For who ? For ourselves. Did we do something, some ritual that affirmed our faith today ? In what ? In ourselves. Our ability to connect with our inner selves. For if we do not, who is this person that is working, loving, talking etc. It’s certainly not you.
It’s an everyday search for me. For that something that can put me in touch with myself. My connection to consciousness. My connection to loving nature.
Of course many people have faith. Which is a wonderful ability. I don’t have blind faith. I am more of a searcher. Questioner. Good, bad ? I don’t know. No value judgements on any faith or the question of faith. Or on myself.
Some people do it with meditation first thing in the morning. I have never been able to do that. I have to connect to something, however small, however little, to loose my sense of individuality. That’s the daily struggle. Against my own exaggarated sense of myself. I am so used to it. I have relied on it for so many years. So tough to let go now. Not that I have never questioned it before. But now, it is really important for me to be truly ‘active’ rather than ‘reactive’, which is what I have done most of my life. And how do I know what that ‘true’ action is ? Unless I am constantly in touch with something larger, more immense, more universal than myself ?
Yes I know. By letting go. By allowing yourself not to be addicted to the result of your action. By allowing chaos to invade your life. Yes, I agree. All of that. I do allow chaos to prevade in my life. I am impeteous (spelling). But then the individual in me fights back hard.
It’s an everyday battle. This battle to let go of one’s addiction to one’s sense of individuality.
Yet, the smallest of things can provoke the sensing of my flowing into something much much larger. Something infinite.
This morning it was my 5 year old daughter waking me up with a loud ‘Peekaboo’ and the tinkling of an early morning laugh.
Sometimes it;s just getting up early enough to watch the first shades of dark blue brush across the sky. Something deeply stirring about that.
Sometimes it’s unexpected gestures of affection that were not sought. Or given so instinctually that you were not aware of them.
Sometimes, it’s writing a poem. But only if the words are coming from somewhere else. As if something is flowing through you, a river of emotion you can physically feel that flows through your being.
But it is always so unexpected. So much that I am constantly aware now. My senses hightened. Waiting for that unexpected moment.
When something deeper will reach out and engulf me, and give my life, and all my actions, however small, a deeper and all encompassing context. On a daily basis.
So say a prayer for me. And for yourself.
Shekhar
Place your burden
at the feet of the Lord of the Universe
who accomplishes everything.
Remain all the time steadfast in the heart,
in the Transcendental Absolute.
God knows the past, present and future.
He will determine the future for you
and accomplish the work.
What is to be done will be done
at the proper time. Don’t worry.
Abide in the heart and surrender your acts
to the divine.
– Ramana Maharshi
“I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one.”
– Chief Crazy Horse, Oglala Sioux, 1877
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare
Notes from Neale…
——————————————————————————–
My dear friends…
Did you ever feel like you needed nothing? If you ever did, you know the experience of Liberation.
Read this note, that I received recently from a dear friend asking me about how the Mind functions, and how “belief” works, in the creation of one’s experience. What’s all this about the Law of Attraction?
I realized when I read that note that a lot of people have that question. So I wrote to my friend that one must be very careful not to fall into self-blame or self-criticism when one earnestly believes in something and it does not occur. People in the so-called New Age Community sometimes get into self-recrimination at this point, saying things like, “What’s the matter with me?!! I’m just not believing hard enough! I’ve got to believe more. We’ve got to have more faith, dammit!”
If we’re not careful, we’ll start making ourselves and each other ‘wrong’ for not thinking “positively enough,” etc. So watch out for that trap.
When things are not happening the way you have envisioned them, it is often simply the Law of Opposites playing its effect. This is to be welcomed, not rejected. (What you resist, persists. What you look at, disappears. That it, is ceases to have its illusory form.) The Law of Opposites offers a Sure and Certain Sign that your good is on its way.
Now, however, if you don’t believe that, if you start seeing the Law of Opposites as evidence that your good is NOT on the way, then it will not be, because you have “switched tracks” and are now experiencing that reality.
A track is nothing but a Belief System. Whatever track you are on takes you to exactly the Reality to which it is headed! Then you get to the station and wonder how in the heck you got there!
So welcome ALL experience—including the experience of NOT getting what you want. My friend said in her note to me that as hard as she tried not to, she struggled with worry (fear) at times over financial matters. I told her that there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Fear will eventually produce exactly what we are afraid of. It has no choice. That is simply how energy works.
All energy produces LIKE ENERGY. It has no choice. This is simply the mechanism. This is simply how the doggone machine works. You can’t change it, you can only know that and work with it.
This is why Jesus’ said over and over to his disciples, “Fear not, for I am with you, even unto the end of time.” He also said, “Even before you ask, I will have answered.”
Other masters of other faith traditions have offered the same wisdom, each in their own words. That is why my favorite prayer is: “Thank you, God, for helping me to understand that this problem has already been solved for me.”
Whenever I catch myself worrying (which is not very often, to be honest. I’m a pretty happy-go-lucky guy….yes, even in so-called ‘bad’ times…), I immediately jump to that prayer. It is absolutely my favorite prayer of all time…
“Thank you, God, for helping me to understand that this problem has already been solved for me.”
But now, the REAL question is: what if the money never comes? What if you went stone cold broke, had to sell the house, the car, everything…? Then what? What would happen then?
This drives to the largest questions of life: Who am I? Where am I? Why am I where I am? What am I doing here? And we are not so far “off topic” here after all, because you can only find those answers by going to the Soul.
There we will be told that we can fool around with children’s toys if we wish…or we can move up to the next level of mastery, where our income and our holdings and our lifestyle become irrelevant to us.
This morning I woke up in a lucid dream state. In this dream state a voice was saying to me….
Bring people a Vision.
From this Vision will emerge a Desire.
From this Desire will emerge a Mission.
From this Mission will emerge a Purpose.
From this Purpose will emerge a Function.
From this Function will emerge an Outcome.
From this Outcome will emerge an Experience.
From this Experience will emerge a Reality.
From this Reality will emerge an Awareness.
From this Awareness will emerge a Way of Being.
From this Way of Being will emerge an Expression of the Divinity that You Are.
From this Expression will emerge a new Vision.
And the Circle will be Complete.
And Life will go on, Everlasting.
I’ve lived on the street. For an entire year. Walking from corner to corner, asking people for whatever coins they may have in their pocket. I understand the Fear that drives us to Worry about things financial. Yet I tell you this: Who You Are has nothing to do with any of that. When this is something you real-ize (that is, “make real”), then you will be truly free.
And here is the irony. When you are truly free, all good things will flow to you easier than ever, ever before. Precisely because you have stopped struggling for them, stopped reaching for then, stopped worrying about them, stopped even needing them.
What we “don’t need” comes to us freely exactly because we “don’t need” them. That is, we live firmly in the conviction that we are “not in NEED” of them…and that conviction sends us to the Time Track where that REALITY exists!
Do you see? It is quite miraculous, this business of what train you get on….
Love and Hugs,
Neale.
…we must let go to be free…
…leap of faith…
om
…riding the waves
…go it alONE
finding new ground to thread on….healing and sending vibes of peace and bliss
My dear friends…
We begin today a three-part series:
LIFE’S GIFTS AND LIFE’S TRAGEDIES:
Making sense of it all
Last week, in previewing this series, I offered the observation that there are people who believe that certain other people “deserve” to have pain and suffering in their life. A few years ago there were those who even said that AIDS was “God’s punishment” for lives in ways that were not in accordance with God’s Will. Others have made the same argument about different forms of pain and suffering. It’s God’s Will. It’s God’s punishment.
Is that how it works? People do “bad” things and God punishes them? He gives them pain and suffering here on earth, then sends them to hell after they die?
What about the pain and suffering of wonderful people, like my grandmother, who suffered a stroke and lived the last years of her life in much suffering and debilitation? What was God’s purpose there?
The earthquake in Chile three weeks ago is what brought this all up for me again—and the tsunami in Hawaii that “never was,” even though for a while there we all thought (my wife and I were on the Big Island at the time) that we were in major trouble…
Why were some people in harm’s way, and others not? How does Fate decide these things? Is there some rhyme or reason? Is there some point or purpose?
No. There is not, and we must become clear that there is not. Not in the sense that most people mean when they think of there being some “point” to it all.
For there to be some “point,” there would have to be a person, a being, who would GIVE it all a “point.” There is no such person or being. Some people disagree with me on this. They say that the Person or Being is God. I am saying that God is not a “person” or “being,” with likes and dislikes, frustrations and resentments, a need to judge and a need to punish, and an agenda for humankind and for each person on the earth.
I am suggesting to you that “God” is an ineffable Essence-what the Upanishads call Brahman-that permeates the Universe; that IS the Universe, and all things, seen and unseen. I am suggesting that Brahman is Pure Intelligence, and that Brahman is a Process. I am suggesting that it is the Process called Life.
Life does not have a preference about how Life expresses Itself. Life always was, is now, and always will be—therefore Life is not worried about the thing we call “death,” and demonstrates no concern about it. If you die, you die. If you live, you live. In both cases you continue to Be.
You cannot NOT Be, and therefore Life (God) has no concern, worry, or agitation about whether you are going to Be or not. Nor does Life have a preference in the matter of how your Being is expressed. Only you do. Because you think that you Are, and the truth is, you Are Not.
That is, you think that you are “you,” and the truth is you are not who you think you are, you are not “you,” but rather, that which comprises you. The “you” that you think you are is merely a conglomeration of that which comprises you, globbed together in a particular form. Put in CwG terms: You are an Individuation of Divinity, a Singularization of The Singularity. You are a Process, not a Person. And that Process will continue forever. It is called Life. In this case, Life manifesting in the form that you call “you.”
Even that form is not a form for more than one millionth of a nano-second. That’s why I have said “you are a Process, not a Person.” The “you” that You Are is constantly changing form. Like a flame burning atop a candle. Is the flame the same flame in Hour 2 as it was in Hour 1? It is the same flame even from moment to moment? No. It cannot be. By the very nature of what the flame IS, the flame is not. For the flame burns itself out even as it is being what it is. It is thus ending its Present Form in every Present Moment.
A flame is the outward manifestation of the using up of fuel. When the fuel is gone, the flame disappears. In the case of Who You Are, the fuel is never gone, so the flame that is You never disappears. Yet it equally never stays the same. In this sense, “you” are not. You are only what you are Right Now. And then, Right Now. And then, Right Now. You can’t stay the same for even one one-millionth of a nano-second. So who are you, anyway…?
There is a continuity to “you,” even though “you” are different and changing in every moment. What is this Continuity? Is it Atman (the Soul)? If so, does Atman have a role to play in determining whether you die in an earthquake or are one of those spared in the “tsunami that never was”? What determines who lives and who dies?
I am going to give you a startling answer to that question. There is no such thing as `living’ and `dying.’ One might as well ask, “What determines who is `being’ and who is not `being.’?” Yet nothing is not Being, therefore there is nothing and no one `determining’ who is being and who is not.
Okay, you might say. But certainly there is such a thing as changing form. We may all live forever, we may all Always Be, but who or what determines the Form that we take from time to time? Those who died in the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile lived on, but changed Forms. Those who lived through the “tsunami that never was” in Hawaii lived on in the same Form. Who or what decides which Form the Beingness takes from time to time?
I am going to give you a startling answer to that question. There is no such thing as `time,’ therefore the Being that You Are takes All Forms At Once. It is merely a question of which Form you are paying attention to, which Form you are choosing to experience, in that part of Always that you call Now.
The Formulation of Brahman that called itself the people in Haiti and Chile who “died” in the earthquakes focused its attention on physicalization and de-physicalization (that is, “living” and “dying”) in the way that it did during those earthquakes in order that Brahman Itself might Know Itself in Its Own Experience AS THAT.
This is all part of a holy process that CwG calls “God godding”, or, if you please, Brahman Being. Being what? Being everything. All at once. Being life. Being death. Being good. Being bad. Being fast, being slow; being up, being down; being big, being small; being male, being female; being all of It. Being, literally, All Of ItSelf All At Once.
Phew. Okaaaay…
So what does that mean about how we, here and now, are experiencing life? You tell me.
No, I mean that literally. You tell me. By your thoughts, your words, and your actions, you tell me, every day of your life, what that means. You are also telling yourself. You are literally telling your own mind what to think about all this. You’re doing it right now. Watch yourself. You are reading this, and you are telling your own Mind what to think about what you’re reading. Or, you are saying to yourself, “I just don’t know what to think.”
Translation: Nothing has any meaning save the meaning you give it.
Now, let me say here that I embrace the Upanishadic tradition and teaching of Atman—the Soul; a part of us that lives forever, retaining its Essence and dropping its Individual Expression of that Essence during Samadhi (Oneness with the All), then picking up its Individual Expression again, then dropping it again, over and over through all Eternity in a Divine Rhythm that perpetuates Perpetuity Itself.
I embrace the notion that the purpose of it all is to allow God to know Itself in its own experience, as I have said before. This is done through the process of Individual Souls evolving and experiencing more and more of what they Always Are. I believe that Souls pick and create the Right and Perfect circumstances allowing them to do this.
To put all this simply, some Souls “die” and some Souls “live” because it is perfect for them to do that in that portion of All Time that they call Right Here, Right Now. When they “die” they realize that they have not “died” at all, but continue living forever. Then they decide (after reemerging from the moment of Samadhi) what aspect of Who They Are they wish next to experience—either as their “old self” (the person they were before they “died”) or as a new and other self (the concept known as reincarnation as another individual being).
Explaining this further, I understand that souls have the ability to return to the Timeline of Forever Always at any point, in any Form they wish—including the Form they just left behind. Put simply, you can live as the “you” that you imagine your Self to be again and again, experiencing Life in a hundred thousand different moments in a hundred thousand different ways, until you have experienced and expressed the Self in this particular Form at the level of absolute Divinity. And even then you can keep coming back to experience that as long as you wish.
Or…you can come back in another Form (i.e., as another person) and experience Life in that Form as many times as you wish. You ultimately realize that you are Life in All Forms All The Time. You are Always All, and you are All All Ways.
In other words, you are God, godding.
Okay, that’s a lot of esoterics for one week. But how to make any of that work for us in any practical way during This Life, Here and Now? That is the question. And that’s what we’ll look at in Part II of this series, next week.
In the meantime, suggested reading: HOME WITH GOD IN A LIFE THAT NEVER ENDS.
Love and Hugs,
Neale
…thank you universe for all that “is”…and “is not”
Jaya Guru Datta…Sri Guru Datta
…peace
…forest life…ahhhhhhh
om
…om shanti shanti shanti
meditative rhapsodies with ‘Shravanam’…
http://play.rhapsody.com/bombay-s-jayashri/shravanam-music-for-meditative-listening#rhapsody
Whatever It Was
It is your own life that you desire to cherish
like one brings the downy tuft of a Dandelion to the lips
blows softly
prays
to give everything away
keep
only what remains
of a life well lived
a life well loved
nourished and blessed
by the suns and by the soils
and by whatever it was
that
finally
Opened You.
`Whatever It Was’ – Em Claire
(Copyright 2007 – All Rights Reserved)
…taking a moment in the passage of time and breathing new life into what is an eternity…
om
Necessity is mother of invention. (Mater atrium necessitas).
CONGRATULATIONS on this new change…om shanti
…may the juorney of LOVE continue in its path of no path…ever lasting…ever blissful!
Notes from Neale…
——————————————————————————–
My dear friends…
Last week I offered here what I called Advice #1 on Grief: Let it out. Find a friend, go to your pastor, minister, rabbi or ulama, check out a grief-and-loss counselor, get to an emotional support group…find someone with whom to let it out.
This week—Advice #2: spiritual healing for a wounded heart.
In the extraordinary final dialogue in the CwG Cosmology, HOME WITH GOD in a Life That Never Ends, God gifts us with the spiritual basis for healing after the death of a loved one. These come in the form of what are called The 18 Remembrances. Among them…
• Dying is something you do for you.
•
• You are the cause of your own death.
This is always true, no matter where, or how you die.
• Death is never a tragedy. It is always a gift.
•
• The timing and the circumstances of death
are always perfect.
These insights into the nature and the process of death open us to a whole new understanding of the experience, causing us to notice that we have been holding it in our reality in an entirely distorted way.
Death is not something that happens to us, but through us.
Actually, it is not something that happens at all, in the commonly held definition of the word among people of the earth. Death is simply a movement from one level of existence and everlasting life to another. It is a gliding from the Realm of Experiencing to the Realm of Being. From that realm we will move into the Realm of Knowing, and then, back to the Realm of Experiencing once again, in a never-ending and always joyful cycle of expressing Divinity.
This cycle may not seem “joyful” to all who are experiencing it, but that is because of their point of view; of their perspective. Were they to embrace the perspective of the Soul, they would (as CwG points it) “see the perfection.”
All things happen in their perfect order, at their perfect time, in their perfect way. There is, in fact, nothing but perfection playing itself out in the Universe. Do you know how it is possible to know that? Because it is happening.
Unless we are in the Universe run by an out-of-control God, Who has nothing to say about, and no impact on, the events of our day-to-day, we can depend on the fact that if something is happening, it is the Will of God. And if it is the Will of God, it is for our own highest good.
This includes our own death-or the death of a dearly loved one.
Yet how can “tragic” events be for our own good?
Taken from the Soul’s perspective, all things that occur, occur because it is perfect that they do so. And this is because the Soul knows and understands the Overall Agenda of the Totality of Your Being (that Essence which you call “You”).
It is important to understand that You came here (to the earth, I mean) to undertake a particular mission. You are not here by chance, nor are the circumstances of your birth or any aspect of your life as it proceeds the product of chance. Rather, the Universe and every element in it (including every element experiencing Life as an adventure here on earth) is a constant expression of All That Is in All The Ways There Are in All The Moments That Exist in the Always of Forevermore.
We are God, “godding.” We are Divinity, expressing. We are Singularizations of the Singularity, knowing our Selves in our own experience.
When we understand this, we never again grieve for another-no matter how tragic or “unnecessary” the death, no matter how “unfair” or unexpected the circumstance. Indeed, we celebrate, knowing that the Soul of our Beloved is likewise celebrating, and now experiencing Its Continuation Day, having chosen and perfectly created the moment and the way of Its transformation from the physical to the nonphysical.
We may mourn our loss, but we will not grieve theirs, for they will have lost nothing and gained everything.
Next week: But why is Life so difficult if everything, including our own death, is chosen?
Love and Hugs,
Neale
…healing loving prayers for those in need…om
…om shanti shanti shanti hari ommmm
Notes from Neale…
——————————————————————————–
My dear friends…
This week we continue to explore a fundamental question: Why is life sometimes so difficult? I said here last week that “nothing happens without purpose, nothing occurs by chance, there is no such thing as coincidence, and there are no victims and no villains in the world. Everything is placed before us so that it might bring benefit TO us. It’s all in how we react.”
It is difficult for many people to embrace these ideas. On some days, it is difficult to me to embrace them. Like everyone else, I am not immune to being overcome by events that are not what I had hoped for. When such things occur, I keep having to ask myself, “Who am I, and who do I choose to be, in the face of this?”
Often, I have to reinvent myself, because the “me” that I am being in that moment is not the “me” that I would choose; not the “me” that I would wish that I could be. And so I try to “recreate myself anew, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever I held about who I am.
This is not always easy. In fact, in my experience it seldom is. Sometimes I just want to drop all this “spirituality stuff,” just turn around and run. Or go hide some place. Find a neat little hideaway somewhere and go there and never show my face again. Just live out my days like a “regular person” and not worry about having to “walk my talk” as “the man who wrote the book.” In Conversations with God I feel I have produced something that I now am being invited to step into. It is something way above me, way beyond me, calling me to a higher way of being.
I am told in CwG that Life is so difficult because we call forth and collectively create Life’s Events in perfect order and in perfect time, so that, as spiritual beings, we may play out the perfect solution to the perfect problem: how to perfectly produce Perfection Itself-which is Who We Are.
In other words (and in fewer words), Life’s Events invite us to a grander and grander expression of who we really are. Yet we cannot move into or create that grander expression if we don’t have the foggiest notion of Who That Is. An artist can have all the paints in the world on his palette, but he cannot paint anything until he has a picture in his head. It must be either something just before him at which he is looking, or something in his mind’s eye that he is seeing in his imagination, but he must have some image somewhere of what he wants to paint.
We are the artists of the heavens. We can create breathtaking pictures, but we must have am image somewhere in our mind’s eye of what we are trying to create.
From childhood many of us in certain cultures have been told that we were “made in the image and likeness of God.” If this is true, then we are invited to recreate ourselves in this image. Such a notion, such a life mission, if you will, calls upon all of our resources, all of our courage, all of our determination and commitment, and all of our humility as well. For Life will humble us, that is for sure, and if we have no humility to offer, we will break.
And so, I attempt very hard to humbly welcome every disclosure of myself to myself, through all the events of my life. Life, and its Events, reveals “me” to me-and then invites me to reveal a new “me” to me through the process of recreation.
And so I pray, in Life’s most difficult moments, a prayer of gratitude. That is, if I have my wits about me, if I am on top of my game, if I am present in this moment now, and not caught somewhere in my mind, where Guilt and Fear reside.
One of my life’s wonderful teachers, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, used to say, “Guilt and Fear are the only enemies of Man.” I considered that a communication straight from God, through Elisabeth. God is talking to us all the time; we are having conversations with God every moment, and we are calling this something else.
And so, why is life so difficult? Because it is designed to bring us the greatest-and then the next greatest-opportunities to recover our Selves. That is, to be once again who we always were and always are.
Kermit the Frog-the wonderful Muppet character on Sesame Street-used to say, “It’s not easy being green.” To which I want to add, “It’s not easy being Divine.”
To which God wants to add: “…until it is.”
This business of becoming who we already are and always were gets easier, I am told. I am trusting in that. I am trusting in God.
Love and Hugs,
Neale
Notes from Neale…
——————————————————————————–
My dear friends…
I hope and trust that your life has been wonderful this week. Let me say that the important thing is to be friends.
Be friends with everybody.
Be friends with your spouse. Be friends with your children. Be friends with your relatives. Be friends with your neighbors and your fellow workers and your acquaintances. And yes, even be friends with your enemies.
Just…be friends.
One of the most stinging criticisms I ever received was when someone to whom I was once married, and who I truly and dearly loved, once said to me: “You treat your friends better than you treat me.”
I never, ever forgot that. Because I knew it was true. It is absolutely, stunningly true that I had more tolerance for, more patience with, more leniency regarding my friends’ behaviors than I did with the person with whom I was sharing my life.
I said things to my life partner that I would never say to a friend. I criticized my life partner for things that I would simply “let go” with a friend. I noticed things with my life partner that I would overlook with a friend. And I let things bother me—annoy me, actually—that my life partner did that wouldn’t even phase me if a friend did the exact same thing.
What is this about? I began to wonder. Why do we so often treat those closest to us as if they were not “close” to us at all? Is it because we know them better than we know our friends, spending more time with them day in and day out as we do? Could it really be true that “familiarity breeds contempt”?
No, no…say it isn’t so! Shouldn’t familiarity breed compassion, understanding, patience, tolerance, acceptance, and deeper and deeper love? Shouldn’t intimate relationship be the place of greatest safety, not of the least?
When I was a small child (which was very, very long ago) there was a song that was popular. Even then it was an Oldie But Goodie, and we had an old phonograph record of it sung by the Mills Brothers that I used to play on the family Victrola (Ha! Does anyone even know who or what I am talking about here—???)
The song was called, You Always Hurt the One You Love. And the lyrics went something like this…if I can remember them now…
You always hurt the one you love
The one you shouldn’t hurt at all
You always take the sweetest rose
And crush it `til the petals fall
You always break the kindest heart
With a hasty word you can’t recall
So if I broke your heart last night
It’s because I love you most of all.
The irony of that song sticks with me to this very day. I have come to deeply regret (and to beg them and the heavens forgiveness for) the many ways that I have treated beloved others who have been close to me, and to realize that one of the greatest gifts we can give to a loved one is friendship. Pure and simple friendship. Just treat them like a Friend. Like we would treat someone we are afraid of losing.
So yes, be friends with your spouse. Be friends with your children. Be friends with your relatives. Be friends with your neighbors and your fellow workers and your acquaintances. And yes, even be friends with your enemies. And most of all…be friends with yourself!
~Neale
…for that is what I am today and always will be changing in the mist of your shadow…content and willing to be a part of all that there is…in this universe
om shanti shanti shanti
Keeping in the mindfulness of nonmindfulness…of the present
PART 3…I have found that the Key to Forgiveness of myself is not to forgive at all, but to understand.
God has made it very clear to me that when I understand the actions of others, when I understand those others themselves (what informs them, what animates them, what motivates them), forgiveness becomes unnecessary.
All I needed to do to find self-forgiveness, then, was to understand what informed, what animated, what motivated me when I made the choices and decisions I made, and when I behaved as I did.
I am not really a “bad” person. I am not villainous, and my intention in life is not malevolent. I’m not out to “get” anybody, and I don’t even seek “revenge” when people have seemed out to “get” me. I’m just a regular guy, a good person, I hope—rather ordinary in my goodness, like the rest of us. I try not to cheat, steal, lie, hurt, damage, or destroy. And yet I have cheated, stolen, lied, hurt, damaged, and destroyed. So what is that about?
It’s about my not knowing what in the heck I was doing—and thinking that the only way that I could get what I felt I needed was by doing what I was doing. I was so wrong in that. I was so misinformed. Or ill-informed might be a better word.
All I wanted, in the end, was to be happy. I just wanted to be happy in my life, and I was scrambling around trying to make it happen because I didn’t know how to make it happen. No one teaches us how to be happy. There’s no Happiness School anywhere. There should be, but there isn’t. Maybe I’ll start one. Maybe I’ll create the CwG Happiness School…
So there I was, scrambling like a quarterback with a porous front line, darting around the backfield, trying not to be thrown for a Big Loss.
Sooner or later I’d find myself asking meekly, “Uh…can we run that play over again…?”
I did some things during that scramble that I am not proud of, some things that hurt other people…but now I understand why I did them. I understand that I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. And even though I knew that some things would hurt somebody, I did them not wanting them to be hurt, and just wondering in my simple mind, Why can’t we all just be happy, without making someone else unhappy in the bargain?
And it’s all because I didn’t know how to be happy…or where to even find happiness. Or, worse yet, what happiness even was.
So if a person promises to pick you up at six, but doesn’t arrive until nine-thirty, and the party you were going to is over, you might feel like you have something to forgive. But if, when they arrive at the door breathless and perspiring and shameful and embarrassed and chagrined and desperately hoping for forgiveness, they tell you that they actually started out an hour ahead of time but became hopelessly lost…suddenly, forgiveness is not the order of the day. You pop out of forgiveness almost immediately, and move into deep understanding and compassion.
And so that’s what I did with myself and my own past. I was, I realized, hopelessly lost. It’s worse than that. I didn’t even know where I was going. Conversations with God showed me that, and I responded with compassion for myself, born of a deep understanding of why I did what I did during those years past.
God, of course, knows all of this ahead of time. I mean, without my having to explain. Like the mother who comes into the room to see the child’s face distorted with shame and fear and sadness and self-recrimination as he gazes at the shattered family heirloom at his feet, God understands all that has happened—and why. God doesn’t have to forgive, because understanding erases any need to forgive.
Then, on top of this comes God’s remarkable revelation that in any event there is “no such thing as Right and Wrong”! So if I didn’t have sufficient grounds for self-forgiveness (or the lack of any need for it) through understanding why I did all the things I did, I now had an even richer awareness of Life Itself—its purpose, its function, its process, and its construction. That is, how it is put together. And this completely eliminated the need for anything even closely resembling “forgiveness.”
Step One in being friends with myself was complete! I could “let go” of
all that guilt I had been carrying around. Yet I don’t want you to think that I suddenly became cavalier about my past, and all the hurt I had caused. I let go of guilt, but I did not step away from regret.
Guilt and regret are not the same thing. If you feel into them, you’ll know the difference. I will never give up `regretting’ some of the things I’ve done. To do so would be to give up my humanity. But I have given up my guilt. If nothing else, I am “not guilty by reason of insanity.” It was insane of me to think that I could find happiness doing what I was doing the way I was doing it!
With guilt gone, I felt better about myself—I was almost a person I really could have a friendship with. But I still had two more steps to go before I could complete that process…
NEXT WEEK: Part 4-The Gift of Acceptance
Love and Hugs,
Neale
Part 4-Being friends with your spouse, with your children, with those you dearly love, truly does begin with being friends with yourself. The process for others is the same as the process is for me. It is, as I said, a three-part process…Forgiveness, Acceptance, Celebration.
Once I had found a way to forgive myself (God showed me the way by showing me the way that God forgives me), I then simply needed to move into a place of acceptance of myself; of who I was and how I was.
This does not mean that I made an inner assessment that it was impossible for me to change. “Acceptance” should not be confused with “resignation.” Indeed, the ability to accept myself opened me up for the first time to changing myself.
Prior to accepting who and how I am, I resisted change mightily, because I firmly rejected the notion that I even needed to change. Like an alcoholic or a drug addict, I refused to acknowledge that I “had a problem.” There was nothing `wrong’ with me, it was everybody else who had the problem.
So when others told me that I was routinely—not occasionally, but routinely—sarcastic, I told myself it was they who had the problem. They were thin-skinned, or too sensitive, or just not able to deal with the normal give-and-take of honest people being authentically themselves.
When others told me I was routinely—not occasionally, but routinely—demanding, often expecting way too much of others, and far too often talking down to people, disrespecting them, I told myself that it was they who had the problem. They were underachievers, not operating at my level, unable to cope with the requirements of Movers and Shakers—in which group I clearly had a charter membership.
When others told me that I was routinely—not occasionally, but routinely—self-centered and self-involved, I told myself it was they who had the problem. They were not equipped to deal with people as talented and gifted as I, and they had to simply understand that I was to be expected to concerned with and focused on myself to some degree, because I was the one who was going to “make it all happen,” I was the person on whom the whole game was riding, I was the star of the show, and so I could be forgiven for giving in to all that pressure by paying attention to my ego. After all, everyone else was looking at me for the answers, the solutions, the outcomes.
When others told me that I was routinely—not occasionally, but routinely—too sensitive, making mountains out of molehills and predictable “going global” with the smallest thing, I told myself it was they who had the problem. They were clearly not tuned into Life at the level I was, they were immune to the insight and awareness by which I was daily assailed, they were among the lucky ones, fortunate enough to be unable to see and feel what I was required by my very nature to see and feel every moment.
When others told me that I was routinely—not occasionally, but routinely—defensive, and that to even slightly criticize me, much less actually oppose me on something, was to invite a war of words and then to be ostracized, I told myself it was they who had the problem. They were obviously unable to move through life with my level of overall brilliance, and not knowing how to deal with a person who almost always had the right answer, knew the right way, and did the right thing.
When others told me that I was….well, you get the picture. This list goes on, I can assure you. The litany of my imperfections is long and varied. Yet I rejected them for over a half century. And so, they kept showing up. For it is as CwG says: What you resist, persists.
It was only when I opened myself to the possibility that it was highly unlikely that 30 different people over 30 different years in 30 different kinds of relationships in 30 different places and situations would come up with the same impressions of me did I see that maybe the problem wasn’t “over there,” but maybe it was “over here,” right in my own backyard.
Then the real work began, because then I had to find a way to continue to love myself in the face of continuing and now incontrovertible evidence that I had some “stuff going on” over here.
I remember once when someone said to me, in the midst of one of my tirades: “You know, this is not the most attractive part of you.” I never forgot that. It was said so cleanly, so simply, without a whole lot of make-wrong or negative energy. It was just a clean, simple observation. And I got it.
Then I had to move into a place of Acceptance. I had a long talk with myself—and with God. And God made it clear to me that I was okay—nay, that I was perfect—just the way I was. Yet that did not mean that there was no room for change. If I wanted to change, if I chose to go to the next level, if I desired to recreate myself anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever I held about who I am, I was invited by Life at every moment to do that.
But I was told that I could not change, could never alter, what I could not accept. I can’t let go of something I refuse to notice I am holding. So I was given the enormous gift of self-acceptance. I was sarcastic too much of the time. I was demanding too much of the time. I was self-centered and defensive and sensitive and much more. I was difficult to deal with and I could speak with an edge that could cut to the quick and I was impatient with the slowness of others (at everything) and I…and I…and I…
Yup, I was all of these things. And when I finally accepted it, I got out of denial once and for all. But the way out of denial was not by embracing these characteristics as faults. It was by seeing them as my strengths, simply with volume turned up a bit too high now and then.
With the volume at a more comfortable level, my sarcasm was my quick wit, for which people loved me; my demanding nature was my ability to inspire others to outperform, for which people loved me; my self-centeredness was my self-awareness, for which people loved me; my defensiveness was my strength of conviction, for which people loved me; my sensitivity was my openness to all of life at a hundred different levels simultaneously, for which people loved me.
These were my gifts, not my faults, and my only challenge was to rein in their considerable energy, so that I could match it with the energy of the Moment Presenting. Then I would be in closer harmony with what was going on Right Here, Right Now, and people would see me as magnificent, not malevolent.
Wow! What a simple, transformative understanding! Whew. It was over. My long struggle with me was over. On the day I “got” that God accepted me, on that day I could accept me as well. I remember well the statement that opened me to this experience: If you saw you as God sees you, you would be very proud, and you would smile a lot.
Next week-Part 5: Celebration.
Love and Hugs,
Neale.
om
Part 5-Celebration…
Once I was able to forgive myself and accept myself, I was ready to take the last step to self-friendship: celebration of myself. And once I was able to celebrate myself, I was at last able to celebrate others. Especially those closest to me.
I had come full circle. For it was through celebration of them to begin with that I fell in love with them. Then, if I wasn’t careful, I loved them to death. The parts of them that I so loved and so admired and to which I was so attracted, died in my arms as I smothered them with expectations and demands and requirements to be this way, and not that; to do it the right way and not the wrong way; to be perfect, thank you, by my lights, not by theirs…
These were requirements that I would never place on my friends. That is why someone very, very close to me once said to me, “You treat your friends better than you treat me. You talk to them nicer. You respond to them with more patience. You accept them with more grace. I want to be one of your friends. To hell with being lovers!”
As I said, that stung me. And rightly it should have. I was guilty on all counts. But I don’t feel “guilty” anymore. I have regrets, but no more guilt. I have forgiven myself. I have accepted myself. And now, I am celebrating myself.
I am a wonderful person. I am generous and caring and deeply compassionate; I am helpful and assisting and wonderfully supportive; I am wise and insightful and emotionally intelligent; I am clever and bright and refreshingly stimulating; I am forgiving and accepting and consistently patient; I am exciting and inspiring and terrifically creative; I am easy going and adaptive and remarkably adjustable; I am loving and embracing and caringly present. I uplift people! I give people back to themselves!
These things are true about me, and more. And only when I can see the best of me can I see the best in you. It is that simple. I must stop “making wrong at every turn” the person closest to me—which is me.
Then I can stop making wrong at every turn the person who is next closest to me—which is the wonderful human being across the pillow.
I can celebrate you again! I can not only love you, but fall in love with you again, as if I was meeting you for the first time. As if I didn’t have all my “stuff” about me in the way of you.
I think that everyone should make a list, should write a paragraph about themselves, as I did above. Then we can celebrate life. We can celebrate the wonder and the goodness in all of us. And then we can treat our closest one and our family as we would treat our best friends. For they are our best friends, accepting us for who we are more than anyone else in the world.
Be friends today. Let’s all just…be friends.
Neale
I care for ‘special ‘ days none,
but I write for you one
on this day
that is everyday…
as I took my first step
and gently followed yours,
with every step and fall
you held and lifted me tall
cradle and sway
delight and wonder
t’was just for my laughter
for that’s all that mattered
so here I am
big and tall,
with every step or fall
only full of laughter
you were, and you are
just so I could be
so here I am, still your little girl
just as you wanted me to be
I love you, Pa!
~ daughter to dad
June 20, 2010
Happy Father’s Day!
…to journeying into the experience of monkhood…om shanti shanti shanti…deepak
…hello
Prayerful moments…
…in conversation with the Dalai Lama http://dai.ly/9gkjoh
“…to be enveloped by the Dalai Lama is like going into the deep waters of the holy Ganga…”
…to be in the moment…om shanti shanti shanti
keeping stillness in the balance of life through the choas and turbulence coming our way…om
This lifetime of ours is transient as autumn clouds.
To watch the birth and death of beings
Is like look at the movements of a dance.
A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky.
Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.
– Buddha
Daily…I think of you
You are near me in a cosmic way…
Sending healing loving thoughts to my dear friend and spiritual companion…ommmmm
This day dedicated to gurus, and all those who guide, lead, elevate and enlighten…
July 25, 2010
“show da universe dat true love is stronger dan da effects of celetial bodies…”
~krishna
My dear friends…
Sometimes I get notes from people wondering, first, if there even is a “God,” and, second, if there is a God, what God wants.
Many humans have been told that What God Wants is for life to be a school, a place of learning, a time of testing, a brief and precious opportunity to migrate the soul back to heaven, back to God, whence it came.
Many humans have also been told that it’s when life ends that the real joy begins. All of life should be considered a prelude, a forerunner, a platform upon which is built the soul’s experience of eternity. Life should therefore be led with an eye toward the Afterlife, for what is earned now will be experienced forever.
Most humans also believe that What God Wants is for people to understand that life consists of what people can see, hear, taste, touch and smell-and nothing more.
One result of this teaching: Humans believe that life is not easy, nor is it supposed to be. It’s a constant struggle. In this struggle, anything other than what is perceived by the five senses is considered “supernatural” or “occult” and falls, therefore, into the category of “trafficking with the Devil” and “the work of Satan.”
Humans are struggling to get back to God, and into God’s good graces. They are struggling to get back home. This is what life is about. It’s about the struggle of the soul, living within the body, to get back home, to return to God, from Whom it has been separated.
Most people of religious persuasion focus heavily on Heaven and Hell. Those who believe that “getting to Heaven” is the ultimate Purpose of Life, and who truly and fervently believe that they can guarantee their entrance into Heaven by doing certain things while on earth, will, of course, seek to do those things.
They’ll make sure that their sins are confessed regularly, and that their absolutions are up to date, so that if they die suddenly their soul will be ready for Judgment Day. They’ll fast for hours, days, or weeks at a time, travel on pilgrimages to distant holy places, go to church or temple or mosque or synagogue every week without fail, tithe 10% of their income, eat or not eat certain foods, wear or not wear certain clothing, say or not say certain words, and engage in all manner of rites and rituals.
They’ll obey the rules of their religion, honor the customs of their faith tradition, and follow the instructions of their spiritual leaders in order to demonstrate to God that they are a worthy person, so that a place will be reserved for them in Paradise.
If they are distressed enough and oppressed enough and unhappy enough, some humans will even end their own lives and kill other people-including the totally innocent and the absolutely unsuspecting-for the promise of a reward in heaven.
(If that promised reward happens to be 72 black-eyed virgins with whom to spend all of eternity, and if the humans in question happen to be 18 to 30-year-old men with little future and a dust-laden, poverty stricken, injustice-filled present, the chances of their making such an extraordinarily destructive decision will increase tenfold.)
They’ll do this because they believe this is What God Wants.
But is it?
I believe that one of the most important books ever given to me was the text, What God Wants. If you have not read this little book in a while, it might be wonderful to give it another look as we end this seventh month of the year.
In it we are told that when we really understand what God wants,” humans will know that the answer is: nothing. Nothing at all. How could God want anything when God has, and IS, everything God could possibly want?
When we know this, we will understand that life is not a school, neither is it a time of testing. If God wants nothing, there is no reason for a test. If humans are One with God, there is nothing to learn, there is only to remember what has been forgotten.
Humans will also understand that life is not an ordeal during which the soul struggles to get back to God, but rather, is an ongoing process by which the soul seeks to know God, then to grow, to expand, and to experience more of what it is. It will also be clear that this process, called evolution, never ends, but is experienced by the soul everlastingly, at different levels and in different life forms.
Humans will also understand that life is not limited to what can be perceived by the five senses, but is far wider in scope and deeper in dimension than humans at first imagined or have ever been told by religion.
One result of this teaching: Much more attention will be paid to what is not perceived by the five senses, and this will be the basis of a new understanding of life and how it might be most joyfully and wonderfully experienced.
Life will not be lived with an eye toward the Afterlife, but with an eye toward what is being created, expressed, and experienced at many levels of perception in the Holy Moment of Now. Humans will become increasingly aware that “now” is The Only Time There Is.
Life will not be experienced as a struggle or as an effort to “get back home” to God, but rather, as a free-flowing expression of one’s intrinsic nature, which is unlimited and divine.
“Getting to heaven” will no longer be the ultimate purpose in life. Creating heaven wherever you are will be seen as the prime objective. To experience this, people will not have to confess any sins or fast during daylight hours or travel on pilgrimages or go to places of worship weekly or tithe regularly or perform any particular ritual or act-although they may choose to do any of these things if it pleases them, or helps to remind them of who they are in relationship to God, or assists them in staying connected with their purpose.
Because of their deeper understanding and rich personal experience of life as a unified field, for people everywhere life itself will become the prime value, and the core around which all spiritual understanding and expression revolves.
We do not know how much longer our own life will go on. Our time on this planet could be over tomorrow. Because this is so, I want, for my part, to use every available moment, every minute, every second, to move as richly as I can, as fully as I can, into the highest expression of which I am capable of the greatest vision ever I held about who I am.
I want to demonstrate God on earth, in me, through me, as me. Even if there is no “God,” even if I’m “making it all up,” can there be a better way to live; a more purposeful, nicer way to move through the days and nights of one’s existence?
So today, each moment, with each decision about what I shall eat, what I shall wear, what I shall think, what I shall say, what I shall do-I am going to try to ask myself: If God where here right now, working in me, through me, as me, what would God do now?
Want to join me in the experiment?
Love and Hugs,
Neale
…om to healing loving energies of the universe…om
…for releasing and freeing up stagnant energies that cause dis…ease…om
In our willingness to give that which we seek, we keep the abundance of the universe circulating in our lives. -Deepak Chopra
My dear friends…
There are millions of them. Billions of them. Trillions of them.
Put them together and they make up a lifetime.
We call them Moments.
They have no prescribed length. They could be one minute or one hour or one second. They come and they go and then they turn into Memories. And then they stay. They are yours forever and no one can take them away. Nor can you get rid of the bad ones you don’t want to keep.
They are going on right now, as you are reading this, and through all of them-the slow ones and the oh-too-fast ones, the good ones and the bad ones, the fun ones and the ones that are simply horrible-there is only one thing that matters.
After a few years of collecting them, you realize this. By then it’s too late to do anything about the ones that have passed. But you can always do something about the one that’s coming up Right Now. And the one After That. And the hundreds more that will happen this day. And the thousands more that will happen this week. And the millions more that will happen this month. And the billions more that will happen this year. And the trillions more that will happen before you die-whenever you die.
Yes, you can do something about those. And as you contemplate what you can do about those, and what you want to do about those, you will realize that there is only one thing that matters.
The more of them that pass, the more of them you will treasure while they are here, and the more of them you will yearn for before they arrive. Until one day you will stop yearning for them. You will have had enough. You will be totally okay if not another one comes along. And then you will die. And when you die, in the Moment you die, you will know The Only Thing That Matters.
You will know in that Moment Who You Are, and Who You Have Become.
And you will know that Who You Have Become is who you have made yourself into.
You will know that you are a self-made person, that no one has had anything to do with Who You Are but you; that there’s no one else to blame, and no one else to praise. You will know that you have done it all yourself. And then you will yearn again. When you know this, you will yearn again for more Moments.
And so you will have them. You will come back, and you will have some more. But you will forget what you knew. You will forget that there is no one else to blame, and no one else to praise. You will forget that you are creating each Moment as it is, and as it will always be remembered. You will forget that you are doing it all by yourself.
Unless you don’t.
And if you don’t-if you remember-then you will gain a quality of control over the creation of your Moments that you never thought possible. And each Moment will be a treasure. For you will create it that way. No matter what is going on, no matter what is being done or said or thought by others. No matter what is happening “over there,” over here there will only be treasures. For you will have understood The Only Thing That Matters.
And in this magic Moment you will be clear that you have not made yourself into anything, that you have not “become” anything, but that you always were what you have imagined yourself to become. You will know that you always were, are now, and always will be, where you once thought you had to go and what you once thought you wanted to be.
Then you will realize that there was nothing you ever had to do but Be. Here. Now.
You will have discovered that you are The Only Thing That Matters.
Love and Hugs,
Neale
…to all those who helped me to get to this point in my life where I can injoy life, live in some awareness, be kind of mindful…compassionate, work, play music…love and be loved…
~namaste…thank you deeply~
ommm