The Different Faces of Experience

Recently I came across this gem of wisdom from Gina Lake at Radical Happiness. It's profound and worth remembering, especially when we get all caught up in our drama. And I love that term "radical happiness" - what a concept!

Experiencing what you are experiencing and experiencing your thoughts are very different realities—very different experiences. When you are experiencing what you are experiencing, you are at peace, relaxed, content, absorbed, with no thoughts about “me,” how “I” am doing, or any other stories, which are the ego’s version of reality. Instead of experiencing reality, the ego tells a story about it, and that becomes its reality.

Looking for God in All the Right Places

Ra (Ra's messages are transcribed and condensed into online book form here) said, when asked what we could do to further our own growth:

The Universe is one Being. When you view another, see the Creator.

Gaze within a mirror. See the Creator.

Gaze at the Creation which lies about the mind/body/spirit of each entity. See the Creator.

It’s challenging to see the Creator in everything, to see god in everything. We tend to see god in another as a static thing, something outside them, loving them, but not them. We just don't see others, or ourselves, as that powerful. It's somewhat easier for us to acknowledge the god aspect of animals and flowers, rather than ourselves or other people.

Watch a bird and see god. Watch a tree and see god. Watch the grass and flowers and clouds and see god. Pretty easy to do, yes?

Watch a child and see god. That's easy too! Watch another doing good things and see god. Very doable. Watch another doing not good things and see god. There’s a challenge!

Now … look in the mirror and see god. Can you? Can you accept that You are the same Creator that created the Universe and everything in it? Can you accept that You continually create your reality? Can you look in the mirror and see, acknowledge, and love, the Creator that is you? I hope you can, because you are that creator. All you need to do is remember.

Why Do They Hate Me?

Have you been wondering lately why, despite your best intentions, people are in upset, and often that upset is directed at you? So much so that some of those friends/relatives/associates are starting to move out of your life, or already have?

It's hard to remember, when people you care about are casting you aside that it is, as Tobias has said many times, "not about you." The upset is their response to a mismatch in energy, one that, yes you created, but by your spiritual growth. That's A Good Thing™ it really is! But it doesn't seem that way does it?

The following message from Jennifer Hoffman at Uriel Heals addresses that very thing. Her message is powerful and speaks for itself.

Why Do They Hate Me?

From your emails and readings, I know that many of you are confused with what is happening with relationships at this time, not the romantic ones but friends, family and other associations where suddenly you go from being friends to being their worst enemy.

Sometimes you can make an innocent comment and are bombarded with words and feelings that shock you. These are situations that end long time friendships and while you may feel like the victim you are somewhat responsible for this because you are helping others heal and many are going through healing crises that they blame you for.

Every shift in your vibration has an effect on everyone and everything around you. Those who are ready to shift will join you, those who are not will reject you, in an unpleasant way. You have created a void in their energetic space, a gap that where they can no longer connect to you in the same way.

On an energetic level they lost an important resource that helped them manage their fear. Without your energy, they have to deal with their fear in another way. Since they have been using your energy and not their own, as soon as your energy is removed, the fear rushes in because there is nothing to buffer it.

Many of us act as energetic buffers for our friends and partners. We do this unconsciously, sharing our vibrations with them to help them with their healing journey. And we can do this as long as our vibrations are fairly close to theirs. But as soon as we shift enough that we are out of their range, the connection can no longer exist and they have to use their inner resources to fill that void.

But since they have been using our energy, they do not know how to use these resources and feel the fear they have successfully avoided. They have the resources to deal with the fear, they just do not know how to use them. So they see you as the problem and are angry with you when the real problems is with them.

Their reaction can make you feel terrible if you take it personally but you should know that there is nothing you can do in this situation except to release them with unconditional love, send them light and blessings and go your own way.

We are now able to experience the full volume of our energy for the first time in many lifetimes. But to do so we have to take back the energy we have been sharing with others, creating a predicament for them. And they may hate you for it but each person is responsible for their healing and has to find their energetic center.

Enjoy your energy, power and use it to create the reality of your dreams. Remember that everyone has this ability and now they have an opportunity learn how to do it for themselves.

Finding Lost Things

Ever lost something, looked every where for it - and searched some places more than once! - then later found that thing right there, in one of those places you know you had already searched thoroughly? Welcome to living in a multi-dimensional reality!

The question that naturally arises, though, is how do you implement the finding of articles lost in such a fashion? Cynthia Sue Larson has some ideas about that. She hosts a ezine called Reality Shifters where folks write in about their experiences with shifting realities. Interesting stuff. Check it out!

Top Six Tips for Finding Lost Things
by Cynthia Sue Larson

Have you lost something recently that you want to find again? Perhaps you've misplaced a book, an important photograph, a favorite piece of jewelry, or a pet. You've checked all the obvious places, and still can't find it. At this point, you might wonder if there is anything else you can do besides give up. Fortunately, there is!



Most all of us lose things. We lose socks in the laundry as well as keys, coats, wallets, and pens a lot more often than we'd like to. Have you ever noticed how you tend to lose more things when you're feeling anxious and upset? For some of us, being in a foul mood is all that's required to find ourselves crashing computers, blowing out light fixtures and appliances, and all sorts of other exciting things. While most people don't notice such dramatic psychokinetic effects, all of us are energetic beings, and we all exert a powerful effect on our physical environment with just our thoughts and feelings. 



If you follow these tips, you'll greatly increase your chances of bringing what you've lost back to you. I've found all sorts of things (pens, keys, glasses, wallet) that reappeared in places I'd already checked after I followed these simple steps. 




(1) Ground Yourself



It might seem that the hardest thing to do when you've just lost something is to relax... but it's also the most important. Your anxiety can and does create conflict in the physical world. By calming your mind and your heart, you will allow for harmony to manifest in the outside world.

We ground our electrical appliances to prevent them from sparking and starting fires... and we need to do the same thing for our energetic bodies. You can ground yourself by visualizing a long cord running down from you, down below your feet, far into the core of the Earth. Imagine that all the worries and troubles that beleague you are falling down, down, down that cord, never to return.

(2) Hope for a Reality Shift



When my young daughter used to lose things, she would say, "Hope for reality shift! Hope for reality shift!" over and over again as she walked around the house. Her intention of allowing for her lost item to return (even to a place we'd already looked) helped make such a reunion possible.

I now make sure that I say my intention out loud any time I've lost something that I dearly love and wish to find again. I know that it is possible for lost things to reappear in places I have thoroughly searched—and even sometimes in very strange or unusual places.

This intention is extremely important, because it gives the universe permission to return your lost item to you when you allow for a miraculous shift in reality to occur.

(3) Meditate



An easy meditation for finding lost things is based on breathing. As you exhale, imagine that you are breathing out all your worries and fears. As you inhale, imagine that you are breathing in love. You are letting go of any sense of panic or loss, and feeling more and more loving and loved. If you have another favorite meditation, this is a very good time to do it. The main idea now is to remain grounded as you relax further, while opening your mind and heart fully into experiencing whatever this moment brings.




(4) Feel Your Love for What is Lost



While all the previous steps are very important, feeling your love for what you have lost is undoubtedly the most important. While you continue staying grounded and breathing in love, remember all your favorite memories about what you've just lost. Allow yourself the luxury of feeling as much of that love as possible. Feel your heart growing warmer and warmer with those feelings of love. This love you are feeling is the bond between you and what has been lost, and by feeling your love as strongly as you can, you are calling what you love to return to you.




(5) Let Go



You've now done all you can do. It's time to trust that the universe will consider your request for a reunion with what you've lost. It's time to let go of any worries, fears, doubts, or concerns that might still be lingering. Just trust that everything is exactly right somehow, and continue with your everyday activities as usual. If you find your mind obsessing about what you've lost, go back to the first step and go through all these steps again. You'll find that the more you practice grounding and meditating, the easier these things become, and the easier it will be for you to stop worrying.

(6) Appreciate the Surprise Reunion



One moment, when you least expect it, you'll find what you lost. It may appear in a place you know you thoroughly checked... it may appear in a completely ridiculous place (like the time my daughter's favorite shoes once appeared on the pillow of her bed). Savor this moment, and fully absorb the improbability of your reunion and your delight and joy at finding what you lost. The appreciation and gratitude you feel will help bring more lost things home to you.

Unconditional Love

Knowing that we all want to help each other, sending energy and good wishes and all—especially when we know that the ones we love are working through times of great upset or stress—it's worth remembering that we can't necessarily know what their greater good is. This message from "The Teachers of the Universal Mind" through Jo Amidon at Light Connection gives an excellent perspective and explains why 'pure love' energy is the best kind to focus on.

What Is Unconditional Love?

Unconditional Love is the highest energy form that can be sent. It is pure, without intent or focus. It does not attempt to control, steer or interfere. It simply sends pure love which can then be used by the receiver (most often on a higher self level or spirit level) for the purpose which is most needed and for the overall best interest of the receiver. In sending Unconditional Love, this should be understood. You do not choose it's focus, label it with judgment or personal opinion. Simply having the intent to send Unconditional Love allows you to do so, and having the understanding within that it is unconditional allows it to flow through you more freely.

When Should Unconditional Love Be Used?

Unconditional Love is always recommended rather than a specific focused type of energy. This is more beneficial than conditional energy. In any situation where you choose to send energy to a specific individual, unconditional love is suggested. This allows freedom for the individual to use as needed. Perhaps you think healing energy is needed, but on higher levels, energy may be more needed for help with releasing, emotions, or decision making. All of these will in turn affect the physical well being, while simple healing of a physical problem will often create the need for re-creation of a physical issue. Physical problems are a result of activity in another area, not a natural state of being. If there are intense physical issues, such as illness or accidents, we would suggest a combination of healing energy and Unconditional Love. This will give assistance with the immediate physical issues, and allow other areas in need of work to be aided at the same time.

We would also remind you that at any time, one may not be open to receiving energy. It must be accepted by the receiver to be used. It is good to ask permission before sending energy. If the situation is such that you do not feel free to do so, ask the higher self of the individual for permission. You will receive a response, through feelings, hearing, or other signs you will be given.

What Unconditional Love Means In Everyday Life

Working with Unconditional Love is a combination of things. It is being in a state of mind where you allow and accept where you are; knowing that you are where you need to be and for a reason. It is having the intention that you will use each moment to be what you are, enjoy where you are, and to learn and grow from each experience. However small or large it may seem. It is allowing yourself to see the beauty, light and love within each person, animal or plant that you encounter.

Learn to slow down, detach a bit from the "importance" of details which compose much of everyday life, then allow yourself to feel and be "in" the things that you do rather than just doing them. This helps to allow the energy of unconditional love to flow through you. The simple daily intention of allowing yourself to be a channel for the energy of unconditional love will do much for beginning to create this "place of being" within yourself.

Every activity that you do allows you an opportunity to send unconditional love. Know that you are in a lifetime selected for its growth, learning and experiences. Although you may not have consciously chosen all your experiences, some level of your being aided in the creation of your experiences. This can be higher self, other dimensional selves, the spirit self or parts of the personality and ego.

Take the time to enjoy the reality you have created to experience. Feel the Earth, spend time in nature, experience flowers, hug trees, talk to animals and listen to them. Take time with people. Feel them, look within for the inner being of light and spirit. Know that all living beings are a part of the God Force, and as such have beauty and light within. When people talk to you, take time to listen. Feel them as they speak, go beyond the words. Be allowing.

Know that each being has a different pathway to follow, different things meet their needs, different things fulfill them, different types of experiences teach them and help them grow. Allow these differences, and know that these very differences among the parts of the God Force are bits of what compose that overall energy which is "Prime Creator". All are bits of the God Force, which while in physical experiences choose and create many different types of reality. This is how the God Force learns and grows. All are teachers, all are students, all are God.


The Teachers of The Universal Mind

Through Jo Amidon

Happy Father's Day!

As Father's Day 2009 approaches I began to think about my own father, who provided so many life lessons, and my son, now a father himself, who has so many lessons to teach his young son. To them both I give my love, my thanks, and my appreciation for the important role they play. To them and all the fathers around the world .. Happy Father's Day!

I am truly blessed because of all the love in my family, but not all families are so lucky. What we often don't understand, and due to the way human nature works what we sometimes don't want to understand, is that no matter what kind of father we have or have had, we chose the circumstances of that relationship. Because we chose it we can change how we feel even if those feelings aren't reciprocated. There is a gift in every relationship waiting to be found. Sometimes it's a tough nut to crack, but well worth doing.

The following, from Jennifer Hoffman of Uriel Heals, offers a different view on fatherhood and the father energy. I hope it will open your eyes to the opportunity that coming to peace with your relationship with your father can be, even if he is long gone.

Healing the Father Energy

This Sunday is Father's Day, a day when fathers will receive cards and gifts that show their children's appreciation for them. This is an awkward day for many of us, because our relationship with our fathers has not been the loving, kind, compassionate image we have of fathers from Hollywood movies. Some of you had fathers who were abusive, domineering, angry, violent, who were totally absent or who were physically present but emotionally distant. No matter how you feel about your father, it is time to reconcile the father energy so we can know it for what it is, an opportunity for us to experience the male energy and reconcile our relationship with it.

In its highest expression, the father energy is an example of energy in action, complementing the nurturing and creative energy of the feminine. When we are balanced in the expression of our male and female energies we are compassionate and motivated, understanding and creative, moving forward with a clear direction and focused on living our dreams. But this is not the case for many of us because our experience of the male energy is far different.

We have lived with the imbalance of male and female energies for eons, and while that energy is shifting and we have come far, we are haunted by the memories of difficult father relationships. The young male Indigos are focused on presenting a balanced, caring, nurturing male energy to their children. For the rest of us, it is time to clear the father energy so we can shift our own energies from those that we have carried for so long into something that will help us connect with the gifts of the male energy.

On Father's Day you do not have to pretend your father was the kind, compassionate, loving and supportive father the media portrays if he was not. But remember that he was raised with the male dominant mindset and he either expressed it to an extreme or tried to hide it by being distant. Perhaps he felt unable to be a parent and he left, many fathers did that. Whatever your relationship with him was like, you chose him as your father for the lessons he could teach you. And you raised your children to be different. So forgive your father, whatever his transgressions, and give yourself peace on this day. A new aspect of fatherhood is being created that will make your suffering a thing of the past. To all of the fathers, happy father's day.

Learning to Love Yourself - Guilt Free

The topic of my last post was about the 'one lesson'—the only real lesson we have to learn—and that is to love yourself. "Love myself? Sure, I love myself!" "How hard can it be? I'm cool. I'm good. I love myself!"

It sounds really easy, doesn't it? It sounds easy until you look in the mirror and realize that the first thing you see staring back at you—glaring back at you—is what you don't like, what you continually criticize yourself for. It sounds easy until you remember the terrible things (so you think) that you've done in the past. It sounds easy until you catch yourself, yet again, doing things that you hate yourself for doing, 'being' ways that you rail against yourself for being. "Dammit! If I'd only ..." It's like a mantra for the new era "If I'd only ..." Guilt and regret; regret and guilt. Those two feelings often make up the better portion of a human life, or at least an adult life. And to what end?

If I were to say, as I have said to many recently, that guilt is a useless emotion—worse than useless, actually harmful—what would your reaction be? I can tell you what pretty much the universal reaction has been when I've said that: people look at me like I've lost my mind. "What?! How can we not have guilt?" they say. "Without guilt we'd be in total anarchy!" they say.

And yet I ask you, "How can you love yourself when you see what you are as guilty?" That's a judgement. That's you saying you did something wrong. That's you saying you're flawed and those flaws need fixing. That's you saying you're not good enough, not true enough, not spiritual enough, not evolved enough.

Spirit doesn't think that way about you, it really truly doesn't. Spirit loves you always and all ways, under all circumstances. Spirit knows that you have experiences, that you are in fact an experience-making machine, and Spirit honors all experience. Spirit knows that experience is what drives evolution. Spirit wants to share in your experiences.

Spirit doesn't judge. It doesn't care what label you put on experiences, because Spirit doesn't judge your experiences or you. It truly doesn't! Spirit honors you always; thanks you always; loves you always, and under all circumstances. Spirit knows who you are. Spirit knows that You Are God Also, and that there is no such thing as right and wrong. No such thing as good and bad. So to Spirit, guilt is a 'no thing.'

Can you feel the same way about you that Spirit does? Can you? You must, because you are Spirit, you just don't remember that you are. And therein lies the difficulty.

Guilt Is Incompatible With Love

It doesn't forward your desire to love yourself when you think that you have done something wrong, done something bad, or perhaps done things you consider unforgivable, things you feel guilty for. As Abraham likes to say, the reason you feel so bad when you feel guilty is that it separates you from You. It feels bad to feel guilty, and that alone ought to tell you that guilt doesn't work the way you think it does.

If you think that guilt is stopping you from what you consider to be 'misbehaving', then you need to spend more time looking at how often you feel guilty about something and do it anyway. Then look at how often you feel even more guilty after having done that thing, and because you feel so bad you go do it some more. Which adds to your guilt. It's an endless cycle. It's "the Never Ending Story." Where in that cycle is the "out" point? Not in more guilt, that's for sure!

Guilt doesn't work the way you think it does. It doesn't. It just doesn't. There's only one thing that guilt is useful for, and that is for its ability to point out to you ways of being that you might choose not to continue with. It's a before-the-fact kind of tool, and truly, if you want to learn how to really love yourself, it's a tool you ought to just chuck right out of your personal toolbox.

But guilt is sticky. Even if you want to toss it out of your toolbox it will likely jump right back in when you aren't looking. But you can outsmart guilt. You can learn how to put it in its place, how to keep it from running the show.

Try looking at guilt a different way. Look at it as your own little alarm system—like the one on your watch or phone that alerts you when you need to be somewhere or do something. Look at guilt as your own little self-actuated alert mechanism.

When you feel the feelings of guilt, or hear the nagging voice of guilt, all that's happened is that your little alert mechanism went off. You can either turn off the alert, or you can use the awareness that it gives you to take a conscious look at what you're choosing. Guilt is alerting you to a choice that you made that you might like to reconsider. "Hey, hey you! You might want to reconsider that choice." That's all it's doing. That's all the control that it has. Don't give it more.

When the guilt-alert goes off, if you've become aware of it, you have essentially stopped time. You are now aware of what you're choosing, and you can now choose something different. Or you can choose to stay with your initial choice. Either of these is your choice to make.

What should you choose? That's easy ... Whatever will feel the best to you after you choose it. Weigh both choices: Which feels better?

If you choose something different, especially if the new choice makes you feel proud of yourself for interrupting a habitual way of being, savor that good feeling. Congratulate yourself for your choice! Love yourself for that choice! Enjoy that choice. Savor that choice.

If you choose something different because you don't want to feel guilty .. well .. you might want to look at why you are giving so much of your power away to guilt. You don't have to choose differently just because your first choice has triggered the guilt-alarm. I know you might be getting antsy about that comment, especially if you are socially tuned to be driven by guilt, but stay with me here, this is the tricky part about dealing with guilt.

If you choose to stay with your initial choice, the thing that caused the guilt-alert to sound in the first place ("I really want that! ... even if it makes me feel guilty!"), what are you going to do? You have to know that the guilt-alert is going to continue to sound if you stay with that first choice. It is, after all, the choice that triggered the guilt in the first place.

There's no getting around it, if you consciously choose to stay with your first choice, the guilt-producing one, you're going to have to have a showdown with guilt. But that's a good thing! You're simply going to have to tell guilt where to get off, because this is your choice and you're choosing it. This is your free will at work, this is your choice. The solution might be as easy as just imagining pressing the 'off' button on the guilt-alert. Or it might take a bit more effort, like reminding yourself that you don't need the guilt-alert since you are freely choosing. Thank guilt for sharing and then turn it off.

What I often do, when my guilt-alert goes off, is remind myself that I have a right to enjoy my life, and enjoying my life includes choosing things that others might consider unworthy of choice. Things others might even consider 'wrong.' Then I remind myself that other people aren't living my life, I'm living my life. Which means my choices are mine to make. Even if I want to eat a whole box of cookies at one sitting. Even if I want to yell at whatever there is to yell at or about. Even if I want to play video games all day.

It's all my choice. If I choose a thing, and do it, then I might as well enjoy the hell out of it, whatever it is. Because when I'm enjoying whatever I'm up to, truly loving and enjoying it and not feeling guilty about it, Spirit is enjoying my enjoyment. Yes, even boxes of cookies. Even round after round of video games. Even yelling. When I really get into yelling, really choose it, it starts being funny. I mean, seriously funny!

The alternative is doing the guilt-producing thing and continuing to feel guilty, carrying the guilt around and not enjoying what I'm doing, or stuffing the guilt and letting it fester inside me. None of those are alternatives worth taking. There is one other alternative, and that is giving in to the guilt, doing something else and then feeling deprived. Spirit won't participate with me in either guilt or deprivation, so why would I choose those?

Letting go of guilt and/or learning to use guilt as a tool might take some practice. With some choices it will be fairly easy to turn off the guilt-alert, with others it may be quite difficult. It all depends on how deeply married to guilt you are in any particular circumstance.

There are things I'm still working on, but it's getting easier and easier. And believe it or not, by allowing myself to make choices that feel good, no matter how guilty society would like to make feel me for choosing them, I've finally—after 50 years of struggle—found many things that I've struggled with falling out of my life. Easily. Effortlessly.

It's as if when I finally allowed myself to love what I love—guilt free—eventually I got my fill. It's as if all I ever wanted was to just be ok with my choices, to honor my choices no matter what they were, and once I did, I didn't feel driven to make those particular choices anymore.

Did it happen overnight? Not at all. But it did happen. I loosened the hold of guilt in a lot of areas, and eventually it stopped hounding me in those areas. And once it stopped hounding me, I no longer felt drawn to what guilt had been trying to keep me from. It's a paradox, and one that each of us has to explore for ourselves.

The whole point is to love whatever you are choosing. Enjoy what you are choosing; savor it, love it. Because when you are loving your choices, no matter what they are, no matter what society is saying about them (or about you), in loving your choices you are loving yourself. Loving yourself feels better than anything else that you can do. And that ought to tell you that loving yourself is the most important thing that you can do.

A Lesson From Atlantis

Following is a little story that might help you see how guilt isn't the answer to learning to love yourself.

If you know the history of Atlantis, you'll know that humanity made some—what we would consider to be—really poor choices. Choices that ended up destroying not only a civilization, but a good deal of land mass as well. Continents even. These were choices that could have, in fact, destroyed the entire planet. On a scale of disastrously poor choices, the ones made in Atlantis were right up there at the pinnacle. And yet ... Spirit has a completely different take on those events. Spirit sees all experience as choice, and all choices are honored. All choices can be learned from. That's what forwards evolution.

This excerpt comes from Salem the Great Light, channeled by Diandra, in a piece about Atlantis. In this response to an audience question, Salem starts out speaking about humans who carry the guilt of Atlantis.

Don't judge yourselves. Don't say 'wow, we really blew that.' No you didn't. No. That was an experience that added to God. It was an experience that added to the dimension of your soul. So as you begin to become more aware of things, look at the vastness of the possibilities of who you are. Don't get caught in blame or guilt. Don't feel like ‘I could have done it better.’

What is ‘better’? Is that a society standard? Who is society? And is that society as you know it in 1998 [or 2009] or society as you knew it in 1998 BC? Don't do that to yourselves. The more you begin to awaken your consciousness, the more possibilities you have of who you are, the more you expand in your awareness. You have more choices.

But if you get meshed down in guilt and blame... there are souls that become so overwhelmed by their perception of failure—whatever that may be on their part—that the heaviness of that vibration, they'll either create something to take them off of this planet in the form of a disease or an accident because they feel like "I just can't do this, I have done it so badly."

And we want to say to all of those souls: no, you didn't. No, you didn't. You just chose an experience. That same experience .. maybe ten thousand years ago it would have been the epitome of the greatness of who you are.

So don't beat yourselves up. That's the important message we want to give. Honor. Honor all that you are. Honor anything that you've been in the past and anything you'll be in the future. See that greatness of who you are. There is no other soul like you. And that in itself is the miracle of creation.

Compared to those choices (the ones leading to the destruction of Atlantis), which are honored by Spirit, what could you, in your current lifetime, possibly do or have done that even comes close? Compared to what has already been accepted, honored, and loved, and where guilt about the choices is a 'no thing', what can you possibly feel guilty for?

Decide, once and for all, to put guilt in its place. Live the life that you choose to live. Don't allow guilt to be the deciding factor in what you do or do not do, in what you choose or do not choose. Honor yourself for who you have been, who you are, and who you are becoming. Accept yourself. Honor yourself. Love yourself. You are the perfect expression of God experiencing Itself as you. Even when eating a whole box of cookies.

There's Only One Lesson

This is an excerpt from a channel by Barbara Marciniak. Barbara channels a Pleiadian collective, this being a different group than that channeled by Wendy Kennedy. Although this message was received nearly 20 years ago, I find it as pertinent now as it was then.

This was among a selection of Barbara's channels from the early 1990s posted here.

There's only one lesson to be learned. One lesson. To love yourself. It is the only lesson that there is. And that is what you are all going to be struggling with over and over again.

You all have come from great entities creator gods that were curious about your Earth sphere, who came here to be a part of a vast experiment. Certainly from their perspective, they were viewing themselves as entities who were an extension of Prime Creator, who had vast abilities. They did not look upon themselves as Gods. It was only those that were not so evolved who looked upon them as Gods. You all have been in that position.

Why is it you have given up that position of godhood and broken yourself off and separated? Because you are curious, you wanted to know what it would be like to feel certain emotions, to have certain perspectives about life. You agreed to separate yourselves, willingly, anxiously, and to sojourn throughout many civilizations and cultures. The time has come for you to make yourself whole once again, for you to remember. That is what is going on.

And how are you going to remember? You are going to tap into the alteration that is occurring within your body. And you will facilitate all of this if you could but love who you are.

Service

You all have a confusion about what is called service. You think that you must take care of others to do service. Service truly means when you take care of the vehicle that you are, because that is your concern. When you take care of the vehicle that you are, you send into the consciousness of the Mother Earth a certain vibration. That vibration works with the consciousness of Mother Earth and there is a uniting of spirit.

There is a resonation that comes to being. Loving yourself is allowing yourself the greatest honor and dignity to be. It is placing yourself first through value, not through selfishness. Whenever you are putting in your life that which is less than keeping you happy, it is because you do not value who you are. You settle for less. You settle for less because you are afraid that if you don't settle for less you will end up with nothing. That is a belief. That is a fear.

That is a program you have accepted over and over again. It is part of the cultural paradigm. The children of the new main stream of ideas are not going to get involved in [that belief]. The new children know they do not have to settle for less. They will teach their parents. They will teach others that no one has to compromise. No one has to take less than what they are wanting.

We would like each and every one of you in this moment to make a commitment to yourself, to place yourself on your own throne.

Honor that vehicle that you are and intend that all that you bring to your lives from this moment forward be gifts of great treasures for yourselves. You will create it. Do not fear your power. That is underlying all of this. You are to some extent afraid that if you start creating what you are really wanting, you are afraid of where you will go with this. And so you put it off. "I will be successful in a couple years. I am not ready."

Love the vehicles that you are so that you can be a guiding light for all of the others. It is your right. It is time for you to remember. It is important for you to honor and cherish yourselves and learn the only lesson that there is to learn. That of love, because love is the key that is going to open every technology. It is going to open every doorway to extraterrestrial and interdimensional communications, inner-earth communications, that will allow you to truly live.

And so it is.

Transmuting Energy

In my last post "Balancing the Ego" I talked about transmuting charged negative energy—like anger, upset, hurt—into Universal Energy, or love. If you've ever tried to disconnect from a charged negative situation and transmute the energy into love, you'll know it's not always such an easy thing.

Tobias, in Geoff Hoppe's channel "Wave of Darkness", in response to a question from the audience, gave the following information. It's a bit more complex in expression than I generally refer to, but I include it here in the interests of those of you who like to be aware of the deeper aspects of working with energy.

Transmuting, in a sense, is as simple as selecting a potential. For example, if there are a dozen potentials in front of you, including anger and fear, hatred and love, being afraid …. and all of the various potentials, transmuting is choosing a potential.

Fear may be the potential that stands directly in front of you, but you choose to walk through it. Walking through it means facing the things that are there. Walking through it means being in a place of strength, wisdom and balance, and owning that new potential.

You ask us to describe a specific exercise or a specific pattern for transmuting. In an answer to that question, Amiel, Archangel of Hope, is the best one to answer this. We pause for a moment to bring her message through (pausing).

"Hope is the energy of new potentials realized." Amiel says to simply move towards the energy of the highest potential. This is through your action and your thoughts. Amiel says to draw this into you. Bring this highest potential into you, then be in a place of strength, and allow it to go through your being.

We cannot define the exact process here, but as you bring it into your being and allow it to go through you, you will learn very quickly what this process is like.

It is not a "thinking" process. It does not take place in any one part of your body, such as your heart area. It is a totally realized energy that moves throughout your entire being then is released back as an energy of the highest potential, through you to the world.

You are processors, you are micro/macro processors of energy. There is not an intellectual pattern to this but it is bringing in the energy of highest potential and then releasing it back out.

Balancing the Ego

World wide, people are talking a lot about the human ego these days. It used to be that only psychologists and psychiatrists, gurus and spiritual ‘seekers’ talked about ego. Often talk of the ego was about transcending it, which many people mistook to mean “eliminate” it. What we’re realizing now is that the ego can’t be eliminated, it’s a part of who we are as a physical being here on earth.

Our ego is a tool, one with which we can experience this amazing and wonderful world that we live in. Our ego is our friend. Our friend, yes, but like anything given in excess, if we give it too much power it can become possessive and abusive and doesn’t serve our best interests. There has to be a balance.

Since our ego belongs to us, since it is ‘our’ tool, it’s up to us, each of us individually, to balance our own ego. But what does that mean exactly “balanced ego”? and what does “having a balanced ego” look like?

My favorite description comes from Kryon in Lee Carroll’s channel, Becoming Masters, presented in March 2006:

I'll give you some examples of what it's like to have a balanced ego: Can you sit in a situation where somebody is calling you names and not feel it? Hmm? Even if they're right? [Kryon smiles.] Can you? Can you sit and take that kind of verbal abuse and not feel it? Can you smile in the joy of the moment while it's taking place? Can you be detached, watching the movie, as they say ... can you?

I'll give you something to do, an exercise. The next time this situation occurs, I want you to try to disengage. And when you are looking at the person abusing you, in their anger, in their unbalance, in their turmoil, I want you to love them. At this moment, they are the ones who are out of balance, not you. Their abuse of you is an invitation for you to join them in an "out-of-balance experience." [Laughter] So sit there and endure their unbalance, don't join it. Then when they're finished, if they're within touching distance, you might touch their arm gently and say, "I'm sorry you're having a bad day." * [Laughter] Can you do that?

Do you know what happens when they don't get the reaction from you that the drama they're putting forward is supposed to create? They are completely and totally disarmed. And that, my friend, is when communication can happen. That's when the love of God is best seen. This can only take place with a person who has a balanced ego.

A balanced ego is an ego that is present only in respect to a Human who truly knows who they are. It's a piece of divinity and survival that nothing can touch.

No other Human can touch you in death or in life and change your mind about anything if you have a divine countenance. No matter what words are presented to you, no matter what situations are given to you, no matter how loud they yell... they can't change a thing because of your mastery.

Remember the four attributes of love that we taught you? [Kryon Book 5] Your reaction will not be anger. It will be solution. As they are yelling, all you can think of is how to solve the issue, not how to yell back or get even. A balanced ego says to you, "I know who I am. I'm a loving individual who can solve problems. I don't have to defend anything. I'm not in survival mode, and I am concerned about the one who is in trouble in front of me."

What Kryon is talking about here—when you’re in a situation where your first reaction is upset of some kind—is transmuting negative energy into Universal Energy (love). I absolutely agree with Kryon that the most empowering action is to disengage from such situations and switch from upset to love. Disengaging is you knowing within yourself that whatever is going on with another is about them and what they are experiencing, it’s not about you. In that understanding we experience true compassion.

Disengaging isn’t running away, or turning a deaf ear, or shutting down, or pretending, or stuffing your emotions somewhere deep inside so that you appear to be being calm and accepting. Disengaging is consciously setting your emotional boundaries. It’s consciously recognizing that someone else’s upset is not about you, no matter how much they want you to believe that it is. And by the same token, it’s knowing that your emotional upset isn’t about another, no matter how much it looks like it is, how much you think it is, or how much you want it to be.

So, as Kryon points out, in our ultimate mastery we can take any situation and not be negatively charged by it. If we feel a negative charge we can disconnect from the situation by loving the situation, ourselves, and other. That’s ultimate mastery. We each have achieved that in different situations at different times. That’s what a great deal of what our personal growth is all about!

But what happens when you can’t feel the love in a negatively charged situation? What happens when you can’t disengage from a negative emotional situation? What if you can’t get from here to there in a particular situation?

Sometimes it’s not so easy to transmute a highly charged negative reaction in the moment, especially when it relates to something that’s been hanging around us for a long time. For one, we get so caught up in our own habitual thoughts and reactions that we sometimes don’t even notice that we are reacting. Two, even when we realize we’re reacting, we can be so ‘stuck’ in our habitual ways of being that we aren’t able to change our reaction even when we see that we’re doing it.

Three, sometimes it takes a lot of soul searching, or inner work, to even realize that our reaction is based in fear. But it always is. No matter what things look like on the surface, any negatively charged reaction on our part is always based in our own fear, our own need to protect ourselves from whatever perceived danger we feel we need to protect ourselves from. If we can find where the fear comes from, what it is we are hiding from or running from or protecting ourselves from, we will be well on the way toward releasing it.

So when we can’t disengage from a charged negative situation, what can we do?

The Art of Disengaging

If you find yourself caught in a situation where you are feeling negatively charged in response to something in your environment, be that a person, a thing, a critter, or a situation, and you can’t shift that feeling into love, try to just notice what’s happening and allow it to play out however it does. If you get mad, you get mad. If you retaliate, so be it. If you go stomping off in a huff, all well and good. If you break down in tears, then you do. No matter how you reacted (or are reacting), just notice. Then make a mental note to revisit the situation at a later time, a time when you’re more calm and not so negatively charged. At that time you can better see the situation from an overview standpoint.

When you revisit a negatively charged experience, avoid the temptation to criticize yourself, or another, for your or their behavior. Avoid the temptation to revisit the negative charge and instead simply observe.

During your review, if you find yourself getting worked up again, remind yourself that this happened in the past, it isn’t happening right now. Remind yourself that you are revisiting the experience as an observer, not as a participant. You’re watching a movie in which you and your reactions are the main character. Remember—this review isn’t about anyone or anything else, this review is about you. You’re the star here, enjoy your time on stage!

During your review, notice any feelings attached to the experience. If you notice that there were feelings attached to the event, allow yourself to feel those feelings. Just feel them. You don’t even have to identify with mental words what those feelings are or were, just feel them. Words might come to you as descriptors of the feelings, insights might come to you; if they do, observe those too. Do this process of observing and feeling as often as you need to until you can view the situation without—or with a greatly reduced—negative emotional charge, and without judgement of either yourself or others who may have been involved.

What do I mean by "feel the feelings"? Allow your body to react however it does while you are observing the interactions in the experience. If you start to cry, allow the tears to flow. If you feel yourself getting angry, allow the angry feelings to surface. Feel the feelings in your body. What are the sensations? Allow yourself to simply feel them, to acknowledge them. We get so used to hiding sensations from ourselves that we don’t allow ourselves to feel what we feel. And what we don’t allow ourselves to feel becomes trapped, becomes blocks to our energy. Left unacknowledged for too long, blocked energy becomes illness.

Important: If you begin to sense that the emotions you are feeling are too intense for you to handle, or if you find yourself being emotionally sucked back into the experience rather than observing it, stop the process. In this case you may want to seek out an energy practitioner to help you deal with pent up emotional energy. Always listen to your inner guidance as to whether to continue with an experience or not, and if not, seek out those professionals who can assist you. There are multiple thousands of energy workers primed and ready to aid you, when you are ready and when you ask. Each individual has different needs; different practitioners will be quite effective with one person but not necessarily with another. Allow your inner guidance to direct you to those who are best suited to help you.

If it helps you to write things down as you are reviewing an experience, do so. Very often just the action of writing helps you get closer in touch with your feelings and can open you even more to your own intuition and guidance.

Anything that you can do to reduce the negative charge on a situation is going to add greatly to your ability to do the same the next time. It’s like anything else that you do—practice helps. At the point where you can view an experience without a negative charge you will know that you’ve accepted the experience. That’s a huge accomplishment! Congratulate yourself for having fully experienced something and accepted that experience, and know that your ability to disconnect in the future has been greatly enhanced.

There is one last step, and one that will empower you in ways that you won't believe until you experience it: From that space of non-charged energy, find a way to consciously appreciate and love both yourself and the other for their participation, or simply appreciate and love the situation itself if no other was involved. You will be amazed at the results.

Finding a way to love yourself, another, and/or a situation that once had a negative charge will catapult you into a higher vibration. You may tear up, or outright cry, when you feel the depth of love that you have for yourself when you can accept, appreciate, and love such an experience. The emotional response that you feel is you, on a spiritual level, thanking you for the growth that you received from that experience. There is no greater feeling in all the world than your own love and appreciation of you.

Know that any time you feel this infusion of love of self, the whole world has just received a hit of your love energy too. And we thank you. Espavo!


* The Love and Logic program offers a similar method of disconnecting from someone else’s upset. They recommend the phrase “I love you too much to argue with you about it" .. along with additional techniques for resolving conflict.

Seth, Breath, and I Am

In an earlier post called "Breath of Life" I quoted a number of spiritual teachers and their comments and statements about how important our breath is. I said, among other things:

Our breath is like an energetic umbilical cord, connecting us, in our human body, with all other realms and dimensions. It’s the direct route to integrating all of our experiences. Consciously breathing reconnects us to who we really are in ways we are only just coming to realize.

In another post, "Of Ego and Essence" I quoted Gina Lake's mentor and channel, Theo, saying:

This that you are—who you truly are—is alive right now. It’s not some concept. “It” is living your life, it’s breathing your body, it’s right here. It gets overshadowed by this manufactured me that the mind speaks about: I’m this, I’m that, I like this, I like that.

This whole identity is created by the mind. It feels real, it seems real, it even has feelings attached to it which makes it more real, but that isn’t who you are. All that mental stuff, it isn’t you.

What is real is this aliveness that is living this life. This awareness that is aware of this life, that is aware of thoughts, that is aware of feelings. You are that awareness. And this awareness is co-creating with itself on other levels.

So that which you are is incarnate. It’s not just a concept of a higher self that’s sitting up there in some other dimension (separate from you). It’s incarnate. It’s here. And when you’re responding naturally and joyfully, that’s it responding, that’s it living. When you’re involved with thought, that’s your ego living you.

So there are two ways of Being in any moment. There is Being aligned with the ego and the mind, and there’s Being aligned with essence. Any moment any of those two things can be happening, but not both of them at the same time. So there’s a dance going on in every moment—people spend time involved in the ego, and they spend time in essence.

The more spiritually progressed you are, the more time you spend identified with your true self rather than the mind. And that’s what awakening is about. It’s a movement toward full identification with essence as it’s living you now.

In reviewing some of my old Seth books, I came upon the following. It's from Jane Roberts' book "Seth, Dreams, and Projections of Consciousness." It was written in the mid-1960s and discusses material from the early sessions. This particular piece was from sessions 22 and 23.

Seth:

Some part of the individual is aware of the most minute portions of breath; some part knows of the most minute particle of oxygen and other components that enter the lungs. The thinking brain does not know. Your all-important ‘I’ does not know. In actuality, my dear friends, the all-important ‘I’ does know. You do not know the all-important ‘I’, and that is your difficulty.

It is fashionable in your time to consider man as the product of the brain and an isolated bit of the subconscious, with a few other odds and ends thrown in for good measure. Therefore, with such an unnatural division, it seems to man that he does not know himself.

He says ‘I breathe, but who breathes, since consciously I cannot tell myself to breathe or not to breathe?’ He says ‘I dream, but who dreams? I cannot tell myself to dream or not to dream.’ He cuts himself in half and then wonders why he is not whole. Man has admitted only those things he could see, smell, touch or hear; and in so doing, he could only appreciate half of himself. And when I say half, I exaggerate; he is aware of only a third of himself.

If man does not know who breathes within him, and if man does not know who dreams within him, it is not because there is one self who acts in the physical universe and another who dreams and breathes. It is because he has buried the part of himself which breathes and dreams. If these functions seem so automatic as to be performed by someone completely divorced from himself, it is because he has done the divorcing.

The part of you who dreams is the ‘I’ as much as the part of you who operates in any other manner. The part of you who dreams is the part of you who breathes. This part of you is certainly as legitimate and necessary to you as a whole unit is, as the part who plays bridge or Scrabble. It would seem ludicrous to suppose that such a vital matter as breathing would be left to a subordinate, almost completely divorced, poor-relative sort of a lesser personality.

As breathing is carried on in a manner that seems automatic to the conscious mind, so the important function of transforming the vitality of the universe into pattern units seems to be carried on automatically. But this transformation is not as apparent to the one part of yourself that you are pleased to recognize, and so it seems as if this transformation is carried on by someone even more distant than your breathing and dreaming selves.

Because you know that you breathe, without being consciously aware of the mechanics involved, you are forced to admit that you do your own breathing. When you cross a room, you are forced to admit that you caused yourself to do so, though consciously you have no idea of willing the muscles to move, or of stimulating one tendon or another. Yet even though you admit these things, you do not really believe them.

In your quiet unguarded moments, you still say, ‘Who breathes? Who dreams? Who moves?’ How much easier it would be to admit, freely and whole-heartedly, the simple fact that you are not consciously aware of vital parts of yourself and that you are more than you think you are.

Man, for example, trusts himself much more when he says ‘I will read,’ and then he reads, than he does when he says, ‘I will see,’ and then he sees. He remembers having learned to read, but he does not remember having learned to see, and what he cannot consciously remember, he fears.

The fact is that although no one taught him to see, he sees. The part of himself that did ‘teach’ him to see still guides his movements, still moves the muscles of his eyes, still becomes conscious despite him when he sleeps, still breathes for him without thanks or recognition, and still carries on his task of transforming energy from an inner reality into an outer one. Man becomes trapped by his own artificially divided self.

It is true, as a rule, that you are not aware of your whole entity. There is no reason, however, why you must be blind to the whole self of your present personality, which is part of the entity, and which can be glimpsed in terms of the breathing and dreaming ‘self’ of which I have spoken.

It is convenient not to be consciously aware of each breath you take, but it is sheer stupidity to ignore the inner self which does the breathing and is aware of the mechanics involved. I have said that the mind is a part of the inner world, but you have access to your own minds, which you ignore; and this access would lead you inevitably to truths about the outer world. Working inward, you could understand the outward more clearly.

When I add all of those up, I come to the striking realization that we are more our Soul Self than we imagine, we just don't remember that we are.

We can come into more and more awareness of our 'true' selves if we choose to, because we really are our 'true' selves, in every sense of the word. We disconnected different pieces of ourselves because we didn't understand, and we can reconnect those pieces anytime we want.

Guess what one of the best ways of reconnecting is? (Besides being in your joy ;)) Breathing consciously!

As you consciously breathe in and out, know that you are reconnecting 'you' with 'You'. Feel the connection. I Am. Appreciate who you've been, who you are, and who you are becoming. I Am. Not only I Am, I always was, and I always will be.

Fully experience that you are already whole, already both sides of the coin of you and You, you just forgot. Now you remember. How exciting is that?

New Synaptic Pathways and The Labyrinth

Recently I learned about Labyrinths. Interestingly, although millions of people are familiar with them, I was not.

I had been reading something by Steve Rother, channel for "the group". He was talking about how to increase one's ability to connect with Spirit (always an interest of mine) and he mentioned the following:

Open new synaptic pathways. There are exercises you can do to open new synaptic pathways in the brain that help. The Group suggests simple practical things like brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand. Driving a new route to work each day. Doing things differently forces your brain to build new synaptic pathways between the right and left hemispheres.

There are many exercises that help to accomplish this. Physical exercises that force both sides into action like tracing finger labyrinths are excellent. There is a program of study called Brain Gyms that teaches physical exercises that can help build these pathways. Many simple breathing techniques can help as well. Balancing both sides of the brain opens the door for Spirit to speak to you.

I'm not unfamiliar with the value of us generating new synaptic pathways, but the phrase "tracing finger labyrinths" was new to me. I wondered what that was all about.

Checking the internet, I found a wonderful and interesting site that explained labyrinths in some detail. The author, psychologist Dr. Dan Johnson, provided a lot of insight about labyrinths, some of which I've reproduced below. He also included a small labyrinth that can be traced on screen or printed out.

It looks like this:


For anyone who's walked a labyrinth this will be obvious, but if your first experience with a labyrinth is finger tracing, start the labyrinth in the white space at bottom left center of the drawing. The lines are the boundaries on either side of the path; the task is to "walk" the "path" with your finger or cursor. When you get to the center space, "trace" your way back out again. Do it several times for best results, and trace it with your non-dominant hand as well.

There are all sorts of finger labyrinths in varying designs available for sale. The most common ones are made of wood, pewter, or ceramic. There are even instructions for creating your own labyrinth from clay. Have fun tracing!

What's So Interesting About Labyrinths?

Here is some of what Dr. Johnson had to say. Visit his labyrinth site for more information.

The labyrinth is a symbol of wholeness, and it has only one path. We are all on the same path, and we are all equal on that path.

He quotes this passage from Caroline Adams:

"Your life is a sacred journey. And it is about change, growth, discovery, movement, transformation, continuously expanding your vision of what is possible, stretching your soul, learning to see clearly and deeply, listening to your intuition, taking courageous challenges at every step along the way. You are on the path... exactly where you are meant to be right now... And from here, you can only go forward, shaping your life story into a magnificent tale of triumph, of healing of courage, of beauty, of wisdom, of power, of dignity, and of love."

And then he continues:

We are all on the path... exactly where we need to be. The labyrinth is a model of that path.

A labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path. The Labyrinth represents a journey to our own center and back again out into the world. Labyrinths have long been used as meditation and prayer tools.

A labyrinth is an archetype with which we can have a direct experience. We can walk it. It is a metaphor for life's journey. It is a symbol that creates a sacred space and place and takes us out of our ego to "That Which Is Within."

Labyrinths and mazes have often been confused. When most people hear of a labyrinth they think of a maze. A labyrinth is not a maze. A maze is like a puzzle to be solved. It has twists, turns, and blind alleys. It is a left brain task that requires logical, sequential, analytical activity to find the correct path into the maze and out.

A labyrinth has only one path. It is unicursal. The way in is the way out. There are no blind alleys. The path leads you on a circuitous path to the center and out again.

A labyrinth is a right brain task. It involves intuition, creativity, and imagery. With a maze many choices must be made and an active mind is needed to solve the problem of finding the center. With a labyrinth there is only one choice to be made. The choice is to enter or not. A more passive, receptive mindset is needed. The choice is whether or not to walk a spiritual path.

At its most basic level the labyrinth is a metaphor for the journey to the center of your deepest self and back out into the world with a broadened understanding of who you are.

A Lesson From The Labyrinth

Dr. Johnson also provided this story about taking a group of children through a labyrinth. He shares a lesson, and we can all learn from his experience. I was so touched by his story that I had to include it here as well:

Recently, I had the opportunity to introduce a group of 20 children, ages six to eleven, to the labyrinth. They were attending a study group at a church which has an outdoor, classical seven-circuit labyrinth designed of stone. We talked together about mazes and labyrinths and to illustrate the difference, I gave them several simple mazes to trace. They all experienced getting lost by making a wrong turn.

Next, I offered them a three-circuit labyrinth and had them trace it. No one got lost. I asked about the difference between a maze and a labyrinth, and the children easily recognized that you couldn’t get lost in a labyrinth. There are no wrong turns.

For more of a challenge, I gave the children a large drawing of a seven-circuit labyrinth to trace with their fingers. As they were following the path, several of them inadvertently crossed over the lines and became confused. We talked about how you had to pay close attention when tracing the finger labyrinth, but I assured them that when we went out to walk their labyrinth, no one would get lost if they just stayed on the path.

One young boy, about eight years old, held up his paper labyrinth and asked if he could take the "Labyrinth Map" with him. I hastily said, "No. Just leave it here. You don’t need a map." And, with that we all went out to walk the labyrinth.

I told the children that they could walk a labyrinth anyway they wanted, but that for today we would walk it slowly and quietly. I had several parents with me who were helping to monitor the children. I decided to walk first, so I could model "slow and quiet" walking. The children were to follow me, and then the parents would walk.

Now, I have never actually seen children walk a labyrinth slowly and quietly, because the labyrinth has its own energy that calls to children and asks them to run and shout. All went well for a few moments of slow walking, but as more and more children entered the labyrinth the energy of it caught them. The noise level went up. There was running and stumbling, laughing and shouting, and "high fives" were being passed all along the path.

Parents, both those already walking and those waiting to enter, were loudly whispering to the kids to slow down and be quiet. They made a valiant effort at control but to no avail. The joy of the labyrinth was contagious. A few parents even smiled and walked faster.

Several children who had run through the labyrinth wanted to do it again. One was the young boy with the "Labyrinth Map." Secretly, he had put it into his pocket and was now taking it out for comparison. Back he went into the labyrinth with his map.

He was carefully comparing his position in the labyrinth to the map so he could tell where to go next. At each turn he evaluated where he was and how much progress he had made. He looked at his map to see where to go next. He would occasionally seem lost, but with the aid of his Labyrinth Map he made the journey to the center and back out again, where he seemed quite pleased with his success.

I watched this young boy with amusement as he struggled to find the path he was already on with the aid of a map he didn’t need. Suddenly, I realized what a wonderful image! What a metaphor! This is what we all do. We try to solve the labyrinth of life. We seek the experience of life in our minds through our thinking.

We want to understand the journey in advance. We want to be prepared and not be surprised. We want the security of a map. We want the map of intellectual concepts with the left-brain logical, sequential, analytical assurance that we are going in the right direction.

In reality the right or correct direction is always right before us, if we will just give up the distraction of the map. If we move from left-brain to right-brain, open our eyes, and drop the illusion of the map, then we can clearly see the path and recognize that we are already on it. It was there all the time. It is there all the time.

The path is one of intuition and faith, and it always involves risk. The path is full of creativity and surprise and inevitably takes us off the beaten path, the well-known path, towards where no map can go, and where no map is of use. Each path in life is unique. My path is not yours, and yours is not mine. We must each find our own way.

There is no Labyrinth Map, nor is one needed. This is an extraordinarily difficult lesson to learn. We already have what we need. We are where we are supposed to be. This is it, if we drop the illusion that it is not.

The map is not the territory. It never was. The map is not the experience. The map only points you towards it. Excessively relied upon, the map takes you away from the experience.

We are all like the young boy with the Labyrinth Map. We all have our strategies and plans and our schematic diagrams of where life either is or should be going. While clinging to the Labyrinth Map robs us of the lived labyrinth experience, such clinging may also be needed in order to lead us to the precipice where the trail disappears, and we are thrust onto our own resources. We may need the safety of a map until we learn to trust our experience and ourselves.

Such trust may begin at the entrance to one of life’s labyrinths, often disguised as one of life’s crises, where we are forced to discard the Labyrinth Map and step into the journey to our own deep selves through a leap of faith.

A Personal Note

I first became familiar with the idea of building new synaptic pathways from Seth. He provided numerous esoteric exercises, particularly in his book "The Nature of Personal Reality", that seemed .. well .. strange. He never mentioned why doing these exercises was important, just to do the them and trust that good things would come from it.

Those exercises were challenging, and I generally felt pretty silly doing them. Translated that means I did each of them once, some more than that, but eventually I couldn't satisfy my need to know why I was doing them and what was to be gained, and I stopped doing them. I wish I'd known where he was going with those exercises, and trusted in his wisdom more!

Now that I think about it, that's exactly the lesson of the labyrinth, isn't it?

Two Wolves

The following is a Native American Legend called Two Wolves. It's short, but it says so much ...

A Grandfather from the Cherokee Nation was talking with his grandson.

"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.

"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves."

"One wolf is evil and ugly: He is angry, envious, warlike, greedy, self-pitying, sorrowful, regretful, guilty, resentful, feels inferior, lies, has false pride, feels superior, is selfish and arrogant."

"The other wolf is beautiful and good: He is friendly, joyful, peaceful, loving, hopful, serene, humble, kind, benevolent, just, fair, empathetic, generous, true, compassionate, grateful, and has deep vision."

"This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other human as well."

The grandson paused in deep reflection because of what his grandfather had just said. Then he finally cried out; "Oyee! Grandfather, which wolf will win?"

The elder Cherokee replied, "Which ever one you feed."

More About Conscious Manifestation

It's been awhile since I spent any time with the Abraham materials, but recently I chanced upon this reference to conscious manifestation and I thought it was truly profound.

To me it really highlights the difference between asking with doubt and asking with pure intent. Hopefully it can help us all get closer to continually manifesting what we want instead of what we don't want.

GUEST: I've had a lot of problems with my teeth and about 15 years ago I decided I was going to grow a third set of teeth. So I informed my dentist of this, and he said to make sure to let him know when this happened. But that was about 15 years ago, and I haven't even created a little nub yet.



ABRAHAM: Well, how often are you taking score about this? Do you look every day?

GUEST: Yeah. I look in the mirror for that little tooth, and I notice that it's not there.



ABRAHAM: It is fun to listen to you offer that desire into a sea of doubt. You couldn't launch that rocket of desire an inch in an environment of human realists who, like your dentist, mock you as they say, "Well, let me know how that one turns out." But, we say to you, if you have the ability to desire it, you have the ability to achieve it—provided you align your Energy with your desire.

All things are possible. Sometimes people want to prove others wrong. Well, you're dead in the water, right now, when you begin that, because now you're pushing against those doubting Thomases, which means, you are now part of that doubting vibration. You have to let your desire build up—and then you have to find vibrational harmony with that desire. And for those who have done that, before, all kinds of things have been invented to satisfy those desires that are an easier way of going about it. There are all kinds of teeth. You can buy them off the rack these days.

GUEST: Mmm, no, no, no, I've got to grow them. When you buy them off the rack, they're not very comfortable, from what I've heard. 



ABRAHAM: When you say, "I want this because I don't want this," you can't get there from there. So talk to us about what you want and why you want it.

GUEST: Well, all this dental work that I've had done has been painful...

ABRAHAM: Now, you're still talking about what you don't want. Talk to us about what you do want and why you want it. Talk to us in more detail about the teeth, and why you want them.

GUEST: I want great teeth that look good, so that I don't feel self-conscious.

ABRAHAM: Now, you're still talking about what you don't want. You cannot get to where you want to be from the vibration of what you do not want. Law of Attraction says, you must find the Feeling Tone of what you do want.

And that's the reason that you're not getting a little nub. And that's the reason that most people don't—because most of you are so aware of where you are. If you could go into a sort of dreaming attitude every day for 10 or 15 minutes...and if people say to you, where are you going? You're saying, "I'm going to eat lunch with my new teeth."

Don't tell it to anybody who isn't ready to understand, but this is the thing that we would say. "I'm going to eat lunch with my new teeth." And then, just go into your dream state, and close your eyes, and get into your place of meditation, and feel your delicious, powerful, beautiful, strong resilient, teeth.

Feel the Energy pulsing through your gums. Feel them, and then eat an apple with them. And then eat something really gooey, eat a caramel with them, and then eat, eat, eat ... 



Feel the fun of your teeth, your teeth that are so strong and in your mouth. And then smile in your imaginary mirror, and feel gratitude and appreciation for your teeth. And then go on with the rest of your day. But every day go and enjoy your new teeth.

Find the feeling place of your perfect teeth. As that becomes the familiar vibration—the cells of your body have the regenerating quality to produce the outcome that you are fantasizing.

Imagine Your Body's Perfection

Any condition in your body, if you have the ability to imagine the perfection (that some disease has now highlighted) if you can get into that place—the Universe has to deliver it to you. It is Law. Ask, and it is given.

The question is, "Am I letting it in in this moment?" You've been asking, but you've been taking score. If I want something that isn't coming, it only means one thing. I'm a match to my old belief and not a match to my new desire. If I'm a match to my desire—it's happening.

If you will say, "I'm going to have fun in this vision. I'm going to have fun in this dream. I'm there already. I'm there vibrationally, and if I'm there vibrationally, I have to be there in terms of manifestation," it must be. 



The manifestation always follows the alignment of the Energy—it always does.