Announcing! A New Travel Blog!!

http://www.ArielBravy.com/travel

Canyon Overlook at Zion NP, UT

If you let go of all of the things you do out of a sense of obligation and necessity, if you could experience yourself being totally and completely supported as you do the things your heart is calling you to do, what would you imagine that would look like? How would that feel?

For the past 4 months or so, I’ve been stepping into this state of being as best as I can, and my heart has been guiding me to travel and really embrace and love all that arises in life.

As such I’ve started created a new blog dedicated to travel and experiencing what life can be like when follow your passion as best you can, listen to your heart, and allow yourself to be guided by your intuition. The site is now up at ArielBravy.com/travel and it’s replacing my 5 year running photoblog. (You’ll find years worth of pictures on the photoblog and only the more recent stuff thus far on the travel blog.) To give you a preview of what’s there, here’s a few pictures.

Nothing that you’ll see here was planned from the get-go. When the fire was lit to go LIVE, these are but a few of the spontaneous manifestations that naturally arose and practically fell into my lap. Life can be really amazing when we quit trying to force it and allow it to show up on its own terms, as we fully align with the universe’s natural subtle currents and flows!

Tent Camping along the Coast of Malibu, CA

STS-131 Space Shuttle Discovery Lifting Off from Cape Canaveral, FL

Orange groves outside of J. Krishnamurti's home in Ojai, CA

Admiring Inspiration Point at Bryce Canyon, UT

Learning to Self-Arrest with Ice Axe on St. Marys Glacier, CO

I’ve been flying solo for the most part the past few months, but traveling with others looks like a lot of fun as well!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=npawmHVaf-E

Really, there’s SO MANY ways of experiencing life!

One thing you I’ve come to discover on journeys like this is that, ironically, it doesn’t matter WHERE you are. (Even though the places are awesome!) What really matters is HOW you’re living your life, and HOW you live is something that you can choose to embody ANYWHERE. ie. It’s not about finding happiness in life through traveling, but allowing the happiness to show up in life though your travels, expressed as your life.

Spending Time in Silence

At this time, my guidance is directing me to take a break from life’s epic outer adventures and to go spend some time in silence, and so I’m taking a break from the whole online thing.

In the meantime, have you considered how much more happiness, passion, joy, and love you have the capacity to bring forth into your own life? What gifts do you have within yourself to bring forth? How much more of your own light do you have to share and experience?

http://www.ArielBravy.com/travel

Alright so first off, if you haven’t seen Avatar yet, you gotta go watch it!! Whether you choose to watch the movie in 2D or 3D, both offer an amazing experience.

For those of you unfamiliar with the plot, the movie takes place on a distant planet named Pandora that is home to these blue humanoid aliens called the Na’vi. They are very much like the Native Americans with bows and arrows and a deep appreciation and respect for life and an understanding of the interconnectedness of all life. The US military comes in to basically drive them out so they can mine for this mineral called unobtainium, killing off many of the natives in the process.

There are some beautiful spiritual messages in the movie and the way it’s all illustrated is absolutely amazing. Just… wow…

The forest and plantlife on the planet is phosphorescent and iridescent in a very heavenly way and even glows for a moment every time you step on the grass. The sky is full of gorgeous planets and moons. Standing on that planet and looking up into the heavens strangely feels like home…

Their diety is a benevolent goddess named Eywa who is basically the living energy that runs through all things. One particularly great passage from the movie took place when one of characters prays to Eywa to take their side and help during the invasion of the military. Another character responded that Eywa doesn’t take sides. She only helps preserve the balance of life.

Heck, even the credits of the movie were amazing. Make sure you stay past the end and watch them to see how many people were involved in the creation of this film. My jaw literally hung open watching them scroll by. It was so nice to see that many (thousands of) people join together in the name of creating such a conscious movie, helping reinforce the understanding that all this “oneness stuff” isn’t so alternative and out there, but is rapidly becoming integrated as a part of mainstream life.

So yeah, if you haven’t seen this movie, I highly highly recommend checking it out!

For those of you who have seen the movie, what was your experience? What did you like about it? How did the movie impact you?

A memory popped into mind the other day while I was out hiking: There’s this scene in a movie (The Next Karate Kid) where a monk in a monastery is slowly going for a walk, sweeping in front of him as he steps. Out of compassion for all living things, he sweeps the little critters along his path off to the side so that he doesn’t accidentally squash them with his upcoming steps.

After this memory came to mind, another duality collapsed within me: The duality of animate and inanimate objects.

There’s the idea about having compassion for all living things. The way I interpret that idea, it’s basically like recognizing the Divine in all of life, in the living aliveness.

Yet what I’m seeing is that EVERYTHING is IT. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a person, an animal, an insect, a tree, a rock, the chair, or the air. Everything is the One. All of Life is revered in all its forms, living or not.

Rather than having compassion for only all living things, what arises is having compassion for all of existence.

We begin to revere and appreciate even the air that lovingly flows in and out of our bodies, the chair that selflessly supports and cradles our bodies, the nutrient-rich soil which nourishes and provides our food, the clouds that contribute to the crucial water cycle…

Conscious?

With the collapse of animate and inanimate, this doesn’t mean that suddenly animate and inanimate objects are identically the same. Of course not. Each manifestation of the One is unique, even though it is nevertheless the One.

What we call inanimate objects don’t have a consciousness in the way that we traditionally think of consciousness. They exist, and yet they have no idea that they exist.

What we call animate objects (living beings) have a consciousness in the way we traditionally think of consciousness. They are conscious, but they may not necessarily have the capacity to, like humans, know that they are, that they exist.

Humans have this unique capacity for being conscious of consciousness, to be a vessel through which consciousness can awaken to itself.

In a way, we could say that people are more conscious than birds who are more conscious than tables.

Yet, in the same way that some people are more conscious than other people, this in no way makes anything any more or less the One.

Everything is completely and totally, equally and infinitely the One, regardless of the degree of consciousness.

The degree of consciousness in a particular manifestation of the One may certainly determine the experience of that manifestation, or even if it can have a conscious experience in the first place, sure, but that in no way alters the fact that it is an inseparable manifestation of the One, animate or inanimate, living or dead.

Everything you could possibly look at is the One, including the one looking… perhaps especially so…

All is the One. All of existence and nonexistence. All is IT.

Once upon a time, long long ago, in the time before time, which is not so long ago since this time we speak of is Now, there lived a vast empty space.

This space existed everywhere, all at once, simultaneously. It was omni-present. Yet it had no substance or form to point to that we could say it is “here” as opposed to “there.” Indeed, it existed nowhere. There is nowhere we could really point to to say there it is, for it existed in no location, and yet it was undeniably here.

One day the nothingness of space wanted to create matter, a non-thing creating a thing, but it was puzzled with the idea of how it could put matter somewhere given that it was already everywhere. “Ah,” it realized, “I may be everywhere, but there is nothing here to prevent matter from taking up this same space where I am. I love this matter so much that I want it to be right here with me, so close that the two of us will actually be one. It may look like there is matter over here and space over there, but if you look close enough, you’ll see that matter is actually mostly empty space. I may look to be outside of matter, but I’m actually deeply embedded within matter as well… the sweetest and most intimate kiss imaginable. Form will be infused with space, inseparable from it. We can talk about space and matter, but they’re really both me. Ah, what joy. I’ll have a playmate to play with that will actually be me, taking the form of something else. What a glorious game this will be!”

and space very much liked the idea of this game, so it made it so.

BOOM!!

The Universe as we know it was created.

Infinity was Born

And space was happy, basking in the glory of itself as the infinite manifestations of the One empty locationless non-thing that it is. It itself is the source of all form, inseparable from it, intertwined with it.

And space went around thinking to itself, “Oooh, a planet. I am that. Hey, a porcupine. I am that. How shiny! A spoon! I am that! Oh look, a human! I am that too!”

Space found all of its infinite manifestations incredibly beautiful and wondrous, so amazing in fact that it wanted to look and look and look at itself and what it could be and do. It was a most curious looker. Space couldn’t really do anything but be with something, aware of its existence.

And so it was that the emptiness of space was simply here, being with all of its manifestations, including the manifestation which chose to call itself “human.”

Now this particular manifestation of space called human chose to have a verrrry interesting experience. You see, the “human” space that was looking decided to somehow forget about the formless aspect of itself and experience just the form, a transition from pure formlessness to both form and formlessness to finally only form.

And so it was that these humans began to experience themselves as only form. With this imaginative creative decision, space suddenly had the grand opportunity to experience itself as if there was literally something else, apart from itself. Wow! What an amazing new experience!

Separation was Born

“Here I am,” said the space-filled human, “and there you are. You and I are not one, for I am this form and you are that form.”

As these humans began to forget about the formless, they began forgetting about things like energy, universal presence, and the Source from which they arose.

And it was discovered that this experience was quite painful. Humans were very unhappy with this choice on some level, for it no longer was possible to experience such a sense of fullness and completion. On a very deep level, these apparently separate humans longed for a reunification with the Oneness that they intuitively picked up on within.

Slowly the formless began to be rediscovered. People discovered electricity. People discovered x-rays and gamma rays and microwaves… all these powers that extended beyond the realm of physical form. People intuitively picked up on some sort of larger power and argued over its nature. People experienced a sense of Love from within, but argued on whether or not it was purely a product of biological reactions or if it actually had some deeper home arising from this mysterious formless nameless something/nothing.

Remembering the Space

Over the years, some of these seemingly separate space-filled humans remembered that indeed they were much vaster than they eye could see. They were actually this infinite empty space arising as this person. In fact there was really no one here. It was really just this one nameless presence that had no boundaries.

“You crazy man!” other separate people cried. “You’re a looney! What are you talking about? Can you prove what you’re saying? No? Of course not!”

Slowly, bit by bit, one person at a time, more people began remembering about the space within them that they were never disconnected from.

They began to consciously experience a sense of nothingness that was full of everything, a sense of nameless and qualityless space that is full of everything that exists. They called it the pregnant void, and other mysterious terms.

“Everything is the same one empty non-thing,” said these people who remembered. “I can’t tell you what I am, for all that I could say arises within what I am. I can only point the way. You must remember for yourself what you actually are. It is the only way for you to truly know.”

“I don’t get it,” said the people who had not yet remembered, “but something sounds amazingly familiar about what you have to say. Something rings true about this. Let me see for myself what you are talking about.”

and so they began practicing a multitude of techniques in the hopes that they could discover what is already here. They began hoping for a particular experience of what they are, or to create something new… when the reality is that what they have been looking for, the vast emptiness of space, has been here all along.

As the restless seeking and searching began to subside, there was a resting that arose in its place, creating a space for the emptiness that simply IS to recognize itself.

“Ah, yes, THIS! This has been here the whole time. It never went anywhere. This sense of something that was missing from my life was actually here all along! What a deep sense of completion and fulfillment in a very non-human sense that is present. It is beyond what we call human, resting in and as something so much more.”

and so this space, which used to look at the different manifestations of itself and think that it literally WAS that as opposed to anything else it could look at, began to reawaken into its deeper nature, consciously remember its true infinite depth.

There is an infinite presence here, but it is no one. It is no thing. It is empty. and yet it is everything. It is everywhere. It lacks nothing for it is the infinite everything. All joy, love, and peace arise from it. Where else could it come from? There is nothing else but it.

and this space began looping back upon itself, remembering what it really is, seeing its emptiness yet again, and reveling in the bliss of nothing.

This space that had remembered itself through a person, people call enlightened.

“What are you so happy about?” people asked the enlightened one.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me about God, the ultimate Creator of All That Is.”

and the enlightened one was silent. His silence actually was his answer. The silence of space IS the ultimate Creator. Any verbal answer is the created, not the creator. Silent space has no shape, no form, no beard, no name, no nothing. It’s empty. It is space. Empty and pure, and yet full of All That Is, inseparable from it.

This space that had remembered its innate emptiness would witness its human manifestation as a grand creation of this infinite space. This space would speak words through this body about returning home, and that our true home was here and now.

This space would speak words about how it is everything and nothing, both the source and the manifestation, the creator and the created, and that all dualities are really the same one thing… nothing.

Space could be nothing, everything, and/or just one individual. Wow… What an amazing play that space is putting on!

It was when space saw itself that it laughed. A laugh of recognition and remembrance.

“Just what I always wanted,” said space to itself, “to be everything and nothing, and I already am that. What more could I have ever asked for?”

I used to think Enlightenment was one single event, like winning a billion dollars where once you “get there,” you’re set for life. For some people there is a single awakening that totally changes everything, sure, but that spark is part of a much deeper and eternal journey. In my experience, ascension is very much a continuous process filled with countless changes. You never get to the end of infinity.

There’s SO much more to this process than just recognizing we’re all one, that you are God, that separation doesn’t really exist, and so on. That stuff is bang on, but it’s just the foundation. Enlightenment 101, if you will.

About two months ago I was intuitively guided to the bookstore, walked right up to a particular book, plucked it right off the shelf, sat down and began reading. I bought it that evening. Ever since then the book has been sitting on my nightstand next to my bed and I read it whenever I feel inspired to. It’s literally as if this book was written by a wiser and more experienced version of me, narrating my ascension process, and explaining to me what is going on with respect to all these internal shifts. It’s almost like I wrote this book several years in the future and brought it back in time with me to explain to myself what’s going on.

It fills in soooo many of the gaps for me about what’s going on here beyond simply resting as awareness.

This book is called Oneness, a dialogue received and transcribed by the author, Rasha.

For example, here’s some of the things that have been arising recently that I’ve also found guidance with in the book:

• Noticing that some unhealed energy was here even before I was born in this lifetime.
• Spontaneously remembering past lives and recognizing that that previously mentioned energy originated in those lives.
• Allowing myself to heal my energy now and noticing that I’m actually working on past life energy.
• Feeling like being in two worlds at once, a sort of transitional place. Neither fully grounded on earth, nor rooted in the eternal. Like one foot in each world. There is a duality, yes, that has not fully merged and resolved itself, hence the recognition of a transition.
• The impact of music upon your chakras and how it influences your energy. How sound can impact you and point awareness deep into its own core.
• How to respond to/learn from/support/teach children whose intuitive understandings of the universe and psychic abilities are already quite well-developed.
• The enhancement of your physical senses. Sound now feels so rich, where I can simply sit and listen to the depth of the sound and appreciate it in its entirety, like an acoustic orgasm almost.
• Feeling like someone turned the juiciness knob up on your sense of taste, where everything tastes like heaven. Imagine if everything you ate tasted ridiculously delicious…
• The incredibly fulfilling experience of simply being alive, more fulfilling than any worldly accomplishment ever could be. It’s not a sense of success so much, but rather a sense of deep wholeness and connection.
• Synchronicity and flow to the point where I don’t have to think about what to do and everything in my life falls into place perfectly. People, situations, circumstances, events, timing… it’s as if I can simply do what I love and at just the right time, a whole bunch of things *just so happen* to fall into place where I can keep going and enjoying the flow.
• The undeniably powerful presence of Love and its force as it pushes through the remaining resistances put in place by the dam we sometimes call the human ego.
• The speeding up and/or non-existence of the experience of time such that manifestations begin to happen quicker and quicker, down to minutes, then seconds, and then instantaneously.

What’s been valuable to me is not just it being another “this is what to do” book, although that is definitely covered from many directions. In my experience, once you get to a certain point, everything literally boils down to deeper and deeper levels of surrender. It’s quite simple, actually. Spirit basically takes over and what needs to happen happens.

This book is like a roadmap or a guide to the process, pointing out many of the events and transformations that you may go through in your journey, offering confirmation that you’re on the right path and suggestions on how to make the transitions more smoothly and naturally, without getting stuck. I’m only a third of the way through it thus far and only read it when it feels right to, yet it’s already helping me deal with fears such as, “Ah, what’s going on?? I’ve never experienced anything like this before and am totally confused. Am I completely off track here? Am I doing something wrong?”

If you are also walking your path and this book sounds like it would be a helpful companion, you can pick up your own copy from Amazon.

Enjoy the journey!

Here’s a wonderfully hilarious and yet insightful pointer into the nature of the illusion. A poem by Iranian mystic and poet Hafiz.

You are the sun in drag.
You are God hiding from yourself.
Remove all the “mine” – that is the veil.
Why ever worry about
Anything?
Listen to what your friend Hafiz
Knows for certain:
The appearance of this world
Is a Magi’s brilliant trick, though its affairs are
Nothing into nothing.
You are a divine elephant with amnesia
Trying to live in an ant
Hole.
Sweetheart, O sweetheart
You are God in
Drag!

-Hafiz

Today’s guest post is brought to you by Father Peter Bowes who shares with us his take on how to have a direct experience of the Divine.

Many say they believe in God, but believing in God is not the same as having a direct experience of God. Direct means first-hand, not second-hand. It is not hearsay or conjecture. Direct means something happens to you. You go through something, and then you can say you have had an experience. Throughout history, belief in God has resulted in people gathering for worship in churches, mosques, and temples. All over the world people still congregate based on similar beliefs about God. But how many can really say they know God?

Love and faith are the two most important qualities that make a substantial relationship with God possible. Love pulls you to the Divine Being; faith expects that something real will happen. Love connects you and God together; faith brings trust that God will respond to your hopes. Love creates the opening for something genuine to occur in relationship with God; faith reaches out beyond what is comfortable, stretching you to feel and see what you long for with your whole heart, mind and soul.

A direct experience of God requires love and faith, both of which play integral roles in preparing you to meet God. With love and faith, you let the Divine Being know you care enough so that God will come and give you God’s Self. You have to silence the mind and the emotions, and develop a stillness that can wait for a response from God. With meditation and prayer, a person can clear the mind of the world and the distractions of the senses in preparation for this meeting with God. God will come when you have cleared away all the other gods in your life, and this takes work, patience and diligent effort.

The initial phase of this preparation can be somewhat discouraging because the most dark and detrimental parts of your nature show up for review. You just can’t ask God to come into a place soiled with dirt, confusion and negative energy, so you will have to make a clean and wholesome space before you invite God to reside in you. Often you will need a Teacher – someone who has had a direct experience of God, who can see what needs to be drawn out of you – to help you clear the space within you.

All the mystics and saints have described direct experience of God in much the same ways. Each describes experiencing the love of their life in the embrace of God’s kiss and God’s presence. No fear can exist in the presence of God since God is all love and light. God is inside you and is loving you with every ounce you are willing to receive, and this experience will move you from belief to knowing. When you come into a direct experience of the God at the center of your being, it will change you completely, and you will know a profound peace that cannot be disturbed by the confusion of the world.

About The Author

Father Peter Bowes is a Master Teacher, priest and co-director of a mystical Christian order with spiritual centers in 15 cities called the Centers of Light. EnlightenNext Magazine named Father Peter among the “Top 10 Internet Gurus,” between Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle. To learn more about Father Peter Bowes, visit FatherPeter.CentersOfLight.org.

This awakening of mass consciousness that we’re seeing in humanity today, let’s put it into a larger context so that we can see where this fits. Enlightenment is not the final stage in our journey as spiritual beings, not by a long shot.

Expanding Awareness

Awareness. Awareness has the ability to focus. It can focus on just the tip of your finger. It can encompass your whole body. It can even expand and fill the whole room to the point where there doesn’t feel like there’s a boundary between your skin and the room. This expansion of conscious awareness is often used as a meditative technique to feel beyond the limited sense of self.

You can expand awareness infinitely far, yet when you feel out to infinity, you probably won’t be conscious of what’s going on in distant galaxies right now or even on the other side of our planet. Awareness, despite being limitless, has some limitations in its distance, at least in the way that you and I are using conscious awareness in our current human existence at this stage in our soul’s evolution.

Okay, so awareness can contract to a point or expand infinitely far. Cool. I guess it’s kinda like an accordion.

Local vs. Nonlocal Existence

In the dream state, it feels like “I” exist in a particular location. There is a “me” that exists in a point in space. Here I am and there you are.

When one awakens, it is discovered that there is no location where one exists. There is simply conscious awareness. It has no location at all, and it is everything, yet it’s not simultaneously consciously aware of all of itself. It’s like knowing you are all the channels on TV, yet watching only one of them at a time.

So you find you are actually completely unlimited, yet there is still somehow the experience of limitation in physical manifestation to a greater or lesser degree.

In his book I Am That, enlightened sage Nisargadatta Maharaj and a student engage in a discussion. Upon hearing Nisargadatta explain that he is consciousness ever-present in all time and space, the student challenges him to reveal what is currently happening in New York while the two of them are sitting together having their conversation in India. Nisargadatta responds that he hasn’t done the necessarily yogic training to be able to do so.

Going Beyond Physical Limitation

We are infinite beings and by letting go of fears, letting go of doubt, letting go of limitation, and letting go of what we are not, we consciously expand into more of ourselves. Heck, even in normal people speak, when we overcome obstacles, we are said to have become “a bigger person.”

Our awareness is not necessarily limited to this body and this lifetime. In dreams we can experience other worlds, just like in our imagination. We can astrally project into other dimensions. We can tap into past lives and experience living in other times and space. We can have deja vu which is really just a remembrance of something we actually have already experienced before, but in another lifetime or otherwise.

We are not as confined and limited to this one physical body as we may think.

The world’s great masters have been able to perform various amazing feats such as teleportation and bilocation. They have literally been able to play with the illusion of time and space while being sourced in a reality which sees through the illusions and the “laws” of physical reality which are not really laws at all, but more like collective beliefs that we all buy into when we play this game called “traditional human experience.”

Normally people project their consciousness into one body at a time and are consciously aware of only one lifetime at a time. Yet these masters have been able to expand not just astrally and mentally into other realms, but physically as well. They are showing us what is possible beyond the limits of what we have traditionally denoted to be a regular ole’ human.

Expansion of Consciousness

Every lifetime we’ve ever lived is occurring here and now. This is why we can experience them in various ways. If they weren’t going on now, we couldn’t tap into them. They’re not really past lives, but multiple simultaneous incarnations.

Teleportation and time travel is nothing more than vibrationally shifting your consciousness to tune into another point in time and space, not unlike changing the frequency on the TV to focus awareness onto another channel.

Not only can we tune into other frequencies, we can even begin tapping into multiple frequencies of existence simultaneously, or multiple lives or multiple experiences within the same life.

In the same way that consciousness can focus on the tip of your finger, expand to the whole of our body, or expand out to the most distant corners of the universe, consciousness can expand to be simultaneously aware of multiple points within time and space.

Moving beyond the experience of bilocation, imagine consciousness being able to eventually experience every point in time of your life all at once, kinda like when your life flashes before your eyes in an instant, but even more real than that.

Then consciousness expands to encompass not only every point in your life simultaneously, but every possible version of this lifetime all at once.

Then consciousness expands to encompass all of your simultaneously existing incarnations all at once.

Then consciousness expands beyond the concept of “you” and “your lives” and starts to simultaneously experience the lives of another person, and then all people, and then all living creatures on earth, and then all living and non-living things on this planet, then the whole milky way galaxy, then all forms of life in this universe including all aliens, then all forms of life in all universes, then All That Is in its entirety, throughout all time and space, in every version of itself… until consciousness expands and entirely remembers and experiences who it really is, in the ultimate merge back into Oneness ever!

WHEW!

What a ride! Go God Go!!

So… Enlightenment?

So what we call enlightenment, the realization that you are All That Is, aka Spirit, and that Spirit expresses itself here in physical reality as form… this awakening from the belief of being a separate self to the realization that you are the Infinite… this enlightenment thing isn’t the final part in the process at all!

So if you’re thinking that when you get enlightened, that’s the end of the road, well, think again!

There seems to no longer be a sense of separateness or oneness. There is no thing that could be separate or one. It is all just That. No labeling, no comparison, no judgment, no nothing. Just pure existence itself.

Oneness and Separateness are not two. They’re not even one. They are both That. Enlightenment is Unenlightenment. Separateness and Oneness coexist simultaneously as really the same thing, yet totally not.

Heaven is Hell. Heaven is not Hell. All is valid for All Is That. That Is All. All That Is is That.

You are That. I am That. This moment is That. You want the Truth? This is it. This moment. This is That. Since God is omnipresent, what people call God is simply another word for All That Is. All That Is is That. It Is All That.

How can you not see the Truth when it is all That? It’s as clear as seeing what’s right in front of you, without labeling it as this as opposed to that.

Since everything is already the Supreme Buddha Nature, where are you going to find it?

-Adyashanti

The search for God seems silly when everything is God. Every idea, every object, every person, every non-thing. Nothing is God. Everything is God. There’s no duality between the two.

Truth vs. Falsehood

People want to say that this is true and that is false. This is “The Truth” while that is not. Let’s seek out “The Truth!” and with this, the philosophical debates and spiritual journey can begin.

Commenter Ismaelia recently asked an awesome question about the Tony Robbins relationship videos. Basically the question was whether or not we’re supposed to drop all our stories to get to enlightenment.

To “get there,” you basically stop buying into any stories as if they were literally the truth. This is part of letting go of thought as if it was the source of Truth, as if this thought or this opinion has any more validity than that thought or that opinion. What happens then when thought itself is no longer seen to be a valid source of Absolute Truth in any way whatsoever, the mind kind of collapses in on itself. Implosion of self.

What stands revealed is what is commonly referred to as the Self. The Self then recognizes itself in everything. All stories are the Self. Thought is the Self. Everything is the Self. The Self is That. There is no longer any separation and thus “this” can not be the truth as opposed to “that.” They are not two.

So as to the question, “Are our stories made up and thus false or are they true?”

That’s a bit like asking, “Is a blank canvas true or is the colorful painting true?”

What a strange question. Both!

Everything is That. Thoughts then come into the picture and color what is, giving us an experience of this, as opposed to that, yet it is all That.

Through thought, you create an experience of something from nothing. You are literally creating an experience with your thought and making that experience true for yourself, and what a masterful Creator you are! Your thoughts are your paint. Are your colors beautiful or ugly? Choose! It’s all That anyways and so it’s impossible to make an invalid choice, for all choices are God. Different colors and different thoughts have different experiences, sure, yet all experiences are That and equally blessed!

All is acceptable because all is That and so there is the freedom to play with any and all aspects of All That Is for All Is That.

Are All Behaviors Acceptable?

From the perspective of That, YES!

Everything is God. Everything is That. All behaviors and all decisions and all energies and all actions are God. No part of God is any better or worse than any other part of God.

What we conventionally call “bad behaviors” arise when people forget who they are. Stealing, for example, is only possible from the perspective of a limited self and separation. ie. “He steals this object from her.”

When everything is intuitively recognized as That, what on earth would stealing accomplish? That steals That from That? How could stealing even exist? It would be silly, an absurd idea. That is everything. In what way would it lack and thus need to obtain anything outside itself, when there is nothing outside itself because it is the infinite and everything is That?

So the sharing and flow of That, the experience of giving and receiving That openly and without limitation, this would naturally arise from the realization that all is That.

There is no longer a sense of needing anything or wanting to acquire or get anything, for you already are everything. There is simply the appreciation and enjoyment of what you are witnessing in the moment and the experience of already being totally complete, for you already are everything. There’s nothing more than needs to be gained or acquired to feel safe, loved, or enough. That’s true freedom! That’s liberation!

In this way, Love is always chosen.

If everything is God and everything is That, how could anything not be part of God and therefore be untrue, any less worthy than any other part of God? Is your arm any less worthy or less true than your leg? They are all That. They are separate and they are one. Paradox. Separation and Oneness, it’s both AND neither. It is ALL.

Everything just is That.

What is That?

“That” only points to something, without actually saying what it is, for what That points to has no name. It can not be conceptualized or imagined. Instead of giving the mind an object to try to conceptualize, such as “God,” the word That simply points to anything and everything. That simply is.

The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way;
The names that can be named are not unvarying names.
It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;
The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind.

-Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1, as translated by Arthur Waley

This is suddenly crystal clear. That which people call Source, the Unmanifest, or the unborn uncreated nothingness, that is it. From nothingness, everything arises, yet it is all That.

All manifestations in the physical world are all That, yet when we give it all a unique name, it is no longer recognized as That, yet it is still That. It’s like calling a bunch of molecules a rock, and then losing the understanding that it’s still just a bunch of molecules.

“Where do I find the molecules? Where’d they go? I only see the rock!”

“It’s right there, right in front of you!”

God is omnipresent and there is nowhere where God is not. It’s as obvious as seeing what is right in front of you, without mentally trying to label, categorize, or figure out what it is. Just drop the mentation and look. Be. Be still and know.

Then God will be realized, directly and experientially, not just as some nice sounding spiritual theory (yet even the spiritual theory is That and thus not any less valuable than anything else). With the dropping of mental labeling, the essence of Self/God/All That Is will stand revealed as All. All is That.

All is acceptable and lovable for All Is That. Even hate is Love. and it is Not. A thing and its opposite are not two. Sameness is That. Opposites are That. All is That.

…unless you enjoy to, of course!

Something I’ve always found amusing is how things seem to get this air of mystique when you make them sound really old and Shakespearean.

Somehow “Thou shalt not kill” sounds more “Godly” than “Don’t clock people upside the head.” Have you noticed that? Heck, even “Don’t kill people” sounds less like the official word of God.

It’s like if God came down to earth today, he’d somehow be behind the times and wouldn’t be speakin’ our language. I guess God somehow got stuck in the land-of-hundreds-of-years-ago and forgot to upgrade his personal vocabulary. Someone get God an up-to-date dictionary! Is anyone here an english teacher?

Does the Divine really only come in that one way? Are we really gonna limit the ways in which the Infinite can express itself? Can the words we need to hear not come from a song lyric, a billboard, or a random phrase that jumps out at you when sitting at Starbucks?

What if God appeared in what we consider to be totally normal and mundane?

What if the extraordinary expressed itself extra-ordinarily?