you.

Can we find peace in a world we don’t understand? Definitely!!
This peace is not something you are going to attain but a Source that is ever-waiting to release itself with the right attitude, open-heart and willingness to listen. This is something that you already are and it is a matter of re-cognizing it! It will be a clear seeing just as you know you exist!

If you want to know a little bit more about me, please copy and paste these links into your browser:
http;//www.burtharding.com
http://www.youtube.com/burtharding/

Also listen to this interview regarding my own experience:
http://batgap.com/burt-harding/

The Workshop

This workshop will be my first class offering after a few years rest from public teaching. I am responding to the many requests for classes I have received from students around the world who follow my YouTube videos and email correspondences. My hope is that you will listen to your heart’s response to this opportunity to directly experience your Self.

The class will be held in my own home, which accommodates about 15 people. Since space is limited, please respond promptly to make us aware of your interest. Once your registration is confirmed, payment instructions will be sent.

Workshop on Direct Experience!
Date: Saturday, April 23, 2011
Time: 10 am – 5 pm
Cost: $150

There will be a one-hour break for lunch. You may either bring your lunch or go to one of many nearby cafés.

Testimonials

“When I happened upon Burt’s website 2 years ago I had no idea that it would change my life forever. Through Burt’s many emails and videos that he freely offers I came to see clearly the truth of who I am. Burt’s wisdom, compassion and unconditional love helped me to open my heart again to myself and others. Any questions I had Burt was always there with a quick reply and a heartfelt explanation. If further clarification was needed Burt readily was willing to explain again anything I wanted to know. It has been very easy to hear what Burt had to share whether in an email or in a video, due to his very gentle and loving spirit that touches your heart immediately. I am so very grateful to Burt for reminding me of the precious gift that I am, and as a result I am able to teach this to others. Burt has shown me how sacred love is and that when we allow, accept and just be, that miracles do happen.”~~ Karen from Peterborough ~~

“It is hard to describe the feelings that took over me when I listened to Burt’s warm, soft, loving and playful words. They have touched me so much, they caressed me in the most deeply buried and most painful places, in which I have been hiding my pain because I didn’t have the power to confront it. Burt encouraged me to gaze into my vulnerability, to accept it and use it as the foundation of my stability.
I have learned a lot from many various teachers but when a student is ready then comes Burt.”
~~ Savina, bestselling author and international master of Face Yoga ~~

“Wow, I really can’t thank you enough! You have helped me see clearly and also helped me through a very difficult period of my life. I now see that time is not as , negative but as a chance to awaken to whom I am. Without my suffering I would not be feeling this incredible peace and love in this incredible NOW that I had forgotten. Thanks again my dear friend. The life that we are is love.
~~ Pelle ~~

“Dear Burt, two weeks ago you gave me your blessing for translating your videos to Polish YT. I feel it would be nice to send you a report:)
Burt, people’s reaction is so amazing for your message and the way you speak about it! I felt your message from the first video I “saw” you, but I couldn’t predict this reaction:)
After only two weeks, almost 1,300 people have viewed these only 11 translated videos. And it is still growing. Many people copy these videos to their channels, forums, share it, etc.
You truly got to Polish-language Truth seekers (or Awareness got through You).
People thank for your message and “want” more translations:)
It makes me laugh, because you have 545 videos on the internet and probably one year would be too short for one person to translate them all:) maybe some will join.
~~ Krzysztof ~~

“Dear Burt, please accept my deepest gratitude for the wonderful gift you gave me. You don’t know who I am, but about three weeks ago I cam across your Youtube videos and I started to pay attention to the message you were giving people about how to love is the greatest, most powerful force in the universe.”
~~ Paul ~~

What is a heart-break?

2011-01-25T17:58:00.000-08:00

I have checked your videos regarding the subject of heart-break but didn't find any. Please write back.

You were right and I had never spoken specfically on the subject of heart-break.
As a result of your need and request here is the webcam video:

What happens to awareness when I die?

2011-01-15T10:30:00.000-08:00

I was wondering what does Awareness ' see ' or experience when the body drops (dies)? What happens to Awareness/ being when there is no more body? If the world is in us, then where does the world in us go... when the body dies? You always say, " You are always you." How does this continue when there is no more body?

First of all, remember that awareness is ALL there IS! Everything else is relative to it. For example, let's say I ask you, "What is the most important thing there is?" and you might say "it is peace or love or God or your religion or your children or fame or power, whatever you come up with, I will the ask you, "How can you enjoy your children or God or fame or anything if you are not aware of them?" Without awareness nothing exists.

Here's another example, "How do you know you exist?" and you might answer surprised at the question, "Of course I know, it is obvious" then I ask you "What is obvious about it?" and you'll probably answer, "because it is present always and I am aware of it!!" and that's it. 95% of the population are not aware that awareness is their true nature. Why? -- simply because it is so obvious that they miss it. They are asleep to it because they have taken it for granted without being aware that they are awareness itself.

You may doubt most things you hear, you may even doubt yourself but you cannot doubt awareness. The fact that you are reading this article proves you are aware of it. Even when we are not aware of anything such as relaxation at the beautiful sunny beach just listening to the waves of the ocean, yet awareness is always present. Awareness is the NOW itself and there is no EXIT to now!!

The fact that you 'think' is because you are aware of thoughts. The fact that you have emotions is because you are aware as they happen. The fact that you exist means that existence is awareness itself.

What is awareness?
No one can ever define or describe awareness because it is the greatest mystery of all to the mind. Yet, the heart (core being)is awareness itself and it can recognize itself. When awareness recognizes itself that's called spiritual awakening.
In this awakening we see that GOD exists as solid as you very awareness. Why? -- simply because GOD is awareness itself, awareness is the primal Oneness of all existence. It is without beginning or end.

Now let me ask you a question. You are aware and that's obvious. The question is this -- "Who is being aware?" The unaware person would say, "It's me!" referring to themselves but that's the mistake everyone makes. Awareness does not belong to anyone yet it is EVERYONE. You don't own awareness -- you are AWARENESS itself! Please read this again and again until you get it.

LISTEN -- YOU ARE AWARENESS ITSELF playing the part of the human role. In truth the 'me' is just a name given a body that keeps recycling every few years and thinks it is it. You see, the problem is that the human mind thinks and believes that she/he is the awareness inside the body. The body is located in time and space but AWARENESS is NOT locatable. Therefore, you. as awareness, is not the body -- the body is inside you. When you realize this fact, which eventually becomes obvious, then you will see that death is impossible. When the body of you drops away, you can look at it lying there in full awareness. There is no death except to the one who believe they are just a form. This is why Masters say that to believe you are a body is to be already dead.

All the great Masters such as Jesus, Buddha, Bhagavan and hundreds of others had only one teaching -- to teach us that LOVE is the only truth.

What is love?
If we are physical then we think it is sex. If we are mental then we think it is communication and sharing. If you happen to be emotional then you think of love as emotional security and having someone special. If you happen to be spiritual then you see it as Oneness (the Unified Field principle all scientists know).

When you are contracted, depressed angry, frightened, insecure and so on then you are seeking awareness without knowing it. This seeking is saying "I am missing something" or if feels like you are lacking something or feels like "I don't feel good enough" and so on and on. There is nothing wrong in feeling angry, depressed unhappy etc but the problem is that you identify with it so much that you miss seeing the truth of it and so dysfunction or even insanity can set in.

Negative emotions are an indirect seeking of awareness known also as love or God (both are one). When people were searching for an answer to life they created a religion, a belief system in order to have something to believe in because they never suspected that their very awareness is what they were searching for. Their intelligence had not evolved far enough to understand something so simple that it escaped the mind. Jesus and Buddha never founded a religion, it was their followers that organized the different beliefs surrounding this one reat truth.

In order to reliaze this great truth, without which there can be no peace, requires innocence, simplicity and the devotion to sit still and LISTEN to your seekings and how every seeking whether it is...
anger (not getting your way)
or frustration (not able to figure it out)
or depression (feeling overwhelmed by the conditioned mind)
or totally unhappy (not knowing what yo want) etc etc it is all an unconscious seeking of Awareness. Remember that awareness is everything and has no opposite. It is therefore known as the Supreme Infinite Intelligence, known as Pure Being, often referred to as God, the Source and so on. When you see it as the NOW itself then this means that your human ego is not around to confuse you and therefore that's peace and joy. Do you see this?

You are always YOU! Why -- right now as you are reading this, if you are completely absorbed by it then where's your ego? If there is no ego (conditioned past) then that's the real YOU. YOU are all there is. You are everyone you meet. There are seven billion humans on this earth but there is only One YOU. You often mistake this "YOU" as being your human role but that's a conditioning. You are the Ultimate One. You are the One you want. You are the very love you seek. You are the infinite eternal Source itself. Your mind won't be able to take this and might end up confused but eventually, if you are serious, devoted to what is true and lasting, you wll discover it.

Please watch my interview with Rick right here...
http://batgap.com/burt-harding/

I had revelations from your interview

2011-01-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Burt, when I listened to your interview it all came together for me. It was like an awakening. You should include this interview video on your blog.

Thank you David, I will include the link here since it is an hour long intervideo.
http://batgap.com:80/burt-harding/

With love,
Burt

Realizing the Truth of YOU!

2010-11-07T09:20:00.000-08:00

People have asked, "How do I awaken spiritually? How can I see clearly?

It is not difficult if we are ready to face the truth of our true nature. Have you recognized its importance? Do you know that Truth is True and therefore the most important thing in your life? If so, then watch this video and experience directly...

What is the dark night of the soul that most seekers go through?

2010-10-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

What is the dark night of the soul?

You are a human being. The human part is a conditioned state based on the past. The nature of this self is so complex that it creates its own shadow and then tries to overcome it at the same time. In this context of paradox and complexity lies the emergence of the “dark night of the soul.”
In brief, this dark night is a total identification with the conditioned self.

The human, which is the conditioned part of us based on its past, is often referred to as the shadow self. It is the artificial self. The term ‘soul’ which is identified with the human self, is a misnomer. There is no soul as such but a fragment of Spirit. There is, in reality, only Oneness, a Unified Field of Being. Therefore what we call ‘soul’ is an individualized mind – a conditioned state of mind based on past experience only often oblivious of its true nature as the ‘NOW’ itself. The ‘Being’ part of us is the Truth of us and it is the part that watches, witnesses known as Pure Awareness, the NOW itself.
What is the shadow self also known as the conditioned self? It is the part that identifies completely with what it experiences and therefore does not see the experience as something ‘happening’ but a conditioned perception based on its identified role.

The shadow self is well-named because it is like a shadow that our body casts from the light of the sun. If we tried to escape the shadow by running away from it, we would end up completed depleted from exhaustion and find that the shadow is still there untouched. The shadow will always follow us because that’s the nature of the shadow. Similarly, our BEING experiences its human part ALL THE TIME because that’s what is needed to experience the witnesser of it. This is imperative to recognize.

Is the dark night of the soul necessary? This question is redundant because we experience only what we need to learn. This ‘dark night’ is created through the need to escape it. Another paradox of the human conditioned self is that it identifies itself with its own resistance and then resists it as it is self-created. In order to understand this let us take the example of the cowboy riding the wild untamed bronc. This wild horse is our human part that wants to be free but hasn’t experienced it yet. The rider is the Being part that allows and stays unrelentingly in its ALLOWING stance. Thus the rider stays on the back of the wild horse without any attempt to control the horse but lets it do its ‘thing.’ It stays on until the wild horse is so exhausted that it gives us. The moment the horse gives up it will follow where the rider wants it to go. Similarly with us, our pure awareness also known as the ‘NOW Presence’ is the rider and it ALLOWS our wild contradictory nature to do its thing without interfering. It stays on until the wild untamed and contradictory conditioned self is exhausted and gives up its struggle. The moment the conditioned self gives up its struggle then the ALLOWING nature of BEING becomes combined with the surrender self and the two become integrated and WHOLE. This is the goal of human life – to ‘accomplish’ this wholeness!

What can we do when we are in the midst of the ‘dark night’? The answer is – do nothing but allow! Then the human mind will ask, “How does one allow?” This is the great paradox and if it is understood with your heart you have grasped the power of the rider. It is this – in true allowing here is no allower. In other words, there is no one who allows and when you can grasp this heart-knowing that there’s no one who allows or accepts then, that very understanding becomes allowing and acceptance.
Here’s an example of acceptance and allowing – picture a young innocent white boy in the South playing with a black boy. The parents tell him not to associate with the black boy. However, the innocent white boy cannot understand the prejudice of the parents and keeps playing with the black boy because, after all, it is his best friend. That’s full acceptance without anyone doing any accepting. The white boy didn’t accept but allowed fully what-is without prejudice. This is the key of ALLOWING the dark night of the soul to be but the shadow that it actually is.

The question might arise, “But how do we heal it?” You don’t! Healing and allowing are the same thing because they are both our BEING nature. The allowing is itself the healing!!

To the persistent question, “How do we allow?” which the conditioned part of us will raise is redundant. There is no one who can allow and this very understanding is the ‘allowing’ itself. Go over this statement until you understand it. The moment you grasp it, it becomes allowing itself. Just like the white boy allowed himself to keep playing with the black boy, there was also no one who tried ‘allowing’ but simply allowed!!

The dark night of the soul is persistent and totally identified with. If we can sit with it doing nothing but simply observe its dynamics as ‘what-is’ happening then this very ‘allowing’ becomes the healing. The dark night of the soul means one thing – resistance! It is such a total identification with the human part that the BEING part is in the background. Bring the witnesser, the awareness of this ‘thing’ called ‘dark night’ into perspective and embrace it in its sensations and emotions. Be one with it (allowing) as you sit looking at it through the body in the moment. Then, in this ‘looking’ the healing starts on its own because there is no longer anyone to identify with anything – there is only just the witnessing of it.

When we see this simplicity, our human conditioned part will rebel because it abhors simplicity and calls it simplistic asking, “But, what if…”
Healing is very simple and yet its simplicity is objected to by the ‘dark night’ because that is what created the dark night in the first place – the conflict between the human and the Being. It started out by resistance thinking, “What is wrong with me?” “Why am I like this so different from others?” “Why am I different and separate?”

The individual going through the dark night always feels separate and different from others and that’s the paradox because it is simply caught in being like most others. The dark night of the soul happens to every seeker who is heavy in its thinking and is always reacting with a “yes but…”
Therefore, the moment we become seekers for a better life we often get cauht in this “yes but…” mentality where we question everything especially the spiritual life that says ‘bliss’ is our true nature. We try to justify our childhood ‘pain’ by reinforcing and validating our past experience and so in hanging on (which is the vast majority of spiritual seekers) we plunge into this world of shadow known as the ‘dark night.’

It is true that most of our spiritual knowledge is bunk but then it is a earning experience to meet whatever happens. I have met so many intellectuals who have read all advaita books available and actually believe that they ‘know’ when in truth ‘real knowing’ means ‘there’s nothing to know’ but simply the fact that YOU EXIST NOW! These three words ‘you exist now’ are all the truth you need. You exist and therefore you are existence itself. Allow this existence to play itself out as it must and in this ‘allowing’ we accelerate our inner knowing of our true nature that no one can teach us except our own allowing (which is Being).

So we ask again, “Is there something wrong with the ‘dark night of the soul?” Absolutely nothing is wrong. It is what we have created unconsciously through identifying with the past as all there is and giving full power to it despite our need for the true Self (Being) we already are. Again, the more we wanted the Higher Self, the more we identified with its ‘lower’ version by resisting it saying inwardly, “I don’t want this” which inadvertently became our focus.

Most spiritual seekers go through the dark night sometime in their lifetime unless they encounter a genuine teacher who will instruct them in the art of allowing, surrender, acceptance without a ‘doer.’ This is the crux of the matter. The individual going through the dark night of the soul wants to know ‘how’ to do something. The true open-hearted innocence knows intuitively that the ‘how’ of anything is not in the domain of the intellect. In other words, the ‘how’ of the spiritual life is God’s business and not ours. Ours is opening up the heart to ALLOW.

The spiritual life is the ‘stopping of the mind’ through witnessing it especially when it says, “yes but…”

Everyone goes through the same story but it becomes ‘our story’ and that’s the suffering. It is all the same one. There is nothing and no one who is separate or different or better or worse. It is a game we play.

You are a BEING plaing the human role.

Our ‘job’ is to allow whatever is rising in the moment as a movement of mind and we are the witness. The witness is always at peace watching it all.

The spiritual life is living each moment in what is in alignment with truth. Truth is love, unconditional love, and therefore it is without conditions and ACCEPTS all conditions.

Our spiritual ‘duty’ is to meet everything that arises and in that meeting there is allowing that we are far more than what is happening.

The Secret About Emotions

2010-10-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

"I wanted to ask you about emotions, why they are important, and their function. "

This is a tall order to reply to but I shall do my best. The word E-Motion comes from the understanding that we are electromagnetic creatures and therefore thought has manifested as our form body. Our human form is the emotional body, period. E-Motion is motion of Energy and that's how things appear to be real when they are ultimately not real. We chose to be born human beings. The human form is a eplica of BEING and it appears very solid to the senses (but this is something that we have to realize directly).

Let's start with basics -- there is Only Ultimate Cause often called God, Father, Being, Oneness, Truth and LOVE. All thse labels mean the same thing. We can begin to understand what human is when we trace it back to its source energy known as Pure Awareness or First Cause. You see, first Cause is Causeless simply because there had to be a beginning which is beginningless, do you understand? So, the first Cause caused everything to happen and it split into fragments called SOULS. You and I are fragments of LOVE known as individuated souls but essentially the same One Spirit known as God or Love. This Love expresses as Pure Awareness and essentially has no form but this is the mystery -- everyone on earth know they exist because everyone on earth is a fragment of the same cause of pure awareness that knows "I AM." Please stay with me here , read it over and over and do not move on until it is clear.

For example, right now as you read this, be very still, take a deep slow breath and slowly exhale as you close your eyes for a moment. Just observe how thoughts cross your mind like flashes of light ever moving. These flashes of motion are known as personal perception based on forms you have had for millions of years. They are your DNA imbedded in every cell of you as a form. Now, knowing this, let these flashes of thought go by and see what is left. Open your eyes then and ask, "What am I?" and then what you are left with is...."I am just awareness..." That is, awareness of these thoughts; awareness of my body; aareness of my environement; awareness that I exist and yet all thee things change but my awareness is ALWAYS. This awareness is the primal feeling known as bliss or nothingness or Silence or peace of mind or innocence or beauty or Essence. It is our very BEING. This is who you are and it is experienced as 'heaven' or 'inner joy' which is its true nature.

Now, let's take it a step further and see what happens -- it is the nature of pure awareness to be aware. AWARE OF WHAT? It is this awareness of 'something' that created the first thought. The moment there is identification with thought we have a belief. This belief creates our perception of life. Here's the first shocker -- there is no LIFE outside of you but only the reality you created by your perception. This has also been discovered by Albert Einstein in his theory of relativity, also by David Bohm who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of time and space as holographic essence and the realizations of Sages throughout history plus the teachings of Jesus, Buddha and Krishna.
Now we have moved further into this knowing -- there are no thoughts but flashes of motion that creates the semblance of time and space known as EMOTIONS. These emotions are movements of perception culled, over and over, many lifetimes of identifying with form. Therefore FORM and EMOTIONS are one. Again, this is what 'suffering' is -- the identification with form as BEING who we are when in fact BEING itself is FREE. So, the question is, what good are emotions?
The Journey or Circle
Emotions are extremely important to our journey, in fact, they are the journey itself because in truth there is no journey but a CIRCLE leading back unto itself. Everything in nature is a CIRCLE leading back to Itself. It is this circle which is called time and space. For example, the earth rotates around the sun creating the semblance of time and space...it creates darkness when not our part of the world is not facing the sun and called day when it faces the sun. As it moves away from the sun in its rotation (or comes closer) it creates the semblance of seasons like Winter, Summer, Spring and Autumn giving us the idea of growth. We have invented clocks to keep abreast of this motion and the clocks are a circle startig with #1 and ending with 12 noon or midnight and starts over again and again. This circle is emotion or motion of energy and it also affects our FEELINGS.

Remember that the primal feeling is bliss also known as love-connection due to oneness, and since we do not know our true nature then we cling to this need to belong known as Oneness and we seek it through relationships, sex, possession, owning, needing, craving, yearning and hoping. These movements create all the emotions of 'suffering' -- however again, remember that suffering is the choice we made to experience humanity or emotion. Suffering is only to the extent of our realization. The more ignorant we are of our true nature, the more we suffer. Our true nature which is Source-Being can only be direct experience of itself and not by reading about it as most people do. This is why "A Course in Miracles" has been devised by 365 lessons for the year in order to experience directly that we are BEING playing the human role. If we do not realize this fact known as Truth then we are lost in a morass of words and symbols called 'religion or dogmatic beliefs.
Truth is not 'something' because it has nothing to do with beliefs, ideas or words but direct experience of pure awareness known as "I AM." Therefore again, we need emotions to lead us back to their source. Emotions can become so entrenched, so solid to us that our individuated mind can lose its balance known as insanity. This insanity is prevalent in our world. It is all starts from the FEELING that we are separate. We learn ONLY through the full acceptance (allowing) of emotions as emotions or motion of energy. When we entertain a thought such as "I wish to get rid of this feeling" "I don't want this anymore" "I have had it feeling like this" "How I wish to get rid of this" then this resistance exacerbates our emotions and we become temporarily insane or dysfunctonal. Emotions that are not wanted is ike rejecting your child. Emotional resistance to itself is a denial of BEING and therefore a rejection of yourself. All that you 'suffer' is not wrong but simply your CHOICE. In fact, every emotional feeling was created by you, however unconsciously it has been created. When we experince these emotions through ALLOWING (acceptance, forgiveness, embracement and as a 'lesson' then that's how we 'grow' towards the very NEING we have never left and complete the circle by returning to Source.

The Four Laws of Creation
There are FOUR LAWS in CREATION, ONLY FOUR and these FOUR are important to never forget. They cover every aspect of life and if you fully embrace these FOUR LAWS you wll hasten your expansion into LOVE. Remember that true love is NOT an emotion (although emotional love leads us to it through embracement). True LOVE is the joy of spiritual knowing of our true nature as "I AM" and expresses as JOY in life. Although in psychology we emphasize positive and negative emotions yet in truth there is only LOVE or FEAR. Just as FEAR is a 'feeling' of separation, so is LOVE a 'feeling' of belonging. Sexuality is the expression of physical love and when the heart is engaged it becomes also a spiritual experience. When the heart is not engaged then it remains just lust and loses its divine expression. These are the FOUR LAWS: --

1. YOU EXIST: You know you exist and when you go back to that inner knowing of existence then you start getting 'back' to Source. YOU will always exist and there is no such thing as non-existence. Therefore when we experience the zero-point of egoless love we are in Source and the feeling is known as innocent joy or heavenly feeling. Everything starts from this felt-sense of "I Exist" and it can lead to who you are. When Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi advocated "Who am I?" it opened the way to this primal knowing of "I exist."

2. YOU ARE ONE-SELF: This second law is derived from the first one and we often refer to ourselves as Oneself. There is only OneSelf. The mystery is that it feels like YOU, and, it is YOU and yet in its true essence is wholeness itself. There is no separation and this non-separation can only be directly experienced through knowing the meaning of "I Exist."

3. CIRCLE OF EXPRESSION: This emphasizes the action of return, that is, for every negative thought you indulge in then the same is returned to you. For every judgment you make is returned to you. Similarly, for every act and feeling of love is returned to you. This is the law of abundance or poverty. This is the Law also known as the Law of Attraction. You are, right now, the exact product of the way you believe. Every cell of your body is imbedded with millions of beliefs you believe are true and they attract the life you live. They are not right or wrong but represent your individual realty that you created by your perception.

4. CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTNT: That is, change is constant with the excepton of the three above. Change is always happening because everything is emotion in our world (motion of energy or the circle of life).

Anyway, I hope that this has been of help to you. Please keep this article and print it out and read it once weekly until it starts bringing greater insights and realizations.

What everyone ought to know about relationships!

2010-09-14T12:10:00.001-07:00

Whether we face it or not, one of the greatest problems, if not the greatest, is human relationships. I’m inundated worldwide with questions regarding relationships. What you are about to read is exciting and an illuminating way to learn about relationships.
I felt inspired to write this booklet when a psychotherapist, who has also written about relationships, asked me what could be the core essence that was missing in fully grasping the significance of relationships between man and woman, that is , beyond “men from Mars and women from Venus” and other writings on co-dependence. This psychotherapist being himself a nonduality follower wanted to know my feelings on the subject. This intriqgued me and the fact that I get so many emails on the subject of relationships opened the door for this booklet.

The following is based not only on my own experience as a hypnotherapist of 35 years but also the major shift that happened in the year 2000 combined with teachings from A Course in Miracles and Michael’s teachings.

I started my search after experiencing Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi’s vision and teaching. As a result I became a staunch advaitist and focused on non-duality. To me this was the ultimate truth and anything else was redundant. My talks emphasized the awareness of the moment as the only reality and everything else was unnecessary in our life. The human part was treated as part of the individual mind and therefore unreal. The word ‘soul’ which is really individuated mind, a fragment of universal mind, was no longer a part of my vocabulary. Bhagavan and Buddha never discussed the word ‘soul.’ This journey for me was clear, uncluttered and simple. Whenever a relationship proved to be too emotional I would just discard it as illusory. My life was successful and even had a brief TV series of my own.
I was detached from the illusion of human negative emotions. This was the truth and there was no world ‘out there’ of seeming time and space but my own perception of it. This was also discovered by scientists and quantum physics and so I was on fair ground established in reality. This was my detached life for 27 years and had experienced peace.

In the year 2000 I found myself attracted to someone who moved into my apartment leaving behind her career in graphic design, two teenage boys sent to theit dad, a house, a car and a wonderful dog. All left behind in Denver, Colorado. The first few days and weeks were good but soon the impact of what had taken place began its toll on her sensitive emotional nature. Unconsciously she was missing her sons, her car, her independence, her dog and the facing of uncertain future in Canada without citizenship. There would be times when she would burst into anger for no apparent reason as far as I was concerned and I would treat it with advaitic detachment. After all, I reasoned, she will soon see all this illusion for what it is and adjust.

One fateful day she “lost it” emotionally and the more detached I was, the greater became her anguished fury. She lashed out with fierce violence and the more calm I was the worse it became. I didn’t know what to do and walked into the bathroom locking the door. Then it hit me that I cared for this woman deeply and she was suffering. If suffering was so real to her what good was my detached calmness, after all, where is sensitivity? Where is compassion? What good was I in a moment when she needed reassurance and comfort and security? What good was I in this situation?
All the ‘truth’ I had studied and placed so much importance on was not available to me then. My ‘peace’ was not real but simply conditioned and programmed by so much reading and study. While I focused on her and for a moment stepped in her shoes, I began to FEEL deep pain and it was good to FEEL it.
I raised my hands and pleaded to Bhagavan, “Please help me as I don’t know what to do?”
I cried, and then saw myself in the mirror and suddenly saw Burt for the first time. A strange feeling came over me as if I had just worn this body, and was temporarily entranced by my arms dangling by my side and a head sticking out from my upper body between my shoulders. A few seconds later a fear gripped me as I experienced this strange new world, however, right then and there it was as if everything disappeared in the bathroom and was thrown into endless space seeing that I was Light. I was a human being – a Being playing the human role of Burt. In those few moments everything became crystal clear and I learned more in those few moments than the whole 27 years of advaitic teachings and practices. It was so incredibly simple and clear that everything and everyone was myself.
I felt such peace and clarity that words were not possible. I could not communicate this to anyone but my partner knew something had happened.
There are seven billion humans on this earth but only One Being, and the mystery is this – YOU are that Being here and now as you read this. It is this awakening of playing the human role that we finally grasp the meaning of relationship.

What is a relationship? A better question would be – what is NOT a relationship? Since everything is One Being playing the role of 7 billion humans and other creatures, then we are all related. This relationship is called LOVE.
Here are some basic facts on relationships:
• Relationships are karmic since nothing happens by chance and there are no accidents.
• Every relationship brings us precious lessons in love. When we do not learn these lessons than we repeat them untl we do.
• We have taken on a human form to experience the emotional body and through such direct experience we ‘attain’ the highest – our Being.
• The human is always seeking, desiring, needing and wanting. It only experiences brief moments of happiness when it is engaged in true love relationship without neediness. The question is, “What is the human really seeking through another? – Here’s the answer – it is seeking itself, it’s own BEING.
• Being is ONENESS and yet it is your true HOME. Everyone is homesick and that’s why we all seek a good relationship without knowing it. When you find love, you find your home.
• A true relationship is a Holy Relationship and therefore is not needy, has no expectations nor demands but allows full freedom, love and forgiveness. Such a relationship is Heaven on earth.
• So many people crave soul-mates believing that such a meeting brings heaven-on-earth. The truth is that a soul-mate is the one who will teach you the most about yourself. In most cases it is the most painful.
• When neediness develops in a relationship, it is because the needy one has unresolved issues and thus feels that the partner might fulfill them.
• Our worst fears arise during relationships such as fear of loss, fear of rejection, fear of death of yourself or partner and so on. These fears arise to be met. Relationships are a mirror of these fears.
• When you refuse to run away from your fear, when you decide to stay with the perfection of your BEING then a vaster vision will come to you.
• If you look only at your fear then you will miss your vast Being. The minute you ask for a vision, for release, for understanding, for peace of heart, you will realize that your present difficulty is only a small part of you and the rest is going great. When you fully accept and embrace the fear as something that is going to make you stronger and more evolved then that’s what will happen.
• Fear in a relationship means that your need is not being met by you. What is it that I need that I am not getting? And you’ll see that it is a need you never gave yourself. As a child you might have been deprived of love or warmth but now as an adult you can give it to yourself by loving that forsaken child inside you.
• In a relationship you are ALWAYS presented with what is needed in you. When you insist upon another to give you what you want, you deprive yourself from it. The relationships is a mirror of our needs and it is up to us to give it to ourselves. Relationship is a mirror.
• Being ill is not bad, being rejected is not bad, being poor is not bad, being unloved is not bad – what is ‘bad’ is your rejection of it rather than fully experiencing it. All these so-called ‘bad’ are your lessons.
• The moment you uproot a fear by fully experiencing it with love, forgiveness and acceptance, you have healed it for all eternity.

What is a soul?

A soul is the fragment of Spirit that is busy seeking itself. A soul is an individuated mind from the Universal Mind. It evolves from lifetime to lifetime always seeking itself until it melts back into the Whole or Spirit. It is never at rest and is always evolving and ofte repeating the same lessons over and over until it learns them and then moves on to higher ones.

In Reality there is only Oneness playing all the roles and therefore our ‘suffering’ emerges the more personal (separated) we are from Source. This Source or Oneness is hard to define because no words can ever express that which is beyond them. However, for the sake of using a word, we call it Unconditional Love.
In our mad rush to experience our true home we risk many things for a glimpse of this unconditional love believing, very often, that we can get it from another.
The soul experiences everything and that’s how it expands its capacity to love. What it rejects has to be repeated over and over until it is grasped as ‘good.’ This is why so many lifetimes are needed to stop resisting, rejecting, avoiding and pushing away. Life is to be fully experienced and in that experience to become a LOVE rather than a FEAR.

Soul Ages

There are 5 soul levels on the earth plane and they are infant, baby, young, mature and old soul. In ascendance there is Transcedent Soul age and Infinite Soul Age.

Infant souls
are more found in countries like Australia and Africa. Infant souls live in the backwoods or in isolated parts of the world where they can cope with survival issues without the complexity of the technological world. They mate with other infant souls like them and their relationships are more stable because they ‘happen’ without expectation or demands or needs.

Baby souls
are more prolific in East Asia but are also found in North American countries such as small towns who gravitate towards strong rules of right and wrong, usually traditionally religious and also found in such groups as Ku Klux Klan and other very deep-set beliefs about right and wrong.
The baby soul is characterized by the perception of ‘me’ and other separate others. Baby souls cling to unshakeable beliefs of right and wrong. They usually stick together by these rules. They can kill to maintain their beliefs and that’s how historically baby soul activities created the Crusades, the Inquisition, religious campaigns and missionary zeals.
Baby souls like to be solid citizens and love to wave their flag. They are seen as righteous and they love models like the highly orthodox minister. In the Old West they were the ones to form vigilanty groups and an ‘eye for eye’ type of justice.
Baby soul age is the birth of religion usually controlled by an appointed minister who preaches more about sin than love.
Baby souls stick together in relationships and rarely mix with other ages.

Young Souls
Then we have young souls which supposedly abound in North America, Germany and other developed countries. These young souls have many different levels but they are all interested in material gain, in having worldly toys such as cars, clothes and the middle and higher levels of young souls crave worldly success and fame. It has been said that developed countries are controlled by young souls who are in government, law and make up many of the army, police, firemen and athletes.
Independence to a young soul is a key issue. They have the ability to go and get what they want out of life. They are the ones who initiate good salesmen, money-making schemes, internet marketing and will pursue anything if they can become successful. Success is usually their goal whether it is in money, running, health foods or just keeping fit.
Young souls flock to well-known universities so they can get degrees of prominence. They also believe in competition, “there is you and me and I am going to win.” They pursue fame, wealth or power at any price. They are also totally identified with their bodies and will take extreme measures to keep looking young by using plastic surgery or improving looks as so many actors and filmstars have done.
Young souls do not question their motives. They have difficulty having insights into their own or other people’s behaviour.
Young souls also are frequently involved in international conflicts over baby soul countries (which are often at war).

Mature Souls
The Mature soul questions the young soul’s bumper sticker that says, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” This is when the questions start…
“What am I doing here?”
“Who am I?”
A mature soul doesn’t actually asks these questions directly but come as a feeling from Source as if there is an emptiness, as if they are cast away from their Home and something feels terribly missing. They miss their families but when with them they don’t feel the satisfaction. It is always ‘something’ out there needing to be met but do’r quite know what it is.
Relationships are very important to mature souls but they often sabotage the relationship they want most.
I am familiar with mature souls because they form my very dearest friends. My older daughter is a mature soul who is a spiritual guide to many people. Mature souls usually make excellent guides, counselors and teachers but often lack faith in themselves.
The reason for the extreme sensitivity and emotionality of this soul age is because it is nearing the end of its evolution and as a result often suffers a dark night of the soul. The suicide rate among mature souls is the highest of all ages according to these teachings.
Mature souls are psychic and can easily tune into other people’s psychy. They can make good intuitive readings and when not feeling sad they are warm, loving and even joyous.
It has been said that Ernest Hemingway, Van Gogh were mature souls who sought to express their visions in their own unique way.
The mature soul is a time of creative flowering and they become their best when they are creative whether in the arts, music, painting or acting.
The mature soul is rising rapidly within the last 30 years or so. And, since we are living in an unprecedented time in our history as far as evolution is concerned, the mature soul can allow itself to move deeper into the Old Soul age.
Mature souls would hide rather than seek recognition like young souls do. Most mature souls seek a mate that they can keep for an entire lifetime and once they find that ‘special’ one they will stick to it but, unfortunately often sabotage their best efforts. This contrary side of their nature is simply because they have just transcended the young soul age that was materialistic and yet their striving for higher and deeper evolution of their soul is met with resistance like being caught in two opposite sides. Yet again, if they become determined to love who they are (their essence) then the sky’s the limit.
They are usually quite attractive physically and they carry an air of nobility.

Old Soul
Old souls are different from mature souls in that they are more sure of themselves and have found peace. They get attracted to mature souls but the relationship usually suffers because they are more detached while mature souls love to fix and point out what is wrong. Old souls have minimum needs and usually love their aloneness and simple lives.
Old souls are usually self-employed and keep to themselves but often quite friendly and easy-going. They are not interested in getting ahead but prefer to be left alone to do their thing. They follow their own draummer and may even appear eccentric at times.
Old soul types are often attracted to mature souls but the relationship is not often easy because Old Souls are more detached and although riendly and warm would rather be left alone than having demands made upon them.
Contrary to popular belief, old souls prefer the quiet life and when they publish a book would prefer not to be made a fuss over. The reason most people think that older souls are popular and would be well-know is because there are many teachers who publish many books and are well-known for their teachings, however, these are often high level mature souls.

Within each soul age there are seven levels of evolution and according to Michael’s channeled teachings it takes about a hundred lifetimes to go from one soul age to another with the exception of the mature soul who takes less time to rise to the level of old soul.

Old Souls are not plentiful and so relationships between them is grand when it happens but is not often the case. Mature and old souls often mix. It can be successful when the mature soul can accept more the detachment of the old soul. And, the old soul to accept the drama of the mature soul.

Questions and Answers

I did enjoy reading your booklet. The soul levels were new to me and fascinating. It helps explain a lot when you look around at the world and people. I also enjoyed reading a bit about your own experiences, it makes it very ‘relatable.’

Thank you, The wonderful thing about knowing these soul-ages is that there is greater sensitivity and understanding of how we are all One evolving towards our true Home, and yet it is all already within.

You say, ‘Everyone is homesick and that’s why we all seek a good relationship without knowing it’ yet you also say that you can give yourself the love you never did before. So does this mean that it is, or it is not, possible to be happy without a relationship?

The wonderful thing about our journey is that everything is karmic and before us to learn what we need to learn. Therefore if you don't have a relationship or do not want one then that's your journey as karmically 'arranged' by YOU for your own evolution. Nothing happens by chance and there are no accidents.
We reach a point in our life where we become paradoxical to ourselves due to misalignment with the conscious and subconscious desires. For example, you might crave a relationship to share your life while and it feels sincere yet subconsciously would rather be free without commitment. Once you fully know what you want above all, then you can attract it into your life.
If being alone is the best way for you to expand then so be it.

I ask this due to my own situation. I have been alone now over 2 years. I have dated only person in this time – for 2 hours. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever meet a suitable partner and sometimes I wonder if I can even be bothered. Then, more recently, I found myself thinking whether I want to live my life alone, and the answer was no, so I have started making some efforts to ‘date’, but I am not very motivated. I ask myself: Is this unhealthy? Am I kidding myself? Can you be okay alone? Can I actually have the sort of relationship that my heart seems to know about?

This is a common dilemma with most mature-souls. If you focus on what is truly needed within you such as the grasp of your true nature then what you truly need will surface and even materialize.

You wrote " the soul experiences everything and that's how it expands its capacity to love. Does this mean when we have experienced many experiences that we can now have a better understanding of what others go through and be more compassionate towards others. It is like the old saying when you have walked in another's shoes you can fully grasped what they are going through. Less judgement of the person and situation.

That's exactly the point. We are here on earth to experience directly every emotion. The reason we are human is to use that humanity for the greater evolution towards BEING, which is our true Home. Thus we have to experience human love before we can experience unconditional love. Unconditional love is our Home.

How would someone know where they are within the 7 levels of that particular soul?

It is all done intuitively. When emotional pain is directly experienced will lead you automatically into the level you are. All levels are our level of allowing fear and pain to teach us love. Each level brings us closer to unconditional love.

I feel that we can hold ourselves back from our evolution by choosing or rather only looking at the fear and not the love that is actually there.

Yes, when we focus on a fear rather than directly allow its experience then we make the fear 'real' to us and we get caught in it. However, if we directly experience the fear as a need for greater love, then we use fear as a catalyst for greater love expansion. In other words, see the fear not as a hindrance or a block but a step towards greater love unfoldment.

When you talk about being ill is not bad, being rejected is not bad, being unloved is not bad, being poor is not bad, what is bad is your rejection of it rather than fully experiencing it. " All these so called bad is our lessons.

Yes-- everything that we call 'bad or 'wrong' is simply our experience of what is NOT love. Therefore rather than trying to change it, deny it or indulge in it, we could use it for greater compassion, self-respect, expansion, understanding.
A young soul would look at a criminal and says, "hang him!!" while a mature soul would feel the pain of both victim and victimizer. An Old soul would look and say, " they are learning a lot what doesn't work." because the understanding is -- only LOVE works!

What could be the reason for the attraction of old souls to mature souls?
Old-souls are attracted to the experience of intensity because they are filled with love of life. They find mature-souls intense and energetic. Unless the mature soul is on a high level there is bound to create too much melodrama and negativity. This negativity will eventually drain the very energy that first attracted the old-soul and lack of communication occurs. The lower level-mature souls believe that their negativity is real and so indulge in it causing a big gap between them.

How can I learn more about these soul-ages?
Study Michael’s Teachings and quite a few books have been written on the subject.

I am afraid that knowing these soul-ages will make me judgmental!
Judgment occurs when we use such knowledge as an ego tool to defend our position. However, such wonderful information is bound to bring humility, compassion and understanding of the human condition. How can you judge someone wrong when you realize they can’t help where they are at. Rather it brings acceptance, tolerance and understanding.

Are young souls attracted to mature and old-souls?
Definitely but the relationships won’t last. For example, a young soul might feel the physical and sexual attraction much more than an old-soul. Many young-soul men are attracted to mature-soul women. Such women hold an allure and appeal to the young-soul but the moment they try to possess the mature-soul woman they make their biggest blunder.

What is the highest percentage of soul-ages?
It depends upon what country you are referring to. North America abounds in young souls and that’s why it is such a rich materialistic country. Achievers and success-oriented individuals are young-souls who are always looking for a score one way or another.
Repressed countries are often baby-soul ages who express their power through their religious beliefs. Dictators are often baby-souls who try to overpower others by their beliefs. Beliefs are the main-stay of baby-souls. This was evident by Nazism and the lives of Hitler, Mussolini, Goering and others whose beliefs (propaganda) was their main focus point.

Can we control someone’s soul-age either through helping them or teaching?
The need for control is still evident in baby-soul age, young-age and including mature-age in different degrees, of course. Baby-souls try to control through force. Young souls try to control by persuation and mature-souls control through subtle means such as manipulation of words and hints. However, all expansion and evolution is based on unconditional love where full acceptance rather than control is the focus.

How can we help another to evolve and expand?
By fully loving them as they are which is not easy, but it is the only way that works. People are only changed through acceptance and never through coercion or control.

You talk about soul-ages as they evolve through time, but what about here-now as the eternal ISness?
Excellent question! It is at this point that we accelerate our evolution, that is, when we recognize that nothing is happening and all lifetimes are contained within this Now-moment itself. The paradox is this – that we cannot see that time and space do not exist until we evolve to the point of seeing that nothing ever took place and all souls are fragments of the same BEING that we already are in this very here-now moment.

What is it that evolves?
It is vibration as it gets finer and finer. We evolve as if we spin faster and faster until we disappear and find that we have always been Home in the One-Self.
When I started out with Advaita teaching I was completely immersed in it but disregarded the human element. Remember you are a HUMAN BEING. The human is a becoming-process and ever evolving until it merges with its on BEING. BEING does not evolve, it does not learn, it does not accumulate or move but ‘IS’ itself. So we act as if we are a human form until all movements reach such a vibration through allowing, forgiving, accepting, surrendering that there is only BEING known as Unconditional Love or the Eternal Home. It is like climbing a very tall ladder that reaches beyond the clouds. Each step up makes us see more of what is underneath us until we reach the top and realize we had never gone anyplace but have been always here and now and everything surrounding us is US. In reaching the top we had such a connection with All-That-Is
that there is only ‘IS’ and has never been anything else but only appeared so. And the paradox is this – we keep ‘becoming’ until the Infinite soul-age is reached and then we function from a dimension that defies any explanation or description.

Little-known Way to rise above stuckness

2010-08-31T17:45:00.000-07:00

Many people feel emotionally stuck in these days of great shifting energy. We are evolving in a way unprecedented in history. This following video is a compliment to the first one uploaded 3 days ago. The first had to do with understanding stuckness and this one has to do with rising above it. Here it is...

Truly Burt, what is LOVE?

2010-07-29T17:16:00.000-07:00

Can you explain to me how sexuality and spirituality are the same? Sometimes sex disgusts me because it lacks love. Can you clarify?

We can never know love fully simply because it is the eternal truth itself. We are always learning about love in one form or another. Our journey on earth is about the discovery of our true nature of Being as LOVE itself.

The major lesson in Life is always the same -- it is LOVE!! Throughout history people have thought that God is an entity outside themselves and that's how all religions were started. GOD IS LOVE itself!

LOVE can express physically (sex); mentally (communication); emotionally (as neediness); spiritually (as Oneness). When love is expressed, it grows until we realize that LOVE is all there is. When we express love in its crudest form such as possessiveness, lust, control and perversion it is usually because we do not know any better or because we still happen to be on the still physical Density of vibration. However, even if this we do NOT make wrong then eventually a part of us will ask "What is it I want?" and it is here that we find that through possession, lust or what have you, we are looking for belonging, for oneness, for reaching out...in other words, we are looking for genuine love. Therefore it is through inquiring and accepting we grow and NOT making things wrong. When we make anything wrong then it grows in its 'wrongness' until it becomes a monster. This is why people eventually become mad, totally insane or totally perverted because they make wrong whatever is happening. Everyone is looking for the same thing but if one happens to be 'physical-oriented' then he/she will choose the physical express of lust, self-gratification and personal neediness. This can't be helped unless we sincerely ask, "What is it I want; what am I seeking?"

It is through awareness of what is happening that we grow and discover that it is genuine true love we seek....but never ever make anything wrong because then it will own you. Please do not see crude sex and lust as wrong but only 'ignorance' of the true meaning of love. The moment you have tolerance, understanding and non-judgment towards what you had considered 'wrong' before, then your heart opens and will find that EVERYONE is looking for the same thing. Once you fully see and understand this then you will see LOVE (God) everywhere. Another fear s also fear of money (which is love as abundance). Many spiritual seekers fear money that it will corrupt them and therefore they are making 'money' as 'wrong.' Then they will suffer lack and that's not spiritual. Spirituality is SPIRIT and therefore LOVE itself. See it everywhere and you start seeing God everywhere and that's the true abundant life. When you see God everywhere (LOVE) then every need will be fulfille; every want will be realized because God (love) is goodness itself and loves to give to its children. Please keep these in mind always.

The utter simplicity of Truth!

2010-07-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

My Mind keeps me locked in its continual activity. What can I do?

Anything you try to do about your mental activity is more individual mind controlling individual mind. This is what frustration is! Try an experiment -- Sit very still and ask yourself, "I will be alert for the next thought that will show up!" and as you relax watching for what the next thought could be you will find yourself temporarily empty of thought. Why? Simply because wayward thoughts are unconscious and the moment you become conscious of what is taking place the activity comes to a halt. Thnk a thought and then try to capture it, see what happens!
Just as the human mind is incessantly thinking, so is BEING empty and tranquil.
Watch this video...

The Open Secret to all spiritual questions

2010-06-15T15:52:00.000-07:00

Won't it be wonderful if we found a secret to answer all spiritual (Life) questions? Here's good news -- There is such a secret but it is an Open Secret because everyone knows it and yet never make use of it. I certainly took it for granted even after my experience with Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi in 73 It never occured to me, even then, that this secret he revealed was what I experienced 27 years later in the year 2000. One day, in utter exhausted frustrated over a relationship that I faced in catch-22 also known as between a-rock-and-a-hard-place, that I threw my hands up in the air and acknowledged my full ignorance regarding the solution of this problem. This surrender to Bhagavan brought me the experience of being a HUMAN BEING. It was these two open-secret words that clarified 27 years of reading, study and practice revealing this simple 'formula.' The words "Human Being" revealed to me more in those two minutes that in the past 27 years. It was the year of January 2000 when it became crystal clear I am a human being - a dualistic creature with two opposing forces ready to meet, anytime, to awaken the whole Being.

The Being plays the human role as if it is an individual and separate. It uses the human to seek for its completion forever feeling a lack or missing something. It forces it to seek in the world of matter until futility grabs its attention that what one is seeking is oneself -- One-Self (Unified Field Thoery). The moment one recognizes that he/she is seeking itself which is the Being whose nature is awareness, then there is the opening of the heart to ALLOW all the seeking (known also as suffering, frustration, confusion and fear) and through that ALLOWING become one with the BEING. The Being is ALLOWING itself known also as love, acceptance, forgiveness, openness, innocence, guiltlessness and compassion. Therefore as the human starts feeling the compassion towards its own fears and guilt it is immediately forgiven and thus the human and the being become integrated as One. It is this wholeness which is the awakening of the human-Being.

How to be intimate with yourself

2010-05-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

When the webcam video "Power in daily life" appeared stating that we focus on what we don't want rather than what we want, people wrote back saying -- "I know what I don't want but I am not clear what I want."
This is a common dilemma because all our emotional feelings of unconscious guilt such as the feeling of lack, heaviness, sadness, depression and loneliness and so on are the hunger and yearning of the soul to know itself. There is nothing wrong with emotional pain and we can literally use it to expand the knowledge of our true nature by feeling the feeling. Watch these videos. Here is part one...

How to find peace in these changing times

2010-05-02T18:05:00.000-07:00

We are living in times of great change (2010-2012) and most people are feeling its impact. Everything is coming to a head. People are no longer hiding diplomatically from what they feel but telling it like it is. All emotions, long held within us are now finally coming to the surface. These times of great change are affecting not only our world politics and economy but our emotions and relationships.
The question is, “How can we find peace within this great inevitable change?”
Since everything is change then we have to find what is constant. It is imperative that we find what is constant in order to find peace. In fact, this great change is happening as a means for the evolution and shift of consciousness.

This article emerged from two sources. First are the flow of emails I get worldwide from concerned and even frightened individuals. Secondly it emerged from my own experience and the change that is happening in my own life. This forced me to turn inward toward the Higher Wisdom and ask for guidance.

The 'voice' (silent knowing) emerged as great compassion explaining that these times are very volatile and very open at the same time. This meant that if you ever had someone not telling you the truth of how they felt, this time they would lay it down on the line without holding back. Angers, grievances, old dislikes and judgments will all surface at this time of great change. Men, who are very yang and not given to sensitivity will start feeling feelings they never felt before. Everything is surfacing. Since the world is primarily run by men who are power-conscious there will start being a change to bring balance by introducing the power of the female (compassion, tenderness, uderstanding, clarity, love. ) Now we are at a time (2010-2012) where the time has come for the balance of power to shift.
It has already begun, and it shall continue to prosper until the balance of power lies predominantly in the hands of the female aspect. The female aspect will rule the world, that is, the softness instead of the hardness of war -- greater kindness, sweetness, gentility, compassion and feeling the feelings without shame, guilt or fear.

Those who are now in touch with the female aspect such as 'spiritual' teachers shall come to guide the world. These ones will find the answers of constancy beyond change within them. It will come from their stillness, the inner voice of silent knowing. Men, as a rule involved in world affairs and politics have lost touch with their emotions and failed to evolve. Now the shift is happening where the challenge shall force the balance towards the female principle. Relationships are now on the verge of collapse in most areas and many couples are beginning to feel the strain of facing the truth of their nature. Emotions are surface feelings that have to be experienced fully and completely. It is through these emotions that we will finally find what is even deeper, which is that which is constant. Intelligent and sensitive women are finding it hard in these times to communicate their true feelings because they are also faced by the challenge of the male energy. Female energy does not mean women anymore than male energy means just men. Both energies exist as polarities within both men and women. Men, as a rule, are governed by yang male energy while women are rued by yin female energy.

So, how do we find balance? We find balance by knowing that change is constant and always leading towards greater wholeness. In order to find peace within this constant change we have to discover the three ‘rules’ that NEVER change. These three ‘rules’ of unchanging constancy are what will give us peace, understanding, balance, compassion and joy in life.

Please pay close attention to these three CONSTANTS because without them there will be no peace nor understanding of what is happening. These three constants never ever change. In fact they never had a beginning and are beyond time and space. Here they are:
1. You Exist. This is the first constant. Therefore, the first constant in our life is 'YOU.' The fact is that you exist and, you know this beyond a doubt. This fact will never ever change. You will always exist in one form or another and even though the body may drop, yet, another form will take its place. This first rule of constancy is imperative to FEEL within your Being. Once you start seeing this obvious rule of constancy that will never ever change then you will find your true nature. Your true nature is consciousness combined with the awareness of it. It is this awareness that is constant.

2. You are the One. The second constant rule is that YOU is all there is and YOU is the Source. The Source is ONE. Everything is interdependent, interrelated and interconnected. Everything is moving towards Source of "I AM" -- therefore "I AM" is the only constant.

3. The circle of perception. This is the consciousness that although changing yet it is always contained within the awareness of it that never does change.
There is no reality 'out there' at all but only what we perceive to be so. This is imperative to know. What you believe to be wrong is only wrong to your perception. What you believe to be right is only right to your perception. Whatever you feel is happening ‘out there’ is only ‘real’ to your perception of it.
The 'you' you think you are is the feeling, living and experiencing whatever you are perceiving. Your perception is your choice and is always choosing between love or fear. The paradox is that there is only love and therefore fear is a frustration of love. This means that your feelings of fear, which cannot be helped as they arise, are the 'lessons' you still need to FEEL inside you as perception.

This perception is now coming to a head in these critical times of great change. Emotions are surfacing more than ever to be met with allowance and forgiveness, that is, to FEEL them as okay and not even wish them away, and that's how balance is restored.
The third rule is therefore the circle of perception, that is, what we perceive returns to us as 'reality.' To make it even clearer – what goes around comes around. If we perceive an ugly world then we feel ugly, depressed. If we perceive love despite what we feel is happening then that's what will be in our 'reality.'

It is okay to have negative feelings arise for these are beyond our control. These negatives are essential and show us where we are lacking balance. They are our 'lessons' to help us towards greater stability through allowing, acceptance and love. We can 'choose' through perception (by understanding) that our world is nothing more than our perception of it and has no other reality other than that.
We have the gift of imagination and what we imagine can materialize the moment we believe it. Imagination is perception. Perception is not good or bad but simply what the mind perceives according to its belief system. There is no reality ‘out there’ but only our “I AM” nature. This nature “just IS” and therefore being Oneness is known as LOVE. When we deviate, in our perception from this love then we suffer separation created by our perception. Separation cannot exist because there is only “I AM.”

If we can abide in these three rules of constancy then we can meet any adversities that are arising at these times of great change and thus profit by them. Explore these three rules of constancy and you will evolve at an accelerated rate. Remember that when the challenges arise unexpectedly, they are bound to be overwhelming at times as they represent our deep lessons for balance and greater evolution of consciousness. There is no wrong in this world except our perception of wrong.
Again, how do we meet these ‘lessons’ of fear known also as desperation, anger, depression, grievance, hate, negativity and all forms of separation? Meet this feeling as something that you can’t help feeling, and yet you are NOT a victim of it. You can allow it by FEELING it in your stillness without trying to get rid of it or controlling it in any way. Have the courage my friend to do this when you feel as if giving up on the world through desperation. Sit with this feeling of separation and relax into it through its bodily sensation without thinking about it. Feel the feeling. Then having done so say ‘thank you.’ This simplicity takes courage but its rewards are far far greater than can be imagined.

NOTE: If you have further questions please email me at burtharding@shaw.ca

The Miraculous Law of Allowing

2010-03-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Spiritual seeker, if you are still struggling and uncertain then this article might help you.

For so many of you still struggling to understand the spiritual life, this article could be just what you need. Imagine your heart warm and open, your spine tingling with new life and you feel like floating on air. When you see the simplicity of what you are about to read you will see colors brighter, the sounds clearer and it will be as if you are experiencing your surroundings for the first time. This is how you’ll feel when you release the ‘holdings’ (perceptions of how life is). This booklet will help you with a pleasant simple way of seeing that will do just that.

The Two Ways of Spirituality
There are two ways of ‘seeing’ (viewpoint) that are absolutely essential and when grasped by the heart that is open and receptive, these two ingredients will shower your life with abundance.
They are:

1. Life (Unified Field) is love and goodness.
2. We can trust it by doing nothing …just allowing it.

When we look at the two ingredients above we shrug our shoulders and meet it with either some doubt or disbelieve its effortless simplicity.

Many spiritual seekers have read and studied the above two points but have NOT embraced such simplicity with their heart and so many have written, “I want to regain my health and I am doing this and that…” or “I want abundance and I am trying to allow it.” And so forth.

This law of allowing is so simple that it overrides our mental ability to grasp it. In fact, even the slightest thought about it right now, as you read this, could block any further understanding.
The perfect statement, when uttered sincerely and honestly from the heart, would go something like this: “I am allowing for my natural well-being from Source within.”
Let me give you an example how complicated the conditioned mind can be. In my recent reply to some questions on youtube found in this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7U521OICB0
commented regarding my statement, “to allow it” by writing the following, “But I can’t allow it because “I” don’t do anything.”
The mind ever-so-ready with a reply missed the whole heart-felt meaning. It missed the fact that allowing means there is no “I” to do anything and merely quoting it clearly indicates the way the mind obstructs understanding.
Allowing means exactly that – there’s no one to do anything and so allowing is not a ‘doing’ but a trust of the heart in the moment. Allowing means that there’s no one who allows…just no interfering by doing anything and that’s allowing.

Fear will grip the seeker with horror because non-doing for an active mind is like death. However, stay open right now and see that if you fully grasp that Life is love, that it is good and whole then why interfere with it especially with a conditioned mind that can’t see further than its own nose?

Important Pointers
The major thing therefore is this – to start ‘seeing’ how good and glorious and whole Life is in its natural uninterrupted flow.
How do we start seeing this?
Here are a few ways to explore in order to give us some pointers to open our heart:

* Nothing happens by chance.
* There are no accidents in Life.
* Everything that is presently happening is caused by you, that is, by your perception based on conditioned automatic viewpoint.
1. You are choosing all the time – whatever is happening to you, you have chosen with your choice perception. If you are having a tough time, feeling stressed and burdened then that is the law of attraction working perfectly to produce your creation according to your perception.
2. Our choice is limited to two emotions only – love or fear! It is very simple. If you are not feeling good with yourself then you are not aligned with the Source of you, which is wellness. This is called fear. If you feel aligned even though you might be sick physically then you are flowing with love. Healing will happen in due ‘time.’

You need do nothing
All the great teachings teach non-doing. The Course in Miracles states emphatically, “You need do nothing!” Therefore all great teachings teach allowing, surrendering, letting the God “I AM” to take over. They teach acceptance, relaxation, forgiveness and flowing which literally means…
Forgiveness means there’s nothing to forgive.
Acceptance means there’s no one to accept.
Allowing means there is no “I” to allow.
Relaxation means that you let go of attempts at relaxing, just like the baby falls asleep without its attempt to sleep.

Now the key question is, “How do we allow when there’s no “I” to do the allowing?” Ponder this question please and see how simple and direct is the reply. Close your eyes right now and visualize your true nature as pure awareness, just being, and then also imagine many things happening around you including thoughts of control, resistance and wishing it would be different and so on. You simply observe so detached that you find yourself at peace even though ‘things’ seem to be happening. If you can see this clearly then you have witnessed ‘allowing’ in its pure state.

“But how can I trust that Life will do what is needed?” Again, this question can only be answered by your own relaxed mental state when observing detached. For example, take the simple act of eating -- When you place a morsel of food in your mouth, do you try to digest it, assimilate it, make sure it is properly distributed by your organs and do you direct it to do its job and eliminate what is necessary to eliminate? It is all done without your help. In fact, one moment of doubt that you can swallow that morsel can choke you. We have learned to trust our body because it is guided by Life. Now it is a matter of allowing the same with our thoughts. Thoughts of limitation and fear cannot affect us unless we resist them or wish them away or try to control them. If we allow thoughts of fear to cross our mind and we watch detached then soon our attention will relax and the thoughts will cease.

Here are more facts of the importance of allowing…

1. Did you ever wonder why we experience déjà vu? Did you ever feel you knew who was on the phone even before it rang? Did you ever think about a person before they appear? The unaware mind calls these episodes co-incidenaces. Now here is a mind-boggling fact, there are no co-incidences in an intelligent universe. Nothing happens by chance and there are no accidents. They are all brought about by our own conditioned perceptions.
2. Here’s another fact of DejaVu -- our mind lives in linear time as if it is solid and cast in stone. Yet nothing is cast in stone and everything is fluid and plastic. We seem to live in linear time which also means we have lived this moment before it happened. Did you ever wonder why you keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again? Isn’t it logical to assume that you are repeating what you haven’t resolved yet? In other words, you are repeating mistakes because you are resisting the lessons from learning them.
The moment we start allowing incidents, happenings, situations and feelings of grievances then they lose their contraction and through allowing (forgiveness) they melt into Oneness. In other words, since there is no individual person to keep the contract going then the ‘happenings’ disperse and dissolve like clouds when they have lots of space to move. Thus, by allowing our worst thoughts without even the wish to get rid of them they dissolve from their contracting small tight state into an expanded dissolved vastness. This is how FEAR transmutes into LOVE.

Fear & Negativity are not bad
(they are lessons to be learned)
Here’s an important reminder – fear and all negative emotional pain is NOT bad – they are merely lessons we have yet to learn. If we don’t learn them, we keep suffering and even escalating the pain until we break down. On the other hand, if we allow them because all ‘wrong’ is a misperception then we have learned our lesson and the forthcoming ‘lesson’ has been resolved and dissolved.
Every time we allow (forgive) we actually collapse time in our favor so that if we were meant to have some mishap due to some unlearned lesson then it might not happen as ‘time’ collapses when that episode should have taken place.

How often couples wanted to get their own way until they actually chose being right above being happy and forgiving? The result of the need to be right is regret, shame, guilt, loneliness, sleepless nights and old-age beyond one’s time. This is why the Course in Miracles asks us, “Would you rather be right or happy?” Wanting to be right is the way of the conditioned mind and it will sacrifice itself for the purpose of being proved right even at the cost of its own physical, mental and spiritual well-being. Therefore, when we keep the negative thoughts by indulging in them, justifying their existence and even seek getting even we are destroying our very life-force – going against the flow of life! Through allowing we move with natural law flowingly and easily and simply. This means we are willing to let our self-image slide (ego) and thus undo it without ‘doing’ anything all simply by allowing.

Our Life scipt is already written. This can’t be proved through your logical mind but it can be proved by your heart when you start allowing. Through allowing many little miracles start happening.

The Law of Attraction
So many books were written about the Law of Attraction without simplifying its workings. Here’s the simplification of the law of attraction. Listen to your heart and see if you are causing poverty-consciousness, negativity, limited thinking or spiritual seeking through the intellectual books alone. If you are, then know clearly that the answers relie on when you fully relax your limiting perceptions.
Here’s the Law of Attraction in its briefest explanation:
1. Have the intention.
2. Allow the outcome of that intention.

If the intention is to have a new car then you will have it to the extent of that intention. If in your intention you see yourself working hard to have that car then you’ll end up working hard to get it. On the other hand, if you see clearly that you don’t need to work at it then Life will draw to you opportunities of when, how, which, what is necessary to get it.
I am a lazy private human being. I love people very much but I also love my own alone space. My intention has always been to work effortlessly at the things I love and my survival will be taken care of. Now I offer many things freely and still pay my rent, have good food and enjoy myself with what I need.

When people come to see me in Supersentience sessions one-on-one I ask them what their questions are about life. Then I write these questions down and do not answer them. Gradually I lead the ‘person’ into a fully relaxed state of Supersentience and they consciously answer their own questions clearly and emphatically. It has never failed. Where do they get this incredible ability to answer questions that they couldn’t answer before? The answer is again very simple – when their minds are in alpha brain-wave level they are more in touch with their holographic essence of being and for a few moments, unknown to them, they transcend their linear time script.

Through allowing a whole new realm of being opens up for us and begin to understand things we couldn’t even read about without getting shocked. Here are some facts we get to know…

Our Life Script is already written
Our life script is already written and we merely go through the steps day-by-day repeating what had gone before to learn what we needed to learn. This learning can ONLY happen through allowing (which is forgiveness, accepting, letting-go and trusting the God “I AM.” When Life keeps repeating the same problems, fears and emotions then it is clear we are repeating unresolved patterns that are escalating into dysfunctional areas.

Our Life script being already written, every step we allow in our life becomes our lessons learned. Life is goodness and love itself and every fear and mental stress is merely what is needed to learn our next lesson. When it is learned than ‘time’ is collapsed in our favor.
In our Being we are already perfect love and this Life is called the holographic essence of Being. We live our linear time to learn what is needed to enter the realm of our holographic Being. This is often referred to as Home or Garden of Eden or Heaven or Simply Being.

Note: Make use of Burt’s booklets on the website:
www.burtharding.com plus youtube videos.
Email burtharding@shaw.ca

The Healing Miracle of Embracement

2010-02-28T10:15:00.000-08:00

This article has been the direct result from questions received regarding the booklet “How to be Intimate with yourself.” The term ‘intimacy’ is an embracement of our humanity.

A man who was diagnosed with serious eye damage due to glaucoma and cataracts followed the doctor’s advice to medicate but the results in taking eye-drop drugs produced side-effects in exhaustion and lack of clarity. Turning within to embrace this problem with the full knowing that nothing happens by chance, he wanted to know what was the cause of it. No answer emerged except a deeper knowing that we are the cause of everything that happens to us. He dwelt on this knowing that he is the Cause and not an effect. This self-responsibility opened up ways to look at this situation differently. He stopped the medications, got rid of his prescription glasses while out walking and fully embraced his blurred vision. Soon this acceptance brought a different viewpoint. Few months later he was called for an appointment at St. Paul’s hospital for some eye-photos and visual-field test. His condition remained the same and the structure of the damaged eyes revealed no change, however, the visual field-test revealed something entirely different – his actual vision improved. Embracement was the healing factor.

In my work conducting one-on-one sessions has proved to be an eye-opener over the years. The body’s ability to heal itself is remarkable and miraculous when there is the embracement of what happens to it.
Just a few weeks ago from this writing I had a client on Skype who was suffering from insomnia, aches and pains, headaches and frequents bouts of anxiety. After an intensive hour of deep exploratory questions and openness of heart listening with deep intent, she reported great progress just from one session – had a good sleep for the first in a long time followed with a more relaxed attitude with hardly any aches. Her embracement of her situation after we talked became the healer.

“The world is falling into greater chaos. The whole earth is quickening. The heart of humanity is quickening in anticipation of the culmination of this epoch, this era of your history, to come into harmony, and into non-separation. In this timing, as the change of consciousness, the expansion, is brought forth in these last years, so will the fear also be brought forth—the polarity of harmony—at last to be embraced into the Light.” (P’taah’)

What is Embracement?
It is to love – to learn to love every little thing until nothing you feel can ever feel wrong again. It sounds like a tall order when you first read it or hear about it, until you start discovering something within you that love was always your greatest love. It is natural to enjoy, to want to be loved, wanted, appreciated, paid attention to and feel you belong. Love is complete, whole and it swallows up everything else and turns it into itself. Love loves to love. As children we cannot do without it; as teenagers we seek it constantly and as adults we suffer deep pain without it.
The most important thing, the most outstanding thing is you, it is who you are in your natural state. It is your unlimited potential for love. Love is the most extraordinary thing and is the beauty and glory of life. Nothing has meaning without love because it is the ultimate truth of you. The best definition of human being is this – you are love, period. When love is not experienced as a feeling then there is emotional suffering immediately.

All emotional suffering is a lack of love for oneself – lack of self-respect, self-hate, feeling less-then, feeling incomplete as if something is wrong with you, feeling as if you are not good enough. All guilt, shame, fear and suffering stem from loss of love. We hang on to people we love because it is our way of feeling that love. Once we discover our true nature as love then we no longer cling because oneness is not only the law but the only truth. When you love who you are just as you are then you automatically accept and love others. Nothing is separate from anything else.

Love is not acquired, attained like a goal or accomplished. Love is this very moment as you read this and it can never be any other way.
When we feel love by allowing ourselves to experience life as it is then we are filled with gratitude, joy and a peace that surpasses the intellectual understanding.

Did you ever feel the wonder of life around you? Did you ever feel heart-felt laughter? Did you ever feel so happy that nothing bothered you at that moment? What is that, other than love-fulfilled?

How often people have asked and sought enlightenment thinking that it was something to be achieved. What is enlightenment except loving every facet of life as it is.

When you feel love then you are everyone you are with – there is no separation, no judgement and no fear.
When you feel love then you are being all you can be, in fact you are God. Did you ever wonder who or what God is? Pause for a moment and contemplate is – isn’t God love itself? It is not an entity outside of you since nothing can possibly be outside of you. God IS! These two words of “GOD IS” says it all and you need no further knowledge. Once you fully realize the truth of these two words you have grasped the simplicity and yet profoundly of the ultimate truth.

We feel the richness of life when we love and pulsate with that love. Just pause and FEEL out all the qualities that love generates and you have the sum total of not only what you are but all you can be. There is nothing greater than love and there is nothing that can be outside of love.

How to regain love
(embrace that which is not love)

When we don’t feel love how do we regain it? Simply say ‘thank you’ to the feeling that is now devoid of love. A feeling devoid of love could be a hundred different feelings of negativity such as boredom, listlessness, fatigue,apathy, indifference, gloominess, sadness, loneliness, heaviness, fear, anxiety even leading to depression and desperation. What are these feeings but a loss of love. This is why even in relationship we fear loss of love or rejection of love. We can’t help feeling either love or fear.

Love or Fear
There are basically only two emotions – love or fear. Emotional feeling is not true feeling but a conditioned state. For example, if you haven’t known much love as a child between 1 to 7 years of age then chances are you suffer some inner drama and fear because you have been deprived of the very life-force of love. So emotions show up as either emotional love (needy love) or fear.

Love is wholeness and therefore life itself known as Oneness. When this fear is not experienced then we suffer some form of fear either subtle or gross. Subtle fear can be skepticism, cynicism, lack of trust, loss of innocence, resentment, judgement, disliking, self-consciousess or discomfort. Gross fear could be depression, anger, desperation, suicide-proness, self-hate, deep loneliness, paranoia or desire to hurt and kill.

So how can we overcome these fears if we have never known love as a child and many fears have taken over our life?
Fears arise because love seems to be missing and so feel unsafe, insecure and alone. However, here’s the good news. You don’t need to get love – you are IT already whether you like it or not at the moment. You are born in love simply because Love is Oneness and nothing can be separate from it. Yet it is this unawareness of our Oneness that generates feelings of separation. Therefore, just as LOVE is Oneness, so is fear separation.

How do you deal with moments of fear?
Since love is like the sun always shining yet it can be covered up by clouds and gives us the feeling that it is not present. Similarly when we suffer depression, upsetness, sadness or gloominess (any fear) we hav merely covered up the love with the clouds of darkness instead of the ever present light. So how do we embrace this darkness? How do we start?...

Well, the first rule is this – while gripped in the feeling of darkness are you willing to see the light even though you don’t actually see it? Just like when it’s a dark day hiding the sun you can still ‘see’ that the sun is hidden above the clouds. If the answer is ‘yes’ then simply say “thank you for the gloominess or sadness or upsetness or hurt or whatever. Just say, “thank you for making me aware that even though I don’t see the sun yet I know it’s there.” It is this simple to embrace every negative quality that reacts upon you.

Some people have said that they can’t get rid of the drama even if they tried. So what’s wrong there? There’s nothing ever wrong but simply do not feel like getting rid of the anger yet because they still seek justification for the feeling no matter how dark, and, it is also okay.
If you feel this need for justification of your anger then acknowledge it and say “Thank you” or making me aware that I wanted to feel validated, acknowledged and that, my friend, gives you the validity and justification you needed. Remember always – you are NOT a victim. Always acknowledge how you feel without judging or blaming another. How you are is how YOU ARE!! The world of your experience is the world of your perception.
Therefore, how you FEEL is how you have chosen (consciously or unconsciously) to feel. You are not a victim. No one has the power over you unless you give them that permission to have that power over you consciously or unconsciously.

You can learn to love fear when it happens by simply understanding that fear is the frustration of love. Fear is a fear of loss of love whether losng someone physically through death, rejection or loss.

All feelings are either love or fear, period. So, how is negative energy not love when our true nature is love? Negative energy is still the need for love but it is like two sides of the same coin. Love is the sun and fear is facing away from it and seeing the shadow.
Suppose you are feeling jealousy, anger, frustration and so on, how are these feelings love?

Okay, suppose you are feeling jealous now? Isn’t it because you want to feel loved and instead you feel the loss of that love?
Suppose you feel angry? Isn’t it because you are not getting your own way; you are not feeling in control? Why do we need control? Isn’t it because our heart knows we are sovereign beings, oneness-love itself?

Why do we get easily hurt?
Isn’t it because we want to feel special? Why do we want to feel special? Isn’t it because we know deep inside that we are love and therefore special?

Why do we act defensively and attack as a reaction?
Isn’t it because you take yourself to be the image you have made of yourself? Isn’t your image a personal construction made up from imagination?
Why do you need to protect it? Isn’t it because down deep inside you know it is not real and struggle not to face that fact? If you knew that your image was just an image, why would you want to protect it?
Why do we protect and fear being vulnerable?
Isn’t it because you fear having someone see you as you think you really are?
Here’s the good news – you are NOT how you think you are at all. That’s a fact that once realized is very liberating. You are LOVE itself! So, what if you were to embrace your vulnerability instead of protecting it? Can you imagine the freedom and love that would emerge from such embracment?
“But it takes a lot of courage and I don’t have that courage!!” Such a statement is understandable because ,most people do not feel they deserve the love they already are…isn’t that a kick in the pants?

Here’s a way to picture embracement and carry it out! …

Visualize a sad lost little child feeling unwanted, unloved and carries the pain of feeling rejected. You look at this child and feel compassion and love thinking, “How could anyone not love this child?”
You approach this child filled with so much warmth and love that you kneel down, hold its hands and look straight into its eyes without saying a word. You are so filled with this clear understanding of love that you convey this energy into the child’s heart. The child’s face softens and the sadness becomes replaced with a bright look of trust.
This ‘child’ is your pain and the compassion you have towards it is your embracement of it.

Forgiveness
“A Course in Miracles uses the same approach but uses the label forgivenss. How are they the same?”
The best definition of forgiveness is given by “A Course in Miracles” when it says that true forgiveness happens when there is the realization that there’s nothing to forgive.
Forgiveness is not forgiving anyone for what they have said or done but to see that whatever happened was your perception only. Why is it like this? All acts that we deem ignorant, repellent, cruel or hurtful are simply how we feel what we are looking at. For example, if you see someone beating a dog you might exclaim, “but I can never see myself beating a dog and so how is that in my perception?” It is not the act itself that mirrors you but your reaction to it. Anything that makes you react means it is a sensitive issue in your memory.

Now, how does forgiveness work with embracement? Embracement cannot happen until we forgive what we see. If you ‘see’ your act of anger as justified then you couldn’t embrace it honestly. You would nurse your anger as your right. Therefore, would you rather be right or happy?
At this point embrace your need to justify your anger and your need to continue the anger feeling. This honest acknowledgment will help you to see how you choose your emotions and that, in itself, will give you the strength to take self-responsibility.
It is through self-responsibility that we forgive and embrace into our true nature.

Here are some facts about love. Love is Oneness and therefore
anyone you judge is self-judgment. How you feel about another mirrors that feeling in you. When you love another then that feeling is in you. When love is experienced you are being yourself…your natural Self. The moment you judge by making something wrong, you have that ‘wrong’ inside you. Anything that stays inside you that is other than love places you automatically into misalighnment with the flow of life. When you are out of flow you automatically feel negative. The feeling of negativity is a clear indicator that you are out of sync with the universe. Once you experience something negative you cannot get rid of it or hope it goes away or control it – all you can do is embrace it.

The difference between thinking and feeling!
Unless we love who we are it will be difficult to know the difference between thought and feeling. Why? -- when we are not in-tune with our being we become active mentally thus spent most of our energy thinking-about-it. People who are negative very often find it hard not to think most of the time…

Thinking is always ‘about-it!’
Feeling is always immediate and direct.

Here’s an example, let’s say you write a book about love and know all there is to know about it as far as songs and poetry and stories go. You are fascinated with love. But here’s the kicker – you can’t know love until you FEEL IT in your heart pulsing and alive. Love is not a thought but a feeling, a knowing of joy, it’s feeling alive.
You cannot love another until you love you. But here’s the good news! – you already love you but you just don’t know it. And, it is this lack of knowing that eats away at you believing there’s something wrong or you are missing something when in truth it is all a conception created by the thinking part of you based on memory.

“You say that all feeling is immediate and direct, how about negative feeling then?”
Negative feeling is immediate and direct whether it is a reaction or self-absorption. The reason it is termed ‘negative’ because it negates the love we are in truth. In this feeling we suffer until we are able to become conscious of who it is that is suffering! Who is suffering is our past – the self-image we created based on memory from past experiences. However, if we embrace the moment as it is without the story (which is past) then we remain present, immediate and direct with the sensations in the body. We embrace the sensation as that lost child within us and show it compassion (forgivenss is automatic). Then healing takes place.

How do you start feeling the love you are?
By embracing every negative part of you; to become intimate with every human weakness until you can start feeling the yearning within it for freedom and goodness. You can only find the goodness through that which is not good. Why? -- because that which is ‘not good’ is not our natural state and is therefore a conditioned programmed concept.
Here’s an illustration – one day you get hurt by feeling that your lover rejected you. You ‘listen’ to this feeling as the sensation in your body, you get in touch with that ache. You feel the heaviness within your heart area. You touch or tape that area and say, “Even though this body feels the ache of rejection yet I fully and deeply accept myself.” (the more feeling you put into it, the more power goes into your healing process. After doing it for a few times you will start to feel greater energy. This energy becomes your connection to your love that RETURNS TO YOU.

You are a human being
When yu embrace the human part of you, the seeking and never-satisfied part of you, it will become bonded with the Being and the two integrate.
Why do most people find it hard to love? Isn’t it because they do not love who they think they are?
When you embrace a fear completely, where’s the fear? All negative emotions have one thing in common. Do you know what that is? It is called resistance! This resistance is found in all negative emotions. When we embrace a negative, it stops being a negative because of one simple rule – the negative resistance has been accepted, loved, embraced and therefore it is seen as the illusion it always was. The reason most ‘negative’ people hang on to their feelings is because they want validation, justification for their feelings and so there are other factors that are now in control such as pride, self-image and the need to control. Now here’s the beauty – the moment we embrace it all as being okay and truly meant it then all resistance is gone and our innocent nature surfaces an a sweetness emerges. This is how fear is turned and transformed into love.

Here are more facts about love – all healing is done through love – doctors, nurses, therapists and helpers can give us a hand in encouraging us to relax and feel okay but love is the only true healer. This is why Jesus performed such miracles of healing. Jesus was the personification of love.
Remember always – there’s only LOVE and nothing else is real but only relative to it. Anything else you think you are is just imagination.

Now we come to the million dollar question? What is love? A billion people will give a billion different definitions because love is the mystery and Beingness of Life. It is the force that rotates the earth around the sun. It is the gravity that makes us walk upright in a fast moving planet. It is the force that turns a fetus into a living human being. It is the energy that blooms a flower. It is what keeps your heart beating, blood circulating and everything doing its proper thing. It is the highest intelligence. Nothing works but love. The best laid plans in the world cannot come close to love. There is no success without love. When you finally embrace a negative, it gives you the clarity to see its illusion and makes apparent your inner richness, gratitude and glory.

Tomorrow when you get up in the morning to greet the day just say thank you for another day. Feel the blessing of your body, of being a unique ‘you’ and yet part of it all. Say “I AM” and know beyond a doubt that this “I AM” is the holiest, grandest being there is.

NOTE: Send your questions to burtharding@shaw.ca
Website -- www.burtharding.com
Videos -- www.youtube.com/burtharding

How to be Intimate

2010-02-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

Oftentimes when email questions I receive follow a particular pattern something gets triggered which literally forces me to write about it. The following recent emails have provoked such a response. Here are some of them…

“I keep wanting honesty from my relationships and yet I make it impossible to elicit such honesty since I counteract their honesty when given.”

“You suggest for me ‘to be’ but how can I when I feel such guilt?”

“I feel so stuck despite years of study and reading from major teachings.”

“I have felt a heaviness in my system ever since I can remember and yet nothing has ever helped me, why?

“I can’t seem to live the truth I feel I know so well!”

We have all read enough and so this article will be focused on direct experience. Before we can have a direct experience of what seems to create these disturbing and confusing questions, let’s make one thing perfectly clear, which is, the vast difference between thinking and feeling. Our questions are based on FEELING and yet we think about them rather than FEEL them directly.

What is the vast difference between THINKING and FEELING?

First of all, thinking is always “about-it” but never IT, itself. So, when you think about something, it is always “about it” and not IT directly. Thus we not only miss it but exacerbate it. On the other hand, FEELING is immediate; feeling is direct; feeling cannot be solved by thinking for it only compounds it!

Trying to make sense of a feeling by thinking about it is like trying to fly by flapping your arms. And yet, absurd as it may seem, this is exactly what creates most of the questions I get. You can’t figure out a feeling because it is impossible. Thinking emerges from conditioned thought and so it cannot understand feeling anymore than darkness can understand light.

Feeling is not a thought. Feeling is awareness combined with memory. For example, let’s say as a child you were laughed at in school and felt inadequate. Now you find yourself, many years later, disliking anyone immediately that laughed at you (or suspected they were laughing at you). No amount of thought regarding your feeling can alter it. Your perceptual memory of the incident has become frozen as a memory in your cellular genetic code and you react without having the slightest idea why. And, even if you found out why it would still trigger the feeling. The only way we could rise above such a feeling would be through the awareness without its conditioned perception. Yet people keep studying and reading material while being stuck with their conditioned perceptions, hence the usual frustration and confusion

So, what can we do? -- since feeling is direct and immediate and ever-present, then it is the awareness of such a feeling without its memory (judgement, story, thought) that we can cleanse the feeling from its painful experience. Here’s how…

First, acknowledge the FEELING just as it is without any judgement or blame towards anyone especially yourself. A good friend of mine pictured her heaviness like an anchored ship unable to move. Feel your feeling and give it a shape, color or metaphor. This picture would help in not thinking about the story or judgment of being good or bad. This feeling is usually a nagging discomfort, a self-consciousness we have had since childhood; it could feel like a guilt, shame, fear; a feeling of not being-good-enough; a feeling as if we have done something wrong or lacking something. And, if you are true to yourself you’ll discover that this feeling has been with you most of your life.

This feeling is in everyone whether we admit it or not because it is our very essence craving expression. It is our core Being reaching out to itself wanting intimacy. Since most people are not aware of this inner craving for love because it is seen as personal attachment then it is rarely experienced as it actually is. It is in experiencing this inner core that we finally wake up to our true essence of Being. People who battle with this feeling, while being interested in spiritual truth, often confuse the issue with personal pain-body and so miss the collective quality of such a happening.

How is it a collective feeling? Even as you read this booklet you will resonate with it and, in total honesty, you know it relates to you. Yet if you handed this booklet to another person who was also honest they will feel the same way. Therefore, isn’t it logical to assume that it is NOT personal but a collective (universal) experience?

What keeps you separate from that intimacy is the fear you are not good enough; not worthy of love or awakening. This is the fear that you knew from the moment of birth. It is the fear that was communicated to you by your parents, by your conditioning and by all those you came in contact with in daily life.

The first step towards the state of beingness is to become intimate, very intimate, with yourself because that’s when you discover your true divine nature.

This feeling is with everyone but most people are not aware of it at all, and those who are aware of this feeling make it personal as if it is happening only to them. It is this personal attachment that creates the most emotional suffering.

As we grow older, this feeling doesn’t go away but simply gets covered up by trying to find meaning in material gain, success, fame or a relationship. However, we can never make this feeling go away despite our best intentions. The problem is that despite our achievements we still carry this feeling with us that surfaces once more when we have got used to our material gain, success or relationship. It usually surfaces in our relationships when they become intimate and start demanding honesty of feelings when honesty can only be self-honesty. In other words, we cannot make our partner honest in their feelings towards us while we are still beset with our own undiscovered unease.

Since this feeling can never be solved by thought about it nor overcome by any exploration through words, what can we do?

We can start by learning to LISTEN without judgment the moment the feeling becomes obvious such as feeling betrayed, angry, upset, hurt, depressed, anxious or any negative drama. We listen by knowing that any negative feeling is a negation of pure feeling (which is love).

Love is what we want most of all from the moment we were born (collective search for Oneness).

We can start LISTENING by visualizing the following:-
Picture the following as clearly as you can – you see an innocent child who is feeling sad, hurt, misunderstood and disowned. Reach out to this child by looking lovingly into their sad eyes and compassionately hold their hands into yours as you feel the warmth of love enfolding you. All you feel towards this child is love and total absolute acceptance.

This child is your inner pain that you often voiced without feeling it directly but often blamed it on yourself or another. This inner child lives in every human being because it is a collective inner unconscious knowing of our true essence called LOVE.

This Love, which is craved, is often our greatest fear and that’s why suffering reaches such great proportions. For example, what is loneliness but the feeling of separation from the Oneness we are.
Our true love nature when misunderstood becomes a great fear. Here’s another example, you fall in love with someone, what is it that happened? For a few moments you have forgotten about yourself and seen only this ‘other.’ It is this utter absence of self that is pure love. Just like when a mother gives a painful birth to her child and at the moment of holding that child there is only love and joy (no ego). Yet, our mind conditioned by the idea of personal image concludes that such a loss of self is akin to death and so whenever our identity is threatened we suffer a form of death. We do not realize that the egoless Self is our true joy and fulfillment. When not recognized then it becomes our greatest fear. Loneliness, desolation, isolation, deprivation and separation are all our greatest suffering. Yet, if we LISTENED to that feeling as it actually is we would awaken our dormant joy and love.

Our hunger for truth through teachings becomes just another search to give us meaning and escape our inner pain. We do not yet realize that only the dissolution of this pain can we discover our Oneness nature. Living truth is not knowing the words but feeling the Pure Feeling of our true essence known as Love and felt as peace and joy.

This contact with this lost child is an intimate contact with yourself – it is the highest and closest intimacy with your Being nature. What is not of love and joy is simply a reminder of this lost child and your reactions to it.

This lost child exists in everyone who has not found their true nature yet. It is more evident in people who have not received the love and warmth as children and therefore know clearly here and now that whenever you feel hurt, betrayed, offended, depressed, angry, anxious or frightened it is really the little lost child inside you and not the ‘other’ you are blaming. We are never upset for the reason we think and believe but always because of that little child’s fear of not being lovable enough; not being good enough or being deserving enough when in truth this little child is also your Essence of Being crying out for its own discovery and claiming its own right ‘To Be.’ That child always feels it has done something wrong without having the slightest idea what that wrong could be.

Review your world right now and see what you don’t like about it. Then having done that see how you have created this world through the beliefs of that lost child inside you. There is no wrong in what you see but only the “belief in wrong” created by that lost child seeking its home and acting through your nervous system as unconscious reactions.

There is no spiritual practice necessary except the intimacy with yourself. No one can supply that need for assurance, security and freedom other than yourself through loving and accepting this lost child. This is the story of the prodigal son in the Bible. It is the story of forgiveness (embracement, welcoming, acceptance, allowing, surrender etc).

In brief, there are two secrets of transformation and they are…

1. Acknowledgement of your inner pain as a collective need for Love.
2. And secondly, to allow it totally as you would allow a child’s loss of innocence by holding its hands and embracing it with love.

Remember that there’s nothing ever wrong with you. Your true nature is love itself and therefore Divine Oneness.

When, during an emotional crises, you are able to LISTEN to that inner child (pain-body) that’s how transformation happens and we awaken our knowing without thinking about it.

You may still have ideas about who you are through a conditioned self-image and thus keep the pain of that child ever deep in your unconscious, but, until these ideas are wrapped in the joyous emotion of knowing the truth of your being, you will not transform into the beauty of you.

It is this awakened inner knowing that will bring us peace, love and freedom from suffering. There is no greater joy than having a glimpse of your eternal Oneness.

NOTE: Contact me if you have questions
burtharding@shaw.ca

I have heard that we are entering the 5th dimension, what is that?

2010-01-25T14:53:00.000-08:00

"There are so many different beliefs about the coming changes and one consistent shift happening is that of the 5th dimension. Can you elaborate on what that is?"

There is no mystery about the different dimensions but the shifting of our consciousness to see more of what IS!! For example, a few years ago, maybe 30 years ago or so, we were immersed in the 3rd dimension. The 3rd dimension is very simply the three measurements of all material objects such as width, depth and height. In other words, we believed that matter is the reality and we based our whole life on this so-called fact. A few years ago Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity that helped many take a leap in consciousness growth (expansion). The eminent scientist Dr. David Bohm added and proved the fact that the universe is holographic and won the Nobel prize. These facts have catapulted our consciousness into the 5th dimension. The 4th dimension is the one most people are in this present age. The fourth dimension has to do with the fact that we are more than a body but have personality, thoughts, emotions and deep feelings that far transcend mere physicality. We have learned the power of mind and in this fourth dimension we are beginning to see that the world is not real at all but simply energy that has manifested into form. Most people are beginning to feel this fact that we are far more than a physical form and that our mind determines how we live life.

The 5th dimension takes us much deeper than the mind and catapults us into the Source as Oneness. In other words, when we enter the 5th dimension the consciousness shifts becomes so powerful that our viewpoint goes beyond the physical and mental aspects and right into the universal principle of Source also known as God or the "I AM" as the One Being and all of us playing a human role directed by this "I AM." When we can look at each other and see this FACT, in other words, see each other as Spirit, then we have entered the 5th dimension known as True Unconditional Love. We are now ready for this shift to occur and it will happen on many levels both physical, mental and spiritual including the earth and its elements which may shift accordingly. There is no separation in anything and we are also the earth and heaven at the same time. We can prepare for this great shift by simply learning to forgive (embrace) every judgment, personal or otherwise) and thus collapse the lessons that were meant to teach us through suffering. We can align with the universal energy simply by forgiving every separative thought that takes over without effort or control. It is the simplest thing we can 'do' if we are willing to open our heart.

What would be the secret of a relationship that lasts and helps us to grow?

2010-01-25T14:11:00.000-08:00

"What is the secret of a 'perfect' relationship?"

The secret lies in the word "mirror" -- what you see in your partner is what you are perceiving your partner to be and therefore mirroring back those feelings.
Intimacy in relationships is the first real step towards growing together. In intimacy arises expectations and with expectations arises also resentments because of how we expect things 'should be' in the individual mind. This stage can't be helped since it is in the process of 'growing' up emotionally. It is at this stage that we learn 'forgiveness' which is the ability to embrace your partner as he or she is according to their enneagram type.
Forgiveness, which is the generous open willingness to embrace whatever IS, is the secret key to a mature spiritual relationship. Forgiveness is not just for the unconscious expectations but towards the deeper subtle resentments that underlie communication. A common resentment among the left-brain mentality is "he/she doesn't make sense when she/he is upset." The right-brain mentality harbors the resentment, "he/she doesn't listen." or "he/she doesn't understand me."
Communication is a major factor in a relationship and unless it is motivated by and through genuine love and respect, it is bound to create unconscious deep-seated resentments.
Two people, no matter how much in love they are and embrace intimacy, are bound to differ in their views of life (as the enneagram types suggest such diversity) and yet the truth is that no one is right or wrong. The key point is -- are you willing to forgive? The ACIM Course suggests, "Would you rather be right or happy?"
Step inside your partners feelings and generously look from within their viewpoint, in other words, mirror how they see. No one is right or wrong...only LOVE matters.
The greatest human fear is rejection and this abounds in relationships and creates defensive attitudes that gradually turn to deep resentment and finally even hate. Many relationships are imprisoned by love/hate relationship. It is through this fear of rejection that resentments are built and finally lead to the death of love. Resentments create the feeling of separation and even after being married to someone for twenty years or so one might feel, "I have married a stranger."
All forgiveness (embracing, allowing, accepting, surrendering, seeing their illusion etc) of resentments is the only needed requirement. Therefore awareness of any inner resentment, no matter how seemingly slight, is the first step towards a great relationship followed by forgiveness of such. Awareness not only of the words uttered in communication with each other but also the personal projection that ensues automatically from the given person. For example, if we suspect a certain attitude and feeling behind the words then we are carrying that within us and blaming it on the other. This projection of seeing the other as offensive is really one's own belief system (mirroring). We see only what we are ourselves. To see love rather than fear. Our only choice in communication is choosing love over fear every time remembering always that there is no right or wrong but love or fear. Love will grow or wither according to the view we have of it -- are we seeing Light or darkness?

The Miracle of Trust

2009-11-30T10:24:00.001-08:00

Trust is basic and yet the most powerful subject
in all spiritual teachings.

In my thirty-five years of study, reading, experiencing and teaching what have I learned? The reply to that question is simple and direct – I have learned to trust Life, God, the ‘IS’ that I AM!
Trust awakens slowly through our natural deep craving to learn, to understand and to find meaning and peace. Trust is not acquired but awakened. Trust is our birthright. In fact there is no spiritual awakening per se but the unfoldment of trust.

This article-booklet will be divided in three sections…

1. What is trust?
2. How we lose trust.
3. How we regain trust.

In this ego world we have lost the most powerful and the most treasured possessions of innocence and inner freedom through losing trust, believing that the world is more real than our very essence.
In this article/booklet I have garnered the precious teachings of “A Course in Miracles” plus the writings of well-known sages regarding the enneagrams which I call ‘soul-types.’ Although there is no such thing as an individual soul but simply a separate mind yet the term will suffice.
The ‘soul’ is our consciousness and its accumulations and memory. Consciousness is eternal because it is derived directly from pure awareness. Pure Awareness is our true nature of love, oneness, goodness and innocent spirit.

Most people are not aware that all human beings belong to one of the soul-types according to how they pursue meaning in life. There are nine soul-types and each one has its own way of pursuing the same one goal – the goal of all human beings which is BEING itself!
It is imperative to remember, right at the outset, that the soul-type you represent is not the real you. These nine types are collective energy that manifests when trust is temporarily lost and distrust takes its toll on the mind/body organism of the individual thus losing their true nature.
The ego world is built on distrust and hence the wars, corruptions and man’s inhumanity to man, and yet within the very fabric of this distrust is the craving for something to believe in and becomes one’s one separate religion, belief, system, organization, cult, political system or just a separate way of life that divides and separates humans into groups. Yet again, despite this division does the bigger picture want Oneness, Unity and Love.

Please note: The soul types known as enneagrams can be found by googling for them on the internet asking “Free Enneagram Test.” Make sure that you are honest in your answers and then try another test to see if the results coincide.

What is trust?

Trust is the natural result of innocence which in spiritual parlance is known as Emptiness or Spirit. It is the child that looks up at his father in utter openness of heart -- that’s trust.
We do not develop trust – we awaken it from its dormant state that stifled, suppressed and thwarted it.

The ACIM “Manual for Teachers” says:
“Trust is the foundation on which on which the teachers of God fulfill their function.
The teachers of God have trust in the world, because they have learned it is not governed by the laws of the world made up. It is governed by a Power That is in them but not of them. It is this Power that keeps all things safe. It is through this Power that the teachers of God look on a forgiven world.
When this Power has once been experienced, it is impossible to trust one’s own petty strength again. Who would attempt to fly with the tiny wings of a sparrow when the mighty power of an eagle has been given him? And who would place his faith on the shabby offerings of the ego when the gifts of God are laid before him?

How do we lose trust?
We are human beings. There are over 6 billion humans on this earth but there is only One Being. Our world convinces us that objects are real and therefore we learn early to ignore that which created the objects in the first place. In other words, we disregard that which we cannot see, hear or feel. Thus we find ourselves completely sold on our humanness and totally forget the Being that we truly are. In this forgetting, we still crave the Being but have so forgotten it that even its name becomes a belief rather than the truth of our nature. We have many beliefs, religions and teachings that remind us of this Being but find it hard to swallow when the world is so enticingly and seemingly real in its temptations. We spend our life pursuing fame, fortune, success, specialness and accomplishment and in this time-consuming effort our inner Being ‘suffers’ from ignorance and it shows in our restlessness, unease, dis-ease, unhappiness, war, violence, crime, desperation, loneliness, isolation and fear. In this separation from God we have lost trust in Being.
Yet despite this so-called loss, we hunger for completion which is impossible with lack of trust. It is this distrust which is the suffering of mankind.

The nine soul-types pursue their goal of Oneness (Being) through the following ideals: (the numbers indicate the soul-type):

1. They pursue perfection in everything they accomplish and so are often dissatisfied and restless.
2. They pursue the ideal through their own ego will and are often hurt or unsatisfied in their relationships.
3. They idealize harmony and achievement but find outer goals empty and unfulfilling.
4. They idealize originality and individuality and suffer low self-worth as a result.
5. They idealize omniscience through knowledge but often feel alienated.
6. They idealize strength and it often takes the form of outward goals.
7. They idealize wisdom and prefer optimism to pessimism, they seek this through future planning.
8. They idealize truth but it becomes their truth through control.
9. They idealize holy love and miss it from fear of not having it.

How the ideals create delusions & distrust

1. Reality is split between good and bad.
2. “I have a separate personal will.”
3. “I am a personal doer.”
4. “I have a separate identity.”
5. “I am a separate self.”
6. “I have no true nature.”
7. “I have a personal self unfoldment.”
8. “Reality is dual and conflictual.”
9. “My love is localized.”

How distrust creates difficulties

1. The belief in wrong.
2. Easily humiliated.
3. Often feel helpless.
4. The feeling of abandonment.
5. The feeling od isolation.
6. The feeling of insecurity.
7. The feeling of being lost.
8. The feeling of guilt.
9. Often feel unloved.

How difficulties create reactions

1. “I have to improve and be better”
2. “I can get love through manipulation.”
3. “I have to strive and do in order to be worthwhile”
4. “I need to be in control or I lose myself.”
5. “I need to withdraw”
6. “I feel suspicious and need to defend myself.”
7. “I need to plan.”
8. “They are to blame for this.”
9. “I go unconscious during conflict.”

How trust grows

We awaken trust through the recognition of our true nature as pure awareness. Pure awareness is already the case but due to distrust we end up not seeing the obvious. Each soul-type has its own ‘buts’ ‘what-ifs’ ‘maybes’ and fears. In other words, we do not see the Being as obvious because our delusions according to soul-type are such deep-rooted fixations that they undermine any attempt to seeing the truth. After all, these delusions created by distrust have created a monster that seems to have a personality of its own. This monster is known as ego. And here’s the good news – there’s no such thing as ego but a self-image that got twisted by so much distrust. This distrust is often finding ways in order not to find peace, which paradoxically, it is always striving towards. This self-sabotage is the work of the soul-type ego.

Get to know your way of wanting peace and inner fulfillment. This is often referred to as the Holy Idea. Then having found your dream-goal towards meaning, get to know how you have created the belief of distrust and how that belief created the difficulties and reactions. It is these reactions that are known as emotional suffering.

Here are some usual questions.

How can I overcome my difficulties when they have become almost part of me?
There is no need to overcome anything but just be aware that when you are suffering it is because you have relied on your favorite delusions. It is this ‘seeing’ that is essential.

Am I stuck in this soul-type for this lifetime?
You are NOT this soul-type but it is your expression in this lifetime. What’s important is what is real. Your soul-type is NOT real because it is only for this lifetime. However, you can find peace and inner fulfillment despite the soul-type because your true nature is Oneness and not individual type.

But if everything is Oneness and there is no individual to overcome anything or control anything then what can I do?
That’s the wonderful news – there is nothing you need do but SEE clearly what-is happening and then smile, laugh or simply forgive it (which means allowing yourself to see its illusion).

Missing the point

2009-11-18T17:17:00.000-08:00

Someone wrote,"My goal is enlightenment. I refuse to believe there are no answers. I believe in me and I believe in mankind."

Questions can only have verbal or written words as 'answers.' But is that really an 'answer' or a pointer towards the truth? Verbal answers merely create the space for more questions until all questions are exhausted and we are left open, vulnerable and humbled by the helplessness of the conditioned mind to understand. It is at this point that we realize we don't know and our acknowledgment of this fact opens the heart for real direct experience of what is here and now beyond words. It is through this innocent, humble and open heart that we finally recognize our Oneness. It is here that we cease asking questions and see the obvious truth that has previously escaped us when we were looking for answers in words and mental gymnastics. Truth is not belief in a 'me' but in the wholeness that IS!

The Three Simple steps of the Spiritual Life!

2009-11-18T10:35:00.000-08:00

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"You mentioned that the Spiritual Life has three aspects. Could you elaborate on these three and how we can live them?"

Picture the sky and clouds. Keep in mind as you watch this picture that the sun is always present. Picture the Light of the Sun as the very nature of YOU. The clouds represent the activity that seems to hide the sun and create the semblance of darkness, dreariness, dullness, smallness, contraction and oppresion of the Light. Yet no matter how covered up the Light is -- it is always present!

1. The first aspect is the darkness of the clouds which are our conditioned thoughts and their negative emotions. They are the collective unconscious guilt. This unconscious guilt which is in the one-collective-ego is the result of the belief that we are separate from God. God is the essence and glory of intelligent and peaceful happy Life. Any feeling of separation from God (essence of I AM) brings automatically feelings of unease, seeking, unrest, discomfort, dissatisfaction, boredom, fear and the longing for completion. This longing for completion is the result of feeling (unconsciously) that something is missing; that we are not quite good enough; that somehow something is wrong without knowing what! This feeling is knwn as the separation from God (the essence of Life). If one happens to be an atheist or simply skeptic then the seeking takes form in the desire for success, worldly attainment, fame or power or even escape through drink, drugs and/or over-indulgence in pleasure to compensate for an empty life.
This unconscious guilt is subtle yet feels like a pebble in your shoe.

2. This unconscious guilt which can escalate into a corrupted life is not individual but collective. Unconscious guilt at its best is felt as suspiciousness. Unconscious guilt at its worst is viciousness. Yet again it is not individual but collective. YOU are guiltless. You are the sun, the bright Light presence of Being that is never diminished through its thoughts and emotions but only when you believe these to be real. It is your interpretation of these inner feelings by making them yours that brings untold unhappiness, depression, fear and even desperation.
There is only one way to rise above unconscious guilt and it is through forgiveness. This forgiveness is often referred to as allowing, accepting, letting-go, looking into and body-awareness. Forgiveness is not trying to forgive another for their actions but to see clearly that there is nothing to forgive because all actions stem from cloudy thoughts and emotions. By seeing one's true nature as Spirit that's automatic forgiveness.
If you can forgive your judgments, fears and grievances you feel towards yourself and others then you are on your way to clearing the stigma of unconscious guilt. This is not difficult to do once you understand that your true nature is guiltless and no thought or emotion can diminish you but only your belief in it. You are always okay just as you are if you simply accept yourself fully.

3. You are a human Being -- a Being playing the human role. Since our human part precedes our Being-part then we are weak and give in to weakness by believing our negative thoughts and emotions. Thus we need help -- this help we can get from turning towards our very presence of Being known as the Holy Spirit. Talk to it as if it is your dearest friend. Ask it to accept all your negative feelings, fears and thoughts. Turn to it for guidance first thing in the morning and use it all the time until IT becomes your dearest and closest friend. It will never fail you or desert you in time of need. That's a guarantee.

There is only YOU!!

2009-10-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

There is only
YOU!

You are all you can ever know!
There is no ‘outside’ or ‘inside’ you.
‘Inside’ or ‘outside are conditioned
perceptions of physical memory.
You think, feel, see and experience according
to how you see yourself!!

Let us talk about your favorite subject – YOU! Oftentimes people do not want to admit that they are all that they think about, but honesty can be quite an awakener in itself.
If we fail to acknowledge such a fact then it is only because we feel guilty about it. If you feel sad it is you who is sad. If you feel happy it is you who is happy. Whatever you believe, no matter how ignoble or noble, you have to live with it. YOU are all you have or will ever have. Whether you admit it or not, it is you who has to live with that belief.

One evening during satsang I asked the people, “What is it you want more than anything?” and replies came in the form of wanting truth, love, peace, reality or what have you. Most, if they were very honest, would probably have said, “I want a million dollars or a new Ferrari or having power and fame.”
Then I asked them another question, “When you want truth, peace, love, fame etc who is it you want it for?” and that question made some realize that what they really wanted was “me.” Some had object and replied, “No, it is not ‘me’ I think about by my son. He comes first.”
“Doesn’t he come first because he is your son or do you feel the same about every other son and daughter?” Of course, he comes first because he is “my” son. Remember that ‘YOU’ comprises of me, mine and self-image.

When there is objection to this obvious truth, that’s when we have to look deeply into our own heart and ask if we are being honest, for that is when we defend and protect ourselves. This self-protection and defensiveness is the need to cling to this ‘me’-idea referred to as “YOU!”

If we start to glimpse, even minutely, what is being written here, you will start to see into what is most precious in Life.

Let’s take it a step further…

Ask yourself right now, “Doesn’t this apply to everyone?” Even as you read this, aren’t you applying it to yourself? After all, when we say the word ‘YOU’ aren’t we really referring to everyone?
Did you know that as you read this, you are automatically referring it to yourself and not how it refers to Karen, Susanne or Burt. Everything has to do with you. YOU are all you know or can ever know.

Here is the first truth to mull over – there is nothing outside of you EVER! You start with you and end up enlightened with you! The only difference is this – that the small box called ‘me’ that saw itself so separate, so isolated and lonely finds itself to be like everyone else.
So, if everyone is the same, then aren’t we all one essence? Now, doesn’t this blow you away? And, as you get blown away by the realization of your assumed smallness and find yourself part of a bigger picture, you still are ‘YOU.’ However, you are now looking through the limitless awareness that ‘YOU’ really is. You will always be YOU but as the ‘me’ idea begins to drop then so will egoic conditioning drop.
Expansion of awareness is like looking at a gigantic ladder reaching above the clouds. The ‘me’ is the first rung of the ladder where only ‘me’ exists as the center of its small universe. The ‘me’ is like the little frog believing that its whole world is the small pond where it resides. As it climbs higher and higher then it sees more and more of its own Oneness. Yet, despite the climb, the ‘YOU’ remains, shedding its conditioned and limited viewpoint to see everyone as oneself.

Here is the great revealer -- how you see others, you see yourself! There is the sudden recognition that if I call you a son-of-a-bitch then I have called myself a son-of-a-bitch! If I resent what you did, I carry that resentment in ‘me.’ If I seek revenge then I torture myself with its thought-process and when I have succeeded in getting even, I have also succeeded in not liking myself whether I am aware of it or not. It was Jesus who said that what you do to others you do to me. He meant that being Christ (Oneness) every act was done to itself. If you love another then you feel that love alive in you. If you hate another than you feel that hate in you.

If you see others as they actually are despite their actions outwardly then that is how you see yourself. If you watch the news and indulge in the disasters, crimes and wars then that’s how you’ll see the world that you live in. The world is a creation of mind because there is nothing, absolutely nothing, outside of YOU.
If I hurt you deliberately then I would feel that hurt by not liking myself unconsciously. The word ‘unconsciously’ covers every aspect of our judgments, dislikes, resentments, condemnations and negative thinking – this is how when we believe we are separate from Oneness we automatically create an unconscious guilt.

This unconscious guilt known often as ego is like a stone in your shoe or like an itch you can’t scratch away. It brings automatic feelings like “I am not good enough” or “I am unlovable” or “I am missing something” or “I have done something wrong without knowing what.”
Why do people feel this unconscious guilt? -- By clinging to the ‘me’ aspect as separate from others comes the feeling of isolation, loneliness and deprivation. Yet we cannot get rid of this ‘me’ because it is your field of experience; your frame of reference as ‘you’; it is the felt-sense of ‘I’ that says “I am me.” We can’t help this ‘me’ concept because we believe it is who we really are. We cannot get rid of it anymore than you can get rid of the air around you. All you are left with is to SEE MORE up the ladder from ‘me’ to “I AM.” Then you’ll start to see in an obvious way that everyone is not only like you but IS ‘YOU.’ If you catch a glimpse of this Oneness, even for a brief nano-second moment, you’ll start feeling the freedom of ‘YOU.’

How you see others
The great mystery is this – ‘YOU’ is all you can ever know, and rightly so, because that’s how spiritual awakening happens. There is only Oneness but then Oneness is YOU.
When the recognition hit me in the year 2000 that I am a human being, it was clear that I was the BEING playing the human role of Burt. While the intense ‘experience’ lasted, there was no other but myself and, everything I saw was myself. Yet there was no Burt around.

Since most awakening consciousness is a gradual process then there seem to be degrees in awareness. I said ‘there seem to be degrees’ in awareness. It is Oneness being kind by showing itself in small doses until we see the whole picture clearly and finally realize it was all obvious.
Initially all I thought was about ‘me, but didn’t recognize it consciously. The average person thinks about 26,000 thoughts a day and all of them refer to oneself. There is initial awareness that how one feels emotionally or mentally has nothing to do with Reality for it is all based on thought.

The next level of awareness starts with seeking something ‘better’ for oneself, maybe some liberating truth or some secret, but no matter what we find, it is all concerned with ‘me.’ There is no getting away from ‘me.’ In fact, the more I struggled against ‘me,’ the greater the ‘me’ had a hold on ‘me.’ This is the egoic trap. So here I reach frustration, confusion, control, anger, fear uncertainty, insecurity and doubt about what I am ‘doing’ here. These are all forms for recognizing how egoic one really is. We try to become happier but nothing happens. Maybe we study Advaita and learn the ‘evils’ of ego but all we generally end up doing is more information, ready-answers but no joy or peace. We even attempt, sincerely, to get rid of the ego while feeding it more validity and, as a result, it tries to strangle-hold us.

Our awareness starts to move a little deeper when we recognize that ‘others’ are a part of us (there are no others because there is only YOU!) So we try to be kinder, sweeter and more loving until we are attacked and we retaliate realizing it was all a sham. However, realizing it was all a façade is itself a leap in consciousness expansion.
All we are ever ‘learning’ is unlearning the egoic unconscious guilt.
We may even pretend we are pure awareness (which in Reality we are) but we are stuck with the pride of ‘me’ knowing this and thus lose hold of the YOU that truly is IT!

It is about this time that the battle against the ego starts and that’s when sadness becomes part of our daily life. We still haven’t recognized that ‘YOU’ is all there is and therefore there is no such thing as ego. Our attempts at trying to resist the ego merely reinforces our belief in it and sadness is the result.
Ego is still the belief in a ‘me’ being stuck in the bottom rung of the ladder. We have to allow ourselves to see that the ladder is who we are!

What is the secret then? We ask, “Who am I?” but no answers are possible because there is no ego to know -- how can the ‘me’ (ego) know that which is higher than itself? This question leaves us with what we are – pure awareness without a past.

Is this ‘YOU’ subject to time?
The part that believes in a ‘me’ is a self-image based on the past conditioning. In moments of deep happiness, love or ecstatic union the ‘me’ is forgotten and all that’s left is ‘YOU.’
“Aha!!” so that’s it! If I am not the past, since it is now history, then ‘YOU’ must be the NOW itself! And, since ‘YOU’ is the NOW itself then it is beyond time. Are you beginning to see how grand you really are?
This ‘me’ doesn’t change from ego to Self – it awakens to what has always been the case! This ‘YOU’ is awareness presence.

This ‘YOU’ is the “I AM” of Self. Therefore, whatever I see, experience or do, it is always this “I AM” doing, seeing and experiencing. In other words, it is Oneness doing it all!! All that awakened was the viewpoint from a limited dark veil to a broad open window but nothing changed except the SEEING of what-is!
When this ‘me’ was caught in the past conditioning (self-image) it was merely unconscious, asleep, robotic in nature. It was blind to what was real and lasting. It was a shell filled with uncertainty, insecurity, fear, doubts and problems. When it opened its eyes and saw what was real and lasting nothing changed but shifted in its viewpoint. It was like looking at the outside from a glass window while gazing at the pane-glass itself putting the outside out of focus. All that was needed to see the broader view was shifting your gaze from the glass to the outside as if no glass existed.

How do we shift our viewpoint? Next time you find yourself thinking about the world or others – pause for a moment and see how what you are seeing is your own perception projected from your conditioned mind. Then, having done so, allow yourself to see that there is only ‘YOU.’ The projection of fear (unconscious guilt) once it is seen through is then forgiven simply because the true nature of awareness is innocence and sees no wrong. Voila! That’s how love unfolds!

‘YOU’ is One-Self!
There is a liberating feeling when we start seeing that this ‘me’ is not the thoughts, emotions but a higher aspect than just a personal self comprised of time. This begins our freedom-knowing. This recognition of seeing yourself in all others begins the liberation of self into Self.

Initially this ‘me’ is nothing but a bundle of unconscious guilt torn by beliefs in ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’ – conditioned further by conventional religions in so-called ‘rightful-living’ we created boundaries, fears and phobias regarding sex, loving, intimacy, openness and freedom. We became obsessed with ‘doing’ the right thing and we enslaved ourselves by not expressing what was in the heart as natural as breathing. We believed that we had to be a certain way in order to be good commandeered by our past conditioning. This enslaved us and created fears from the very thing we wanted most.

When you feel sad, angry, upset or simply lost and negative, it has nothing to do with Reality but only your thoughts about it. We are so inundated with how we should be, to be good and spiritual, that we have stifled the very Truth that is in us. Since nature abhors loss of freedom then our need for freedom becomes addictions, guilt, even perversions. We find ourselves sabotaging the things we really want and feel guilty for pursuing them.

This vicious circle is known as unconscious guilt. It is the arsenal of the egoic mind. We cannot get rid of this egoic mind, after all, who’s going to do it? We forget that there is no ‘me’ in reality because there’s only YOU! Are you beginning to see this revealing picture?

‘YOU’ is the oneness of pure awareness from which everything appears and manifests.

When you confine your ‘thinking’ to your conditioned beliefs then you actually create a wall against the very truth of YOU. Your natural state is Oneness and therefore it is intimacy, warmth, love, openness and unrestrictive freedom. ‘Giving’ is your true nature as opposed to ‘taking’ when expressed as ‘me.’ When this ‘me’ starts to dissolve into “I AM” (which is YOU) then the unconscious guilt starts to fall away and with it all the fears that imprisoned you.

What are the fears that imprison you when you act as ‘me’ rather than pure awareness? The ‘me’ is driven for love with a craving and neediness so that when love actually appears it will become beset with fears – the fear of rejection; the fear of not being loved enough; the fear of abandonment; the fear of intimacy; the fear of letting go in sexual expression and the fear of losing it all.

Throughout history we have had ‘righteous’ groups who protected themselves against evil while creating a worse evil themselves. Do you recall fundamentalist Christians? Do you recall the Ku Klux Klan? The Salem witch hunts? The hate literature against Jews and minorities? The communist propaganda to control the masses? And so many others under the banner of ‘doing the right thing?’ Is there such a thing as ‘doing the right thing?’ How freeing to realize there is only Oneness known as YOU. Everyone else is YOU. How can we hurt that which is ‘One’ with no separation? This Oneness or YOU is known as LOVE.
The ego, whose arsenal is unconscious guilt, is terrified of true love. I read the following from “The disappearance of the universe” page 170 and had to quote it because of its direct message:

“The ego is always trying to find ways to prevent you from closely examining its thought system.
Loudly the ego tells you NOT to look inward, for if you do your eyes will light on sin, and God will strike you blind.”
Jesus said in the Course that what the ego is really worried about is not sin but the truth…
“…beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet another fear, and one which makes the ego tremble.
What if you looked within and saw no sin? This “fearful” question is one the ego never asks. And you who ask it now are threatening the ego’s whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend is is your friend.”

The world is beset with wars, crimes, violence and cruelty because of one basic belief the ego has known as unconscious guilt. Unconscious guilt believes in ‘wrong.’ It is preachy, proselytizing, controlling and demanding that we do what is ‘right.’ Yet there’s no need to do what is right at all when you awaken to the LOVE that YOU actually are. You don’t ‘do’ right – YOU simply live love and then ‘right’ is no longer a ‘doing’ but a ‘being.’

‘YOU’ is all there is!! This is not only an incredible life-changing, perception-shifting and freedom-giving but it is actually our true Home. We all want to belong, to feel loved, to be happy and to enjoy each other without restrictions in utter freedom. Yet we deny this because of our beliefs in separation. We want to create boundaries, rules, self-protection and thus self-denials and fears and for what? Look into your heart right now and ask what would be the greatest thing for you? Wouldn’t it be the freedom to love without restriction or fear of intimacy? Wouldn’t it be to feel free and open in your sincere affection for all of YOU?

Who am I?
People keep asking, “How can I change myself?” The fact is that any attempts at changing yourself will boomerang, often against you. The greatest news about positive change is to do nothing but simply to allow you the direct experience of pure being.

I make it my ‘practice’ to sit quietly doing nothing on a daily basis but just listening. I listen to the sounds around me and then gradually direct them to the body’s sensations of aliveness. I listen to what is completely present such as heart-beating, normal breathing, the feeling of my body against the chair and all the different physical feelings that make me know I have a body. This focus quiets the mind and stops thought. Then I focus my awareness in the room with eyes closed. I keep expanding this awareness until it contains the whole apartment and extending to the street, city, country, globe, orbit space and the Milky Way galaxy. I allow myself to ‘feel’ how unlimited awareness is. I keep ‘listening’ to this limitless, beginningless and endless awareness as my source. In this ‘listening’ is contained the knowing that I AM the awareness of Oneness itself. I see in this ‘feeling/listening/knowing’ that beliefs, conditioning, fears and all thoughts as just movements within awareness like clouds that block the sun’s light. They mean nothing but a passing movement. In this ‘listening’ I see clearly that I am nothing at all because I am everything! In this freedom, unencumbered by past or future, I see that I AM pure awareness experienced as Love. This is who I AM!

Dr. Frank Kinslow who has awakened to his true nature now offers quantum healing and has had great success in helping people heal and change by simply recognizing their true nature as pure awareness. In an interview he stated:

“I went into seclusion to contemplate “No-thing” or “pure awareness.” After another seven years of silence, I realized that there is Nowhere to go and Nothing to do. Everything is perfect just as it is. You see, “Nothing” doesn’t give answers, it IS the answer! Deep rest, pure awareness, deep peace – these would be other terms to describe the experience of “no-thing” or “no-thought.”

Ask yourself right now, “Who am I?” and no answer will emerge because that ‘no answer’ is the answer itself – you are pure awareness; a clearing; an open space; a pure being and yet fully cognizant of Presence as ‘I AM.’
Initially such ‘no answer’ is scary but when accepted as ‘the answer’ then we start waking up. We find there was never a ‘me’ but YOU as everything and nothing; everyone and no one. The logical mind cannot comprehend something so basic and fundamental but the heart can experience it directly.
When you ask anyone, “How do you know you exist?” they will often reply, “Of course I know because I am aware that I exist!” Yet who is being aware? And eventually you’ll discover it is the same for all 6 billion people on this earth. It is the same one pure awareness that YOU are!

Cause and Effect
Now we come to the most important secret of all and one that will blow your ego mind into the Self. This secret is so wondrous, so revolutionary and so transforming that the moment you realize it it’s awakening itself!
So what is this great revolutionary and transforming secret? It is this – you are 100% responsible for every feeling, thought, motion and experience. There is no world ‘out there’ – there is only YOU! You have to be 100% responsible because there is only YOU! Everything you see happening in the world is your responsibility because you are seeing it.
Most people act as victims of circumstances but in reality there are no victims because of one simple fact – YOU are the Cause and not the effect. You are pure awareness and the Oneness of all-that- IS!

The following is taken from the article “World’s Most Unusual Healer” by Ted Kuntz:
“Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len is a psychologist who works with individuals considered criminally insane. These are individuals deemed mentally unstable to such a degree that they are not held legally responsible for the serious crimes they commit. As a society we typically respond by locking these individuals in an institution, often for the rest of their lives.
Yet, after a few months of Dr. Len’s treatment, those individuals who had been shackled are released of their shakles. Patients who had been heavily sedated are able to go off their medications. And those who were given no chance of ever being released are freed. After four years of intervention, the ward in the state hospital where Dr.Len worked closed because so many of the patients had been released.
This is the stuff of urban legend. It seems inconceivable that even the world’s best therapist could cure the criminally insane. The most unbelievable part of the story however is that Dr. Len cures his patients without ever seeing them! Rather than offer traditional face-to-face therapy using cognitive and behavioural interventions, Dr. Len studies the inmate’s charts. He then looks within himself to see how he created the person’s illness. As Dr. Len accepts, forgives and heals himself, his patients are healed.”

Dr. Len realized that being 100% responsible means he knows there is only ‘YOU’ (One-Self) and that energy is transferred to the ones focused on. It is like calling someone on the cell phone and dialing their number to reach them specifically. They are reached directly by dialing (focusing) their signal until the radio waves reach their cell phone and they answer. This is also explained as quantum forgiveness in ‘A Course in Miracles.’
We take 100% responsibility because there is only “I AM” and so by forgiving One-Self for whatever seems to be happening ‘out there’ we imbue our auric field with so much energy that our focus becomes the signal to reach the ‘other’ part of our-Self.

‘YOU’ is all there is and there’s no one ‘out there’ but YOU. It is like when you dream at night and see others in your dream-creation, they are all emanations of and from YOU. Once you start seeing this clearly then there is transformation, healing and inner power. You take responsibility for whatever you see, feel and experience and then forgive it in you. (see WorkBook Lesson #122 of ‘A Course in Miracles” titled “Forgiveness offers everything I want.”

With our current understanding of how things are, Dr. Len’s method by taking 100% responsibility doesn’t make sense. I have had people recoil at even the thought of being responsible for another’s behavior. However, we start to understand when we allow ourselves to see the obviousness of Oneness. There is only YOU. The moment you start having a glimpse of this then you will see quickly that any other method is a waste of energy.
Our understanding of “There is only YOU” begins when we commit ourselves to see it. I use a method called ‘Supersentience’ in which pure awareness is seen to be the only reality. Once we glimpse this fact then ‘things’ will begin to happen in your life.

The Three Reminders:

1. Your true nature is Pure Awareness and it is through this truth alone that everything happens. This pure awareness also known as Holy Spirit is the Intelligence of Life. By being aware of this truth there is nothing for us to do and it will do what is best for us automatically by turning to it. What blocks us from using this power is the belief that we can control our life through the ego. In other words every time you try to be in control you are making yourself helpless leading to confusion, frustration and complexity. If you ever feel confused ask, “Am I trying to control this or trusting the Holy Spirit?”

2. What blocks us from knowing the simple truth of our nature is called ‘Unconscious Guilt.’ This unconscious guilt that eats away at us is the reason for the world’s ills. It believes it is separate from Source (Oneness, God) and thus often feels ‘not-good-enough’ creating self-sabotage, unnecessary suffering and projection of its guilt onto others. It is also known as unconscious self-hate.

3. There is only one safe and fast way to return to Source and that’s through quantum forgiveness. Quantum forgiveness means that you see everyone as yourself – whole and innocent as pure awareness.

Burt Harding
burtharding@shaw.ca

Please note: If you have read this and would like to have a direct experience of Pure Awareness through the method of Supersentience then email me for an appointment.

The Simple Way to Live!

2009-09-23T11:26:00.001-07:00

The Simple Way to Live!
One evening I received four email questions that had to do with the same ‘problem’ which was -- How to incorporate the simple teaching into daily life. Then this morning I felt inspired to write the following…

Please listen carefully because words by themselves are tricky unless we fully grasp their true meaning. It all comes down to CHOICE. Many advaita enthusiasts will say, “but we have no choice” which is true. And, it is this very truth that gives us this choice. Confused? Let’s see if I can make it a little clearer.

The word ‘choice’ is a paradoxical term because it is when we realize that there’s only one Truth, One Essence, One Reality or Oneness that we have the choiceless choice. In other words, Truth is choiceless because it is the truth. Since Truth is true and it is One, then we have no choice but to choose it. It is in this recognition that we start living by conscious choice.

Another interesting facet of this is – the ego mind really believes it has choice and therefore makes up its mind; actually chooses through its conditioned perceptions to decide or not to live the truth. This is, of course, absurd. Therefore NOT living the truth is ego’s way to establish its individual separation. However, what it ends up doing is suffering. Then it attempts to get out of its suffering mode by making more choices and decisions how it should act or be exacerbating the whole situation. In other words, suffering leads to more suffering. This is the ego’s way to deal with its own illusions. For instance, it gets guilty for feeling guilty and gets depressed and frustrated over its own depression and frustration. It gets very angry when it can’t deal with its own anger and reacts violently when all it wants is peace. In other words, the ego is a contradictory bastard. There is no way to deal with the ego because of one simple fact --- it doesn’t exist except in one’s imagination!

Since we believe there’s an ego that we must get rid of then we are stuck trying to get rid of a shadow when it chases you. You ran fast to avoid the shadow but it keeps up with you in perfect attachment. Then you get confused and frustrated because there’s nothing you can do. Thus, instead of learning to see that there’s nothing you can do, you try even harder thinking there’s something you are missing. The struggle goes on and on until exhaustion sets in and that’s where depression, deep sadness and even apathy or indifference may take over and we are ‘dead’ on our feet.

The ego is simply our conditioned beliefs about who we think we are. It is easy to see who we are and find there’s nothing there, but it’s a hell of a shock we are not willing to take. This shock we are not willing to take again leads us to different forms of seeking, which we can’t help. We want to be ‘something’ or ‘someone’ blinding us from seeing the obvious. The fear says, “but I have to be a person because I know I am here.” If we just ‘looked at what is obvious’ and accepted it fully we’ll see two things – the fact that you have always been here and knowing it plus also having all you ever really wanted as always being here.

So, how do we live simply? There are two steps which I have learned since my experience in the year 2000. You are a human being. The human forgets the Being because they oppose each other on the surface. Therefore let’s see it this way…
We have two LIFE-SCRIPTS and they are already written just like a movie already made. Thus it seems that these two scripts are what we can choose. Ordinarily we choose (unconsciously) the ego script. This ego script is based on the belief in ‘wrong.’ In other words, it judges, condemns and often entertains grievances. It can’t help it because that’s the structure of the false self known as fear. If you were to tell this ego script that there’s no ‘wrong’ it will probably break out in laughter and goes about proving it to you by pointing out all the mess we have created in the world – wars, crimes, violence, corruption and man’s inhumanity to man. It never occurs to the ego system that such ‘evil’ (opposite of ‘live’) was created because of the belief in ‘wrong’ in the first place. When the ego chooses the ‘wrong’ beliefs it is not conscious of such choosing, therefore it is called ‘unconscious choice.’

Then we have the Being-Script, which is also already-made and we can call this script ‘The Holy Spirit.’ This, incidentally, is the One Truth…it is who you really are. This Holy Spirit knows no ‘wrong’ and therefore sees no ‘wrong’ ever. Its true nature is innocence. It contains the highest good and also what we love the most – joy, aliveness, happiness, peace, inner fulfillment and unbridled freedom. The ego can’t conceive of such a heaveny state but here’s a fact – once we take conscious choice to live by the Holy Spirit and its guidance, our life becomes such a blessing we will wonder how we had missed something so simple. It makes our work effortless because it is done through love and creativity; it makes us open and loving without inhibition or fear; it enhances every facet of our life without doing anything except choosing the Holy Spirit every time we find ourselves ‘caught’ in our shadow self of judgment, condemnation
and fear.

When we do not listen to the Holy Spirit then our life becomes sheer suffering and we are placed in a position to learn lessons we didn’t yet resolve. These ‘lessons’ keep repeating until we actually start hearing what we are unconsciously choosing. If we don’t hear what we are choosing then we keep repeating the lessons whether they come in the form of accidents, or sickness or just emotional dysfunction. We may go to doctors or psychiatrists for help and take drugs but treating the symptoms without knowing their cause becomes a chiku-brigu (vicious circle). There’s no healing from unlearned lessons except through forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not just saying “I forgive this thought…” but it means seeing the Holy Spirit as the Truth of Being and therefore you are innocent. Thus forgiveness is seeing the innocence of all acts.
Here’s another fact -- we don’t hate or hurt or punish ourselves and others because we like it, it happens because we are ignorant of our true nature as Holy Spirit.

Now it comes to knowing our choice. When we feel miserable, sad, lonely, and unhappy, depressed or whatever -- we can’t help it. It was our unconscious choice. Unconscious means we didn’t deliberately choose to feel this way. Yes, it was still our unconscious choice. The trouble is that when depressed we don’t want to choose our innocence because we want to punish ourselves for being that way and so it continues on its merry-go-crazy cycle. It is imperative to remember that whenever we feel guilty (which is the nature of the ego) we also feel that we do not deserve the best and so end up sabotaging even our own efforts at choosing the Holy Spirit. In other words, we actually choose suffering rather than end it because we do not believe we are good enough to deserve happiness and love. This is the nutty, crazy, ghastly, monstrous way of the ego. And yet, it is all one big huge illusion. We have played it for so long that we do not know any other way than to live in fear.

The Holy Spirit is real, very real but it is something that I cannot prove to you unless you start choosing IT! This does not mean that you deny yourself anything…in fact by choosing the Holy Spirit you live freely and unencumbered by struggle or decision-making. Everything will flow so easily that you’ll wonder how you could have lived otherwise without having gone insane. By the way, the ego is insane!! There I said it! You will see this when you start Consciously choosing the Holy Spirit.

So, how do I start? First thing in the morning just before rising say something like this, “Holy Spirit today is your day. Take over my decisions and actions and thought and you are the manager. Thank you.”
Then simply go about your daily business as usual. The moment you start judging yourself or others; condemn anyone or yourself; or feel that you are holding on to a grievance against anyone then simply forgive it by saying, “I am Spirit, whole and innocent.” For a moment recall your true innocent nature.

What starts to happen then? You may not notice any changes happening but you might find that things move more smoothly. You will feel moments of creative energy or inspiration. You might even find expression becoming easier as weeks go by. In retrospect you will find that life has become more enjoyable and loving. You will feel freer even in your sexual expression, in laughing, in enjoying and knowing that you are not limited to just a body or age or economic conditions. You JUST ARE!!
Someone might say, “This sounds too simple.” And, I will reply, “Yes it is!” because that’s how life was meant to be.
Another wonderful thing will happen also – your life script which is being lived in linear time might go through shifts and time changes to avert ‘unresolved lessons.’ Life will flow more easily and your understanding of your true state that lives in holographic essence becomes clearer in ways that words can NEVER explain.

Questions that OPEN the Heart!

2009-09-13T09:22:00.001-07:00

Questions that open the heart!

“We reach a point in our life when inexplicable events and feelings cry out for answers and yet the ‘answers’ lead to deeper questions until it strikes us that it is not the answers we need but an open heart to the wonder and mystery that is Oneness itself.”

I have fallen in love with a reality so subtle I can’t put it in words. In my work as both a hypnotherapist and my dedication to answering innumerable email questions worldwide over the past three years I have discovered that there is so much literature about oneness (advaita teachings) that many readers have become well-versed in that information, and as a result, have become blinded by that very information believing that they know and thus deprived themselves from an open heart closing it off from innocence, joy and genuine love.

I have often stated that Oneness is the answer to all questions and problems because, after all, it is the One Truth. Yet I have failed to state that I do not know Oneness despite my glimpse of it. This oneness has coaxed me on to various stages. It is the force behind the silent questions that compelled me to peel away the veils one by one to see where it was leading. It slowly persuaded me to drop my illusions, showing me something greater than anything I could have believed. This article is not about answers, for there are none except intellectual words. It is about the power hidden behind questions that have haunted people since the beginning of time.

A man recently asked me a very intelligent question, “Why are questions so incessant. We are driven for answers that never arrive but only lead to more questions. Why is it like this?”

The reason there are no answers is because it is Oneness that is prodding us towards itself. We glibly state, my self included, that oneness is the answer as if we now know the answer. Can we know Oneness as long as we are in the human form? Oneness is so vast, so limitless that it staggers our imagination. In this realization alone, that we don’t know, begins our authentic ‘knowing’ that the unknown is beyond mind. In this acknowledged unknowing we have opened our heart in innocence and authenticity.
It was a wise Zen master who said, “It is the absence of intellectual knowing that allows the discovery of the new.”

Did you ever wonder why we get so stuck in our growth? Is there something we are missing in our understanding? Look no further because this topic can be your breakthrough.
The secret lies in understanding the power and wisdom of questioning. We might have never seen the wisdom and power of questioning because the moment we had a deep question we wanted an answer.

It was the ‘answer’ itself made up of words
that actually stifled and kept us in a box.

Answer this question now – “Can you step into the unknown and construct a life unrestricted by answers? If so, you are now on your way to real knowing beyond intellectual knowing.

What is a question?
Let us get to basics first – what is a question? The word ‘question’ means a quest, seeking, searching and needing. It is life’s way to help us evolve in consciousness. And, it is consciousness itself asking the questions according to the level of our awareness growth.
As my morning work consists of answering a multitude of email questions, I have learned to ‘feel’ the questioner by the level of the questions themselves. The questions that are unconscious inside you are the causes of your stress and negative reactions. In fact, all unresolved questions are our suffering. Initially our questions center on our ego and that is as it should be. They often consist of ‘why’ and also ‘how.’ The word ‘why’ is the first indication that the questioner doesn’t really want the truth but an escape from it. For instance if someone asks, “why am I suffering?” are looking for sympathy and someone who canb enable their victim-mentality. A fully matured question would be more like, “What is suffering?”

If you are really interested in taking a leap in understanding then do not just read this script but digest it, feel it, reflect on it until something is triggered within you.

The nature of questions
The nature of a question is the recognition that we do not know. There’s an old Zen saying that affirms, “If you think you know, then it’s clear you don’t know. If you admit you don’t know then you know.”
This most basic of understandings is also the most powerful. The knowledge that trumps all other knowledge is the understanding that we have no certainty. A fact that frightens us is that the ego can NEVER be certain (nor secure or safe). The moment we start getting to know this fact and accept it, it is at that moment we start becoming unstuck. We really don’t know except words from hearsay and books. This ‘not-knowing’ allows an investigation into life that is unobstructed by our conditioning, uncluttered by our information. Just remember this fact…

It is the absence of knowing
That allows the discovery of the new.

Why do we get stuck? It is because nobody ever told us that there is nothing to know for the mind except information. Information cannot help you anymore than black dots on a white page can. We fit what is new into what is old by seeking answers thinking we now know. This thinking we know simply repeats the same old patterns, old thinking and old questions.
When it comes to the Truth there is nothing to know and the only way to break free is to stop trying to know something thus open yourself to what is already in you and about you and really start looking in a fresh new way.

How do we come to know beyond intellectual knowing? -- by looking deeply into our natural questioning nature. This whole journey on earth is an evolution of consciousness. This evolution of consciousness has one single drive – to know itself! And, how does it get to know itself? -- Through the process of questioning. Did you know that our whole make-up is built on questions? Our every step in our consciousness ‘climb’ is a question understood (not answered).

Initially we are so filled with questions that we do not know we have them. These ‘living-questions’ are known as restlessness, stress, over-active mind and body plus all negative thinking.
Did you know that you are asking questions most of the time without ever realizing it? Every stressful feeling, every anxiety, every discomfort and every negative thought is a question.
What are we seeking (questing)? We are unconsciously propelled by consciousness to know itself and so our unconscious questions are about finding meaning and belonging. Remember that these questions are unconscious. For example, whenever you feel out-of-sorts what is happening? You are unconsciously asking a question. For instance, suppose you are feeling anxious aren’t you raising the unconscious question, “I wonder what’s going to happen?” Suppose you are hurt by someone close to you – what are you asking (unconsciously, of course), “Is there something wrong with me? Maybe I’m not lovable? Am I missing something other people have?” So, let us make it simpler by saying that all negative emotions are questions we are UNCONSCIOUSLY asking.

We have taken a big step the moment we become aware of the questions we are asking, we are already above average awareness. When we start looking at these questions as a means of ‘learning’ more about ourselves then we have taken a giant leap in awareness growth.

Why does the subconscious keep asking questions? This is all part of consciousness evolution. Emotional dysfunction or any mental illness is total unawareness of this action of questioning. When we become aware how every negative emotion is a question, that’s greater awareness. When we use such questions to get to know and meet ourselves, that’s even greater awareness. However, the greatest leap is when we realize we are NOT asking the questions at all. It is life’s way ‘trying’ to awaken us.

The levels of questions
What is interesting are the levels of questions people ask. The average consciousness has so many questions that it doesn’t know what to ask or how to phrase its feelings. Anything that is discussed beyond its level of comfort is usually ignored or not ‘heard’ at all. When questions are asked initially they are concerned with ‘others’ and the world, such as “Why is there suffering in the world?” “What if people take advantage of me?” “People are not generally loving and kind!” This subconscious questions are known as ‘living-questions’ and affect every area of our life. It is imperative that we recognize our living questions.

I get so many single women clients who have relationship problems and find it hard to maintain a relationship longer than a year. Through probing their ‘living-question’ I find that they are carrying ‘self-sabotage’ questions such as “I wonder if he’ll stay?” “If he finds out how I really am he will not like me” “I feel rejected when he doesn’t call and expect the worst” and many more. These questions or inner statements, unknown to the individual create an unconscious intention for failure.

What is a ‘living-question?’ -- It is unexplored feeling of negative emptiness and surfaces as stress and a closed heart.
The initial questions are triggered by unconscious guilt such as “What is wrong with me?” “Why am I different?” “Why don’t I feel good enough?” “What am I missing?” “Why aren’t I happy?”

The average questions asked are usually about ‘others’ or about events and situations not directly affecting the questioner except indirectly. It takes courage and somewhat of an egoless nature to expose oneself openly especially in a group situation. It is only when such courage has awakened that those deeper questions start being asked.

The first stage of questions involves the world and this is understandable because in the initial stages of consciousness the world is quite real. Fundamental questions about the government, political system, money, people’s behavior and so on are threatening our security and safety.
The second stage the ‘world’ questions then lead to personal ones and how they affect us. At this point we may ask ‘experts’ or some authorities or join some support group and so on.
In the third stage we start reading a lot but not because we want truth but because we want answers. This is a slow stage and oftentimes we get stuck in it for a whole lifetime.
Truth is scary because it is Oneness and therefore there is no ‘you’ as you believed you are. You just don’t want to hear about this and resort to some comfortable belief system where your fears are supported.
It is in the fourth stage that we start seeking spiritual truth but only on our level of understanding. Most of the time is is spiritual fascination about esoteric themes such as reincarnation, karma, miracles, supernatural events, healings, chakras and so on. These are valid facts but NOT Truth. Truth is Oneness where there is no one doing anything.
In the fifth stage we get fascinated with advaita known also as Oneness. We read voraciously and begin the belief that we now know the truth. We just want to know that we know and we let others know that we know by the knowledgeable statements we make.
In the sixth stage we realize we do not know anything and there’s no one to know anything. This is the stage of innocence and true love. This is the open heart.

Questions never cease as long as we are human. And, questions have no answers because they were NOT meant to. When someone awakens to the full nature of pure consciousness then questions stop and there is eternal rest and bliss. However, what has actually happened is that questions have become recognitions due to one simple fact – all ‘answers’ had stopped. Questions never cease because the human part of us incessantly wants answers.

It is quite a shock to the human system (ego)
when it realizes there are no answers and there never was.
Paradoxically, it is this very shock to the human
that elevates it beyond its box.

Learning to listen

We think it is ‘we’ who ask but there is no ‘we’ or ‘me’ that asks but a strong drive of consciousness to get to know itself. The ordinary mind can ‘choose’ to listen or not. When there is no listening to inner questions then we ask,
“Why do I feel sadness without knowing why?”
“Why do I feel as if I am missing something?”
“Why am I so restless and uneasy with myself for no apparent reason?”

Well, here’s the good news – you haven’t been listening to your deep restless questions and instead tried to find an answer which would have been impossible. Start listening to your deep questions that come to you as a feeling of boredom, listlessness, worry, fear, anxiety and a host of other uncomfortable thoughts and judgments. All these feelings are a clear indication of unexplored questions deep within you. How else can consciousness grow unless it pushes you into a discomfort zone?

Who is it that asks these questions within us? We do not ask these questions, they are our triggers to listen, to explore, to choose to LISTEN WITHIN and ask the ultimate question that will liberate us – “Who am I?”
We do not have the free-will we always thought we had – our choice is very simple (and we do have that choice) – to LISTEN and become aware without seeking answers. We also have the choice to resist and reject exploring our inner questions by seeking answers. Now, let me ask you this – have the answers you received from books, teachers and friends ever gave you lasting peace, security and safety? Of course not! No one can give you these ‘qualities’ because they are your very heart itself when all answers are given up including the ‘answer’ to the ultimate question, “Who am I?”

Ask yourself right now, “Who am I?” and if you know you cannot answer it and accept it fully that it has no answer, then you are already feeling greater understanding because your heart has opened. And please do not confuse the word ‘answer’ with the word ‘understanding.’ The word ‘understanding’ refers to an inner knowing, which is a felt-sense. It is like understanding that you exist and yet it is a felt-sense and not an ‘answer.’ It is the felt-sense that brings inner harmony, peace, awakened love and eternal rest (security and freedom).

How do we awaken deep questions?
Einstein’s genius emerged from his ability to look at Life and marvel at its mystery, and then, ask himself questions about time and space until his own inner wisdom revealed what his mind could not.
The secret of tapping the wisdom of the inner Self is through deep and unusual questions most people never ask. And then, without reaching for an answer to explore the question itself, revelations emerge from deep within as a result of deep exploration.
Most people feel a certain pride when they have an answer to a deep intelligent question. This ‘answer’ which is nothing but a bunch of intellectual words is probably (and most often) borrowed from some hearsay or reading. The real wisdom is in asking the right question. I am grateful to the hundreds of people who have asked me such profound and ‘difficult’ questions because they ‘forced’ me to look deep within myself.

When we step into the unknown and construct a life unrestricted by answers but filled with wonder and awe at life itself, then the questions get deeper as they question the question itself. And, the wonderful thing is, when we are not so keen on arriving at any quick answers, we start fully understanding the questions. And the truth is – an ‘experienced’ question is superior and deeper than its possible answer. This is the secret of awakening inner knowing. The understanding that comes from knowing fully the question itself and what we are really asking (the why and what of it) is what enriches our life. Intellectual answers are mere words that only satisfy the ego and have no staying power. Whereas, when we can look deep within and search our very being for what we really want to know, and formulate such a question that points out exactly what we are asking, then it is a matter of understanding the question itself that brings greater clarity.

How do we understand the question?
There are two steps to understanding the question. However, before going into these two steps it is imperative that the question is a deep unrelenting need of your soul. It is something that has lingered within you for a long time but never had the courage to ask it. You might have to start LISTENING to the deep longings within you (which are your living-questions) and then writing them down as they come to you. Please do not try to make sense of them. When you have a long list and they go all over the place in their incoherence, then it is time to see what the common denominator in all of them is. When you arrive at the one major question then simply write it down as succinctly and clearly as possible. In other words, know what it is you are really asking.

Then follow the two steps:
1. Stay away from reaching for an answer to the question (this is imperative). The ‘answer’ might pop into your head but just laugh at it and let it go. No matter what answers your mind will come up with, they will not be satisfying nor ‘awareness-producing.’

2. Now look deeply at the question and see what your heart is trying to tell you. Just remember this – that this question represents your level of awareness in getting to know itself. This acceptance without reaching for a solution activates your ’unknowing’ of the question. This acknowledged ‘unknowing’ automatically triggers a silent ‘knowing’ that defies explanation because it is not made up of words. What happens is a deep resonance of felt-sense of our wholeness. Accept fully that no answer is necessary and you are willing to stay in this ‘unknowing’ forever if need be. It is this humbleness that brings a glory that can’t be put in words.

The over-powering belief in 'wrong'

2009-09-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

“You stated in your webcam video that there’s nothing wrong in Reality. I find this too perplexing. Could you clarify?”

You are referring to the video clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-nbBMcOzjk

I admit that this is one of the most controversial subjects but it is also a transforming one when fully grasped in its true meaning. In order to understand this seemingly complex statement there has to be some clarity about Cause & Effect of everything that happens in creation. It is true that there is corruption, crime, violence and man’s inhumanity to man in the world but they are the effects of a cause…and that cause is the belief in wrong also known as unconscious guilt.

The Unconscious mind
Practically all of your mind is unconscious to you, just like almost all of an iceberg is underneath the surface of the water. Since we do not see what lies in our unconscious we judge the surface and draw conclusions based on what we see only. Of course there are ‘evils’ in the world and that’s obvious, however, it is when we see the cause of their existence that we start understanding the fact that it is the belief in wrong that creates the wrong.

The Human part
The human part of us is a small insignificant part of our true nature. Our reality lies in Being. Our identification with the limited human aspect is known as ego. The ego is that part of the mind that believes in division, separation and smallness. It is this separation alone that keeps reminding you that you are separate from God (Source of Life). Thus, when you keep being reminded unconsciously that you are just a small human who has forgotten its One Being nature, you have committed the act of separating from God.
Our conventional religions exacerbate this further by making us believe that God is ‘up there’ judging us instead of the Being we are itself. And, we have bought it all because we like the idea of being separate individuals. As Assagioli (Founder of PsychoSynthesis) said, “We spend 95% of our energy protecting, defending and maintaining our self-image without the slightest idea that it is just an image.” It is this defense of this false belief that created the belief in ‘wrong’ known as unconscious guilt. Another aspect of unconscious guilt is the demand for punishment imbedded in the unconscious known as “I don’t deserve the best.” “I don’t feel good enough” “I feel I am missing something” “I feel empty”

The prevalence of self-sabotage
These beliefs in wrong create self-sabotage often destroying the very things we want most. As a hypnotherapist I keep hearing this litany with practically every client, “Why do I do this to myself?” “Why can’t I hold a relationship?” “Why can’t I find peace?”
Whenever ‘things-become-too-good-to-be-true’ we make sure we don’t have them. If this sounds crazy then you’ll be surprised to know that it is in every one’s thinking pattern as long as one has not awakened to their spiritual nature.
We pride in being individuals, I certainly did for most of my life. Yet it is this very duality that creates this inner emptiness and division even from oneself. The term ‘individuality’ spells ‘duality.’
Just like the term ‘evil’ is the reverse of the word ‘live.’

There is no separation
In the movie ‘Leap Movie’ (www.leapmovie.com) that cites many notable scientists and authors it emphasizes the fact that not only there is no separation but the thought of being an individual is the insanity of the age. It is this separation-thinking that promotes the belief in wrong. And, belief always materializes.

The ego (separated self idea) believes that this insane behavior is what you did because it believes that it is you. If you identify with the ego (and most people do) you must perceive yourself as guilt, and you will fear punishment. This belief in wrong is so subtle that one often feels as if they have done something wrong. And, it is this negative thinking that is responsible for the craziness in this world of the mind.

The Thought of ‘Wrong.’
An interesting research study conducted by Cognitive Therapy revealed that people do not suffer from a negative mindset because of depression or fear. It has been discovered it is the other way around. People suffer depression, fear and anxiety because of negative thoughts. In other words, it is the thought of ‘wrong’ that created the emotional suffering in the first place.

Religious teachings about sin, hell, devil, damnation and the need for punishment contributed greatly towards this unconscious guilt. This unconscious guilt has been also the precursor of many suicides.

“A Course in Miracles” states emphatically that all suffering is the result of unconscious guilt. Even in mundane psychology we know this to be true. Sigmund Freud wrote in his studies, “Our patients do not believe us when we attribute to them an unconscious sense of guilt. In order to make ourselves at all intelligible, we must tell them of an unconscious need for punishment.”

This unconscious guilt is imbedded in our very humanity. It is an ingrained belief in separation and often experienced in families. Many of the more serious feelings of guilt stem from a special kind of guilt; the hidden guilt we feel towards our parents – and sometimes towards our brothers and sisters. This is often denied until from hypnosis the truth emerges with such shame from our unspoken hate. This is mostly unconscious in most people. However, as more people become aware of their true nature, the more this hidden feeling surfaces and then what do we do – we start dwelling and indulging in our self-pity stories of betrayal or shame or feeling unloved.

How does this unconscious guilt (which is a strong belief in wrong) manifest in daily life?
• Some sabotage their own success.
• Some are unable to achieve a satisfactory relationship.
• Some are unable to fully relax and enjoy life.

In my sessions with clients I have found the following patterns…
How I should be instead of how I am.
I believe I was abandoned and fear rejection therefore I look for it.
I feel bad but can’t pinpoint what that is.
I am often conscious of losing something and must control it.
I often feel overwhelmed.
I believe one of my parents didn’t love me.

Addictions are escapes from ‘wrong’
This belief in wrong creates the need for escape as a respite. This means that we seek some pleasure or outlet to compensate for our nightmares in our unconscious. These escapes often become addictions. Some addictions are as innocent as the need for coffee or a smoke or masturbation to the greater needs for escape through drugs (including medical) alcohol, drugs and pornography. The average human being is addicted to something or other in order to compensate for their ‘wrong’ inner feeling. This addiction could be anything that will compensate for feelings of ‘wrongness.’ Lying, pretension and a hypocritical attitude is also subtle addictions. Then we have addictions as self-punishment for feeling ‘not-good-enough’ such as complaining, grumpiness, moodiness, melodrama and negative thinking. These addictions are backed by the belief that they are justified like saying, “I have a right to be angry or jealous or upset…”

My experience has shown that such addictions are not healed by conventional therapy except maybe temporarily. These addictions are healed when we discover the truth of our Being-nature which is guiltless and innocent.
We are a human being. While the human part of us believes in ‘wrong’ yet our true part, which is the Being, is guiltless, innocent and love itself. The average human hides the being just like the the dense dark clouds hide the sun. The sun is always there but not seen due to the dark clouds until we come to believe that the dark clouds are real and thus there is no sun.

Questions about the belief in wrong
It is interesting to note that most of the questions about this subject came from religious people who believe in guilt. Somehow guilt is necessary for them to help them atone for the sins of mankind. Imagine the children brought up in such an environment?

In this article I have mentioned unconscious guilt, addictions, fears and attachments and someone might ask, “Aren’t these wrong then?” Yes, but they are the result of the belief in wrong and that’s the whole point.

In order to understand this subject look upon all effects such as emotional pain, melodrama, panic attacks, deep anxieties, insecurities and daily stresses as the result of unconscious guilt and not whether they are wrong or right. As long as we feel justified in our suffering, we will not rise above it and see the sun.
I have heard many people rage and condemn and judge with malice because they said they were justified for the pain they received. Who is it that is suffering? And yet, the need to justify our anger, fear and hatred not only exacerbates the situations but blinds us to healing. It is this which is self-punishment and always follows unconscious guilt and its projections. We do not realize, and don’t want to realize, that all our emotional pain is caused by the mind’s projection. No one can do anything to you unless you allow them. And, you allow them by playing victim. It is this which is termed ‘belief in wrong.’ It is such a vicious circle that we get angry for being angry; get upset for being upset; feel negative for feeling negative; and feel so guilty for feeling guilty that we indulge in our guilt even more. This is the ‘game’ of ‘belief in wrong.’

How do we heal?
In my practice of hypnotherapy I have seen people suffer from this belief hat their lives have become a literal hell. Yet it is symbolic of the thought-system of the ego of fear, guilt and death --- and it’s not real! So why fear it? All images are just images, no matter where or when they appear to happen. These images are seen in some of your nightmares are very tyical of the nature of the ego which is based on guilt (belief in wrong). The unconscious is much more horrible than what’s above the surface. This is how the ego hides itself and its plan to keep you immersed in the belief in wrong. The conscious projection you see all around you is a defense. Thus your ego defense is tolerable in comparison to what’s in your unconscious mind. In other words, we find that surface living is tolerable in comparison to what lies underneath and so we escape into surface living (addictions and escapes) not to face our deep unconscious demons and nightmarish creatures that often seem so real. The unconscious carries all the memories of what you had run away from, resisted and remained unresolved and the word ugly, monstrous, demonic, savage and ghastly come to mind. In fact, this has been built up by the beliefs of separation from God (Love, Source, Essence). And knowing this you begin to understand why people drink heavily or seek sex intensely or indulge in negative beliefs – this is all part of the belief in wrong.
Remember too that the belief in wrong wants you to believe that these unconscious fears are real and it prods you to resist them, escape them or even indulge in them to make them real.

So how can we break free? It is done through forgiveness.
See video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhuNDbP92dQ
The word ‘fore-giveness’ is a giving-forth of whatever your mind is creating in the belief in wrong. To make it simple just do the following whenever you find yourself reacting, feeling anxious, afraid or hating someone or something…just say…

“I AM Spirit, Whole and Innocent.
All is forgiven and released.”

Get into the good habit of affirming this every time you believe in something wrong. Please do not question it. If you are not feeling love and joy then there is something believed to be wrong. When you repeat it nothing actually seems to happen, however, this habit of affirming will bring incredible awareness of your ‘wrong’ belief system. It will strengthen beyond your expectations; increase greater trust in the highest in you and more importantly, it will heal long term ‘demons’ in your unconscious mind. After a few months you will see quite clearly (in retrospect) how wonderful life has been treating you. Your ability to listen is not only enhanced but you’ll be feeling feelings you never even dreamed you could have. At this point you’ll know that living on this worldly illusion can also be heavenly.

Burt Harding
www.burtharding.com
www.youtube.com/burtharding

The Two Voices!

2009-09-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

The Two Voices!

“Most of the teachers talk about living in lasting peace in daily life and I have been practicing meditation and various studies for over 15 years and I am still not at peace. Is there something I am missing in all that I have read? My question is – how can I live in peace and clarity if I am not yet awakened?”

What you are about to read may seem revolutionary and original in its approach, and yet, it is the oldest teaching in the world when fully grasped in its simplicity. You cannot read the following in authentic interest without it affecting your life in a positive, even transformative, way. This writing is not only for you but for everyone who is not yet at peace.

The word ‘Awakening’ has become a word as if meaning something to be attained. Awakening is like sleeping at night and having a nightmare that seems real until you wake up and realize nothing happened except in your mind. The true awakening is a similar process where we awaken from our daily conditioned life to the true life where we see that what seems to be happening is a projection of our mind.
Daily life is like watching a movie on a screen that seems real. If we do not like what is happening on the screen then we try to change the screen and end up frustrated, confused, bewildered and horrified at the escalation of the very thing we wanted to get rid of. Escalation means that whatever we try to get rid of becomes more seemingly solid to our consciousness simply because we give it greater validity and importance. What is needed to be done is not change the screen from which everything seems to be happening, but to go back to the projection room where the projector is playing on the screen and then change the projection.
Everything that happens in our world is a projection of our mind, believe it or not. The world we live in is the world of the mind and as we evolve start seeing what could not have been other than obvious.

Read this carefully because it can make the difference between a life of pain to a life of joy. As you read the following you might find yourself struggling with it even disagree, however, give it your sincere attempt and apply it and watch the richness that will emerge from it.

You are a human being…
What I am going to present here works and, it will work for you if you allow it. It has worked for me ever since I realized it a few years ago. What you are about to read is definitely not new but hopefully easier to understand and apply. After all, it is all about APPLICATION.

There are two seeming parts of you. Each one is unaware of the other. One lives in linear time and the other is holographic. One is real and the other is false. The two are not on speaking terms. You either live from one or the other. Let’s name these two as the Two Voices. These two voices are completely different, while one lives in time, the other is timeless. While one is real, the other is utterly false but seems real because it is the first voice.

The First Voice
The first voice is human and most people live and die never knowing of their real voice (true being). This first voice is what most people consider their life and it is a completely false life. It is known as the first voice because it speaks first through reaction; through conditioned response; through automatic robotic mechanical action conditioned by thought. It is impulsive, compulsive, reactive, propelled by unconscious guilt and fear. It is suspicious, distrustful, skeptical, and carries the feeling of not-being-good-enough and the subtle nagging sense that something is missing. It believes in ‘wrong’ and some religions have called it ‘the original sin.’ The first words of this voice are mechanical and either hypocritical, pretentious or negative. Ask anyone, “How are you?” and chances are that their first voice falls into these categories. This is no direct fault as it is unconscious and conditioned. This first voice is also referred to as the egoic voice. And, since this is unconscious then it keeps creating its future script. All anxiety, fear and emotional suffering is an indication of this first voice. The thoughts are so automatic and unaware that they do not recognize their karmic consequences. Thus, thought is seen as feeling, and feeling is seen as reality. For example, most depressed people complain that it is their depression that is creating their negative thoughts and feelings. However cognitive therapy research found out that it is the other way around – it is the conditioned negative thoughts that are causing the depression. These negative thoughts are the conditioned first voice of the human.

To find out more why the human is so negative please refer to previous booklets on the subject such as “The Ways we seek” and so on. In short, all negativity is caused by unconscious guilt which is the result of believing we are lacking something and thus feel ‘wrong’ or not-good-enough. This feeling ‘wrong’ then tries to sabotage its positive efforts believing unconsciously “I do not deserve the best.”

The Second Voice
Just as the first voice is the human conditioned response so is the second voice that of Being. This voice is not only in total opposite of the first but it is the real voice. This voice of Being is known as Love. This second voice is already the case here and now. It is important to understand that this VOICE is your real BEING voice and therefore it is who you really are in this very moment of reading this. The reason we do not know of this voice is because it lives in the timeless essence of the holographic state. In other words, this Beingness knows no linear time as we have become accustomed to believe is reality. It is eternal, unchanging and always perfect love. It has been called as the kingdom of God or heaven. The nature of the holographic reality is peace, love, joy, freedom and absolute harmony. It is your true presence. You get in touch with this essence when your ego is temporary absent as when you are in love or immersed in an egoless activity such as total immersion in music, love-making or rapture. It is a great joy that surpasses the comprehension of the human mind.

Your interpretation is your choice
When you listen to the first voice, which is 99% of the time, you have ‘chosen’ through interpretation of this first voice as reality. In other words, you have made the voice and its language real to you. When, through some good karma, you interpret anything that happens as glorious, beautiful and loving then you have ‘chosen’ the second voice through your interpretation.
Here’s the great news – you have complete freedom to choose between the first voice or the second voice. In short, you either interpret from the first voice and feel guilt and fear or through the second voice and feel love and peace. This interpretation is your choosing.
Your life is either mediocre and thus suffer or flourish and find peace by interpreting through the second voice. It is up to you which voice you want to listen to.

Both scripts of the first voice and the second voice are already written. Your first voice of the ego, which is incessantly talking to you of negativity and limitation “why” “maybe” “what-if” “but” makes up its mind so fast that there is no awareness of any other possibility unless you make a point to know the truth. We cannot hear the second voice until we make up our mind to do so. In other words, we have to be willing to want what is true. The human script consists of karmic consequences built around thoughts and beliefs that either have already manifested or yet to manifest in the future. What lies unresolved and unforgiven in your conditioned mind becomes the controlling first voice. It becomes stronger and louder the more you entertain your belief in it.
You choose which voice to listen to by how you interpret what each voice is saying. When you start listening to the second voice then you automatically undo the first voice’s power over you, in other words, you start undoing the ego’s influence.

There are over 6 billion humans on this earth and yet there is only one ego. Therefore, when one gets caught in their ego they repeat the same fears and anxieties and guilt as everyone else in that same predicament because it is all One Ego. All characteristics of ego are the same one ego. When this ego is seen to be a liar and a deceiver because we are driven towards the truth then we start moving into the One Spirit Voice. The 2nd Voice is the voice of the Holy Spirit or as often called the “I AM.” Just as the human voice accumulates more garbage with its unconscious life, so does the 2nd voice unlearns the ego conditioning and returns to its primary wholeness and innocence. The more you interpret your life from your true natural Self ( 2nd voice), the more you undo the first voice of judgment and guilt. Just as the first voice lives from fear and is never NOW but always acting from conditioned response combined with fear of the future thus creating anxiety, insecurity and worry. On the other hand, the second voice lives fully NOW as love oblivious of time. Love is the absence of ego and therefore is selfless, giving, loving, forgiving, open, free and peaceful.

The first voice is known as daily life and is easily upset, threatened, bored and mechanical. It never questions itself driven by compulsions, addictions and reactions. Most people live and die hardly ever knowing the glory of their true state.
Our true state known as the 2nd voice is silent, sweet, tender, warm, simple, whole and innocent.

We start expanding into our true nature by interpreting through the 2nd voice. We can call this voice as the Holy Spirit of Being.
Remember we have the freedom to choose to listen either to the first voice of ego or the 2nd voice of the Holy Spirit. The human ego asks…
“What is the meaning of life?”
“What am I doing here?”
“Do I have free will?”
“Do we really have choices?”
Th first voice cannot know the answers and it is often confused. The ‘answers’ do not exist because they are not words spoken nor are they emotions experienced – they are a ‘knowing’ in the center of Being. We come to know everything we need to know through the Holy Spirit. In fact, the ‘answers’ will feel so true and natural that they’ll be beyond doubt.
When we feel sad, unhappy, depressed or melodramatic then know that we have chosen, however unconsciously, to listen to the first voice of doubt, judgment and fear.
A Course in Miracles says, “The part that is listening to the voice for God is calm, always at rest and wholly certain. It is really the only part there is.”

How to listen to the True Voice
When the term Holy Spirit is used, it is referring to the Reality of Oneness as formless even though appears as form. In other words, we listen to the Holy Spirit (2nd voice) in Silence. It doesn’t use words because it is not conditioned by language or time. Yet this voice recognizes the delusion of the 1st voice and undoes it.
Let me give you some examples how the 2nd voice of the Holy Spirit works. One time a man was on the verge of suicide, his whole world was turned upside down by his financial ruin. By grace he attended a spiritual lecture where the speaker suggested listening to the silence early morning before dawn breaks. This man got up early the next day and went to the beach overlooking the sun rise over the horizon. As he sat silently watching this break of dawn something deep within became very still and in a moment of utter silence he ‘heard’ no words and yet they spoke loudly of tranquility.
He stopped at a nearby coffee shop and while sipping his coffee he realized that he was no longer afraid nor worried, it was as if everything was wiped out in one single blow. He returned home feeling a peace he never experienced before. This very listening to the 2nd voice of the Holy Spirit resolved all his ‘problems.’ Within a few weeks everything picked up in a way that his mind could never have imagined.

Another aspect of the Holy Spirit’s guidance is its way to let us know the difference between joy and pain. Most people are not aware of what they feel inside and so confusion is often the case. When we start listening to silence, our ego will rebel and as often the case the first voice (ego) will say, “You’re kidding yourself.” “What do you think is going to happen?” “You are as you are and you’re not going to change!” and so on. This to be expected in the initial stages of the decision to listen.

The Course states it this way…
“The Holy Spirit will direct you only so as to avoid pain. Surely no one would object to this goal if he recognized it. The problem is not whether what the Holy Spirit says is true, but whether you want to listen to what He says. You no more recognize what is painful than you know what is joyful, and are, in fact, very apt to confuse the two. The Holy Spirit’s main function is to teach you to tell them apart. What is joyful to you is painful to the ego, and as long as you are in doubt about what you are, you will be confused about joy and pain.”

And so, it will take a while before you start listening to the Holy Spirit’s voice that is so repugnant to the ego. Initially you’ll escape from silence or from listening. You will find excuses without realizing you are making them. This is natural in the beginning stages of listening. So here are the steps to take in order to ‘hear’ the Holy Spirit’s voice…

1. Start observing your first voice, in fact, be aware of your reactions and after a while you may start feeling discouraged or afraid of your own steadfast first voice. Remember that if you are sincere in wanting what is true about you above everything else, then stick it out.

2. After becoming aware of your first voice and its negative connotations, judgments, ‘wrong’ thinking and fears etc and how prevalent they are then you are ready for the second step. Make a point to witness your reactions as they happen and allow what is happening without guilt, in other words, without making it wrong. Just see it as a release. Release is good but of temporary help.

3. This third step starts the real ‘work’ – next time you see how you react and think just say, “I am Spirit, whole and innocent. All is forgiven and released.” Even though this is like a mantra yet it prepares you for the real forgiveness that will start happening naturally from true seeing in Silence and peace.

4. Now start Listening to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you through the feeling of Oneness. Spend time sitting and watching silently without judgment – listen to the bird singing; listen to that tree in front of you until you actually ‘see it’. Listen to the wind or listen to the warmth of the sun. As you walk, listen to the people’s faces and their thoughts without judgment. This silent listening will automatically awaken your knowing of your connection with all that is around you. It is this feeling/knowing that will teach you more than books or teachers ever could. Remember the first voice had convinced you the world was real, now through this inner silent listening a whole new awakened energy starts percolating bringing insights into the world’s true image. Most important of all, it is the awakening of your Oneness and never feeling alone or lonely ever again. Here you enter the true world of peace and love.
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NOTE: Burt is available through email or skype interview on donation basis.
Email – burtharding@shaw.ca
www.burtharding.com
www.youtube.com/burtharding
http://burt-inspired-writing.blogspot.com

Catching a Glimpse of Oneness!

2009-08-30T08:53:00.000-07:00

“ My question is this -- if Oneness is One and that means I am IT, why do I live such a limited life experiencing fear and separation?”

We are a Human Being and therefore seemingly live in the polarity of both Human and Being. It is this subject and object that have to be seen in their wholeness to get a glimpse of Oneness.
When we take a look at these polarities of Human (object) and Being (subject) we tend to identify with the object rather than the subject and it takes insight, intelligence, sensitivity and a ‘readiness’ to start seeing that the object, which seems tangible, solid and real is nothing more than ‘densified’ thought made real to our perception. In other words we live in mind.

What we call ‘soul’ is really mind and the world that appears so real and solid and material is nothing more than the One Mind making it seem so through the creation of senses.

Subject and object
We may well ask, “What came first, the subject or object?” or again we can ask, “What came first, Spirit or Thought?” and if we say, “It is Spirit that came first then thought followed…” then we are back in the same quandary of creation. When did matter start? When was the world actually created? In fact, when did it all start? Now you see, we are back in time.

Time and thought are synonymous.
When did time start? Could it be that it never started at all but was the creation of perception? How did perception start? Isn’t it mind? We can say that there is only One Mind and everything that seems to exist in time and space emerged from that One Mind, just like the great One big ocean creating waves from itself that seem to be separate, unique and different and yet all the same water. Are there really waves or just a movement emerging from the one big ocean? Do we have a mind that emerged from the One Mind or is it just a movement of this gigantic Mind that is collective and appears as individuals?
What if all this is just one big illusion that appears real? How can we find out and live from what is real? The next question is, “What is real?”

What is real?
Let’s stick to what seems to be obvious. We are here existing and we know it. This ‘knowing’ is in everyone, but who is it that knows this since everyone has that inherent capacity of awareness? Please see the difference between perception as our individual conceptual seeing and knowing from the ‘heart.’ This knowing that you exist is the ‘felt-sense’ of the Mind “I AM” that initially starts from the seeming individual framework. This ‘knowing’ that you exist is not a ho-hum subject but a “Wow! Gee Whiz” recognition. It is collective Mind recognizing its existence just like, as an example, a wave knowing it’s a wave because it is imbued with the ocean’s knowing. This Self-recognition is the wonder and mystery of existence. When we take it for granted then it is known as a state of ‘sleep’ and when we see its grandeur then we can say it is a state of ‘awakenness.’ When we look at the ‘obvious’ we have to arrive at the only conclusion – Oneness!
Oneness is limitless
One can never say, “I realize Oneness fully” simply because that very statement would erase the very one who said it. Oneness is a fact, and no matter how we look at it, or NOT look at it, we eventually awaken to the fact that it is the only ‘thing’ that answers every question and resolves every ‘problem.’
When people complain and say, “I am confused” or “I can’t seem to understand such questions as…
“Do we have free-will?”
“Do we have a choice?”
“Is there purpose to life?”
“What is the meaning behind existence?”
These are questions that every intelligent ‘person’ would ask and will not receive an ‘answer’ because such an ‘answer’ does not exist in mind except in Oneness. As long as you have the slightest belief that you are a separate person then these questions will elude you. The moment you start ‘seeing’ (knowing) that Oneness is Truth and Truth Oneness then here, probably for the first, you will see clearly what free-will, choice, purpose and meaning truly mean.

An ‘awakened’ teacher might say there is no free-ill, no purpose, no destiny and no choice since there is no ‘doer.’ That teacher would be correct. And hearing this we would feel helpless, hopeless and discouraged until we ‘see’ the truth that there has never been a wave to the ocean but the same water appearing in ripples.
There is no individual person separate from Life; there is only Life appearing as human. Therefore, look at the other side of the coin and for just a moment, for just one moment, see how grand you actually are. There are no waves to the ocean but ripples of its expression. There are no separate people in life but humans appearing as expressions of this One Life. Now stop and see that you are LIFE itself and therefore everyone you see is also. Your very awareness by which you experience life is the same, the very same, awareness that everyone else is. The seeming difference lies in perception, which is individually conditioned. And, please do not confuse perception with awareness. Awareness is the knowing of presence whereas perception is individual separate and conditioned seeing. As we recognize that we are pure awareness (Presence) then that very recognition ‘purifies’ or refines our limited perception so that we see a little clearer. And, there is no limit to our clarity. This clarity is known as unconditional love. The more we recognize Oneness, the more love awakens until like Jesus we become pure love.

Cause and Effect
We do not deny our individuality but simply ‘see’ it as our limited perception of what-is. In fact, it is through this acceptance of how things appear to be that we start ‘seeing’ how they truly are.
We start this ‘seeing’ by getting to know the experiencer. That is, who is it that experiences this world but the experiencer of it? If we have the courage we can move even deeper and ask, “How real is it what we perceive and experience?” It takes courage to ask that question sincerely because the very ‘asking’ is challenging to the ego conditioned perception. The ego (the seeming-separate individual) faces his/her conditioned state and is often frightening if not horrifying. The average ‘person’ deals with such confrontation by escaping, ignoring or simply (if intellectual) by finding logical excuses not to do it.

Assuming that you are sincere in your quest for what is real (which is Oneness) then you are faced with this question – who is this experiencer called Burt, Susanne, Karen? None will come to mind and understandably so. However, our honest inquiry will lead us to the obvious statement – we came from a cause. This cause couldn’t have a beginning because if it did then there would be another cause to have caused it. Now we come to the deeper conclusion “This primal cause had to be Causeless (beginningless and, of course, endless).” This automatically brings us to the question of time since the Causeless Cause (from which we came) has no beginning and therefore timeless. So, we have to see here that our natural state is timeless and causeless. Isn’t this enough to blow your perceptual mind away?

This Causeless Cause is the Source. And, since it is the Source of all then it is Oneness. Everything is interdependent, interconnected and interrelated to this One Source. Isn’t it logical to call this Source Oneness or that which is Real? Therefore this Cause produced an Effect, in other words, Spirit became visible as matter. Is matter Spirit then? What would you say? After all, all matter emerged from pure energy, and since all emerged from the same One Source then everything must be the Source in its natural state! Cause and effect are one!

Here’s the big question then – when we look at a form, what is making this effect seem real when it is the result of pure mind energy? Cause (Spirit) and Effect (mind) are One Source or Oneness.
When Einstein came out with the theory of relativity he pointed out how everything is relative to Light (Source). For example, when you walk in the sun your body casts a shadow, and so in this case the body is the source of the shadow? The shadow appears real even though one dimensional because cause and effect are one.
Now if we have seen how cause and effect are one then we also see that the world we see is the result of thought (perception). Just like when you dream at night and it seems real and vivid, yet when you wake up you see it was all a creation of mind. How real is this world you see about you? Isn’t it a creation of mind since in this case your mind created it?

If you have some insights about this then we can move on a little deeper how everything is One and that’s Oneness.

The frustration of human life
The human seeks meaning in life, why? The human seeks purpose and strives towards it. The human believes it has free-will, choice, control. This belief is inborn in the human, why? Look a little deeper into Oneness and you will begin to have insights. Just keep open as you read.
When we seek through the world, which is a creation of mind, we expect to attain our goals and find meaning but unfortunately even after a full lifetime one ends up believing the worst and hardness of heart, cynicism and sadness become one’s lot. It is not whether there is purpose, meaning or free-will but what are they? Why are we all the same? As we mature spiritually and explore as we are doing here we will find that the answer lies in Oneness. The human chases the Being unknowingly thinking it is chasing after some tangible goal in the world of illusion until it finally wakes up and finds it is a dog chasing its own tail. It is Oneness we are missing.

We believe we have many choices and, one after the other we find it is not what we wanted. One day we wake up and discover we never had any choice, and it is then that we discover our true choice – Oneness itself. We pursue goals with the hope of finding some meaning to our life ending up in disillusionment and unhappiness after years of struggle and seeking. Finally, hopefully we wake up and discover that the real meaning we were after was Oneness itself propelling us towards itself.

Polarities are one
Polarities meet in Oneness when you begin to see that everything you made real in this world was nothing. However, the moment you realize that everything is nothing then that nothing becomes everything to you.
We begin to experience oneness when we emphasize the nothingness; the emptiness of everything and see Spirit as the Source. It is in Silence and a tranquil mind that everything is revealed. When we cling to objects or effects rather than Source spirit then we lose everything and end up negatively empty, tired, old and deprived of life. When we go after the Source spirit as the truth of Being then we find we have everything.
The human ego wants everything and will end up empty, frustrated and futile. When, on the other hand, we realize we have no choice then we discover the one true choice which is Oneness and then have everything. Oneness is everything, does everything and appears as everything and yet it is but pure Spirit.

We have a choice between ego mind or spirit. If we choose ego-mind as most people unconsciously do then we live in fear and guilt that will haunt our dreams in both day and night. We’ll feel overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, unhappy and lost. When we choose nothingness (spirit) then we have everything we truly wanted above everything else…we had found ourselves.

The greatest ‘practice’
What is the greatest ‘practice’ for experiencing Oneness? There is only one direct way and it has been called LISTENING to what-is or FORGIVENESS. They are both the same ‘practice.
Please watch the video clip titled “The Great Secret” – here’s the link…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhuNDbP92dQ

How do we listen? There are two voices inside us. The first voice is of the ego and all reactions, impulses and first words often come from ego. This is the conditioned perception that has seemingly molded our life into thoughts and emotional feelings. We really believe this is who we are. When I receive questioners about emotional suffering there is one thing everyone has in common in asking it – they thoroughly believe that what they are emotionally feeling is real. Statements like…
“Of course my depression is real!”
“How can you say that my emotional drama is not real?”
We do not realize that everything we feel emotionally is what we have bought-into through thought. It was this realization that created the founding of cognitive therapy – “People do not feel negative because they are depressed – they are depressed because they believe their negative perceptions.”
Ego acts like a robot based on its past and its beliefs according to how it feels about the world and itself. This voice believes in ‘wrong’ and often says to itself, “I don’t feel good enough” “I feel I am missing something” “I feel as if I have done something wrong without knowing what” “I feel a sadness without knowing its cause”
This egoic voice often takes over before we have a chance to see what we are telling ourselves. This is the voice of EFFECT. This is the voice of conditioning and brings about fears, anxieties and emotional suffering. And, it is all unreal and unconsciously created.

Then we have a second voice, which is the voice of the Holy Spirit. This is the true voice of Source and it speaks of love, happiness, win/win and balance. It understands your illusory pain and if you listen to it, it will help you to find strength.

We hear this second voice when we first allow our first voice to release itself and see it as simply conditioned automatic response and that we are in truth innocent.

This voice has no words but Silence, warmth, love, joy and harmony. It teaches us through pure feeling and not words. This is the voice of forgiveness.

Here’s how to start listening…
Take time daily to be still and just look at a tree as if for the first time and then listen to it. Sit on a bench or rock watching the sunset and just look and listen. Watch and listen to the break of dawn. In silence listen to a flower, to the moon at night, to the stars, to the bird singing and the rain falling and to the wind…just listen to what words cannot convey but the heart can feel. Then you will begin to feel a connection with all that is YOU…Oneness!! Recognition of Oneness does not happen through words but beyond them. It is in Silence and stillness of mind that our center starts resonating and recognizing its origin.

Why do we seek Truth if it is true and already the case?

2009-08-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

“Why do we seek Truth if it is true and therefore already the case?”
That’s the whole point. We keep seeking because we feel inadequate, insecure and incomplete. However, it is through understanding our seeking that we awaken our true nature which is complete, adequate and fulfills our every desire and meaning.

Let’s explore how and why we seek, and then, rising above seeking we see its futility and we find what we have always wanted.
Whether we realize it or not, we are always seeking love since love in its ultimate sense is the Oneness of all life.

The ways we seek love are the ways that guilt is built and have no idea, ordinarily, of this incessant seeking. We seek love through the need for approval; the need to be loved and appreciated; the need to be recognized as important; the need to be powerful; the constant need for attention (and this starts early in childhood); the craving for self-identity; the need to be better; the strategies and manipulations we use to gain advantage financially and socially; the hunger for knowing we are okay, feeling-good, have self-worth and so on – all these are the driving force of the human being towards his true Home called Oneness.

The unconscious drive to seek
The way we seek differ according to the type of sensitivity we have unfolded, for example, a physical-oriented person would seek sexual expression and/or physical contact. A mental-oriented person would seek communication, knowledge, information, being smart. An emotional-oriented person would seek security, warmth, love-relationship. A spiritually-oriented person would seek deeper meaning of love such as oneness, God, True Love and so on.

The paradox of seeking, which is the whole drive of the human being, is often unconscious. This drive is the very essence of being knocking at the door of its true goal – inner fulfillment or Home. While the human being cannot help this seeking, yet, it is this very seeking that creates all our dysfunctions due to the build-up of guilt inherent in the seeking itself. For example, one can’t help seeking love in any of its various ways simply because his/her nature is love knocking fo recognition. However, since the seeker is 95% unconscious to its acts, behavior, moods, emotions and thoughts there is the buildup in the subconscious mind that believes one is lacking love. The subconscious doesn’t know the difference between the real and unreal and produces (materializes) whatever we believe to be true. This means that we are telling our subconscious mind, “I need love because I lack it.” This is, of course, a lie, a great deception since it is our true nature of love (oneness) that seeks itself to bond with itself. Again, due to unawareness of this great truth, we feel we need love because we lack it. This lack-feeling creates a nagging hole in us that keeps saying, “I am not-good-enough” “I am missing something” “I feel incomplete but don’t know how” and so on. This is the guilt that emerges from seeking what we already are in our true nature.

What creates the problem?
What creates this problem? The ‘problem’ of guilt is created because we seek in the world what we already are inside us. Every act, thought, emotion and belief towards this need to fulfill a lack exacerbates our guilt – the feeling of being incomplete and not-good-enough. And, this is why every worthwhile teacher encourages us to look within for the ‘answers’ that can never be found in the world ‘out there.’ Also another reason why we can’t find the answers in the world is because the world is the creation of the mind. What we see in the world is what we have created in our own world.

Look at the world that seems so real and solid and you will see guilt in action – corrupt officials and governments; crime, violence, wars, dictatorships, and man’s inhumanity to man. When we look for answers ‘out there’ we end up frustrated, confused, bewildered, frightened and hopeless. We seek hope and meaning ‘out there’ where none can possibly exist.

Turning inward
When we start to awaken to our own seeking and its futility to bring us what we truly crave, it is then we start turning inward toward ‘answers.’ But then, we look for answers within the same way we did when we sought in the world. This is, of course, an inevitable process of conditioning. We believe that answers come in words and sentences. Our greatest ‘answer’ is One and it is known as the Silence of pure awareness. It is through this pure awareness that we find the meaning we had long overlooked for it is the Oneness itself.

We can’t stop seeking anymore than we can stop breathing, however, our awareness of our futile seeking is itself a pull inward towards the Truth of our Being. Our seeking doesn’t stop altogether but reaches deeper and finer forms of expression until it becomes directed towards the One Love – our true Beloved, which is the Spirit Being. It is all we ver wanted and needed but didn’t know it.

You are a human being
You are a human being. The human is a seeker for the Being. Since you are already a Being, the human part of you is seeking itself without your surface self (human) knowing it. This unawareness or surface self is called ‘ego.’ Ego may seek knowledge, practice and study but it can’t see beyond itself to what is Real. In other words…

The human is the seeker in us but it eludes the human how all it is really seeking is the very Being that is itself appearing as human.

This unawareness of how we seek the Being (which is love) creates the emotional suffering known as unconscious guilt. There are nine ways how we seek the Being known as love or Oneness (one and the same thing). We will discuss these in a moment, but first let’s explore the most essential knowing, which is this –

We do not seek or learn spirituality since it is already who we are – we unlearn the unconscious guilt built through the seeking ‘out there.’ It is through the healing of guilt that we find the Truth.

There’s nothing to do but SEE!
When Gurus and Teachers tell their students to study or practice or do many various things to attain true spirituality, they are merely giving the student something ‘to do’ because it is the ego that believes in ‘doing’ rather than ‘being.’ When a student is ‘ready’ (and any teacher knows and sees that in a student) then there is no longer ‘doing’ but inquiry into the nature of why we have to do anything to unfold that which we already are. It is this inquiry that awakens the inner LOVE we already are and leads to the recognition of Oneness.
The best Inquiry I have ever seen was advocated by Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, by Byron Katie and by the Course Workbook lessons. They ‘force’ you to look at what is obvious here and now and thus wake up from the guilt through knowing one’s true nature as innocence.

What is the unconscious belief that compels guilt?
What you are about to discover is so unconscious that you might have never even considered it, and it is this – it is the belief in wrong! It is so subtle and devious that the guilt in us forces us to pretend and deceive ourselves into believing there is no wrong so that we can indulge in it. Here’s one example, a woman asked me, “Sometimes I feel sad and I want to cry, there’s nothing wrong in that, right?”
My reply was, “Of course not, there’s nothing wrong in anything. However, the fact that you are sad and want to cry, although in itself is not wrong, yet it is a clear indication that you believe in wrong”. In other words, The need to cry is itself coming from the belief that something is wrong.

The belief that something is wrong or could be wrong is the lurking unconscious guilt that is always ready to deceive us and trick us. Another instance is the great power of forgiveness, which is the most effective way to rise above guilt, and then guilt uses forgiveness to keep itself feeling guilty – How? By going through the motion of forgiveness so that one can indulge in self-concern, self-pity or sadness and crying spells.
In hearing about this belief in wrong a woman asked during a session, “Now whenever I feel sad or want to cry I will feel even more guilty because I feel I shouldn’t!”
Another devious deception of guilt is this continual need to keep feeling wrong – there are no ‘shoulds’ in reality. There is only what you are feeling in the moment and then to look at it without going unconscious into its story or conditioned response. Guilt will try to force us to feel guilty for feeling our feelings. There is no wrong in anything! To repeat, there is no wrong in anything but the belief in it. Therefore, if the feeling to cry arises, do not stop it or think anything about it but simply take a deep breath and LOOK at it. See what is propelling it into its existence.

The story of the Garden of Eden is a tremendous good story about guilt when both Adam and Eve were naked (innocent) and the snake (guilt) compelled them to eat from the fruit of good and evil and thus they were thrown into suffering. It is a story how the ‘devil’ is guilt and engorges us with its influence to the point of believing we are it.

Meaning of forgiveness
The true meaning of forgiveness is this – seeing clearly that there’s nothing to forgive since the nature of life is innocence. It is the subtle unconscious belief in wrong that sustains our egoic preoccupation.
Guilt is the unconscious belief in wrong. This is a hard one for the human to fully comprehend because when it looks at the world and sees what is going on, it convinces itself in wrong, and this conviction happens because of the unconscious guilt itself. So you see here how devious and cunning unconscious guilt is! The world is as it is because of guilt.
If we looked with innocence and clarity we would see that the world is a mess because it is motivated, directed and propelled by guilt.
The greatest healing is learning the true art of forgiveness, which is the undaunted drive for the truth. Truth is innocence; it is the ‘now’ without a past or future just like the sweet child who sees only goodness. In Reality goodness, love, joy and happiness are the truth itself. This sounds like polyanna to the human ego but to the Being in you it is Heaven itself. Forgiveness is the only sanity because it sees only the true spiritual essence behind the appearance of evil. The word ‘evil’ is the reverse of ‘live’ and there is no life as long as there is the belief in wrong.

Byron Katie, one of the purest spiritual teachers in our world wrote, “Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there’s nothing to know and that we already have everything we need, right here and now.”

Another subtle deception of the spiritual seeker is the belief that they think they know Truth, as if Truth was ‘something.’ Truth is Spirit-essence; it is not information from a book but an inner peace that our true essence is Oneness. Truth is emptiness, Silence, peace, love, happiness. In an nutshell it is innocence.

The question arises, “Okay, I have read this before but what can I do if Oneness is the Truth—there is no individual doer?”
That’s it! There’s nothing to do but to allow yourself to see that you are guiltless and innocent despite the sadness and emotional turmoil that still takes over. There’s nothing to do but see the momentary deception as it happens, to look at it with innocence and say, “It is forgiven because it is not the truth of who I AM!”
This continual vigil arises from your sincerity and honesty and with repeated affirmations of forgiveness when guilt is experienced, it will eventually become such a part of you that grace will bring you the awakening of your Being.

The nine ways we seek
The following are the nine ways in which unconscious guilt builds. Do not under-estimate guilt. When someone commits suicide it is always the overwhelming guilt that finally commits that act. It leads to insanity, dysfunction and criminal behavior when guilt reaches its summit. It is important to note here that your true nature is guiltless. Guilt builds by believing that there is something wrong with you. It projects this guilt outwardly into the world and blames ‘others’ for this deep feeling of unworthiness. The love sought becomes self-hate and reaches for its own self-sabotage. We awaken when we see this grand delusion of humankind. This is the only human suffering.

The nine ways we seek love and bring guilt:

1. We seek to be good and right in what we do. This need to be right becomes more important than happiness itself. It leads to perfectionism and the feeling that we are never satisfied. The Course asks us, “Would you rather be right or happy.”

2. We seek love from others by loving them hoping to get approval and confirmation of our sweet nature. It never works and this need for approval becomes an overwhelming need for self-identity that haunts us incessantly.

3. We seek to achieve, accomplish and success becomes important to us. We have believed as children that getting straight ‘A’ in school guaranteed love of our parents and teachers. This brings shallow values and attachment to body and image.

4. We seek emotional affection and attention for our authentic nature. We want to be real and believe we are special. This brings bitchy behavior for not being understood.

5. We seek knowledge through information and we are proud of our basic intelligence. We also seek privacy and aloneness but suffer identity problems such as inferiority or inadequacy.

6. We seek security and are very loyal. We make everything either black or white, right or wrong and do not see the in-between. We usually develop paranoia. Many policemen, firemen, government officials belong to this level.

7. We seek optimism and have future hope and dream a lot. These people are often shallow dreamers and can often resort to drink or indulgence.

8. We seek power and control. These people are often aggressive and extrovert. They can be in your face and they seek control over others.

9. We seek peace and harmony. This seeking brings fear of conflict and thus often escape facing the truth if it entails facing anger in others and oneself.

All humanity belongs to one of the above ‘seeking-modes’. This seeking becomes our natural way of being in the world to the point of believing it is the way to be.
When we start challenging our needs and desires without any attempt to control them or even overcome them (which is NOT necessary) then they start to fall away by themselves through the light of ‘seeing.’
To discover what has been troubling you is a great step. To discover that it is all an illusion is an even greater step, but to start seeing how beautiful and innocent you really are despite the thoughts and emotions, then you have taken a giant leap towards your true nature.

“Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there’s nothing to know and that we already have everything we need, right here and now.” ~~ Byron Katie ~~

Note: If you have questions or need guidance then email me for a face-to-face Skype interview and to arrange the time and fee required.
With love, Burt

The Three phases of Spiritual Seekers

2009-08-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

This article is dedicated to the sincere spiritual seeker who have not yet awakened to peace and inner-knowing enough to live the truth of their Being. In other words, if you still feel that you are confused, uncertain, frustrated or still get caught in your egoic world then you are in phase one.

Phase one is not only common but most seekers do not know anything else despite the fact that they think they know. Paradoxically, it is this belief in thinking one knows that blocks further inner experience.
Phase one usually lasts several years to a whole lifetime simply because he/she is intellectually driven (trying to figure out; make sense of what you read or hear; looking for answers where none exist.
Spiritual answers only exist in Silence, in utter emptiness and deep listening.

There are three phases:

1. The information gathering phase (which often lasts).
2. Application.
3. Direct experience of Source.

1. Information gathering: Actually many of these seekers in phase one already know all the words; have been or still are with many teachers; they have traveled the road to different teachings, teachers, ashrams and applied methods and techniques. The worst part of this phase is the belief that one knows truth and, it is this very belief that keeps phase one unchanged for many years.
I keep getting email questions of this nature, “I know the truth but I still don’t feel at peace.” The belief that information can change your life is so strong and unyielding that even intelligence is not enough to make you aware of it. Here’s a fact – there’s nothing to know about truth – Truth is Being!! If you are NOT living the truth in daily life then you do not know truth.

A true teacher does not talk about Truth simply because there is nothing to say, there’s only to teach what blocks you from truth and, that’s the belief that there’s someone separate who knows. It is only in inner Silence that we can live in innocence (Truth).

This phase is a difficult one because there is a lust for knowledge but at the same time one can’t settle for any teaching enough to commit oneself to it fully. There is restlessness, uncertainty, often depression, frustration and confusion. Words in reading are taken literarily and when teachers make contradictory statements or simply seem to conflict from teacher to teacher they end up confused and even bewildered. In other words there is no happiness nor peace yet and the ego is strong in wanting, needing, craving and searching.
Another paradox is that even though they find genuine teachings, there is no listening yet…just more information.
These three phases are really phases of learning to listen…not to words but to their heart-meaning. If they are honest with themselves they will at least realize (which is a big step) that their theology, metaphysics and including Advaita teachings has not given them peace or true lasting joy in life.

A beautiful statement from ‘A Course in Miracles” states “You are at Home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality.”
This statement, if truly listened to, can break the first phase but chances are it won’t because the gathered information says, “There is no doer.” And so after reading it there is the intellectual thought of believing that one has no choice. The truth is that there is no individual separate person but there is the interpretation which takes place all the time. When one suffers, it is simply because one is following his/her own conditioned interpretation of what seems to be happening. In a way it is an unconscious choice to suffer. This is the delusion of the separate phase one. They can’t seem to apply the heart of listening which is often confused with making sense or figuring out.

Breaking free from phase one
Breaking free from phase one is simpler than imagined simply because there is no doing but the choice of interpretation. Phase one people love to debate even argue as if truth consists of words. Truth is love, period. You can’t make sense of truth because it is whole, complete and timeless. It can’t be understood by the linear brain because it is an experience of the heart. In other words, truth is Oneness.
You start to break free from phase one by the following reminders…
1. There are no answers to life; there is only love and forgiveness.
2. There is nothing to figure out; to understand; there is only the Silence of the heart at any given moment.
3. Choose one teaching that resonates with you and makes you feel good until you are convinced this is the road for you. Then commit yourself to it.
4. Whenever you feel confused, uncertain, frustrated or anxious just stop for a moment, take a deep breath and forgive it. Forgiveness is a term often misunderstood but for now it suffices to use it as you know it.
5. Remind yourself that whenever you are unclear or confused then you are using your intellect which can only complicate things. If ever you are not happy with anything then you are not in your heart, simply forgive it. It takes courage to let go but moving to phase two requires breaking free from the addiction of seeking.

2. Application: This is the most important phase because it will make phase three almost direct and effortless. This means that you take everything you have learned intellectually in phase one and apply it. Application means LISTENING to it even if you have to repeat it often until you actually hear it. This is a form of subconscious deprogramming from the past conditioned hypnotic beliefs in limitation. You had taken words like Love, Joy, Oneness, Silence, glory, beauty, Heaven, meaning, Peace as separate words and gave them your meaning. Now look at them again and with closed eyes LISTEN to their ‘feeling’ in your heart. When you discover that all of them mean the same thing then you will start opening to oneness. All is One. There is no individual doer but there is interpretation. There are two interpretations in life. One is from ego conditioned belief systems and the other is the Oneness interpretation which the Course calls the Holy Spirit’s interpretation.
Ego judges, intellectualizes, fears, suspicious, holds on to beliefs, prone to reaction and negativity and pain. We interpret through the ego every time we are faced with something we don’t like. The Holy Spirit interprets anything we don’t like as something that-simply-IS! The Holy Spirit does not judge, does not condemn or blame nor tries to negate anything. It is ready to love, forgive and be at peace with whatever is. We can ‘choose’ either the ego or the Holy Spirit in any situation – we have that option. When we indulge in judgment or pain then we have gone back to phase one conditioning.
When we make use of phase two here then we are ready for the direct experience of Oneness.

3. Feeling one with Source: All debates and arguments and harsh judgments and self-abuse and self-sabotage including anxiety are now a form of history. You have opened your heart to the moment to the point of LISTENING direct to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the eternal “I AM” of you and is One with all. It is who you are.
You enter this phase by asking “who am I?” and realize happily that you have no idea who you are simply because the mind can never know what is beyond itself. This becomes your ‘answer’ as being the vast space, a clearing, a borderless being, pure awareness which is unconditional love. This is also experienced directly in daily life as Presence. It is at this point that you feel complete, at peace and unafraid of life or death.

NOTE: If you have inner conflicts and want to move beyond them then email Burt for a possible face-to-face Skype session. You can agree on a payment before the session.

How do I apply inquiry in daily life?

2009-08-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

Someone wrote:
“You have written a booklet that touched me deeply entitled, ‘The Way of Clarity’ which is about Inquiry. I have been applying it but have met with snags. Would it be possible to write a booklet as part two giving practical examples of inquiry to daily disturbing questions? Thank you for your writings.”

It was a wonderful suggestion and what I have done was to pick the theme of the day’s email questions that people all over the world have sent me that day and briefly INQUIRE into each theme.

Here are a list of themes received today:

“I don’t like the way I am.”
“I can’t figure it out and I’m confused”
“I keep falling back into negative thinking”
“I suffer from anxiety-attacks”
“I guess I don’t love myself enough”
“I don’t believe in anything anymore.”
“I’m so skeptical that nothing can convince me.”
“I’m emotional and changeable”
“What can I do to overcome my fear”
“How can I change myself”
“You talk about forgiveness, but how do you forgive someone who betrayed you?”

What do all these questions have in common? Isn’t it the need to control, resist, overcome or an attempt to improve? Have these ever worked?
What makes us balk under these ‘living-questions’ and what is it that we are after? We feel a lack propelled by unconscious guilt. And, here is a fact that many people refuse to look at – everyone who has not realized their true nature of Being suffers unconscious guilt. When we get fed up easily, feel bored, lonely, restless and afraid it is the unconscious guilt behind it. Here is a shocking fact – unconscious guilt that feels like inner emptiness or the feeling of ‘not-being-good-enough’ wants us to fail at life. This unconscious guilt has been labeled ego or the ‘devil’ in us, but behind it all it is an aching drive for our true Home -- Our Being or Spiritual essence.

Inquiry is the fastest way to our true-Being-nature because it is the simplest way to forgive our unconscious guilt. Forgiveness is not something we do but something we see clearly – seeing our innocence. We do not forgive ourselves or another but simply fore-give (give forth) our narrow view for the greater expanded innocent view.

Depression, apathy, indifference, lack of drive and ho-hum thinking are the symptoms of unconscious guilt. Unconscious guilt looks at the question “Who am I?” with the attitude of “well, what’s the big deal?” whereas innocence says, “Wow! Gee Whizz! How grand!!” Sincere inquiry helps us to confront our biggest fears and see their innocence. It is through innocence that we awaken our Being-Nature.

As you read the following ask yourself this question, “Am I willing to see how my unconscious guilt is running my life in reactive thinking, negativity, anxiety and fears?” If your answer is an honest ‘yes’ then you are on your way to the truth of you. If you answered ‘No’ then that’s okay, just leave this booklet.

This booklet is divided into four parts…

1. The Truth about Innocence.
2. How the mind creates what we think about.
3. Unconscious guilt and why we have it.
4. Inquiry into our questions.

1. The Truth about Innocence
The spiritual life is the truth of you. The spiritual life is honesty and innocence.
What is Being? It is ‘to be’ with what-is! ‘To be’ is your innocence, your wisdom, your compassion and truth. Therefore to forgive means to ‘fore-give’ (give forth) into Being. Being is this moment without a story, without judgment or interpretation and to see what-is as it actually IS!

What is the mark of a truly spiritual being? It is innocence. Innocence has been said to be the highest wisdom because it sees no wrong but equality, oneness and love.
In order to understand what innocence is, we have to rise above our concepts of it. Some people think of it as gullibility, weakness and Pollyanna-mentality. It is strange that what we think of innocence is ordinarily quite the opposite of what it is.

The best way to grasp this most beautiful quality is through the recognition of what it transcends, which is the unconscious guilt that is part of every human being who hasn’t realized their true nature. Unconscious guilt has been covered up and misunderstood by using the word ego to explain it. Unconscious guilt is so unconscious that there is no immediate awareness of it except self-consciousness and a form of constant unease about oneself. All stress, anxiety, unhappiness, fear, bodily concern, worry and the feeling-of-wrong are symptoms of this unconscious guilt. Unconscious guilt reacts in self-defense, in talking too much or a continual feeling of self-concern. In brief, unconscious guilt is a pre-occupation with the body whether about its health or image. Underneath this self-concern or even self-absorption lies the nagging fear, “I don’t feel good enough” or the belief in somehow being wrong or have done something wrong or something going to go wrong.

When Jesus walked the earth 2,000 years ago he was the epitome of innocence and his teachings were focused on love and forgiveness, yet a religion was built around him that focused on sin and punishment. Could that have been helped? I don’t think so. The teachings were more focused on his example and were never meant to create a dogma. Yet a religion was created and inevitably so because unconscious guilt survives through control. It focuses on its own feeling of guilt by controlling others. Early Christianity was based on this focus of overcoming evil even though Jesus’ teachings focused on love and forgiveness to undo evil. Yet the attention on sin brought the very thing into greater focus and thus the vicious circle of control and punishment replaced the sweet innocence of love. What is fascinating about unconscious guilt is that the very people who condemn sin are the ones that suffer most from it and thus the religion of abolishing sin became the sin itself.

2. How the mind creates our illusion
The mind creates what it focuses on because its very attention on it manifests it. Our subconscious mind does not know the difference between the real and unreal. It simply creates whatever the conscious mind focuses on. I remember in the seventies there were two nutrition experts who wrote books on the prevention of cancer through proper eating habits. Both these experts died of the very thing they wrote against because their focus was on the very thing they warned against. The subconscious always manifests what we think about most. Just like the president who wanted to control and overcome terrorism and focused on it so much that he created acts of terrorism himself.

Here is an important rule of unconscious guilt – anything we try to overcome or resist will manifest in our life. Just like the man and woman who complain that people are mostly bad exhibit these very qualities themselves. Just like the policeman who is resolved to stamp out crime ends up destroying himself eventually. The suicide rate among policemen is not often talked about but it’s one of the highest.
“What you see is what you get” is a precise rule to live by. Therefore it is through what we pay attention to that either kills us or renews us and it is that simple. The true spirit of the human being is sweetness, light, goodness, love and forgiveness. These qualities are not assumed but a natural outcome from focus on spirit. Yet, despite the fact that we want what we already are, namely, love and happiness, we keep missing the boat due to the unawareness of unconscious guilt.

Innocence is one’s greatest strength and power simply because it is without fear. Innocence is utterly fearless.
Those who got to know the transformation of Byron Katie received healing through her innocence. There were cases of holocaust survivors who were able to forgive the Nazis through the grace pf Byron Katie and healed years of suffering and pain.
Innocence heals through its power to rise above fear and guilt and thus create a heaven on earth.

Just as the world teaches us about shrewdness, manipulation, clever tactics and ways to gain control and power, it fails to bring happiness and peace but encourages greater suspicion, ulterior motives, shallowness and inability to feel the inner beauty of joy. Why? The world is the dream of the mind that is devoid of spiritual-knowing.

3. Unconscious Guilt and why we have it!
Someone asked me, “Why do so many spiritual seekers suffer from guilt?”
You are a human being. The human is a seeker and appears real because of the Being. However, the Being itself is forgotten and so the human, focused on his seeking of the ideal state, forgets the true state of Being. In other words, things become as ‘they should be’ rather than the way they are.

Did you know if we accept the way things are we return to innocence?
It is our attempt to control, resist, overcome, change and try to improve that creates emotional problems and suffering.

The unconscious guilt is always pushing us towards self-protection and self-improvement because of this inner feeling of emptiness that is trying to fill. It is this very attempt at trying to fill this emptiness that hides the Being. Therefore, the unconscious guilt will ask, “If we do not try to improve or overcome our faults we will get worse.” This is the belief that GUILT places upon you. Ask yourself, “Has your resistance and attempts at overcoming or changing your fears worked?” Such attempts validate the guilt, which is the culprit in the first place.
Look at the list of statements and questions at the beginning of this article that people are controlled by, and, do you know what you see? Unconscious guilt had taken over.

In our attempt to be spiritual we lose the point. One time Gary Renard, who is the well-known author of the “Disappearance of the universe” quoted how so many Acim teachers miss the point by trying to understand the Course text and even allow arguments in their meetings. He emphasized that the major theme of the Course is forgiveness (which is innocence) and if they happen to argue than there is no happiness, no forgiveness and love.

In Advaita teachings it is emphasized that all is Oneness and therefore there is no ego as such. In this context many seekers attempt to squelch the ego so that they can experience the oneness and thus the opposite happens.

It is true that in every human being there resides an “I” felt-sense and we acquaint our name with it plus our conditioning. This is not wrong or bad but simply a natural result of unawareness. There is no need to look upon this felt-sense of “I” as something wrong but rather as something right. This “I” is what-is and therefore by knowing sincerely and openly what it really IS then we find that there aren’t “I” and Oneness but only Oneness appearing as an “I.”

Through inquiry we learn to shift from effect into cause. By taking everything as it is, exactly as it is and, accepting it as it is then we can expand it and find the truth of Being. It is in control, resistance, manipulation, by believing “how-things-should-be’ rather than how they are that we stumble and fall into a precipice.

The whole journey on earth has one purpose and that’s the return to innocence, which is true love and joy of Being.

A common question by many seekers is this, “I know the Truth but can’t seem to live from it.”
This question is an example of self-deception. In Truth there is nothing to know for it is this moment itself as it is. Living truth is how you live with what-is! If you try to alter it, improve it or change it then you are creating problems known as the seven deadly sins.

The key question is – why do we resist what-is? Isn’t it because we want to change it, improve it or control it and fail to LISTEN to what it is telling us at the moment (which we can only hear when we listen to it as it is). And the next question is, “why do we try to improve what-is or control it? Isn’t it because there is a deep dissatisfaction within us that believes change can bring greater happiness or peace or meaning? Has it ever? Now you get the picture of what unconscious guilt is – a deep feeling of void within. This void within is the result of not recognizing the truth of our Being. What is the Truth? It is this – the “I” that you believe is yourself is in truth Oneness.

4. Inquiry into our questions
Here are the questions again as given and addressed briefly and directly, but before we tackle each one remember that asking “why” or “how” is the guilt’s way to avoid the directness of it. The “why” is an escape from looking at the truth directly as it happens and “how” is our escape from responsibility. In ‘Being’ there is no ‘how’ but only ‘what-is.’

“I don’t like the way I am.”
What is the way you really are? Right now without your story or such labels as ‘like or dislike’ what and who are you? It is all a story that you have made real. Ask yourself how real that statement is. If it still appears real to you then you are holding on to it. What do you hope to gain from holding on to this belief? What would you be without that belief?
(see how unconscious guilt wants you to dislike yourself).

“I can’t figure it out and I’m confused”
What is there to figure out. Be clear. What is confusion other than two opposing sides…the truth and your interpretation?
What is the reason for holding on to it? What would you be without confusion? (guilt wants confusion)

“I keep falling back into negative thinking”
What falls back into negative thinking other than guilt? What is negative thinking. Take a good look at it next time it happens. Find out where it is happening and who is making it happen?
What is the reason for holding on?

“I suffer from anxiety-attacks”
What is an anxiety other than the question “What-if?” And, what happens as you keep resist it (hoping it goes away)? Sit with it because you have resisted it long enough it has become an attack. Look at the sensation of it without its story or label ‘anxiety-attack’ but just something that is happening. Take a deep breath and watch it as it takes place in your body.
Guilt has a field-day with anxiety.

“I guess I don’t love myself enough”
Who is the person you call ‘myself’ and who is the “I” that says ‘myself’? Sit with this feeling without its story or label and feel what is taking place. Where is the self that you don’t like? The moment you see the absurdness of this statement you are healed.
Also remember, guilt won’t like it when you look directly at it because then it dissolves.

“I don’t believe in anything anymore.”
What is a belief? Why do you need to believe anything? Either something is real or it’s not. What difference does it make whether you believe a truth or not, either it is true or it isn’t. Truth is not a belief – it just IS true!! (guilt likes to discourage you from looking deeply).

“I’m so skeptical that nothing can convince me.”
The same goes here as the above. Skepticism is not bad when you want the truth but if it closes your heart then guilt has won another round.

“I’m emotional and changeable”
Emotion is change itself. Emotion is ‘motion of energy.’ When we believe a thought it becomes an emotion (motion of sensation in the body). The more we make emotions real, the greater becomes our instability, changeability and weakness of character. Strength emerges from looking directly at our inner discomfort known as unconscious guilt. Emotions are not wrong when they are fully accepted as what-is.
Learn to put aside the stories that emotions carry and simply allow the feeling to be what it is.

“What can I do to overcome my fear”
What is fear? It is guilt thrown into the future bringing worry, anxiety, concern, what-ifs, problems etc. Experience the fear sensation when it arises without its story or label ‘fear’ and then as you look at it see what happens. Remember that guilt will try to prevent you from looking. Once you know this then it’s your choice.

“How can I change myself?”
What is change? Who is it that changes? Your thoughts change, your emotions change, your interpretations and judgments change but the truth of you never changes and it is always happy, loving and innocent. Instead of changing yourself BE AS YOU REALLY ARE and that will be an enormous change. Guilt wants you to be other than what you are and that’s why we get confused.

“You talk about forgiveness, but how do you forgive someone who betrayed you?”
You love the story don’t you? Guilt likes to dwell on past stories of pain because it gives a sick feeling of meaning. You don’t forgive your ‘betrayer’ – you simply allow yourself to see that only guilt has brought you into this distressful feeling of an ‘enemy’ who in truth is part of you (as spirit). See this person’s innocence beyond the act and that’s forgiveness of yourself and the guilt.

Take a moment NOW!
Take a moment right now and sit still, close your eyes and honestly ask yourself, “What am I right this moment?” and you might get shocked at the obvious answer of not knowing…because all you are this moment is a clearing, an open space, an awareness of Being and anything else is a conditioned thought about it. This is it! Once you get over the shock and fully acknowledge and accept these obvious observations then you start seeing in a whole new way – your infinite greatness, the infinite possibilities and limitless nature. In this oneness-intuitive-knowing you awaken your natural innocence.

Next time you are troubled by a problem, situation or happening, take a deep breath and do nothing about it. For a moment witness how the story about it is the deception. It is the story that we are telling ourselves because the unconscious guilt is at it again. The unconscious guilt is vicious – it wants you to feel guilty and wants to punish you for not being good enough. It wants you to be ashamed of yourself. At this point uttering the word ‘forgiveness’ reminds us that we are not guilty but merely pawns of a conditioned ego known as unconscious guilt. Through uttering the word ‘forgiveness’ we remind ourselves that our true nature is innocence and we abide as that with no ‘ifs’ and ‘buts.’ If we succeed in looking at ‘what-is’ as simply what-is without a story and forgive it then we have taken a giant leap in consciousness.
With this new understanding (after a couple of months) you will see in retrospect the giant leap you had taken!

The Two Choices!!

2009-07-29T10:16:00.001-07:00

THE TWO CHOICE (Life or Death)

One of the most common questions spiritual seekers ask is:
“When I listen to the satsang videos I feel clear but the moment something negative happens I am back to square one. How can I keep stable in my awareness of the Truth?”

You are a human being and therefore convinced that you are living in duality. Since the human and the Being are opposites in values and interpretation of life we get ‘caught’ in a quandary between the two. Thus, there seem to be two choices. The human choice is so conditioned that before we even have a chance to see what is happening, out of habit and familiarity, we keep choosing it unconsciously. To top it all, we are also convinced unconsciously (and might not want to admit it) that we are this human part more than the Being part.

Illusory Duality
In Truth, there aren’t two separate parts of us but only Being. It is like looking at ourselves in a mirror and believing that we are that reflection rather than the One looking into it. In other words, we have identified with the human so much that whether it is real is not even ever challenged. The human is only a reflection of Being that has taken on the characteristics of the conditioned mind.

The Conditioned Mind
The conditioned mind is so-called because it is the product of our induction into the physical life. Our parents brought us with values inherited from their parents, schooled and educated in their limited tradition, nationality and religion plus whatever values of their inner life according to the ways in which their inner life was viewed. This is not wrong but simply a conditioned viewpoint like hypnosis. Hypnosis refers to the unconscious values that lie unchallenged (unquestioned) in our subconscious mind. We are hypnotized in their belief. Beliefs are NOT reality because they can be shaken whereas Truth cannot be shaken. Here are some belief systems and their result -- Muslims believe that anyone outside their belief-system is an infidel. Christians believe that theirs is the truth yet both religions have created great division from Oneness. Besides these limiting beliefs, we are conditioned by cultural differences that have caused wars and inhuman cruelty. What is being said here is this – we are not criticizing beliefs per se but saying that anything that separates us from Oneness takes us away from Oneness.

You are NOT this conditioning
If you have traveled the world then you have broadened your mind enough to see how each culture in the world holds different value systems. They are conditioned values that narrow our view of our Being nature. We do not reject these values but expand them to include even opposing beliefs.

When you start awakening to your true Being nature you start seeing how limited your conditioning is and it is both shocking and frightening. It is shocking because we never challenged our values before we started seeking a broader perspective, and frightening because we see that we are NOT who we thought we were at all. Yet something intuitive inside us (our Being) beckons us to follow this broader path and when we listen to satsang videos we resonate with this Truth since it is already known by our Being nature. However, the familiarity of our conditioning will draw us back, almost instantly, the moment we forget what we just heard at satsang.

Ego is conditioned suffering
It is these conditioned beliefs that create the back-and-forth swing from stabilizing into Truth of Being. This back and forth between human and Being will continue until we are ready to commit our human values to forgiveness. The word ‘forgiveness’ is a term abhorrent to the ego. Once we start recognizing the truth about forgiveness, we will see that it takes much less energy to forgive than to indulge in our lower values.
When we indulge in self-defense of our ego system of thinking we suffer. Yet this suffering is so familiar to us that we might prefer it to Being at the moment of being hurt. For instance, suppose in childhood you did not experience much warmth and approval, then as an adult you feel a deep gnawing lack inside you. This lack or low self-worth had become so much a part of your value system (habit of thinking) that even your self-image has become hypnotized into your viewpoint of life and self.

Ego creates unconscious guilt
This self-image of lack (separation from Oneness) which we have taken to be who we are creates an unconscious guilt that seeks self-punishment because it doesn’t deserve love. Love, being Oneness itself, does not reside on the level of our immediate awareness and that’s why it is called unconscious guilt. It is an itch that can’t be scratched and so whenever we are confronted by some lack either in communication or thinking, we react without realizing the extent of that reaction.
Our reactions from resentment to violence are triggered by this unconscious guilt image of ourselves. It resides as a frozen center within us. We often ‘lose it’ emotionally and even become violent and bitchy. However again, because it is so familiar to us and because we feel we deserve punishment we hold-on to this melodrama rather than forgive it. Somehow this melodrama justifies our value system of who we believe we are.

Spiritual seeking as an escape
Now here’s another devious way of conditioning called ‘spiritual distraction.’ Spiritual distraction’ among seekers is so common that it escapes awareness entirely. For an example of spiritual distraction – Mary has now become totally well-versed in the words of spirituality namely the terms ‘Oneness’ or ‘egolessness’ or ‘pure awareness’ or Truth and believes she knows the Truth. This distraction is a common strategy of the conditioned human not to look at its own escapes from Truth. It is a way to pat itself on the back as being spiritual while still indulging in self-defensive tactics and ego thinking. When it sees that it is getting caught then it feels guilty rather than inquire “who is it that is feeling guilty?” In other words, these escapes from truth are so common that the simple knowing of forgiveness, commitment to truth and abiding as the Truth are elusive and avoided.

Tug-of-war between human & Being
Our life becomes a tug-of-war between human and Being. At this point we keep choosing ‘death’ rather than Life. This appears to be so because at this ‘stage’ there seems to be two choices (which in Truth do not exist at all). We are actually choosing death every time we indulge in ego rather than Life.

It is all a choice between Life or Death
Why is it called ‘death’? Death is that which kills the spirit in us. It makes us heavy, tense, stressed out, mentally tired, bored, doubtful, guilty, fearful and incredibly frightened of the future.
On the other hand we have Life. Life is radiance, aliveness, Nowness, ISness, Truth, happiness, forgiveness and allowing with full acceptance. Life is innocent and does not dwell on the idea of sin, wrong or that which is not-good. In fact…

True Life is so innocent that it can be likened to a child or kitten and puppy in their innocence. This ‘Life’ value system doesn’t see wrong or sin but love everywhere.

So initially the spiritual seeker is torn between life and death. Again, why do we call it Life and Death? The terms are so appropriate that they hit the mark just by seeing the words. The ego believes in death and in fact he/she is frightened of dying and won’t even think about it. The innocent Life, on the other hand, loves Life so much that death is not frightening simply because there is no death ever. The innocent can see this clearly that death happens only to the individual and there isn’t one.

How do we forgive ‘death-thinking?’

How do we forgive death-thinking? Forgiveness is also known as quantum forgiveness which means that there is no action taken to forgive. Forgiveness (fore-giveness) is giving forth the belief in death to allow Life to take its place with no ‘buts’ ‘what-ifs’ or any holding on to death.
Death is that which has an end to it; it deteriorates, it hides, it fears, it destroys itself, it rots and finally disappears or gets lost in darkness.
Life, on the other hand, sees clearly through its innocence that such limitation are only the creation of the ego-mind.

Forgiveness is seeing that there is nothing to forgive simply because death is an ego-creation.
Life is ever flowing and has no beginning or end. It is our true Home. Jesus called it “The Kingdom of God.” It is all that is beautiful, pure, innocent, loving, open, trusting, unworldly and joyous. Life is eternal and knows no limitations, no boundaries and has infinite possibilities. It looks at everyone with pure innocent love and trust and even though it sees the world of darkness and death it is still untouched without denying its illusory existence.

Innocence does not deny this illusory world of pain but looks beyond it.
So, how does one forgive?
Let’s take it step-by-step -- say that your conditioned self is confronted with a challenge whether it is financial, work-related, relationship-related or self-related.

First step:
The immediate response of the ego-self is worry, anger, irritation, rage or depression and escape. This immediate response is immediately seen for what it is and that’s the first step. In our conditioned human state, death always speaks first.

Second step:
Once we become aware of this ‘death’ experience we acknowledge how the body is experiencing that death through churning stomach, heart palpitations, maybe hot and cold shivers, trembling, heat building up to a pitch as if ready to explode in violence or anger or simply holding-it-in and becomes depression or apathy or indifference (all different forms of death).

Third step:
Now having become aware of this ‘death’ feeling experienced as sensation in the body, simply acknowledge it to yourself and allow yourself to see your reaction and how you indulge in it. This is something you can do if you have understood the two choices of human and Being.

Fourth and final step:
At this point there’s not much you can do but sit down for a moment, take a few deep breaths and say, “I choose Life because I am Life and it is forgiven.” Then go in front of a mirror and reflect this Life in your face. The face of death is morose, sunken, heavy and avoids direct eye-contact. The face of Life, on the other hand, is willing to smile and even brighten the eyes. This becomes fore-giveness and it alters the conditioned aspects of death into Life. When we awaken fully then it is simply that we keep choosing Life and not death. It is a choice between Truth and falsehood. It is this simple, and there is no ‘doing’ per se but an awareness of love and giving forth that love.

What would be the results of this ‘practice’?
This might not alter your sensations of fear and pain but having gone through the steps with sincerity you have actually erased any future karmic consequences from your emotional trigger (which inevitably follow when no awareness is allowed). As you continue asking the Holy Spirit (“I AM” essence of you) for help then this ‘practice’ becomes a fast way to inner freedom.
The gradual transformation from worldly harshness and crudeness to innocence and sweetness is a joy to behold.

The Way to Clarity (Inquiry)

2009-07-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

“I have read that Ramana Maharshi advocated using the mind to go beyond it. Also ‘A Course n Miracles’ is a Course in mind training which brings one to the clarity of non-duality. Can you explain to me how this works?”

This ‘method’ is called ‘Inquiry.’ It has been used by the Masters such as Bhagavan, Byron Katie, “A Course in Miracles” through its workbook and effective satsang teachers. It is the most direct and ego-transcending method of all. It takes both willingness and an open heart to apply it. If you have this drive for what is real then inquiry is the way to go.

Before we get to know what is inquiry and how to apply it there are three things to understand first.

First -- All ego seeking and emotional pain are made up of questions. The term ‘question’ means a quest. It is a need from the hungry human to find its way back Home to Essence. Most people do not know that all emotional pain and including seeking spiritual awakening are the ‘living-questions’ of the soul for its redemption.

Questions have different stages of ‘growth’ and move from the ego-me to the deeper aspects of us and finally to Oneness. For example, the initial stage of the seeking novice is something like this, “Why me?”
“People do not like me!”
“It seems the world is against me.”
“People do not listen to me.”
“I feel misunderstood.”

Then with greater maturity and understanding the questions move to ‘us.’ Here are some of them…
“Why are people so dense?”
“The world seems closed to the spiritual life.”
“Why do religions divide themselves instead of unite?”
“How can I help the world?”
“Why do bad things happen to good people?”

Finally with greater seeing, sensitivity and maturity the questions move into Oneness or the Whole. Here are some…
“If there is no doer then who is it that acts through me?”
“I am not clear about linear time and holographic timelessness?”
“I feel clear at times but still find myself losing what I know!”
“I have had glimpses but I still do not live the life!”
“I realized that my knowledge of spiritual reality was a distraction to make me feel good about myself and that’s why I never felt really pure!”

How to apply inquiry

Second -- The way to inquiry is simple but it requires some form of earnestness to conduct it. For instance, let’s say you find yourself reacting to some statement or to some thought. In that instant write down or express in a digital recorder what you are really asking. For instance, someone says you are being dumb and you react to that statement with anger, offence, defense, outrage, hurt and so on. This reaction happened NOT because of what was said since we are never upset for the reason we think. The statement felt like a threat that must have reminded us of some personal lack (as a child for example.) Maybe you felt misunderstood or ignored or less-than and that term ‘dumb’ triggered that memory and feeling. Therefore you are asking a question in your subconscious mind such as, “What is wrong with me?” “Maybe I don’t feel good enough?” or “I probably feel so separate from others!”
The point is this – that all emotional reactions are unresolved questions…
Anxiety is a question asking, “I wonder what’s going to happen next?” “What if I don’t make it?” “What if I fail?” “What if people laugh at me?”
Fear is a question with a “what-if…” in it. Most fears are future-oriented.
Sudden anger reaction is a question that is seeing a threat to the ego and reacting in defense of itself without knowing what or whom it is defending.
Deep disappointment is a question dealing with expectations of an ego boost nature. “How could I be so wrong about that person?”
Suffice to say that all emotional pain, melodrama, hurt, depression and including indifference and apathy are unresolved questions.

Third -- The next step, once we have acquired the skill to formulate the question is to understand the question itself. Here’s is the most important part of inquiry – do not reach for an answer!! All answers come from the conditioned mind and are merely words that mean very little. The true answers have no words but a deep feeling of inner knowing and satisfaction. Therefore it is imperative that we do not seek an answer to the question but to keep it open.

I remember reading my first book on inquiry from Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi who advocated asking, “Who am I?” and I must have asked it several hundred times and never received an answer. However I kept it up throughout the years waiting for grace to descend upon me with an answer. One day it dawned on me that the answer was given from the heart the first time I asked it but I didn’t hear it because I wasn’t ready to listen.
What was the answer that I didn’t hear? It was the Silence that emerged from asking, the deep space of unknowing of who I was simply because I was far greater than words could tell, and besides, if the answer came in words who would give it - It would have been my ego or conditioned memory from reading so much. It was the silent peaceful ‘not-knowing’ that unfolded the mystery of my inner knowing.

The question now is, “If I don’t get an answer, how do I listen?”
Listening is what all awakening is about. People do not ‘get it’ or ‘awaken’ or feel at peace is because they do not LISTEN! They hear the words; they intellectualize the words; they know the answers to questions but there is no inner clarity because one hasn’t gone beyond the thinking mind. As long as you are thinking about a truth you cannot know it. You will only ‘know’ the words about it, not ‘IT!’

The Truth is Oneness or how every human is a wave from the One ocean of Life. Yet, the wave is one with the ocean. This ocean is One and therefore known as LOVE.
Love is not emotional except in its initial understanding. Love is seeing another in oneself. Love is ‘knowing’ that there is no separation in anything – everything is interconnected, interdependent and interrelated. If I judge you I am judging myself. If I hurt you I hurt myself and this boomerang is known as guilt.
Boomerang is that which always returns to us what we give out. What we give returns to us. If we give love, we get love. If we give resentment, judgment or fear then we get it back in the form of guilt. Guilt is always present initially as unconscious-discomfort as if missing something or feeling a lack without knowing what it actually IS! Guilt is the result of feeling separate and thus incomplete. Guilt is what causes all loneliness, fear, unrest, hatred, separation and distorted thinking. Guilt always seeks self-punishment known as self-sabotage.
Therefore LISTENING is this…

The major point of inquiry is to NEVER seek an answer as there are no satisfying answers to life. There is only the clarity that awakens when we understand fully the question we are really asking.

Listening is ‘understanding-the-question’ that your heart is asking deep down within you. This asking is a seeking, and a seeking is always in the form of pain or discomfort. Thus, if you are troubled, confused, uncertain, perplexed, frustrated then do not attempt to figure it out; avoid all intellectual attempts at trying to understand it. Do these steps…

a. Write down the question you are really asking. Keep it simple.
b. Understand the question by its emotional feeling.
c. Look at the story created by that question and its reactions.
d. What is it that you’re telling yourself?
e. How will it be if there was no such story in you?
f. Are you willing to forgive it?
g. If not, why is it essential to hold on to it? (what are you hoping to gain from holding on?)
(Would I rather be right or happy?)

These questions will uncover what is truly eating at you and releases deep unconscious guilt and awaken clarity.

Why do we get negative? Negative feelings are human feelings and they emerge from feeling a lack in you (result of separation). ‘Negatives’ are the soul seeking redemption (answers).

The real answers are NOT words (verbal or written) but the feeling of joy and love in the heart.

The way to clarity (awakening) is inquiry (listening). To inquire (investigate or explore) is to put a thought or a story up against questions such as given on this page 5.
Inquiry is to end confusion and experience inner peace, love, joy and innocence, even in a world torn by worldly values and chaos. Above all else, inquiry is about realizing that all true answers we ever need are always available inside us (in our Being).
See the video clip “Awakening Insights’ found in this link…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVEZmJWjM7s

Inquire is not just a technique: it brings to life, from deep within us, an innate aspect of our Being. When practiced for a while, inquiry takes on its own life within you. It becomes alive in you. It appears wherever thoughts appear. This partnership with the Holy Spirit in you (which is the ‘I AM’) awakens in you to abide fulltime. This partnership leaves you free to live as a kind, fluid, fearless, amused listener…joyful partner. In this partnership loneliness, desolation, separation become an unknown quantity, a realized unreality that only existed in unconsciousness.

Your inner guide is your best friend forever that can be trusted, relied upon in an emergency and experienced as a way of life bringing fullness of Being. Peace and joy inevitably make their way into every corner of your mind, into every relationship and experience. The process is so subtle that you may not even have a conscious awareness of it. You just know such happiness now that you wonder how you could have lived before without your real partner.

The Act of Waking up spiritually!

2009-07-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

"You mention the word 'awakening' often, can you explain what you mean by it, are you referring to enlightenment?"

The word 'waking up' is meant literally waking up by choosing life instead of death. Most people believe they are just a body and identify with thoughts and emotions as reality, that's unconscious living and a form of death. Waking up is seeing that you have infinite possibilities because you are a human being. There are literally no boundaries to you. Being is the sky and the human are the clouds. When the clouds cover up the sky's light and darkness descends then the Being becomes clouded over and forgotten.

Clouds come and go but the sky is ever present and its Light is never dimmed despite the clouds. Thus it is a matter of identification. When the day seems cloudy and dark isn't that merely the covering of the Light that is always present? We have the choice to identify with the Light that is always the case rather than with the temporary clouds.

You are a Human Being. Through the understanding of both these aspects we wake up through choice. Let's see how each affects us.
The Human is a seeker and it is always seeking a better life for itself. It believes it is individual and separate because it identifies with the body as its reality. Therefore it has FOUR strong drives which are the culprits for much suffering.
These FOUR DRIVES are...

1. The drive for control.
The need to have one's way based on one's view of life. This is also the need to be right at all costs to assert its individuality and gets hurt if this is not so.

2. The drive for security.
This is a strong need especially among more emotional people. This drive for emotional security automatically brings the fear of insecurity which haunts one's life.

3. The drive for approval.
This need for approval is also the need to be accepted, recognized, respected and looked-up-to. This applies to both the emotional and the intellectual. When there is no approval then one suffers low self-esteem and equates this to low self-worth.

4. The drive for separation.
This is a strong one even among spiritual seekers who supposedly seek Oneness. This is the need for feeling special, better-than, important or stand-out and feel different. This creates loneliness feelings and moments of negative emptiness.

The question is this -- why is there such opposition between Human and Being? This duality is part of creation. Creation cannot happen without opposites. For instance, to have an 'up' there must be a 'down.' To have 'white' we must have 'black.' To have 'front' we must have a 'back.' Similarly with emotions. Emotions are thoughts that are believed to be real and become strong beliefs. Thus since our true nature is love (Oneness) then we seek it 'outside' ourselves to join, to belong, to possess, to have, to own and so on. This need creates the fear of not having enough or being enough. So, with love comes fear in the human expression. When we love someone we start feeling the fear of loss, fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough and fear of abandonment. Since this fear often takes over while having the drive for being right then we create self-sabotage of the very things we want. This is called human suffering -- self-betrayal or choosing darkness instead of Light. We see the clouds instead of the ever-present Light of the sun.

The next question is -- when we seek the need for control, approval, security and separation, what is making us seek these things? Believe it or not, it is our Being nature which IS the very things we seek. In other words, we are seeking what we already are but don't know it. It is this 'knowing' that will bring awakening to our true nature.

What is our Being like? Being is our true nature. However, Being is not personal and that's the crux of the matter. There are over 6 billion humans on this earth but there is only One Being...that One Being is YOU! Please read this again and again until you feel its incredible impact because by itself it can bring awakening!
You are a Being playing the human role!!
So, what is Being? Let me put it this way -- do you like going on vacation? Why? Isn't it because you love to relax, be free, happy and enjoy yourself. And, what is it in you that wants this? My dear friend, it is your very Being that is this relaxation and aliveness itself. We can FEEL this as who we are but since it happens through the FOUR HUMAN DRIVES we equate it with a need instead of who we ALREADY are! Please read this again.

'Being' is 'BE-ing' -- it is to be happy, comfortable, relaxed, alive, spontaneous, creative, energetic, enthusiastic, joyous and fulfilled. The reason we want these things is because we do not recognize them as qualities already inside us, we believe they need to be attained and so we seek them and thus destroy them.

When we seek what we already are believing it is something to be attained then we automatically block it from immediate expression. This seeking becomes our lust for the world making the world real in our mind. The human believes that the world is real instead of a dream of the mind. When the Being expresses itself through acceptance of its true nature then one sees clearly that the world cannot be real. Physicists know that matter is energy and only appears solid to our senses.

Every time we choose the human part of us, which means we choose unconsciously by identifying and indulging in our negative thoughts and emotions we die a little. Therefore we keep choosing death instead of life. Now listen to this great simple truth -- it takes more effort and stress to be unconscious and suffer then to choose consciously our true nature. It all comes down to this choice -- if we don't choose aliveness then we are unconsciously choosing death.

The unawakened human believes in death and, in fact, so much so that it frightens them to even think that they will soon die physically. Human life is fragile at best and its life-span is so short yet it hides from even seeing the physical for what it truly is. The awakened knows, beyond any doubt, that death is impossible because Being (who you really are) cannot die because it was never born. Being JUST IS!! Being is Oneness. Some seekers ask, "How do I realize Oneness? Oneness is not attained or 'realized' but seen when we are devoted to the Truth of our Being nature. Being is Truth -- Truth means that you are eternal, ever-alive and always YOU!! Jesus said, "The greatest mystery is how Christ lives in each heart." We are NOT separate individuals but One in Spirit. The moment we ALLOW ourselves to see this fact the we are awake. Wakefulness is like waking up from a nightmare and then rubbing your eyes and saying, "WOW! It was just a dream!"
Waking up is seeing the infinite possibilities of your true Being nature. It is the knowing that there are no boundaries toBeing. You are glorious and boundless and to even feel this minutely is to fill you with gratitude and joy. This is who you are RIGHT NOW!!

3.

Transforming Power of Forgiveness

2009-07-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

The Transforming Power of Forgiveness

I get an average of 40 email questions a day regarding the spiritual life. Most questions of “why” or “how’ indicate the need to escape from facing the truth of what-is happening. Looking at what-is, is the fastest way to understand by looking at it directly. Thus, trying to figure out “why” or “how’ are ego ways to avoid looking directly. This escape is a ‘natural’ act of the ego which exacerbates the problems.
The most powerful solution to daily conflicts, problems, misunderstandings, and negativity is forgiveness.

The word ‘forgiveness’ is reviled by the ego and respected by the heart. Thus from the emails I get there seem to be two problems about forgiveness. First is the fear of forgiveness because of the ego’s need to retaliate or validate one’s suffering.
Second is the mind’s inability to understand how to forgive or what is implied by it.

Our lifetime script is already determined with its ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ plus ‘accidents.’ This script is not set in stone unless the human ignores forgiving, then what was determined happens on ‘schedule.’
Before we get into the secret of forgiveness let’s see some of the transforming power of it. Forgiveness actually collapses time in our favor so that any karmic consequence due us such as an ‘accident’ or painful experience is bypassed.

To understand this karmic life there has to be the mental grasp of what is called ‘Unconscious Guilt.’ This unconscious guilt is a discomfort most people live with believing it is the way life is. They go about life feeling this inner discomfort and try to find either a reason for it or try to get rid of it. Nothing works because guilt is not something you can put your finger on. It is like having a pebble in your shoe and any attempt to remove it fails since you can’t find the pebble. So, you learn to live with it.

What is this unconscious guilt?

It is unconscious because it is deeply set within the psyche. It is known as ‘guilt’ because it carries with it feelings of separation and the need to be important, to be special or to stand out and be noticed. Within its needs lies a feeling of ‘not being good enough’ combined with the subtle feeling that you are missing something or lacking something. At times it even feels as if you are ‘bad.’ These feelings everyone has regardless of station in life and it is unconscious so that it nags you without knowing what it is.
This unconscious guilt is so heinous that it leads often to suicide when it is kept frozen inside us. Most people know about suicide but they have no idea how widespread it is. In the book “Your Immortal Reality” it points out that more people die from suicide than are killed by all the wars and all of the crime in the world combined. More firefighters die from suicide than are killed in fires. Policemen also suffer from this unconscious guilt and many die from suicide. Nobody wants to talk about it because the feeling of ‘guilt’ is so close to us. Depression in all its forms is derived from unconscious guilt. The ego runs away from looking at it as fast as possible.

What creates this unconscious guilt? The reason is simple enough. From the time we are 3 years old we start feeling and believing that we are our name and body and thus, unconsciously, create the feeling we are separate. We have totally forgotten that we are One Being or Oneness itself. And, it is this very estrangement from this fact that allows the unconscious guilt to make its way into our life. This guilt-feeling carries with it self-consciousness, ego pretension, and the need for love (power or approval.), the need to be heard, seen, noticed and recognized. This need for ego recognition comprises the emotional and psychological suffering of humanity.

What is ego?
It is the belief that you are a body and therefore separate from others. Therefore ego is what creates unconscious guilt feeling. Most people live a whole lifetime believing they are this ego and never even question it. Such people can never find true peace and inner security and contentment.

Forgiveness helps us in two ways. First it keeps the guilty feeling out of the picture, and while doing so, moves us closer to our true nature. Every forgiveness of discomfort enhances our oneness knowing.
Forgiveness cuts through unconscious guilt and its projection of karma like a laser beam. It penetrates through all of your past lives and even future lives, through the different dimensions of time.

How do we forgive?

First of all, it is hard to forgive unless you know that you are NOT an ego. All worthwhile spiritual literature carries this basic theme – ego is the false self. Ego is the self-made image from conditioned past believing it is ‘YOU.’
Ego wants to hang on to pain and hates to forgive. In fact, ego will want to retaliate, seek revenge and get even in any way it can. Thus it creates karma of a serious nature in one’s life. Ego belief is also written within your life-script. Thus the script contains the tragedies, mishaps, accidents and awful experiences that stem from the belief in ego.

So, one primary ingredient for forgiveness is knowing who you are. It is not difficult if you pay close attention to the following question.
Ask yourself right now, “Do you know yourself?” and then pause for a moment before answering. This pause will give you an opening to LISTEN through your Heart.

Good – now that you have asked it and paused for a moment, what was your answer? Don’t read further until you have answered it.

The Heart replies:
“You are the knower of your body, senses and mind. You know that you have a body and mind. However, this knower can never be known, because you are it and there is nobody to know it. It can never become an object of observation because it is totality, wholeness, Oneness itself.”

This is who you are – the knower! You are NOT the body, senses, mind nor thoughts and emotions. In fact, these emotions, thoughts (mind) and body appear only because there is ‘YOU.’ You are NOT an ego but the knower.

Pause and feel what you have just read because only through this process can you grasp the power and ease of forgiveness. And, forgiveness will take you all the way Home. Every time you forgive your guilt, you move one step closer to your true Home of Oneness. Oneness is like peeling an onion. You might not notice the depth of the peeling because it looks like the same onion; however within every peel you’ll be moving closer to the center called Home with each peeling (forgiveness).

Understanding Cause and Effect

How do I forgive? You learn how forgiveness works as you recognize that you are not an Effect of a major Cause (Oneness); You are the Cause itself. It is you, the Cause, which predetermined your life’s script. It is You who created the life you live. You cannot be an Effect because then you’d be like a victim. Since most people feel that they are effects of the Source (Cause) then they play victims in life and bemoan their lot. Through forgiveness, seeing expands and reveals (ever deepening) that you can override the pre-determined script by forgiving (what you normally would not have forgiven) and thus transcend the karmic consequences that might have been due you. In other words, forgiveness collapses time as we know linear time. Time doesn’t exist except in our linear thinking. All physicists agree that past, present and future happen simultaneously because we live in a holographic universe. It is from this understanding that forgiveness becomes a natural process.

If someone maligns us or takes advantage of our position we see that we created that so-called individual in our life script. By forgiving him or her we rise above the consequences of such unforgiveness and thus retain our peace and make the path free from obstruction.
Therefore seeing that this ‘other’ created a ‘problem’ for you, you in turn see no problem only something you created in your life script leading you toward forgiveness. In other words, we learn by forgiving both ‘others’ and ourselves in seeing that there’s nothing to forgive.

The Ultimate Truth
In brief – the ultimate truth of our Being is what threatens and frightens the ego. If you are a novice to the spiritual life you will find yourself, automatically, asking many questions filled with ‘but, but…” or “what-if…” plus filled with ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions. This is natural until we start becoming familiar with what truly IS the Truth of our Being. The Truth is what is true and to escape it, ignore it or deny it is our unconscious guilt.

The paradox is that the Truth of our Being is so glorious, wholesome and beautiful that initially we haven’t the slightest idea of this grandeur.

All we see at first is the threat to our ego and that’s because of the unconscious guilt of separation-thinking.
The ultimate truth is this – this daily life is all a dream and the only way to wake up from this dream is to forgive it. Why!? It is you who made it up with the egoic belief in separation from the Oneness. You are NOT an effect of Source but Source itself -- this is what Oneness means. All is One Source and YOU are IT! We live in a holographic universe and not linear time.
Forgiveness is ‘seeing’ the Truth as what-is and can’t be denied, suppressed, rejected, resisted or controlled. This seeing-clearly is itself quantum forgiveness and it undoes the ego. Once the ego is seen as false and therefore non-existent then we are free and at Home.

Is forgiveness the only way to undo the ego and transcend our unconscious guilt?
Forgiveness has also been taught as acceptance, allowing, letting go and surrender. However forgiveness is more direct in its meaning. It is a way of SEEING the truth of NOW as what truly is! It is seeing that you are not really forgiving anyone for we create the ‘other’ in our unawareness of Oneness. What ‘others’ do to us is what we have asked for in our separate-thinking activated by unconscious guilt. Therefore forgiveness is knowing that there’s nothing to forgive. It is this ‘knowing’ alone that will help us rise above the false idea of ego and find the glorious truth of our Being.

Are there levels to understanding forgiveness?
Ordinarily I would say ‘no’ because it is a feeling-knowing of the heart that there’s nothing to forgive since only Spirit is real and everything else is its effect. However, for understanding its deeper aspects we can divide the comprehension of forgiveness on three levels.
1. The Face in the Mirror: This first level is for those who still believe they are an ego and live in separation thus forgiveness seems like an effort and something to ‘do’.
Picture looking into the mirror and look at the face in front of you in the mirror. Ask yourself, “Is that who I am or is it just a reflection?” “If I shave, do I shave the mirror’s face? If I crack the mirror with my reflection do I crack my face also?” Since both questions are ‘no’ then a reflection is just a reflection and has nothing to do with the truth. Make sure that you fully see the import of this obvious presentation.
If this example felt obvious to you then go to level #2 below.

2. Thoughts and emotions: This is slightly more advanced and if when under stress or anger you still don’t want to forgive then you are on this level. You have made the thoughts and emotions so real that you are caught in them and wish to hold on to them despite the pain and suffering. However, it is still a step closer than #1 because even though you might not want to forgive, you can still go through the motion of forgiving that you’re not wanting to forgive.

When we think and indulge in thought we become the thinker of that thought (ego). Similarly when we identify with an emotion (which is thought made real) we get caught in it and suffer to that extent. This also means that when you identify with an emotion you go unconscious and may lose control because you are deluded. If during this unconsciousness you ask, “Where is this emotion right now?” it would be like awakening from a dream and you won’t find the emotion anywhere. Look deeply for it and you won’t find it except as a residue from its physical sensation. If this question has been raised by you and you succeeded in seeing that there was no such thought or emotion, then you are ready for #3 below.

3. Am I the body? Be still and look at your body and ask if you are this body. Twenty years ago you weren’t this body and neither when you were a teenager or a baby.
Ask, “Who is it that says I have this body?” It couldn’t be the body who says that? What part of you says, “I have!” Where is that “I” and the knower that knows you have a body and thoughts and emotions? Can you name it? Can you taste it or touch it? Can you see it or feel it? Of course not, simply because it is YOU.
How can YOU see yourself? Can the eyes see themselves? Can the lips kiss themselves? You can’t know it but yet you know it’s there. It is this unknown in YOU which is the Truth of you. This is your Cause, your oneness, the Truth. It is the connection with ALL-That IS!
This is the AWARE part of you that witnesses your actions, thoughts, emotions and feelings. It is the YOU that is eternal and unchanging. It is the YOU that is innocent, guiltless, complete and wholesome.
If you have understood this, then you understand forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a ‘doing’ but the understanding that there’s nothing to forgive because whatever you experience is Oneness experiencing and therefore cannot blame, judge or pay back anyone without suffering the brand of it. This is why what goes around comes around. This is why karmic action is infallible. This is why that how we are treated by ‘others’ is our projection. Believe it or not, it is our auric field and thought power (belief) that creates others to treat us in such a way that we do not like. Therefore you do not forgive yourself or another – you see clearly there’s nothing to forgive and it’s done and cleared from its karmic consequences.
Through this quantum forgiveness you erase all consequences from your past actions and beliefs and even clean out any future consequences. This type of forgiveness is so powerful that it collapses time as we know it so that any karma that was due us will be erased. More importantly, it will create such intuitive knowing that knowing our Oneness becomes automatic love and connection.

Please Note: The following has been added after I received a sweet honest question from a young man (which also reflected others who read the above…

I don't want to ask how to forgive because it said in one of your PDF's that the question is asked to avoid forgiveness, but it would be helpful if you could explain how I use the question to put it off. The difficulty is that your words may be very plain but If I'm unconsciously rejecting the truth it may not all get to me.. what a pickle.

It has been said that the ego is at best suspicious and avoiding (denial) and at worst is vicious and destructive. Most of the time when we ask, “Why?” is because we want to delay facing the truth of our Being nature. It was Alan Watts who said (over forty years ago) that when we say, “I don’t feel it” or “I am waiting to realize it” is a delaying tactic of the ego NOT to feel it and thus not have to face it.
This is understandable from the human point of view, after all, we have been conditioned to believe the world and body are real and our spiritual nature is something that we learn in religion and is not practical or ‘down-to-earth’ enough to bother with. How often we say, “Let’s get back to reality” meaning daily life as we know it.

It took me many years to see something quite simple – either it is true or it isn’t! If Spirit is our true nature and our senses do not perceive it aren’t we creating delusion, suffering and separation from what is real? What if we have deeper insightful senses that can be awakened if we just LISTEN? What if we allow the possibility of an open heart here and now to check who is doing the LIFE we are?

The question, “How do I use ‘why’ to put it off?” is a legitimate question. Have you ever been in an accident that left you temporarily helpless and said, “Why me?” because we didn’t want to face the fact that it happened? It is the human part of us that lives from its surface (shallow perspective) that doesn’t want to look deeper than its conditioned state of belief. It is afraid of the unknown.

Now the question that follows is, “How do we forgive our escapes, denials, fears of the unknown and so on?”
Let’s review what we had just read on pages 7 and 8 discussing the three levels of understanding forgiveness. Please read again level one page 7 where it states “The Face in the mirror.” Please do not go to the next level until you first grasp level one.

The term “Face in the mirror” typifies our perception of things. We see our face in the mirror and believe that it is seeing the truth of us. The reflection is very deceptive. If we shave our beard we cannot use the reflection to do it. If the mirror cracks our face doesn’t crack. The reflection is just a reflection. This point has to be planted firmly in your understanding.
Similarly, what we perceive outside ourselves is our conditioned perception which is a reflection of our mind. Thus if we see a person we don’t like, it is because we are seeing ‘what we believe about that person and NOT the truth of that person. We are seeing our reflection of that person. The reflection is of the mind and NOT truth.
Two people can look at the same painting and see different things. What we see is the belief of our conditioned thoughts. Therefore, once we realize this we are apt to forgive our conditioned perceptions as our own limited viewpoint and NOT reality.
If we have understood this far then we are ready for level 2 of forgiveness which is…

Thoughts and emotions reflect our conditioned perception: Now we are moving deeper into the understanding of quantum forgiveness. Here at this point you are still reluctant to forgive because you have been so conditioned by your emotions that you are convinced they are real. How real are your negative emotions?

We have learned that we perceive externally what we have accepted as real in our thought structure. Thoughts are picture (image) impressions that occur by the hundreds in a blink of an eye. This is what creates our world of perception. We think about 26,000 thoughts a day and they are just conditioned impressions from the past. They are just impressions. The moment we hang on to a thought and believe it, we have created an emotion (motion of energy in the body). The body is an emotional energy body. We feel the sensations of anything that we believe as real. Our heart beats faster, our gut wrenches and our stomach churns by anything that reminds us of a traumatic past. A trauma is a subconscious memory that has become frozen in our center and now dictates how we experience life. With each occurrence of anxiety we deepen its ‘reality’ within our psyche until we start becoming ‘unbalanced’ or dysfunctional. It is all a delusion that seems real. At this point of attachment to such emotions we become totally convinced that it is real and it’s called ‘addiction’ or ‘fixation’ or ‘phobia’ or just hysteria. The point is this – it is absolutely NOT real except in our mind. We feel its pain; we feel its suffering in the emotional body and we feel it as a tangible experience – the fact of the matter is this – we created it all however subconsciously and that’s what we need to forgive. In other words, we are experiencing our mind and NOT Reality. This understanding will give us the courage to look again at what we call ‘real’ and it is this willingness to look that takes us to the 3rd level of forgiveness.

Am I the body? When we read this question we react and without any depth of seeing exclaim, “Of course I am the body!!”
Let’s take it easy and look at it realistically from the vantage point of what is real or just temporary.
When we state something is not real doesn’t mean we are not experiencing it. It means that it is not lasting and meaningful other than an appearance for the sake of unfolding our true nature.
For a moment be still and ask, “Am I this body now?” And you will find that your body now seems very real but it is a moving fluctuating and ever-changing function. Twenty years ago your body was different, totally different. It was also totally different when you were a baby; a teenager and a young man or woman. This body now seems real but it is only temporary and will soon recycle again or pass away.
As you now look at your body, ask yourself, “Who is it that says I have this body?” It couldn’t be the body that says, “I am this body?” so there is some other part of YOU that says, “I have this body!” and who is that? Who is it that says, “I have?”
Can you name this part that says, “I have this body?” Is it something you are aware of? Of course not! This part that says, “I have this body!” is the very awareness that you are. And, it is the knower that you have a body. Therefore, you cannot know it because there is no ‘you’ to know the thing that knows. After all, can the lips kiss themselves? Can the eyes see themselves? Of course not. You are that ‘knower’ often referred to as ‘heart’ or true essence. Therefore isn’t it obvious that you are the pure awareness that sees and experiences? Can you see now that you are a human being, but it is the Being that sees itself as a human? You are a Being playing the human role.

If you have understood this much then you are ready to forgive so completely that it becomes an instant healing of suffering, fear and guilt. Why? Because forgiveness is not forgiving anyone or anything but seeing clearly that there’s nothing to forgive. Whatever happened was the cause of mind’s conditioned perception and NOT reality.
Now that you have read this – stop and lay it aside. Then read again before going to bed and ask the Holy Spirit (I AM) to guide you in its deeper and more profound seeing. If you are open and receptive to it, then something in you (pure awareness or the I AM) will bring you insights. This is up to you now. You have the choice to see ego (human) or Being (God).

God is all that’s good, forgiving, glory, beauty, immortality, eternality, joy, Heaven, happiness and meaning. God did not create the world. The Mind created the world. When we awaken our deeper perception of our limited mind’s seeing, then it extends deeper and deeper until we see that we are the Cause and not the Effect. This is called Awakening.

How do we find our specific unconscious guilt?

There are three facts we need to know first before embarking on forgiveness of our guilt.

1. First, know that everyone suffers from unconscious guilt unless they are spiritually awakened. After all, what is awakening? Isn’t it the death of the ego (separation) belief which brought the unconscious guilt?

2. Unconscious guilt is NOT the truth of you. No matter how you feel this guilt, it is all an illusion made real through unawareness of your true nature as Oneness. Unconscious guilt is a form of death such as closed mind and heart, cynicism, strong doubt about your true nature, loss of innocence, worldliness, fear of getting hurt, fear of being vulnerable, fear of rejection, fear of loss and the fear of death. The more guilt you feel, the less alive you feel. Conversely, as you forgive your guilt, the more alive you feel.

3. There are nine types of unconscious guilt. Everyone feels separate initially due to the hypnotic belief “I am the body.” This belief in being a body separates you automatically from other bodies missing the Spirit that joins us all as One. Thus we feel unloved often due to this unconscious belief in separation known as loneliness, deprivation, isolation, and self-consciousness.

This separation-feeling creates the need to belong; a need to feel loved; a need for a mate and it is all triggered by this unconscious search for Oneness (God).

Since there is no awareness of this Oneness and yet subconsciously crave it through needing, seeking and desiring then it takes the form of our personality, temperament and type expression. It is here, through these nine types that we find the guilt that is created by needing what we already are but don’t know it. Thus this seeking and needing creates its opposite.

Here is a list of all nine types of guilt and how it is created through seeking Oneness (God). Let me repeat here for the sake of elucidation that there is absolutely no knowledge that we are seeking Oneness (God, Love, Wholeness, Home). So instead we call it money, power, control, fame, success, security, sex and emotional love.

Let me say this – since your true nature is already Spirit and therefore love (Oneness), goodness, innocence and glory then any seeking of it means you don’t believe you are IT and it is this that creates the unconscious guilt.

The Nine types of Guilt

1. The perfectionist: You value and are attracted to goodness. Goodness is your search for Oneness (God). You want to make the world a better pace to live in. You want to realize all of your potential and help others actualize theirs.
You have appreciation for and a dedication to excellence and doing things well. You long for perfection.

GUILT is created by over-identifying with the idealized self-image of being good, right and perfect. These become more important than anything else. If you are a good girl or good boy, then you are acceptable.
You are afraid to do anything unless you can do it perfectly. Your guilt is perfectionism. You are hardly ever fully satisfied or fully happy.
Forgive yourself whenever you feel imperfect and blaming yourself or others.

2. The Lover: You value and are attracted to love. You want to make the world a more lovable place to live in.
You are naturally a giving, generous, helpful person. You enjoy giving to others. You are generous with yourself, time, energy and possessions.
You are supportive, nurturing and considerate.

GUILT – You over identify with the idealized self-image of being loving and helpful. You are acceptable only if you are loving and nice.
You can become a compulsive helper. You give love to gain attention and approval. You expect appreciation in return for your care.
Guilt arises from being manipulative towards others to like you by giving strokes to get strokes. You even try to make others dependent upon you and thus get hurt easily and disappointed.
Forgive yourself whenever you seek approval, which is often incessant and yet subtle.

3. The achiever: You are attracted to and value efficiency, productivity, industriousness and competence. You possess a natural organizational ability. You have the ability to get things done. You often make a good salesperson.

GUILT – You can over-identify with the idealized self-image of being successful and productive such that your worth depends on what you do instead of who you are.
You can become overly efficient, machine-like and ultra programmed. You become a marketing personality and therefore worldly losing sight of Oneness.
Forgive yourself when worldly goals are used to pretend you are spiritual.

4. The individual: You are individual and value originality. You put your personal touch on everything you are involved in.
You have an ability to make the ordinary extraordinary. You can take what is plain and make it special, like an oyster changes a grain of sand into a pearl.
You value beauty and appreciate it and thus want to make the world more beautiful aesthetically.

GUILT – You can over-identify with the idealized self-image of being special and unique. You may become an eccentric caricature of originality.
You believe you must be unique, original, different; otherwise you are nobody. Your identity and worth depend on your being special.
Guilt is in not feeling special and thus insist in having your own way or be in control to prove yourself special in your own eyes.
Forgive yourself when wanting your own way at all costs or the need to control. Be alert to anger or any held-in grievance. Keep forgiving.

5. The scholar: You value and are attracted to wisdom, knowledge and understanding. For you, the intellect is a person’s highest faculty. You feel, “I think therefore I am.”
Your passion is of the mind. You are a seeker of truth. You want to discover what truly is.

You can over-identify with the idealized self-image of being wise and perceptive. You live too much out of your head and you forget you have also feelings and a heart.
You can be overly intellectual and thus be afraid of being out of touch with how you feel. You can become overly analytical and skeptical. Your questioning can interfere with your acting.

GUILT is the separation from others and preferring aloneness as you become unwilling to entertain other people’s views that may differ from yours. You may even stop participating in life.
Forgive when you find yourself intolerable, closed-off or too intellectual forsaking feelings.

6. The loyal: You are attracted to and value loyalty. You honor your commitments.
When you give your word you keep it. If you say you’ll do something, you’ll do it. You are faithful to relationships. You make a gracious host or hostess. You are protective of those in your care.
You are dedicated to your cause.

You can over-identify with the idealized self-image of being loyal and doing your duty. Many soldiers, firemen and policemen are in this category.
You go by the book and become rigid and inflexible. It may be difficult for you to change or reconsider your loyalties. Things become either black or white and no in-between. You may accept those in your fold but you can become a persecutor of those outside the fold.
Be wary in your marriage and any relationship as you can become too strict with how things should be and create strain.
Forgive yourself when you find getting locked into your rules of how things should be.

7 The Optimist: For you the purpose of life is to enjoy it. You value joy. There is delight, sparkle and joie de vivre about you.
You are a celebrator of life.
Everything is recognized as a gift. You have a childlike responsiveness to the world. You are in touch with the immediacy of things.

You can over-identify with the idealized self-image of being okay. You can overdo the pleasure principle and become overly attached to pleasure. You can become addicted to ‘highs.’
You may not be willing to endure hard labor to get what you want.
Guilt can emerge from being unable to handle emotional people especially difficult ones and would rather avoid them than deal with them.
Forgive yourself when difficult people or emotional people dampen your spirits and control you.

8. The Powerful: You are attracted to and appreciate power. You know how to get it, keep it and use it. You use your influence to bring about good. You make a strong leader like a matriarch or a patriarch. You are self-confident and self-assured.
You can over-identify with the idealized self-image of being powerful and capable.
You can easily become addicted to power and control and rely on it to manipulate others. You use your power to protect yourself instead of to help others. Therefore you can become a bully, a dictator. Your presence can be over-bearing and intimidating.
Guilt – you can harbor great anger and aggression and even hatred and thus can use forgiveness in these instances.

9. The Peace Lover: You value peace which is the tranquility of order. You have an intuitive sense and appreciation for harmony, for when things fit together.
You possess diplomacy. You are able to reconcile opposing forces and can see both sides of an issue.
You have an allowing approach to life which encourages people and events to unfold in their own way and at their own pace.
You can over-identify with this idealized self-image of being settled and avoid any kind of conflict.
You can overdo agreement. You experience ambivalence about whether to agree or disagree, to conform or not to conform. You find it hard to find the perfect balance.
You find it difficult choosing a position or taking sides. You can be indecisive or put off making any decision.

Guilt is experienced when you meet conflict or anger either within you or outside you. You find it hard to confront conflict head-on. This is your guilt. Forgive this feeling every time you are aware of it. In fact any discomfort you feel is to be forgiven otherwise it builds as inner resentment creating frustration and deep anxiety.

In brief:
You are a human being. In this world of illusion we emphasize the human and forget the Being because we feel separate as bodies. In this forgetting and abiding by the world’s rules we find a feeling of lack known as unconscious guilt. This guilt is the result of separation between human (ego) and Being (God). This guilt is known as the feeling of unrest, seeking, wanting, desiring and never satisfied with the subtle nagging that we are missing something and/or don’t feel good enough. If these feelings are not dealt with they can escalate to immense suffering.

Our only freedom is the realization of our true nature which emerges as the result of forgiving our unconscious guilt which surfaces as suspicious nature, doubtful, skeptical and resentful and often escalating to viciousness, inner rage, violence and deep hate often ending in self-destruction.

Awareness of our true nature combined with forgiveness is the simplest, fastest and most direct route towards inner fulfillment, freedom and lasting peace.