Awakening Starts Now

The Way of Mastery

A Master manages every thought, feeling, word and action – at every moment.

There is only one road to Mastery, and that is Self-Mastery.

There’s no thing or no one else to master outside of self. There’s nothing ‘out there’ that you need to overcome or conquer, and as long as you keep aping Don Quixote tilting at windmills, you’ll drive yourself mad in the endless pursuit of battling imaginary enemies. This is madness. Madness is continuing to do the same thing over and over again, expecting to see different results. Stop making yourself mad and begin the work of coming to sanity, returning back to the stainless perfection of your Master Self.

A Master manages every thought, feeling, word and action – at every moment.

The outer world is a mirror reflection of the inner world. It’s a symptom of internal cause. Outer events that you perceive as happening to you is no more than the out-picturing of the scenario that you already painted into your inner canvas. Yes, it’s that literal.

A Master manages every thought, feeling, word and action – at every moment.

Only through meticulous self-work can you master all. Don’t concern yourself with other people – like you, they are each responsible for their own masterful arrival, according to their own unique itinerary. As there are many different perspectives as there are people on this planet, no two paths to Mastery are ever alike.

This means that you have no business in trying to fix others as much as others have no right to fix you. The only way of the true Master, therefore, is to honor all, without exception, for no one has any idea of why or what another needs specifically for his own spiritual journey and realization. Their business is none of yours and yours is none of theirs. Instead, the only honoring thing to do is to accept every person for exactly who and where they are, as they are exactly who and where they ought to be for their own life plan.

A Master manages every thought, feeling, word and action – at every moment.

That’s all there is to it – manage yourself. It’s a huge job as it is, so if you’re sincere about becoming a Master, you won’t have any extra time or energy to bother with meddling in others' creations. The way is, truly, to each his own. Master yourself.

A Master manages every thought, feeling, word and action – at every moment.

That’s the only guideline, the only compass that you’ll need to arrive as a true Master.

Stop Blaming God

 

Thank God for _____; I guess what I prayed for isn’t part of God’s plan for me; This must be a test from God; Things aren’t working out so well... what’s God trying to say to me? 

Blah blah blah. It doesn’t matter.

Whether you praise God or get angry at God, you’re still blaming God. Whether for positive or negative reasons, blaming is the act of assigning responsibility to something/someone outside of yourself. It's an excuse. You give up all your integrity and power away every moment you blame another for anything, without exception, and that includes an external deity that's separate from who you are.

One of the first signs of awakening humans is a new perspective on what God is, and their relationship to It. At some point, whether suddenly or gradually, you realize that God is not an invisible old fickle man in the sky who only doles out favors for you in return for your devotion. Instead, you come to know God as the ever-compassionate All That Is that is also all of who you are. The final realization is: Wow, I Am God also!

Whatever you are, God is. Whatever God is, you are. It knows only as much as you know, and doesn’t know what’s best for you any more than you do. God makes no decision on your behalf – the Compassionate One cannot by essence inflict Its will upon you. When you pray, you make-believe that you’re speaking to God, but all along you're talking to your Self, pretending to be a puny little helpless human when you're a God Self in your own right. 

Your prayers are always answered. Why? Because as a Creator Being, you’re the one that allows the answering and not-answering of your prayers. There is no other God that says yes, no, or not now for you. That’s always been you. To say that God has blessed you with this or God is punishing you for that is to do yourself an enormous disservice to your God Self, and only slows your progress to permanent Freedom, which can only be had through taking full responsibility for all of your creations.

You were created from All That Is, and as such, have been given full Creator rights. God gave you full creatorship to answer all the prayers you ever uttered, and by the choice of your free will, you decided for yourself whether or not you wanted to grant them. If a prayer was answered, it was because you believed yourself worthy of it. If not, there was something in you that didn’t truly want it, or felt that you deserved it. At no point was there ever an outside force that judged whether or not you will have your prayers fulfilled. For the awakening human, there will come a time when he/she will let go of praying altogether, as I have, preferring to sit with Self instead and speak your wishes directly to It.

You, dear God, need to stop this childish game of blaming an external God – can’t you see that, in this circular relationship, you only end up blaming yourself? As long as you give up your responsibility, you will always remain helpless and hopeless – two things that will instantly dissolve once you choose to reclaim your Creatorship.

Be God. Be responsible. Answer your own prayers. Choose what you want, and let You, God, give you exactly what you want. If there ever was a plan from Source, that was the only plan It had for you – to allow you to create and enjoy without limitation, so that It may enjoy Its creations through you.

So dear Creator, let’s end the blame game today – and start creating the way to your Freedom!

Everything Is Not One

 

Q: What did the Buddhist Monk say to the hot dog vendor?

A: “Make me one with everything.”

As a former Buddhist practitioner, I can vouch that the above joke is not entirely accurate. However, there’s no denying that many spiritual, or New Age (cringe alert!) circles recite the mantra of “We Are One” ad nauseam: Everything is One; We must return to One; Beyond form, there is only One. And la-la-la, they go around holding hands around the campfire, rapturously singing “Kumbaya.”

You already know where I’m going with this hook: 

Everything is not One.

And thank goodness it isn’t – how damn boring would that be? Do you really want to go from having hundreds, even thousands of uniquely customized lifetimes, only to return back to a homogenous One? I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t. If that’s the case, I don’t see why I should bother with all this spiritual work – I’d rather remain on the earth plane forever so that I can at least enjoy the game of having an identity, a personality. 

But here’s the catch: Everything may not exactly be One, but we are not Two, either. This means that not being One doesn’t make us separate. We all originated from One (or All – as one cannot be fathomed without at least two). And because we emerged from One Source, we are all composed of One Essence, much as a drop of water contains the entire fullness of the ocean.

But that’s where the Oneness ends and the Togetherness begins. 

As we each broke off from the unified Source into differentiated parts of Itself, having our own individualized experiences, the One – or Whole – also began to learn, evolve and expand, becoming a new Whole based on the contribution of the sum of its parts. Like a hologram, the Whole contains all of its parts, while each part retains both its individual Self as well as the entire Whole.

No single snowflake is like another, yet it contributes to the 'snowness'. No two grains of sand are the same, yet it’s adds to the 'sandness'. Not even a particle of dust has a doppelgänger to call its own. Each person is unique – even identical twins – yet we add to our humanness. The planets and planetary systems – all different – make up galaxies, which make up universes, which become the omniverse. All of creation is distinct, yet is part and parcel to All That Is – not becoming One, but becoming MORE.

We are not One, and also not Two. But what we are is interconnected, together, having our being as a hologram, or more simply, a kaleidoscope, so connected that the quality or movement of one single grain affects the entire picture and experience of the whole – instantly.

We are connected to everything else. Being One with everything is not, for me anyway, something that I aspire to. However, understanding this truth of togetherness, this interconnectedness, I know that I matter, you matter, and everything else matters in all of cosmos to glorify that which was once One to become more of All That Is.

 

[Images: (left) Dust under an electron microscope; (right) Grains of sand under a microscope, from sandgrains.com]

Lunch with the Creator

 

If you were invited on the spot, without notice, to meet the Creator for lunch in the next few minutes, how would you respond?

Would you be prepared? Would you feel joyful anticipation for a chance to finally meet Spirit? Or would you feel embarrassed to present yourself? Ashamed, even? Maybe try to make an excuse to run and hide? How would you think, feel, speak and conduct yourself in the presence of the Creator?

This what-if scenario bubbled up recently as a great moment-to-moment reminder of how I choose to live my daily life, which is to live truthfully and genuinely from the center of my Being. And from it, I would, at any given time, be happy to take my seat in the grace of the Creator without feeling any self-imposed unworthiness in Its company.

You are Spirit. As you are created from Spirit of Itself, you are all Spirit. And what Spirit, Creator, God – whatever you wish to call It, wishes from you as part of Itself is this: to be able to explore more of Itself and its creations through you, and in the process, for you to come to know yourself as God also.

The Creator wants to know Itself as you. It loves and accepts everything about you, and judgment is impossible. God is Love. You are a part of It. How can it harbor anything but Love for Itself?

Find comfort and joy, then, in knowing that you are always welcome to the Master’s table as an honored guest, fully worthy of Its presence at any moment, no matter who you think you are and where you are in life. In Spirit’s eyes, you have made no mistakes and have never taken a wrong turn. In It’s loving eyes, you are perfect as you are.

This lunch with the Creator: when we sit down, face to face, it’s no more than my looking at It as me, and It looking at me as Itself. Whatever I feel, It feels. Whatever I learn, It learns. Whatever I say and do, It says and does. Whatever I am, It is.

So, Creator, you have a choice, How would you choose to present yourself in Its presence? Remember, it doesn’t matter anyway, and there’s no right or wrong choice. 

If you ask me, I choose this: to love myself, to accept myself, to be compassionate with myself, to be kind to myself, to be honest with myself, to enjoy myself – at all times, ready to accept Spirit's lunch invitation at a moment’s notice. After all, that’s the way a proper guest thinks, feels, speaks and behaves so that her host also feels loved, accepted and cared for in her company.

That’s just plain good manners.

 

[Photo Credit: a5hwin]

Lighten Up!

 

What does enlightenment look like to you?

Do you picture yourself peacefully meditating alone in remote caves and mountains without any worldly cares? Perhaps you're able to levitate, see through walls and read people's minds? Do you see yourself being so 'full of light' that you go around as a miracle worker, healing the sick and raising the dead, and basically saving the world? Or maybe it's a place or state you enter after death, where you're flying around the nonphysical realms, finally free from the body and cavorting with other enlightened beings in the afterlife? Or if you're a religious type, perhaps it's about meeting your creator and spending eternity in paradise with the angels, joyfully praising your maker.

Whatever the case, most people think of enlightenment as some far-off destination that they reach after a lot of hard work, spiritual discipline, self-control and following a long and rigid list of rules. Depending on your religious beliefs, you usually ascend in one of two ways: either struggle through as many lifetimes as you need to earn your way to it, or, more commonly here in America, get one chance – this single lifetime – to prove that you're worthy of it… and if you're not, well, you're in for a lot of 'heat'. Whatever the case, it's something that you have to work very hard at, in all earnestness, and often by making personal compromises and sacrifices in the name of religion or spirituality.

Well, I say to hell with that. That may have been the case back in the old days, back when human consciousness was much denser and slower and therefore perhaps needed the hard lines and heavy rules. But not today, not now, not in this new era of accelerated consciousness that we're in. It's not about going anywhere, earning anything (especially the hard way), and being anything more than who you are – now. 

So I ask again. What is enlightenment?

It means just that: Lighten up! Be who you are! Go play and do more of what pleases you! Be gentle on yourself and with everyone around you. Think, feel and do things that are true to your Being. Have a light hand and a light touch with everything that goes on within and without you. Be kind to yourself, be nice to yourself, be light on yourself – first; then being kind, nice and light to others follow naturally, effortlessly. And before you know it, as more and more of your internal being becomes lighter, brighter, more at peace and full of grace, watch in amazement as your outer world mirrors your incredible lightness of internal being.

Your life is simply but an outward reflection of who you are. Be heavenly and you will see heaven all around you. Be easy and life will be easy. Be joyful and more of it will come to you. Be at peace and discord can't touch you. Be love and others will love you back. Be enlightened, and you just are – just like that.

So lighten up. Stop making enlightenment so damn serious and complicated. As the saying goes, "Keep it simple, stupid!"