What's In Your Mind?

Awakening: the parable of the beggar

I also like this parable at the start of Power of Now:

"A beggar had been sitting by the side of the road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. "Spare some change?" mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding his old baseball cap. "I have nothing to give you," said the stranger. Then he asked: "What’s that you are sitting on?" "Nothing," replied the beggar. "Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember." "Ever looked inside?" asked the stranger. "No," said the beggar. "What’s the point? There’s nothing in there." "Have a look inside," insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold."

In the same vein, I write to my friend A.:

"All I can provide are POINTERS to the TRUTH that resides INSIDE OF YOU. I can point to it to try and help you see it. This is all I can do.

The Truth cannot be put into words -- but it is (and has been) with you all the time!! This is the beauty of it."

Conversations with God

I start reading Conversations with God from Neale Donald Walsch, and the books that follow (Conversations with God 2 and 3, Friendship with God, Communion with God, and Tomorrow’s God). I really like it! Here is how it works: one day where he is really upset with life, the guy-next-door (Neale Donald Walsch) starts asking God: "Why is my life so miserable? Why me?" etc, and, surprise, God starts replying to him ("Ask and you will receive", Matthew 7:7, which is also my experience). He continues asking questions and answers come, and the series of questions and answers constitute the books.

In short, these books promote a "New Spirituality" based on the mystic awareness "All Is One", and all that follows, and I find them quite clear and inspiring. They are best-sellers, i.e. they are being read by millions of people, which is, I think, unfathomably good news.

The manifested world

Here is an excerpt from Conversations with God 2 that I quite like. "God" explains the manifested world in one elegant paragraph:

"I devised a way for you to create anew, and Know, Who You Are in your experience. I did this by providing you with:
1. Relativity - a system wherein you could exist as a thing in relationship to something else
2. Forgetfulness - a process by which you willingly submit to total amnesia, so that you can not know that relativity is merely a trick, and that you are All of It
3. Consciousness - a state of Being in which you grow until you reach full awareness, then becoming a True and Living God, creating and experiencing your own reality, expanding and exploring that reality, changing and re-creating that reality as you stretch your consciousness to new limits - or shall we say, to no limit.
In this paradigm, Consciousness is everything."

The meaning of life

Another excerpt from Conversations with God that I really like:

"Here is the meaning, the purpose of Your Life: to create Yourself, to create Who You Are. To express, to experience, to declare, to fulfill, to be, Who You Really Are.

Every decision you make - every decision that you make every second - is not a decision about what to do, it is a decision about Who You Are. Every act is an act of self-definition.

Once you understand this, things start to change. You start seeing everything with a new perspective, you start placing everything you do in context.

With every decision, every thought you have, every word you say, every deed you do, ask yourself: Is this Who I Am? And things will start to change. And you will know, as you create Her, Who You Are."

In other words, every time you are about to do something, you may want to ask yourself: "Is this Who I Really Am?" It sounds utterly silly, but it is actually very helpful. Some of friends share with me their existential crises, and it often boils down to this basic thing: they perceive a GAP between who they ARE and who they WANT TO BE. They know there is a gap, yet they do not seem to pull themselves together and fill the gap. In fact, most of them seem to have a strong BELIEF that the gap between who they are and who they want to be cannot be filled, and, instead of moving in the direction of who they want to be (i.e. Who They Really Are), they rationalize the existence of this gap. I had done exactly this for many years before I "woke up", so I am quite familiar with this!

Another corollary thought is this: is there any point living a life that has already been lived?

What you fear is what you will draw to you

Here is another quote that I love from Conversations with God. Looks innocuous, but it is actually quite profound...

"What you think is what you get.
What you fear is what you will draw to you.
What you resist, persists.
What you look at disappears - giving you a chance to recreate it all over again, if you wish, or banish it forever from your experience.
What you choose, you experience."

Jumping the cliff

There is this mini-poem at the end of Conversations with God 2. It is mistakenly attributed to French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, but it is in fact from Christopher Logue, an English poet born in 1926, who wrote it in 1968 for a festival in honor of the 50th anniversary of the death of the french poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Could very well describe my "awakening", e.g. overcoming the fears (I have often used this image of jumping from a cliff into the unknown – but, as in the poem, I have not fallen so far!).

"Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
And he pushed,
And they flew."

Be a light unto the world

This is an excerpt from Conversations with God 2 that may not fly with whoever has hang-ups with Christianity… I personally find it incredibly inspiring! It is "God" speaking:

"Be a light unto the world, and hurt it not. Seek to build, not to destroy. Bring My people home.
- How?
By your shining example. Seek only Godliness. Speak only in truthfulness. Act only in love.
Live the Law of Love now and forevermore. Give everything, require nothing.
Avoid the mundane.
Do not accept the unacceptable.
Teach all who seek to learn of Me.
Make every moment of your life an outpouring of love.
Use every moment to think the highest thought, say the highest word, do the highest deed. In this, glorify your Holy Self, and thus, too, glorify Me.
Bring peace to the Earth by bringing peace to all those whose lives you touch.
Be peace.
Feel and express in every moment your Divine Connection with the All, and with every person, place, and thing.
Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man's shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person's truth, adore every person's God, protect every person's rights, preserve every person's dignity, promote every person's interests, provide every person's needs, presume every person's holiness, present every person's greatest gifts, produce every person's blessing, and pronounce every person's future secure in the assured love of God.
Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you.
Speak humbly of yourself, lest someone mistake your Highest Truth for a boast.
Speak softly, lest someone think you are merely calling for attention.
Speak gently, that all might know of Love.
Speak openly, lest anyone think you have something to hide.
Speak candidly, so you cannot be mistaken.
Speak often, so that your word may truly go forth.
Speak respectfully, that no one be dishonored.
Speak lovingly, that every syllable may heal.
Speak of Me with every utterance.
Make your life a gift. Remember always, you are the gift!
Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter. Be careful not to enter another's life if you cannot be a gift.
(You can always be a gift, because you always are the gift - yet sometimes you don't let yourself know that).
When someone enters your life unexpectedly, look for the gift that person has come to receive from you.
Every person who has ever come to you has come to receive a gift from you. In so doing, he gives a gift to you - the gift of your experiencing and fulfilling Who You Are."

Heaven on earth

In the same vein, this is a passage of Conversations with God 3 that I find quite brilliant (remember that Neale Donald Walsch mostly speaks to the Christian world):

"My Children, who art in Heaven, hallowed is your name. Your kingdom is come, and your will is done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
You are given this day your daily bread, and you are forgiven your debts, and your trespasses, exactly to the degree that you have forgiven those who trespass against you.
Lead your Self not into temptation, but deliver your Self from the evils you have created.
For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever.
Amen."

The three great love-enders

I forgot exactly where I found this gem, I think it is in one of the Conversations with God books, in Friendship with God I think. What are the three great love-enders?

1. Neediness
2. Expectation
3. Jealousy.

Another description of God

I just read that book The nature of personal reality, by Seth, a spirit channeled through Jane Roberts in the 70’s. Some say that the success of the "Seth books" was one of the key drivers of the New Age movement! On a number of the many websites dedicated to Seth/Jane Roberts, I find this beautiful excerpt:

"What you call God is the sum of all consciousness, and yet the whole is more than the sum of Its parts. He is not one individual, but an energy gestalt. He is a psychic pyramid of interrelated, ever expanding consciousness, that creates simultaneous and instantaneously, universes and individuals that are given duration, psychic comprehension, intelligence and eternal validity.

Its energy is so unbelievable that it does indeed form all universes; and because its energy is within and behind all universes, fields and systems, it is indeed aware of each sparrow that falls, for it is each sparrow that falls.

Dimly remembered through what you would call history, there was a state of agony in which the powers of creativity and existence were known, but the ways to produce them were not known. All That Is existed in a state of being, but without the means to find expression for Its being. All That Is had to learn this lesson, and could not be taught.

From this agony, creativity was originally drawn, and its reflection is still seen. All That Is retains the memory of that state, and it serves as a constant impetus toward renewed creativity. Desire, wish and expectation, therefore, rule all actions and are the basis for all realities. Within the dreams of All That Is, potential beings had consciousness before any beginning as you know it.

In Its massive imagination, It understood that the cosmic multiplication of consciousness could not occur within that framework. Actuality was necessary if these probabilities were to be given birth. All That Is saw an infinity of probable, conscious individuals. These probable individual selves found themselves alive within a God's dream and they clamored to be released into actuality. All That Is yearned to release them and sought within itself for the means to do so.

Finally, with love and longing It let go of that portion of itself, and they were free. The psychic energy exploded in a flash of creation.

All That Is loves all that It has created down to the least, for It realizes the dearness and uniqueness of each consciousness which has been wrest from such a state of agony. It is triumphant and joyful at each development taken by each consciousness, and It revels and takes joy in the slightest creative act of each of Its issues.

All individuals remember their source, and now dream of All That Is as It once dreamed of them. And they yearn toward that immense source... and yearn to give it actuality through their own creations.

Now in the same way do you give freedom to the personality fragments within your own dreams and for the same reason. And you create for the same reason, and within each of you is the memory of primal agony — that urge to create and free all probable consciousness into actuality.

The connections between you and All That Is can never be severed, and Its awareness is so delicate and focused that its attention is indeed directed with a prime creator's love to each consciousness.

All That Is knows no other. It does not know whether or not other psychic gestalts like Itself may exist. It is constantly searching.

All portions of All That Is are constantly changing. All That Is is constantly seeking to know Itself, for seeking itself is a creative activity and the core of all action.

You, as a consciousness, seek to know yourself and become aware of yourself as a distinct individual portion of All That Is. You automatically draw on the overall energy of All That Is, since your existence is dependent upon it.

The portion of All That Is that is aware of itself as you, that is focused within your existence, can be called upon for help when necessary. This portion of All That Is looks out for your interests and may be called upon in a personal manner."