YATL posts and videos can be viewed freely here on this site. If you feel grateful for all that has been given and all you have received here, you are invited to give back.

Taking Responsibility for your Emotions

“This makes me so angry!”

How many times have you heard someone say this? Have you said it yourself?

It’s a pretty typical way to phrase such a statement and its unconscious implications are quite significant.

How so?

You see, this phrasing implies that something outside of yourself controls your inner state of being. It’s saying that your emotions are dominated by what’s happening outside of you and that instead of proactively choosing a response to the event, you’re automatically and robotically reacting to a external stimuli.

The truth is that nothing outside of you can control your inner state of Well-Being. In fact, nothing truly causes anything. Events and circumstances may certainly influence you to select one state over another, but they do not have the ability to literally “make you angry” or “make you happy.”

Recognizing this, let’s make a shift in the way we phrase the statement, “This makes me so angry!”

Let’s remind ourselves of the underlying reality by changing the statement to read, “This event creates the context in which I choose to feel anger.”

It may sound like an issue of semantics at first, but it’s really deeper than this. By shifting the way you phrase this statement, you’ll continuously come to realize that your emotions are in fact your choice, that you can take responsibility for deciding whether you choose to feel good or not.

“This event creates the context in which I choose to feel happy.”

How do you think this impacts any addictions or habits that you may have picked up in order to feel good?

This change in phrasing can bring you a tremendous sense in freedom. It can help remove the barriers you’ve set up to resisting your own sense of joy and wonder. Happiness can be a continuously experienced state. Make this simple change in your wording and you’ll bring yourself a step closer to this place of continuous Well-Being.

“ABC creates the context in which I choose to feel XYZ.”

How Do You Love People

Question:

When I was 13, I had this platonic love, but it was not love, it was an infatuation. So that’s not it. I have experienced states of what could have been love, an inner state I cannot describe after repeating the ‘mantra’ I am truly loved, with tears, but I’m not sure if it was really it, or just an ego trip since I was ‘being better’ than the rest of the world just because they were not able to feel that state. Towards my family and ‘beloved’ ones… I appreciate them.

It’s confusing, and maybe it’s my fears trying to get the best out of me, but how do you actually love someone? How do you love yourself? What is love?

My Comments:

How do you Love someone? How do you NOT?

Oh yeah, that whole ego thing…

Lovingness arises when the ego steps aside. Let it go. When you look at someone, don’t judge them, criticize or condemn, label or categorize…

Anything coming from the mind is just a mentalization. Love arises from beyond the mind.

“I Love You.”

More accurately, that statement could be something like “The essence of that which I am acknowledges and appreciates the essence of that which you are.”

or “The God in me recognizes and adores the God in you.” (Namaste)

There is no “I” to love and no “you” to be loved. Those two “beings” only exist within the mind. You and I are one. In reality it’s Love loving Love. It’s not an “I” loving a “You.”

Let the ego go. Open your heart chakra. Love is the Truth of what you are. When the ego stops covering this up, Love arises spontaneously, freely, and automatically.

The question is not how to Love, for Love is your true nature. A better question to ask is how do I stop resisting Love.

Surrender!!! Let go of all resistances to Love and it will be the only thing left.

Thanks for your question.

Don’t Be Humble, Enjoy your Gifts and Have Humility

In many societies today, people are taught to force being humble. It is when one person goes out to brag and parades around their ego that the egos of others begin to feel inferior. In an effort to save their own face, the inferior egos will “cut down” the successful ego by telling it to be humble and not brag about all its accomplishments.

Faking being humble actually reduces you. It doesn’t enhance you.

Life is meant to be a joyful experience, something to be celebrated and loved. We are all given our own unique qualities with which to play with in the world. We all have our own special characteristics which make us one of a kind and memorable. It’s what creates variety in the world.

Life in all its forms is meant to be expressed, not repressed.

Take a look at how flowers live. You never see them trying to hide themselves, cover themselves up, or be humble. No, they JOYOUSLY open up their petals and gleefully say to the world, “This is who I am! I am love! I am beauty! I am the stunning radiance of life itself!”

Notice that flowers are essentially saying, by their very presence, “I am wonderful. I am not claiming to be more wonderful than you, but I am wonderful.” There is no comparison here. No duality. No judgment. I am what I am! A flower radiating its essence in no way diminishes the glow of any other flower, nor does it limit how much another flower can express its beauty. Read More …

Spiritual Truth is Experiential, Not a Belief System

Spiritual Truth is something to know, to experience, not something to believe in. The joy and love and peace of God can be actually experienced once you know how to access it.

Do you need a belief system to know how many heads are sticking up out of your neck? If I told you you had 18 heads sticking out of your neck, would a debate even be necessary? No.

You know you have only one physical head. You experience it. You know it. No belief system or opinion is necessary.

It’s when you lack the complete knowingness and experience that the weaker substitute of belief or opinion (which only exist in the mind, not in reality) is necessary.

Whether or not Jesus turned water into wine, or whether Adam and Eve actually existed, it’s not something we can actually experience. Thus, it’s basically a question of whether you believe in it or not. Since there’s no way of proving it one way or another, all you have are people arguing and defending their belief systems which is essentially a big house of cards. People are terrified of what will happen if their cards come tumbling down.

What are some spiritual truths that can be experienced and that really make a DIFFERENCE in your life? Read More …

The Hammer Metaphor

We’re going to be describing the ego in terms of a metaphor which will allow us to both visualize the effects of using the ego in the world, as well as understand the necessity for surrendering the ego.

The ego is simply a tool, an automatic duality-creating machine which allows us to experience every possible aspect of life.

Now the problem is not so much that the ego itself exists, but the fact that people are identified with it.

The ego has a useful purpose: to allow us to believe that illusions are a reality and thus experience both the real and the illusory. The ego is simply a tool.

It’s similar to someone using a hammer. When a nail needs to be nailed into a wall, a hammer is certainly a very useful tool. So, people find that it benefits them to use the hammer and thus they pick it up and use it to their advantage. Cool. No problem.

It’s very clear that while you’re using the hammer, the hammer is not YOU, but simply a tool that you are using with which to engage in the process of creation.

The “problem” is that most people think that they literally ARE the hammer and that there is nothing else they can be, so they continue hammering in every activity in life: while talking to others, having sex with a partner, dealing with foreign politics, resolving disagreements, even in talking to themselves!

…and then people wonder why the world is in the shape that it’s in. Read More …

The Role of a Spiritual Teacher

What is the purpose of a spiritual teacher? Is he there to save you and guide you into heaven? Is she there to share with you the truth she discovered in a book? Is he here to show you how to access the truth already inside of you? Is she here to provide a map for you to follow towards enlightenment/salvation? Is it any of these things? None of these things? Perhaps something else altogether?

Ultimately, all a spiritual teacher can really do is show you how to find the truth which is already inside you. You are God also and your soul, that part of you which is most deeply connected to God, knows anything and everything that ever was, is, or ever will be. ALL Truth is available to you, Now. You already know it. It’s simply a matter of remembering it. The task is learning what to do to access the database of infinite knowledge and wisdom.

All the “knowledge” a teacher shares with you, feel free to try it on yourself. Try it on like a new pair of jeans. If the pants fits on you and you enjoy the way they look, wonderful. Keep wearing them.

On the other hand, if they don’t feel so good, that’s cool too. Simply say, “No, thanks” and put the jeans back on the rack. Either way, the teachings are helping you decide your OWN truths.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with a teacher, because they’re helping you decide and create Who You Really Are, you can feel a sense of appreciation towards them giving you the gift of showing you who you are by holding up a mirror, just like the rest of the world.

No one is claiming to have THE Truth. They simply have their own versions of THEIR Truth which, in their own experiences, seem to be serving them quite well! … or perhaps sometimes they don’t. Either way, they’re simply sharing our own truths, as well as the natural consequences that seem to be created as a result of applying these truths.

Good spiritual teachers can hold immense power and they have a choice of how to use the power. They can either:

a) Use their power OVER others, from a place of egoic superiority and the mistaken belief that there is a “them” who has this power.

b) Use their power WITH others, to uplift all of mankind with the understanding that We Are All One.

My intention is to help uplift all of you, or more precisely, to assist those of you who are ready to uplift yourselves.

In this process, you will have to meet me halfway for I can only show you the door. You have to walk through it.

In the end, the spiritual teacher can only show you the path that they have walked. Everyone walks a unique path and there are 10,000 paths to God. It is up to the spiritual truth seeker to pick and choose the truths which resonate with them as give to them by the teacher and then implement the teachings in their own life in order to walk their path.

You Are Not Your Mind

What are you?

It’s a simple question.

Chances are, if you’re reading this article, you’re human. (To all you aliens and humanoids out there reading this article, hello! This will apply to you too!)

So, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re a human being. If someone were to point to you, they would be pointing to your body, as if the body was you. When you see the body of your friend “Bob” approaching, you’ll probably say hello to the “body” of Bob, as if he was his body.

If Bob gets his arms and legs chopped off, is he still Bob? Indeed he is. The same applies to you. You could even get your head cut off, and you’d still be you. YOU wouldn’t disappear.

So, you must not be your body.

Ah, you must then be the mind inside the body, right? That makes more sense. Afterall, that’s where your personality lies, your thoughts, opinions, belief systems, memories… Sure your body is certainly one of a kind, but most everything important that makes you unique lies inside your mind, yes?

You know that little voice inside your head? … If you just said to yourself, “What little voice?”, THAT’S the little voice!

Go and and tell yourself to stop thinking. Do it. Stop thinking.

…

Can’t do it, can you?

The reason why is because your thoughts are NOT YOU. The thoughts automatically come and go on their own, without any conscious control, much like your breath.

And, like your breath, your mind can influence itself to try and think a certain thought, at least temporarily, but ultimately you do not have any control over your mind. Read More …

Opposites Do Not Exist

Love is all there is.

It is literally impossible for anything other than Love to exist. Yet, if Love is all you experience, you will never truly be able to appreciate it.

In the same way that your favorite food grows tiresome if you eat it consistently, it is necessary to experience the opposite of that which you enjoy in order to fully understand and appreciate that which you enjoy.

Because Love is all there is and it’s impossible to experience anything other than Love, the next best thing is to forget and create the illusion of fear. You are given the tremendous gift of being able to believe fear is real in order to fully appreciate Love.

In the absence of that which you are NOT, that which you ARE is NOT.

In this lifetime and in all your other lifetimes, you have the ability to create whatever it is you wish. You get to create fear. You get to create Love. With enough trial and error, you’ll start to come to the conclusion that Love simply feels better. It’s a more enjoyable place to be. Fear may feel good to the ego, but it’s ultimately a destructive energy. What may feel righteous or justified in the short term will never bring long term happiness.

If fear doesn’t exist, how is it that we can experience it?

Let’s take a look at several pairs of opposites. Read More …