CHAPTER 7
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
It looks really complicated out there doesn't it? Your physical world is chock full of stuff. When your physicists explore outwards into the universe, there seems to be no end of stuff. Of course, that is consistent with the idea of infinity isn't it? What you are seeing in your vast physical universe is only the tip of the iceberg too. Even there, constant creation is taking place in every infinitesimal speck of physical reality. Add to that the fact that there are infinitely more such physical universes sprouting up in each moment. Each is interlaced to one degree or another with your immediate reality, impinging upon it or expanding out of it. It is a big place! Infinity is more than large enough to hold many universes at once and many even in one space. They are all composed of spirit appearing to be solid.
As you explore the realm of ideas which flood the cosmic mind and thus your own, you find just as much infinitely expanding complexity. From each idea, an infinity of newly created ideas spring instantly and constantly. Kind of makes you wonder how anyone can decide upon which ideas to build a world on. Of course, we have suggested that such ideas are in constant evolution within you as well. Your idea of your self, your world and the nature of life itself is evolving in each moment. Thus, your experience of life changes, grows and deepens with each moment's decision about who you are.
This same principle is true at all levels and dimensions of your awareness. Infinite expansion! There ain't no cure!
If you are expecting to become enlightened by looking at, exploring, naming and cataloging every aspect of an infinitely expanding universe (namely science) you had better plan on taking an eternity to finish the job. Trapping your attention upon ideas, feelings, definitions, beliefs or things one at a time will not get you where you want to go. To reach an all-inclusive state of awareness, one that can embrace with understanding the wholeness of your existence, a new strategy is in order. Your attachment to your ideas about reality, which you know as beliefs, is a deeply rooted fear response which holds your world stable but beyond your comprehension. Much of our relationship with you has been designed to disrupt, undermine and expand your belief structures which are inherently self-limiting. Even your current beliefs about infinity hold you back from the direct experience of your whole Self. Imagine how limiting your beliefs about your body and its safety may be.
The program of study which you have undertaken with us has brought you in increasingly larger steps towards your goals of enlightenment. You tread a path which does not progress linearly, with even strides or at a steady pace. The path spirals through all perspectives at varying speeds with an ever increasing over-all velocity which you experience as intensity. You are impulsed to vary your activities, exercises and points of view to free even more of your self-imposed limitations. We come once again to suggest another such variation. This one has the potential to simply explode some crystals of patterned thought, freeing you to see your world with a fresh new perspective. It also will unnerve you, leaving some aspects of your experience undefined. When you observe that taking place, be patient and unconditional with yourself. Remember that you are safe and relax. New patterns will align inside you quite naturally. Watching that take place will show you much about how you have constructed your reality from your first conscious awareness.
We will ask you to approach these new techniques with self-discipline, putting down this book and giving your attention to each new strategy in turn. Go find another book for a span of time while you work with our suggestions in your daily life. We would suggest you keep a journal both to document your progress and insights and as a consistent reminder to focus on the exercises as you go along. Simply carrying a small notebook will help you to remember to shift your attention. A simple notation of time and date when you think of the exercise you are working on will chart your progress.
If you choose not to use the mnemonic device of a journal, expect your learning curve to be longer. Instead of the week which each exercise could take, give it a month or more. If you choose not to partake in these exercises, but simply to read through them and go along through life relatively unchanged, you will at least know there is an alternative. The time will come when such experience will fit your universe better. As we have said, growth is not a linear phenomenon. Your growth will follow a unique path and timing, yours. So be it!
So, are you ready for change? Our friend here will be following the same regimen in his daily life. You may find the texture of these writings change as the exercises continue. Much depends on his willing participation which is no more predetermined than yours. Good luck to one and all (not that luck has anything to do with it!).
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The first exercise will be both the most difficult and the most simple. We suggest you devote at least a week of your life to it. Continue to function as per normal while learning to turn your focus of attention to this new paradigm. Do not return to these pages or read ahead until a shift occurs inside of you. We cannot tell what that shift will feel like. It will be unique to you, be it subtle or overwhelming. Still, you will notice your perspective change. A new normal will be achieved. Then it will be time for the next step.
For the next few days of your life, practice a new attitude. Change nothing else that has occupied your existence recently. Simply add this perspective to absolutely every moment of your experience that you can capture consciously:
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating."
These exact words are only important in the very beginning. The attitude they convey will soon take over and become increasingly easy to live out of. Like a meditation mantra, it will eventually come unbidden to mind as you go through your days. That is, if you practice recalling it often and consistently. Until you throw your intent into this effort, you will see few, if any, results.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating."
This attitude will bring insights to the surface, sometimes at a dizzying pace. If you are journaling as you go, write these down as well. This will encourage your intent to grow. As this attitude becomes a habit, your interpretation of events both inner and outer will change of their own accord. We will not attempt to influence the nature of such insights. Enjoy the process. Allow change to happen.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating."
In every moment of existence, conscious and unconscious, this statement rings of truth. It is a truth you have given little power to until now. This is why life has seemed to happen to you, the world has seemed to exist outside yourself. This is why you have seemed to be separate from all of existence, including the individual cells of your own body. Be relentless in repeating this mantra in every moment you can remember. Let it be the canvas upon which the landscape of your life is drawn. If you really work at this, a week is all it will take for this to become a Habit. It will be a long time before we ask you to replace this attitude with a more deeply meaningful one. You certainly may question this mantra. That too, will be an experience of your Self that you are creating.
Each moment of your conscious existence is built upon a foundation of such thoughts as this. Most of them are unexamined and unconsciously held viewpoints that were created in a very similar fashion to the idea with which we now suggest you replace them. They were slowly developed, augmented and made concrete parts of the background of your perception over years of maturation and growth. They are a foundation laid upon the soil of infancy which we now know was not your most intelligent time of life.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating."
This idea will disrupt your old foundation. Stone by stone, the ideas which were the building blocks of your life will be brought forward for examination. You will then either replace them with versions consistent with this new conception or return them to their places with increased conscious intent. Your week of intentional practice is merely the beginning of a long term project which is already transforming your relationship with your Soul.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating."
Put the book down now and do not read further until you feel a shift inside. If that takes a year, so be it.
Go now!
Welcome back!
We hope you are enjoying the adventure. Have you struggled greatly with doubts that you are doing the exercise correctly? There really is no right or wrong way to do these exercises. Even identifying the internal shifting we have mentioned does not follow any prescribed form or timing. What is important is that your foundation assumptions are shifting in ways subtle but certain. You have spent a lifetime building the structure of your universe. Do not expect high drama from this work. You are adept at making any internal change into a normal experience almost immediately. You hardly remember your childhood because it contains definitions and beliefs long archaic and discarded. Your memory lapse has nothing to do with biology or talent. When you complete this task we share you will do so seamlessly and without fanfare. Your life will be truly changed nonetheless.
All this aside, you have experienced some significant internal change even if you only have read the preceding section and not practiced as we have suggested. We hope you accept that change with equanimity and grace. There is plenty more to come. You can take heart from the occurrences of immediate synchronicity in your recent experience. The increased intensity of your experience may be a bit disconcerting but it is also pretty entertaining is it not? Are you finding it easier to accept responsibility for your experience? It may be a bit of a strain to embrace not understanding the metaphors of your life experience. Why did that happen? Why am I feeling this way now? What was I thinking? Owning your experience even when its meaning is a mystery makes unraveling that mystery possible. It frames the question so that you can allow the answer to grow inside you.
We now offer you the next installment in this process of change. Having chosen to own your experience of the world which you create, it is time to break down the next set of barriers. For the next period of time, build upon the foundation you have constructed by expanding the mantra to the following:
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine."
It may not seem like much of a shift to add this statement. This is the wonder of it. You carry much resistance to this statement, built up layer by layer throughout your lifetime. You are unlikely to be aware of much of this resistance at any but the most superficial level. Resistance to the resistance is the perfect mask. Address this onion directly and you will have some fascinating experiences in store.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine."
Remember our suggestions about facing your fears. Pay attention to any arguments to this statement that surface as you go along. When you recognize resistance to deserving the very best that you can imagine whether it be rational and logical argument or irrational and primal, do not fight with it. Embrace the resistance as part of who you are. Acknowledge it, out loud if possible and then go back to the statement:
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine."
While accepting your fear induced resistance, you may want to explore it at a deeper level. Trace its origins perhaps, or look to where its tendrils reach into your past and present experience. Such conscious inclusion of your fears robs them of the power over your perception. While unconscious, your fears color the world that you perceive. You already know how easy it is to believe that what you see "out there" is real, the TRUTH and the Way It Is! Anything you can do to undermine that belief that your perception is "RIGHT" will make it possible for you to be open to learning, expanding into your infinite Self. Of course, you don't have to do this. It can be scary after all. Your truth in this present moment is just as much true as ours. You will, like all of the infinite universe, move forward from where you are. We suggest you try this because it embraces so much joy.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine."
As you work with this mantra, explore it in detail. What is the best that your imagination can conjure right now? Really experience what is right now and ask again. If you find something that you want to add to your present moment experience, consider what you can do to add it. Don't bother insisting on a miraculous solution if a more mundane solution exists. If your feet are a little cold, don't insist on some supernatural warm gust or an energetic flow of body heat. Simply ask for the heat to be turned up a little, go turn it up yourself or put on warmer socks. Remember the title for this chapter: Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. Insisting on miracles, the supernatural and so on is merely another form of resisting that you deserve what you want.
Let us suppose, for instance, that you come up with, "I wish I was driving a Red Maserati right now," while tooling down the road in your old Ford. Suppose, too, that you have had this desire before. Have you ever explored the feeling of driving that Red Maserati? Have you ever taken one for a test drive? Can you imagine buying one and trusting that the money to cover the check will come to you just because you believe you deserve it? At every level of this desire's potential fulfillment, you will find resistance springing out of fears both rational and irrational. These fears state loudly that you do not deserve what you want. Explore them. Make them familiar parts of your inner landscape so that they will not sneak up on you again, stopping you in your tracks. Then, go back to your inner declaration:
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine."
Push this envelope from both ends by exploring your desires in the moment as well as the fears which stand as barriers to even considering how to fulfill those desires. The more diligently you follow this prescription, the more of your desires you will find being fulfilled without much of any effort on your part. The synchronicity of your thoughts and the events they inspire will increase in number and immediacy of manifestation.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine."
Now, once more, put the book down and go live its contents. Come back when this new shift becomes your new norm.
So, how is it going? Quite the adventure isn't it? If you are working the program, you will have had some surprises by now. You will have corrected some of your habitual settling for less than the very best that you can imagine. You will have seen some powerful evidence for the effectiveness of this large idea. You also will have experienced an interesting range of resistance.
Your arguments against the possibility and about your deservedness to have the very best that you can imagine are every bit as important to your growth as your immediate "successes". They express a range of fears that are crucial that you bring to consciousness. Developed over your entire lifetime, remaining unaware of these fears is fundamental to misery and victimhood. As you are moving in another direction entirely, defining each swell of fear and resistance as another success in your search for the truth of your Self propels you further and faster.
Each argument is a chance to reinforce your new version of life and your place in it. Making so fundamental a shift in your beliefs about who you are is a big job. It will ask of you the wisdom and patience of a saint. Of course, that definition of a saint is your creation too, based upon who you really are, so...
The rhythmic flow, from your loving expansion to fear driven contraction, that you are exploring with your life can work for rather than against you. Discovering the judgements you hold about one side of the coin being better, more sacred and more fun is a huge development. The experience of fear, as we have said, is a spiritually based, primal factor in every expression of God. It is not a "bad" thing. It just is! The sooner you learn to revel in the fear that arises into your awareness, the sooner total joy will be yours. So, bring it on!
One of the more pivotal beliefs to explore and replace is that of cause and effect. As you go about inspecting each choice in the light of this new paradigm that you are creating, you will surely stumble over this foundation belief. It is at the root of your ideas of justice, fairness, balance and worthiness. We have addressed the idea of Karma before. We reiterate that this is a projection of your basic acceptance of the idea of cause and effect. You have projected this idea, driven by a fear of your own divinity, upon the very spiritual realm that you spring from. It is so easy to find evidence of this concept in action in your world because it is so basic to every expression. It will stand between you and your deepest desires until you realize it is just a choice and you decide to make a new choice.
As you contemplate granting yourself permission to have whatever you desire, you will likely encounter thoughts about what it is going to cost you. Do you have to work hard to get it? Must you deprive yourself or sacrifice to get it? Will you risk burning in Hell by going for it? Have you decided that eating too much makes you fat? Do you believe that being rich requires hurting other people? Does falling in love leave you in danger of a broken heart or a broken life? Looking at your daily life as a spiritual expression can free you of these arbitrary definitions. You can just as easily define eating too much as a symptom of choosing to be fat. Perhaps not caring about others is a symptom of caring obsessively about money (having more than you need is kind of obsessive don't you think?). You can choose to see that deeply felt vulnerability which falling in love inspires as a wonderful opportunity to become more fully intimate with your self.
Even these new definitions are predicated still upon the concept of cause and effect. As you explore your awareness of your whole Self and express that into the world, you will see sure evidence that cause and effect is an illusion. It is a projection of fear pure and simple. You fear at a deep level that you do not have the power to choose your experience and so you create an objectified world that reflects an order which satisfies your craving for security. Cause and effect makes your world more understandable even if it places circumstances beyond your control.
At your deepest root, your infinite Self, as it becomes self-aware, experiences the simultaneous awareness of Self as Self and of Self as God. As this awareness begins to oscillate, it flows naturally back and forth, forming the primal expansion/contraction of awareness that Taoists call the Yin and the Yang. As this primal experience becomes more complex, taking on form, with layers building awareness into entity, the experience of fear of SELF-NOT-GOD blossoms. Fear even begins to infiltrate the experience of SELF-AS-GOD while the layering continues. It is this layering of God interacting with ITSELF, creating complexity and richness into spirit, thought and feeling and finally matter, that has brought you to this world of yours.
You have followed the same pattern as we have described. Your inspired self-awareness is what we describe here. You did not begin as a physical conception, you conjured that imaginative story to describe a spiritual process for which you had no words or concepts to describe it otherwise. You have conjured the other countless aspects of your physical experience in the same fashion. They describe who your burgeoning conscious self-awareness defines itself as being. As you come to align that definition with your concept of divinity, your search for causes will cease. You are your own cause. You are God's choice to know It/His/Her Self in totality. Quite a ride isn't it?
To reduce the hold of cause and effect upon your present moment asks only that you be aware of your heart's desire and that you allow your heart to be filled with that desire. Let the immensely rich experience of desire fill you unreservedly. It is a leap of faith where logic and emotion have no sway. You have prepared for this leap by fostering trust in logic and passion. Just like a running head start prepares you to leap over a fence, developing your emotional and intellectual strength propels you into the unknown with confidence and daring. When you trust your deepest passions and your highest mental aspirations enough to allow them expression, you will experience immediate reward. It will be so immediate that the word reward will have no meaning. It will simply be who you are.
The unlimited joy, love and power and knowledge of true spiritual awareness is not an accomplishment. True spiritual awareness is not a commodity to be earned or a skill to learn or a gift to be bestowed. It is who you are!
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So now we move along. Continue to apply your mantra, in whatever form it takes for you, to your daily existence. Continue to explore the fears, resistance and arguments that come up as you apply it.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine. "
Now, begin to go in search of what your heart truly desires in the present moment.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine. So, what do I want now?"
You may not find this the easiest of tasks. It can be though, with a little practice. The first stage is to get right into the present moment.
Take a deep breath. Breathe in the whole universe that is your creation, your world. You are completely safe in embracing it all in spite of its sometimes dangerous appearance. It is your creation entirely, so breathe it in!
As you exhale, breathe out all thought, feeling and judgement, all attachments to past and future. Release all but the present moment. What are you really experiencing in this moment once you have released all the chatter? Relaxed and peaceful? Healthy and vigorous? Happy? If you find anything less wonderful, do the breathing once more. At first, you may need a few breaths to get down to the very present now. You will become adept at releasing the made-up B.S. that occupies so much of your inner life, the "I can't's, "I should's" and "you make me's" that act as self-limiting barriers to happiness. With that stuff released, all that is left is a clear channel to your wholeness.
Now, ask yourself, "What do I most deeply desire now?" Trust that you will get an answer. Trust that this answer is true in the moment. Trust that you deserve to experience what that desire is and have it fulfilled. This way you will not block the flow of response from your spiritual Self. Sometimes, the response will speak to your physical life, sometimes to your feelings and sometimes to your mental life. Explore fully whatever response you get. Don't hold back or judge the worthiness of the answer.
There is no right or wrong response. Sometimes what you will want will only take this present moment to grant. Sometimes, you will want nothing as you bask in the rich fulfillment of the present moment.
Whatever you do get for a response, whatever form that response takes, it is absolutely crucial that you trust enough to act upon it. Find some way to express your answer. Speak it! Write it down! Act it out! The very best way to foster trust is to act as though it is true, no matter your reservations. Sometimes, the answers you get from deep inside make little sense. Trusting in that can be quite a challenge. Refusing to trust, though, is like slamming down a telephone. All conversation is emphatically ended for a while. Any question asked often enough will be answered in a variety of ways. It will keep eliciting answers until you stop asking. Those answers will come as words brought to mind, songs popping into your head or on the radio at special times, the actions of neighbors, the themes running through television shows in a span of time and so on. Look for those answers in your life in general as well as just in the moments of questioning. You will miss most of those answers if you keep asking the question without listening for the reply. You are the source of ALL information that you have EVER encountered in your life. You do, indeed, know what you truly, madly, deeply desire.
Enjoy!
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Go live a little with this technique. Enjoy its rich flow. When your internal arguments get a bit oppressive, use this technique to release them and choose anew what you truly desire. Practice and you will find it the easiest thing in the world to do. You have been treated to this flow of desire all of your life. You will find it familiar ground as you hone your intent to make it a conscious alignment. Desire is the most fundamental experience of your spiritual Self. It is desire which fuels your existence. You live because you desire life. You are aware because you desire to know your Self. There are no moments of existence which do not contain desire. No movements that are not directed and driven by desire. When you look for, listen to and identify what it is that you desire now, you are communicating with your Soul in its own language. You are tapping, then, into the source of inspiration which is the primal cause of Life Itself. It is also the signpost to happiness. Opening to your deep desire and making room for it to become the center of your life makes it possible to live in joy.
Your attempts to manifest the representations of your deep inner desires, the house and car and spouse and children, the money and career and so on are pale facsimiles of the direct experience of the spiritual state we encourage you to seek. All the time and effort that you have invested in them are as well spent as a dog's chasing of its own tail. When you tap the spiritual layer of desire that underlies all of your life experience, you find a fulfillment that is infinitely large and true. Your physical manifestations are the shadows cast on a cave wall, as Plato once discussed, made by the bright light of spirit shined through your ideals. Go direct to that light, experience it as fully as you can and as often as you remember to. It is the finest kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. You can experience your deepest desires in their expansive largess. Simply, for a moment, turn away from your physical world and grant reality to the desire which fills your inner world. Wheeee!
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Perhaps you are noticing the seeming contradiction of our assertions about cause and effect and the pragmatic advice we offer. We ask you to ask for what you want and then listen for an answer while refuting the illusion of cause and effect. That may leave you juggling two or more paradigms at once like a circus performer. In point of fact, we are participating in a very small part in your journey of awakening. We can only point across the abyss of your fear driven internal barriers and suggest where you can build a bridge between your human identity and your spiritual Self. You get to choose whether or not to build such a bridge, how to go about it and what kind of bridge to build. You can begin with a flimsy rope bridge of vaguely understood concepts, leaving you feeling vulnerable and exposed as you tentatively step forwards towards joy. Soon enough, though, you will choose to erect an expressway to convey all that you love, in ever increasing number, along with you.
We have said in other books that each layer of the Self, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual, has senses of its own. We used the word sense metaphorically for your convenience. More accurately, each layer of awareness has a perceptual matrix all its own. Each is of a kind, expressing into its particular plane of existence the primal drive of the Soul into manifestation. Accordingly, each layer benefits from being addressed directly. Working with your belief structures while learning to open to your emotional Self while looking in your physical world for the expression of your deepest desires increases the potency of your awareness and expression of spiritual inspiration. Your obsession with the realm of doing derails this flow of power. You make the more subtle layers of the Self slave to the physical by insisting on your world changing to satisfy your wants. Watch for this tendency in your daily life. It is the wall you have most need of dismantling. Focus, instead, upon your internal experience of your desire and its fulfilment and allow the external world to change on its own.
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The next step in our little program is to begin to connect your immediate desires to the primal flow of your spiritual longing. Even the most mundane wish is an expression of a universal desire that runs throughout your life's experience. Your physical hungers are drives that begin with the most fundamental aspects of your infinite Self. The more complex-seeming desires, like that red Maserati, express a broader mixture of desire and fear but are still expressions of a universal drive. Learning to identify (and identify with) that longing, in even these simple terms and very specific experiences of wanting, opens you to the flow of spiritual, creative power. At the same time, it dismantles the barriers you have been exploring that express your fear and self-doubt.
Looking at your wish for a new car, for example, in more universal terms, such arguments as, "I can't afford that," begin to lose their power. The universal desire for abundance is supported by your infinite creativity. There are unlimited ways for the car to come to you. It is arbitrary of you to decide that earning money to buy the car is the only way to get it. Look to the underlying desire that your physical world wishes to express. Are you seeking wealth, power, security, health, love, wisdom or joy? Does your immediate want seem connected to these or other universal drives? Don't let your present moment experience go unquestioned. There is an infinity in your present moment crying out to be experienced. Open as much to that infinite moment as you can. It is happy making stuff.
So, for the next little while continue referring your immediate experience to the mantra we are developing:
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine. So, what do I want now and how does that look to my Soul?"
Continue with your commitment to find and break through the fear barriers to fulfilling your desire. Explore how your desire really feels at every level of your being. Every fear that pops up to oppose your desire is another chance to acknowledge your old way of defining your life and then choose your desire anew. Remember that your fears lose their power when you look them straight in the eye.
Go get 'em tiger!!!
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Are you seeing in this exercise that your every experience is a spiritual experience? Every event, internal and external has its roots in the spiritual Self; roots that are like an iceberg, deeper, broader and more inclusive than any expressions can hold. Every expression into matter that you experience is the result of a thrust of spiritual intent through the filters of your beliefs into a passionate, creative manifestation of who you are in the moment. No part of this process stands on its own. All facets are intimately connected and integrated. The only mystery is how unconscious you are of the process.
The point at which your spiritual desires, mixed with your self-definition, take on sufficient density to manifest into the physical is the point of passion in your emotional body. Those matters for which you have the most passion, like survival, are the ones which form the core of your life experience. Passion is a cumulative experience as well. It is not just the overwhelming, great swell of feeling. It is also the deep, world building insistence, applied over time, that things be such and so. Your passion for security and stability is so great that you create normal out of even this amazingly vital and energetic projection as the stable and solid physical world. Indeed, you create normal out of every internal change, no matter how sweeping or how large. You look back at your youth, mystified by how seamlessly you go from there to here. What was normal then seems so distant and different from what is normal now. Through it all, you are pretty much totally unaware of how passionate you have been and are now about being alive.
Your definition of Self, as relates to such issues as gender roles, relationships, money, security, communication and your roles in the world are chosen by you, often in unconscious and self-defeating ways, as the central issues of your life. For you, that is the way it is! No question, no argument. We suggest that this is arbitrary. You could certainly choose other issues. People all around you have central issues vastly different from yours. Still, the core, deep down inside all human beings, burns with the same fundamental divine desire.
Any effort you make to get a grasp on your fundamental desires will reap tremendous reward. By looking for the universal core which lies beneath the expression at any level, you step towards aligning your passion with your Soul's desire. In so doing, the creative process becomes far faster and more powerful. Imagine the outcome of your Soul's desire to love unconditionally when expressed through your passionate fear of getting your heart broken. At best you can imagine a series, perhaps a lifetime, of ambivalent relationships; partner after partner who is somehow unavailable to you or who fails to measure up to some personal standards, made up by you that you use to keep them at arm's length. If you choose to passionately and fearlessly express a desire to feel unconditionally loving, your experience in all relationships will be radically different than that.
This, then, is our next step.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine. So, what do I want now and how does that look to my Soul and how does it feel to fulfill that desire??"
In order to abandon yourself to the emotional body experience of your desire fulfilled, it is important to let go of the details of your wants. That is why asking how the craving looks to your Soul is of such value. The Soul is unconcerned with which of the infinite ways to satisfy its cravings you might choose. It simply craves. Your immediate want of a red Maserati may symbolize a desire, at the Soul level, for the expression of the vast, infinite potential of the universe for abundance. It may express a concomitant longing from your mental body for freedom. At the same time, it may express your emotional craving for security, status, reputation, even speed, risk or anger. The car itself is only a metaphor for the gestalt of your internal filters in action. Can you see that at lower levels of the psyche, fear is mingling with the Soul's pure desire to express itself, to create a specific expression that satisfies the whole of you? While the Soul wants to play and expand, another layer of you wants to show off, be wealthy, move fast and impress the heck out of people.
If you were to address the Soul's desire directly, all the other cravings imbedded in mind and emotions would automatically be satisfied. If you explore the vastness of the universe which you have at your beck and call, letting yourself be expanded in heart and mind, the cravings derived from your definition of your world as solid and finite, lose their urgency. They get fulfilled in the larger, more inclusive flow.
Now, using the desire for the red sports car or whatever point of focus you choose, can take you a ways into building a passionate connection to the universal drive that underlies all creation. Eventually, though, you must let go of the details in order to allow the ineffable spiritual thrust into the world. Basically, you need to get out of your own way.
So, use all of your imaginative resources to explore and conjure the feelings associated with the fulfillment of your desire. Begin at the physical by calling up the feeling of sitting in that lovely automobile. Perhaps you can go test drive one. Don't let your internal arguments stop you from finding out how it feels to have what you want. Feel the affluence of driving such a dream car. Get out on the open road and explore the freedom it offers. Learn all you can about how it feels to you to fulfill your desire. Practice conjuring these feelings. Use your imagination to explore other expressions that bring these feelings into your life. There is little difference between passion and temporary obsession. Don't hold back. At the same time, let go of the details of how fulfilling your desire "should" look.
Your emotional experience is very real and very valid. Indeed, the whole point of a physical expression is to justify and make acceptable the emotional, mental and spiritual experience that you desire. You fear desire because you might be disappointed. You fear passion because you might not be able to control it. You fear being hurt by your own cravings. We suggest that you go directly at the experience of desire. Release the physical world of the requirements of how that desire gets manifested. Your emotional Self is very powerful. It wields the energy of which all "stuff" is made. It is also very pliable. It is shaped by the mind. The fears that block the flow of desire into expression can be released and transcended simply and easily with a willing acceptance and acknowledgment and a restatement of desire. How you frame your statement of who you are, in your mind, programs your emotional body to direct the flow of passion into matter.
Consider a person, wanting to be on the 16th floor of a building. She is deathly afraid of elevators though. As she stands before the opening doors, she is faced with a profound choice. Does she deny the fear, give in to the fear or accept her fright but assert her desire to be on the 16th floor? Denying the fear only postpones the inevitable and makes the fear grow beneath the weight of repression. Every time she watches those doors open will add to that fear until it finally becomes an insurmountable barrier. Giving in to the fear and never entering another elevator eats away at her self-esteem. It creates a self-definition which undermines many other attempts to manifest her dreams. She learns to do without the experiences and feelings she craves.
The third option, of accepting the experience of fear, makes it possible to explore the fear and discover the illusion at its core. She gets to think about the actual likelihood of being hurt in an elevator. She gets to watch how her body responds to the fear and how she can relax herself in the face of the fear. Perhaps she can gain enough detachment to consider that she is a spiritual being and that this too is a spiritual experience. As a spiritual being, she is never in any real danger. Even death is of no great consequence to the Soul. Only acceptance of the experience of fear produces the space to contemplate these ideas. That acceptance also creates the space to freely choose the next moment. It is there, in that moment of acquiescence, that this frightened person can choose to surrender her fate into the hands of her Soul and enter that elevator fearlessly and freely, choosing to feel happy and secure in the here and now.
Onward and upward!
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Exploring the feeling of your desire fulfilled is the turning point in the process of spirit flowing into matter. At deeper levels of your psyche, levels to which you aspire to be aware, you explore your inner desires in just this way all of the time. That is how you created this amazing world you inhabit. From this point forward, you can become the active ingredient. It is no longer a quest to discover what you really want and how that feels. Now you are casting that desire into form.
The conjuring stage you are now focused upon is the balance point. You are both receiving and exploring the experience of fulfillment. You are conjuring that experience as an act of will. As you can imagine, much of your effectiveness in getting what you have wanted until now has been determined by how you handled the balance of active and passive forces within yourself. Does fear override your desire? Have you plowed through your fear without letting it become conscious and then have it bounce back into your face?
Over-identification with the active force of will can bring tremendous frustration to your efforts. Hyper passivity produces much fantasy and dependency. Neither brings as much joy as a balance between willfulness and acceptance in constant flowing motion. To reach this stage in the conscious creation process, you have opened yourself to the very subtle impulses from your spiritual core. That means using a small willful push into deep acceptance and patient listening. To proceed beyond this stage will require a small acceptance of your own power and a large willful push into thought, feeling and action. Shall we proceed?
Practice conjuring the feeling of your desire fulfilled often and forcefully. Test yourself against whatever life circumstances come up as you go along. You will quickly discover that large obstacles to your fulfillment become rare and of lessened power. Take advantage whenever you can. You will come to encounter fewer angry people, fewer mean-spirited competitors, fewer social trends that affect your life and so on. Seeing those types of circumstances as opportunities to choose your dreams once more gives your efforts at manifesting your spiritual desire a running head start. Having something or someone standing between you and your goals gives you the chance to hone your determination and to build up a head of steam for the push into creativity. Obstacles serve to increase your passion. You will thank them someday. Why not now?
Practice conjuring the experience of your desire fulfilled often and forcefully. Notice the arguments against such as, "That's impossible!" "I cannot afford that!" " I do not deserve/ have not earned that!" There will be many and of a wide variety. Notice each as they come up and accept that they are part of you as surely as your desire is part of you. Do not let them stop you though. Do not cut them off or try to suppress them either. Do not engage them in internal argument. Simply accept them and reassert your desire. Such arguments gradually cease as you rob them of power in this way. Noticing the arguments is a handy reminder as well. Such thoughts have unconsciously mucked up your life for a very long time. Now you can learn to catch them consciously and deal with them directly and effectively. Keep in mind that rational fear is a powerful experience. Some arguments against your dreams make a lot of sense. You are very clever after all and you have practiced rationalizing your life experiences for a very long time. Be vigilant but determined and you will be able to undermine the fear which tells you that the world works differently than you are leaning to believe it does.
Practice conjuring the experience of your dreams fulfilled often and forcefully. The irrational fear of your own emotions has been a long-held habit in your life. Becoming master of your feeling nature goes very much against the grain. It is a grain which you have created yourself but slowly over much time. You may not easily embrace the new definitions of Self you are pursuing now. Your ability to develop mastery will be a direct reflection of how well you balance the active and passive forces within you.
Accepting how you feel in the moment is crucial to choosing (or projecting) how you want to feel in the next moment. Your willingness to decide how you want to feel makes accepting the intensity of emotions, of all kinds, easier. You will still experience the gamut of emotions. There will still be frustration and despair along with joyous, loving happiness. In fact, you will find the level of intensity of these experiences will become your new normal. The increasingly rare moments of despair will be much sharper, brighter and stronger. You will also come to notice that the very power of them is made of joy, the pure joy of being alive. We promise you that the experience is not because the emotions themselves are any more potent. You are becoming more aware of what the experience of life really is.
Practice conjuring the experience of your desire fulfilled often and forcefully. Begin to look at the world through the strong feelings you create. Begin to live your life from within these feelings. As you go through your days working, relating, and relaxing, renew these feelings and see what your life looks like from within them. How does your job appear in the light of your desire for joy or love or freedom or abundance? How do people treat you and how do you respond when your inner context changes? How do your choices differ now?
If you are working on being in love, for instance, and you have conjured that expansive feeling into your physical, emotional and mental Self, how differently do you feel about that waitress at breakfast, that man behind the counter at the post office or the fellow who cuts you off on the highway? Conjure that feeling with your friends and family and how do you change? How many opportunities does your day hold for putting that feeling into action?
Practice conjuring the experience of your desire fulfilled often and forcefully. Look for evidence of that feeling in the world around you. You have spent many years searching for evidence that you do not have the power to change the world. Now search for evidence that you do indeed have such power. If you desire wealth, begin to look at how wealthy you already are. If you compared yourself to Bill Gates, begin to compare yourself, instead, to the vast majority of humans on your planet. Most could not afford to purchase this book or take the time from their efforts to survive to read it. Pay attention to how much of what you want that you already have. When you pay your bills, shower this feeling of wealth that you practice onto each cheque. Let each payment be an expression of abundance and confidence. Let it be a statement that there is plenty more where this came from. Where once it may have been painful, let it be a joyous act of affluence.
Practice conjuring the experience of your desire fulfilled often and forcefully. Let go of how that desire "should" look in the world. You have used the details, what circumstances would fulfill your desire, to learn to conjure the feeling of fulfillment. Now those details become a barrier to changing your world. If a red Maserati is the symbol of your desire to feel wealthy, you may miss the full experience of the amazing abundance of the fancy dinner that a friend provides you, or the gift offered to you by your next customer. The feeling of fulfillment is yours now, no matter what the world looks like. That feeling is a real and valid experience. Assume that if the world doesn't bring you that car, it is because your conflicts with the experience are still strong enough to block the manifestation of it and keep that change from taking place. When your new belief is strong enough to stand alone, you will have what you desire immediately. There will be instances of this right from the start as well. Look for them. Not all aspects of your dreams are new to you or fraught with conflicts. They will appear quickly indeed.
Do not just look for what you want in the world either. Ask for it! This is crucial at this juncture. Believe in your deservedness and act upon that belief. Such power this has! It is an expression of the passion you are investing in your dreams. You may notice how hesitant you have been to ask for what you want in life. This is not a demand, mind you. This is a request, a prayer if you will. It is a prayer with all the fervent emotion you can muster. Use the power of your emotional body to put forward the experience of your desire fulfilled. All too often you have prayed to the world around you to give you what you firmly believe you do not have. Now that you are within the feeling of what you want granted, you are saying a very different prayer. It is a prayer of Thanksgiving.
As you develop greater faith in your own creativity by noticing its power in action, you begin to have no doubts that you already have what you want. You are becoming centered in your Self instead of in the world outside of yourself. Your internal experience is becoming your focus. Your external experience (which does not really exist except as an internal experience) becomes the canvas upon which you project your artful efforts. While we insist that changes in your internal state of being will change the world outside of you accordingly, it doesn't matter whether or not that is true. Your internal change is real. You already have what you so deeply desire. The point of looking outside is to see your internal state reflected. If you see disharmony, poverty and pain, you harbor, still, beliefs that support such experience. We suggest that looking for harmony, wealth and pleasure is not naive or denying "reality". It is a creative choice which will change your world.
We have painted a picture of an infinite universe which is constantly expanding. Each moment creates a brand new universe for each and every one of you. The world you see is brand new now, created to express who you are in the present moment. Each of you create brand new universes in every moment, universes that intersect and overlap because you are all one being. The universes that were, in moments past, are still very real and ongoing. They too expand in every moment and at the very deepest levels of your being, you experience them all fully. That expansion of experience powers what you conceive of as evolution.
Once upon a time, you thought of the world as solid and solitary. It was the only world there was, caught in the slow motion of time and space. That world did not overlap anything else nor did it move in any way but forward in time. You thought that world was created so many years ago by an absentee landlord God and left to its own devices, following immutable laws. That view left you a helpless victim of those unchanging laws of creation. If things went badly, and they often did, you had no recourse of any kind. The closest you came to a course of action was to assign blame. You blamed your parents, your society, those around you, even God. That offered some relief though small and temporary. The end result of these definitions was suffering. Life is hard, and then you die!
What you have before you now is a world that is ever changing. It responds to the statement you make in every moment of who you are, warts and all. You have no one to blame for your present moment experience, but you do have the opportunity to choose the contents of that statement you make to the universe. By doing so, you change your experience of life and your world. That statement is what we address in these pages. Your Soul's desire to know and express itself in its infinite wholeness drives your experience of life. You can make that a conscious movement now. And why not?
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"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine. So, what do I want now and how does that look to my Soul and how does it feel to fulfill that desire??"
As you practice this large and unwieldy statement of intent, it gets easier to sense the flow of it. Looking out at the world from within this statement produces a very different perception of the world. You reinforce this perception of your own creative power simply by looking for the results of that power. Every awareness of having what you want, from the air that you breathe to the luxury of sitting and quietly reading instead of struggling to survive, adds new "oooomph!" to that power. Shower that moment of awareness with appreciation. Really experience the latent joy of that moment. This is positive reinforcement at its best.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine. So, what do I want now and how does that look to my Soul and how does it feel to fulfill that desire? Amen (Thank You)"
Remember when, as a child, you thought the word Amen mean "Yay! It's over!"? Consider all those memories in this new light as you replace that old definition with an exclamation of gratitude. Every prayer ends with a "thank you". Now that you know that every thought is a prayer, can you imagine how much of your creative power you lose by not being aware of that truth in the present moment? You can reclaim that power by simply adding the attitude of Amen to every thought, every conscious moment.
We suggest you foster an Attitude of Gratitude that will color every conscious moment. Remember that we said "conscious moment" and do not be intimidated by the enormity of our suggestion. It is not necessary to use the word Amen either. There is no magic in the word itself. The magic is in the feeling it represents. Add "thanks!" to your thoughts if that word feels clearer to you. We would caution you, in fact, to use terms which do not point outside of yourself. Referring to God is a literary device that we use in these pages. It can also be a trap. Be sure to center yourself in these exercises. Stay true to the creativity of your whole Self. Offering thanks does not require an object any more than offering love does. It is a feeling of fullness; a blessing you give to yourself. Let your Amen be a statement of grateful ownership and appreciation for the limitless bounty of the present moment.
As we have mentioned, your meditation practice is an exercise of being conscious in the present moment. For minutes at a time, you are aware of as much of your Self as you are able to be. Being that aware within an attitude which appreciates the inherent joy in the moment lends tremendous power to your experience of fulfilment. Gratefulness is an expansive motion, costing you nothing but opening you to infinity.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine. So, what do I want now and how does that look to my Soul and how does it feel to fulfill that desire? Amen (Thank You)"
All these years, you have made life into an increasingly more complex activity. While you have searched for meaning and understanding and TRUTH, you have clung tenaciously to the reality of a universe outside of yourself. Even your Soul has remained at arm's length, beyond your grasp. We have now boiled down the overwhelming complexity of your universe into a short, simple affirmation. We share this so that you can prove your divinity to yourself on the only proving ground you know, the physical world. The paradox is that you don't have to do anything to change your physical world. Merely feeling and thinking differently is sufficient to create a different life. In the early going, expressing your new definitions by creating symbolic acts will help to reinforce this movement. Of course, like thanking God, this becomes a trap at a certain point in your growth and must too be released. The most important statement that you can make is one which places you in the center of the universe you experience.
That statement honors your divine creativity. With that statement, you get to own your experience and let it be primal in your life. All too easily, you can make people and things outside yourself (which are just representations of the infinite universe inside yourself) more important and more real than you are. We cannot over-emphasize this important shift. Be watchful for this unconscious movement of your conscious attention away from your own experience of life into the metaphoric representation which is the physical world.
With this in mind, play with your creativity by designing symbolic acts which express your desire fulfilled. Express your desire for affluence by springing for lunch for a friend, by buying something trivial, by saying, "It's only money." Tell the people in your life that you love them in as many ways as you can imagine. Such creative play keeps you within that feeling of lovingness while you interact with others. Express your desire for security fulfilled by finding opportunities to be vulnerable. Open yourself to your fear and express your safety right into its face. Act upon your desire for knowledge by teaching others what you know is true for you. When life tests your resolve (and it will) with people rejecting your knowledge or your love or challenging your vulnerability or your wealth, accept the opportunity to reassert your desire fulfilled. Accept that you create these challenges with your internal arguments against your desire and reassert your desire. Such challenges will gradually fade.
"This is the experience of my Self that I am creating and I deserve the very best that I can imagine. So, what do I want now and how does that look to my Soul and how does it feel to fulfill that desire? Amen (Thank You)"
We close this chapter by simplifying even further. This discussion of how you create the reality you perceive is not the be all and end all of metaphysical knowledge. Indeed, it is only an intermediate step towards opening to your whole Self. The practice, though, will offer you proof of your divine creativity and dispel many of your deeply ingrained doubts. Those fears that you are not large enough, powerful enough, intelligent enough, divine enough to create the universe that you perceive, are but one more layer of the barriers you have placed between yourself and God (your whole Self). There are more barriers at more subtle levels of awareness. We lead you towards these deeper layers as you foster the courage to continue exploring your Self. The simple truth, perhaps for you the only truth is this:
Spirit Creates Matter!
