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YOUR WORLD IS A METAPHOR





CHAPTER TWO



The Shape of Things to Come


We expect that you have had a few moments of doubt spring up by now. Consider that a good thing. Perceiving the unity of all things is quite a leap of intuition. By this point in your life's journey you likely have an idea of the truth of such unity. Going from the point of the philosophical thought to a direct experience is less difficult than you might suppose.


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Assume the position, relaxed and quiet inside. Call your higher self to align with your physical body. Imagine yourself as an antenna drawing the pure spiritual energy of your soul into your physical body with each inhale and send that unconditional love that you really are (God stuff remember?) down into the Earth below your feet with every exhale. It doesn't matter if you are perched directly on the ground or on the fiftieth floor of a concrete and steel building. Energy follows thought and nothing physical can block thought's movements. Each exhale carries the very spirit of you into loving contact with the Earth. Don't add anything else to this flow of thought. You don't need to heal the Earth. It is quite perfect in its wholeness. Simply anchor your perception of your whole self into the Earth like a radio antenna grounds the signal it acquires into its receiver. Feel the connection with your whole body. Feel the love pour through you into the planet that sustains your life. Feel the wholeness that this thought process provides you. Let yourself explore this vast terrain. Each time you practice this bit of reverie, free yourself to perceive whatever aspect of this connection, from the cosmos to the Earth, that your intuition leads you to. There are no right or wrong things to explore here. You are creating a relationship between your spiritual and your physical worlds. Recognize that you ARE the whole planet in one perfect and beautiful aspect. Let yourself identify with each portion you investigate. Allow your most exalted state of love to fill you with each inbreath and travel into the Earth with the outbreath.


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If you practice this technique in conjunction with other people, you will feel even more power moving through you. Ask for an image that the whole group can use to focus this thought in unison. Explore this image as it grows and changes. Each time you practice this, your relationship to yourself and the world you occupy will grow, changing size and shape. In a remarkably short time you will begin to identify with the flow of love that such a group will generate and transmit. Follow this flow toward the point where your group is genuinely one being, moving in concert to stimulate your growth as individuals. Expand this state of unity outward to include all those whose lives you touch for the same purpose, consciously or otherwise. Include all those that your partners touch and all those that they in turn touch and so on and so on. This expansion will speed up. There is a lovely surprise at the end. Enjoy!


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Now, if you are simply reading this material and not practising the techniques we suggest here, you are missing a good deal of fun. We would ask you to consider your reasons for denying yourself the chance to expand your identity and accept the joy of knowing your true self. There are so many reasons. Are there any that do not come down to fear? You certainly were not raised to believe that you are God in search of Himself. Of course, you were also not raised to believe that you have the right, by virtue of your mere existence, to be happy in every moment. It is certainly disconcerting to look at yourself in such new terms. These are revolutionary ideas. But you are a rebel. You choose for yourself what you believe, what you value. Look closely at your resistance to taking simple and painless steps toward experiencing the joy of your divine self.

We must warn you! Meditation is addictive! It feels really good. Once you reach the point where you will allow yourself this pleasure and peace, well, you will want to do it every day that you can. There is something intrinsically valuable in every life experience. In meditation, you learn to notice what that something is. In meditation, you learn to observe yourself. You become the dreamer dreaming. We do not suggest any one form of meditation. Indeed, we suggest you try as many as you can think of. Follow your whim and intuition for the form that most suits you in the moment. If you establish a comfortable contact with us or with some other portion of your higher self, ask as you enter a relaxed state of quiet, what form you might follow each time. If you have the chance to go out walking alone, let your vision go soft, aware enough to keep moving safely. Let yourself drift into a meditative state. With your body so occupied, you can gain access to your inner consciousness very easily. Freely ask any questions that your life may generate day to day and listen intently for the answers, knowing they will come, if not immediately then in the next little while as life unfolds.


Every effort you make to observe yourself on the inside as intently as you observe the people and things in your life that you dearly love, will bring great rewards. Carefully observe the thoughts that careen through your mind. Notice the words that you speak. Really listen to yourself. You will begin to see the conflicts in your thinking that undermine your happiness. Words like "I should", or "I can't", stand for a denial of the God within you. Each act, each sentence spoken makes a statement before the universe about what you deserve in life. The universe will support each statement and bring you exactly what you proclaim you deserve. Each moment of your life, you stand before God and proclaim who you are; and God grants you just that. Make each proclamation a conscious act. Choose each thought, each word and each action to proclaim that you are God Himself. For one thing, this is accurate. For another, it is happy making stuff. If it satisfies the rebel in you, it is blasphemous for the religion you were likely taught as a child. Remember that religion has a vested interest in your unhappiness. When you let yourself be happy, you no longer need the validation of others. Your own joy is proof enough of your worthiness to exist.

Look around your life and begin to notice what statements it is making about your worth. What you see before you is what you believe you deserve. It is quite that clear and simple. Like it or not, you have precisely what you want. If you have the courage to believe that you deserve better, God will support your new statement. We suggest that you can make miracles. The world does not work the way you have been taught that it does. It does not unfold moment by moment. If you could muster a complete change in your beliefs in the flash of a single moment, life would instantly change to fulfill that new belief. The resistance to this lies solely within you. This resistance is based solely on fear and is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. That does not mean that it cannot be overcome of course. It only means that practice is needed to become conscious of it and to begin to live in a state of freedom. So, let's begin to practice now.


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Choose a single aspect of your life that does not satisfy you. If you are ambitious and willing to risk the frustration of a difficult challenge, choose a large issue like poor physical health or abject poverty. Otherwise, start at a reasonable place like a single difficult relationship or chronic car trouble, etc. Take a piece of paper and write out as clearly as you can what presently is the reality of that situation. Use any format that is comfortable for you. Prose, outline, point form or song lyrics, it does not matter. Be as complete and specific as you can though. This may take some time for the more complex situations. With this statement completed, start a new page which will clearly state with as much detail as possible how you want the situation to be. We will reality check later ,so don't waffle about things. If you want to replace that old clunker with a new Porsche, say so. Why not dream big dreams? We remind you that the really big issues will be a considerable challenge as a starting point. We suggest you practice with smaller situations so as not to undermine yourself at the beginning.

Now that you have your dreams down on paper, pick up the first document with the assessment of what is. Before you even look at it, acknowledge that it is a statement of what you believe you deserve. Denying the truth of who you are is not very effective. If you aren't willing to accept that you are totally responsible for the situation, your victimhood will lock you into it. Blaming someone else, from your parents and ancestors to God Himself will keep you from having the power to change. So, with this acknowledgement in mind, look again at what you've written. Look for the statements you have made about who you are. See how those statements conflict with who you want to be. With each conflict you find, replace the statement that sums up your situation with your new belief about who you are and what you deserve.

For example, let's say that you have written, "There is a person in my life who hates me and treats me badly." You, however want to believe, "I am a wonderful child of God who deserves to be loved." The most glaring conflict in these thoughts is that no one can hate someone who deserves to be loved. Therefore, this other person either doesn't know you and thus hates a stranger to you both or you don't really believe your own statement about your worth and this person is merely showing you how you really feel about yourself. Most likely a combination of these possibilities is at play. Now, you cannot really change that other person. They are not to blame for the situation. They are giving you what you are sending out. So, you must set about changing yourself. Look carefully at exactly what that person is showing you with their behavior. Be honest about what you see. If that behavior was not something you yourself have within you, you would not see it outside you. Perhaps, their perception of their behavior is vastly different than yours? Once you find within yourself the actions and feelings you are seeing in the other, apply your new belief, "I am a wonderful child of God who deserves to be loved." Love those aspects of yourself that the other person has shown you. Look at the fear inside you that sparks those acts. Embrace the fear as you would a frightened child. Love yourself for being who you are in this moment, a person capable of such fear and the actions that spring from such fear. Forgive yourself for bringing such pain into your life.

This other person has done you a grand service. They have shown you a fear that has ruled you and that you can forgive and accept and no longer need to be unconscious of. Be very grateful for their help in your growth and education. Look at them with new eyes now; eyes that love the you that you see in them. When you encounter them again, know that it is you that you are seeing. Shower that visage of yourself with all the love you believe you deserve. This other one has the opportunity to know who you really are now. Don't hide that anymore. You truly do deserve to be loved. Show the whole world who you really are and know that love is precisely what you will get back. See every action on the part of another as an expression of love. That is what you deserve. Even the crustiest of people will be expressing love for you in the best way that they know how in the moment. See yourself in each of those others and love what you see as yourself, a wonderful child of God. Your world is about to change!


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For those of you who are disappointed that we did not use wealth as an issue in our example, we have this to say. From our perspective, your relative financial abundance holds little charge. Money means little to us. Focus on wealth expresses certain emotional truths that we find to be counterproductive. For instance, such a focus states a belief that there is not enough wealth to go around. Look at how much you really have, how far beyond mere survival your present way of life really is. If you factored out the time you spend pursuing wealth, both the pursuit of money and the pursuit of things money purchases, see how much time and inner peace you have to pursue the internal relationship that would gain you happiness. It is your happiness which concerns us. The acquisition of stuff is both a distraction and a burden in our view. Realize that this preoccupation can be seen as a game you play. It is a way to conform to your cultural environment and little else. We suggest you come to see this game accurately. Money is only an idea. You invest it with reality beyond its own internal structure. You spend great sweeps of emotional energy on it. This is the energy which could afford you great joy and self awareness if you invested it in yourself instead.

Having said all this, if you insist on playing out this game of poverty/wealth, there are certain principles involved that may prove valuable. Indeed, value is a crucial term. Begin to think of your money oriented behaviors in terms of value more than price and cost. How much do you value what you receive for your money? How much do you value the effort you invest in earning your money? Is what you get reflected in the equation? Does the amount of money equal the value you place on a particular service or object? Do you really value your possessions or your own effort? It is in the act of fulfilling your values that real happiness can be found. The consumer economy of your culture only mirrors this principle. Feeling wealthy does not require more money than you have; only more money than you need. When you recognize that your internal state of being is the most important commodity you own, any abundance beyond subsistence becomes gravy.

You have the power in this eternal moment to change your state of being. Remember that the universe exists to support your state of being and whatever proclamation you make to the universe of who you are will be reflected back to you by your environment. Look around you at how much more you have than what you need to survive. Look at how easily you make that living. Do you have to work 16 hours in every day like your ancestors did to survive? You have the time to read these words after all. See the truth of your life in the present moment. Appreciate and value it highly. Be very grateful for what you HAVE and turn your focus away from what you perceive that you lack. As you begin to treasure yourself and your life, you will find out how very secure you really are. There has always been enough for you to survive, obviously. There will always be. Your universe is infinite.

Once you have begun to adjust your values, granting yourself permission to be happy, start to break away from the messages of your culture that proclaim that ownership equals security and happiness. Your inner state of being is the only thing you truly own. Your trust in yourself is the only genuine security. Every time you have a thought or feeling which contradicts that trust such as, "I can't afford such and so," replace that thought with your new model of the universe. "I do not choose to spend my resources on such and so." Understand that what you can and cannot afford is a function of your value system. Make sure that it is "your" value system and not someone else's. You do not have to be influenced by advertising if you so choose. You do not have to accept the messages of your culture. Choose your own values. Replace your thought that there is not enough money with the thought, "There is plenty more where that came from." Trust that there is enough to make your dreams come true. Do not hesitate to have what you honestly believe that you deserve. The money will come to you. It is as abundant as the air you breath.

This new attitude will bring to the surface all of the internal conflicts that you have about wealth and how much you "deserve" to have. Confront each conflict in just this manner and you can release yourself from the bondage of insufficiency. Your faith in this benevolent universe will grow. All areas of your life will begin to reflect such faith. Pay attention to each change which appears and enjoy it as much as you can. That will accelerate the movement towards happiness and your growing awareness of self.


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Once more assume the position. Enter a quiet inner state, relaxed and at peace. Call on your higher self to align with your body and feel its presence slide into you. Announce to the universe that you are, that you feel the lack that you experience. Acknowledge your belief that this feeling no longer serves you and ask that it be released and transformed. Ask for a truer reflection of reality and the emotional experience of that new reality. Let that new feeling permeate your body, right to the cellular level. Let this new knowledge become part of who you are. Offer your gratitude for this feeling of abundance and security, accept it as a gift of love from a benevolent universe. Open your heart to the healing flow of this love. In and out with each slow deep breath. Whatever you feel is lacking in your life: love, friendship, wealth and health, all these exist within you in infinite quantities. Feel that abundance in your very cells. Bask in the fullness. When you go out into the world again, bring that feeling with you and watch your life begin to blossom.


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One item we have not touched upon in our discussion of insufficiency is time. Your civilizations move on the assumption that time is limited. In this view, one moment of time follows the previous moment inexorably and no other possibility is entertained. This moment by moment perception of time is instilled in your species at a very deep level. There seems to be no other explanation for your experience of life. When you look at past and future as separate from your present moment, you assume that time, more specifically your time, is limited. We suggest that time is your creation. You have chosen how to perceive the motion of life and you can choose to change that perception. You can create time to fit your model of the universe. You have experienced time in a variety of ways already. You have seen time as too fleeting when you have been in a warm and loving space and reached the point of separation from your loved one. You have felt time drag when engaged in some boring enterprise. You have felt time running out when you approach a deadline for an activity. You have experienced time as empty when freed from responsibility and at your leisure. "Well," you say, "that is only a perception of time." Exactly!!! We suggest that perception is all that time really is.


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Take a look at a clock before assuming the position. When you have reached a relaxed state and called your higher self to align with your body, ask for a glimpse at an event from some point in your past that has an emotional charge for you. Review this event with as complete an openness to the entire range of experience as you can muster. Let yourself see and hear and feel as much of this experience as possible. Especially, let the emotions sparked by it come into your awareness. Feel how your body felt at that moment as well as in this large present moment. Let this past experience fill your present. If it is an experience of pain or emotion, joyous or otherwise, let if fill you as though it were happening now. The more moving the experience, the more useful it will be to your understanding. Trust that even the most painful experience in your past is safe to recall and truly feel. In fact, it is most healing to let these feelings wash through you without throwing up barriers. Stay with this previous moment in your life until it is done. Be with it. Notice the response of your body in the present to the flow of old feelings. Remember other experiences where you felt the same way. Let the feelings ebb and flow as you watch each event unfold. The more fully you focus on this effort, the more fruitful it will be.

As the images and feelings begin to fade, remind yourself that you are whole. A few repetitions of this affirmation, "I am whole!", would be advantageous at this point. Let your awareness drift a little as you relax back into your comfortable present self. When you are complete with this experience, open your eyes (wipe the tears away) and once more peek at the clock and make a note of the hour. Consider the difference, if any, between the perception of time you spent in reverie and the "actual" time which has passed on the clock. Now consider that you have just experienced you past selves as very much present. Your body has responded to these past portions of you as though they were very much right now. Your emotions engaged in this event with as much energy as you experience in any other present moment. You have just compressed time. With practice, you can bring all of your past experience into your present moment. Your entire past is contained in your energy field right now and is accessible to you in the NOW.

Not only are you all that you have ever been, but you are also all that you will become. the future too is contained in the present moment. Consider your aspirations. Who do you want to become? Can you remember a time in your life when you had no aspirations, did not want to become someone "more" than who you were then? This sense of becoming, common to all created forms be it human or otherwise, is the future calling. You already are who you will become and that you (all those you's) are beckoning to you in the present, presenting you with your dreams. What we have been offering you in this chapter is the chance to shift in time and bring your future self into the now. Each moment you focus on your aspirations, what you want to become, even if what you want to become is rich, you step outside your habitual perception of time. You draw past and future into your present and make yourself larger and more real. We urge you to reach for your grandest dreams because in your future those dreams have come true.

Indeed, you have myriad futures to choose from. What you dream today, you might say, might never come true for you. We say that that is a choice you make by doubting yourself. If you did not experience this dream in your future, you would not be able to dream it in the present. Your soul experiences every possibility you consider. It has done so in your past (which shocks you as much as that it might do so in your future) as well. Each path not taken as you have walked on your journey through life, has been followed by your soul. Each lesson learned by these alternate you's is available to the you that you presently know. These lessons have a hand in shaping your awareness in as much as you have allowed your intuition to come through. Each possible future that you consider as you live your life is investigated by your soul and the wash of its lessons is available to your awareness as well.

So, dream as large as you can. Dream ecstasy for yourself. Dream your soul! Dream your infinite loving self. Bring that dream of your future awareness into your present moment as strongly and as often as you can remember to do so. Dream the happiest dream you can imagine and know that you dream true. Your dream is already real. You could not imagine it if it were not!


To Chapter Three


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