Introduction
"Every person wants to be free, but some want it more than others. The amount of freedom we experience in life will directly relate to the amount of courage we put into action. It must mean more to us to be free than to live behind an illusion of safety. Our vulnerability must not intimidate us so thoroughly that we imprison ourselves behind a fortress of self-defense....""In this book I am going to show you that it is possible to live a life in full awareness of human vulnerability and responsibility and do so with joy. More than that, I am going to teach you how. It is from experience that I speak to you, so you can trust that what I say is practical and effective.
Fear and hopelessness ruled my life for decades, but they don't have a grip on me anymore. For years now I have embraced a different way of living that has blessed me with the most important kind of freedom there is, the freedom to grow on a path of joy instead of one of suffering.
I am a happy person. I am a truly, ecstatic, joyful person. And that is not because these years have been easy. In this time period I have suffered much pain and loss. During these years I have seen someone I loved slowly die. During these years, I have found myself in New York City to experience the destruction of the towers, witness the needless deaths of all those innocent people, and watch the militarization of the city for a year thereafter. During these years, more than once I have received news that has shocked me to my core and sent my mind spinning in search of alternative truths. Yet through it all I have remained a truly blissful person.
To be bliss doesn't mean to be untouched. It's not a state of detachment. On the contrary, you feel more. You don't hide from any of what you experience so you feel all of what has always been there. This means you find the horror of life along with the beauty. It means you are fully alive now while you have a chance to be.
I wrote this book because I am dying. At the time I began it I was convinced by my doctor that my death was imminent. That turned out to be untrue, but by then I was already half way through writing it so I decided to finish. This body really is dying anyway, though I will likely have another 50 years or so before I decide to 'walk off the set.'
This book is an offering to you on behalf of the All Pervading Light. Here I refer to it as "the All Pervading Light," but in other places I will say "God, Goddess, Ultimate All, Source, Infinite, Spirit, Unity, Luminous Emptiness" and a host of other labels. In seeking to name that which is beyond all concepts, what word or phrase can really capture the Truth? So here is an opening disclaimer. I cannot tell you the Truth.
If you read this book with full attention and an open mind and use the techniques found herein, you will experience the truth as it is able to reveal itself to you, through me, right now. In the process of conveying this to you, I will have to use words, but any words can only attempt to evoke the truth, not be it. Truth is lived. You are living it right now, but are you self aware? Let us take this journey together as partners in discovery."
Chapter 1 - Miracle Manifestation
"I spent 1999 living in Bali, Indonesia. I went there because I wanted to live in a beautiful, tropical place that was so inexpensive that I could take modest savings with me and still be able to stay a year without working a job. I had not yet reached a point in my spiritual development where I was able to support myself through spiritual work, such as channeling , teaching ecstatic dance, or doing energy healing sessions.While I was living in Bali I had the chance to dedicate much of my time to each of those pursuits. My ability to channel greatly expanded. I taught spiritual dance in a number of venues and even had the chance to perform it before hundreds of captivated Indonesians and westerners. And I came to a much deeper understanding of what was happening within energy healing in light of the new experiences I was having with channeling.
It was a miraculous time and I am grateful to myself for having given myself the chance to experience that. One of the most fortunate parts of the experience was being given a book by my next door neighbor titled Conversations with Raj. It is the story of a trance channel on the brink of enlightenment whose spiritual guide is trying to help him cross that final bridge. The guide says basically, "Remain in contact with me as much as possible. Maintain a field of peace within you and keep clarifying your intentions."
The channel of course is concerned about paying his rent and providing for his family who don't understand his sitting in meditation all day, day after day, month after month. They want him to get up and see to getting some clients through the door so money flows in. The phone is about to be turned off and the man goes to the guide and says, "Don't you think we should be a bit more balanced in our approach to this. I have responsibilities, you know." And Raj still keeps saying, "Focus on me. Stay in the field. Clarify your intentions."
Well the book never really says what happens to the man, or at least I have forgotten if it did. But I can tell you what happened to me when I applied Raj's guidance to my own life. Miracles. You see, my calculations were way off. I had thought Bali was going to be cheap living and I could stay a year just off the money I made from selling my furniture and collecting the vacation pay from my last job before I left San Francisco. In actuality, I ran out of money after only 4 months.
I had an open ticket with up to a year I could stay, but decided that I was going home after 4 months because I had lived so lavishly that I was broke. So I reserved a seat on a flight leaving on a Tuesday. That Thursday I went to my friends and told them I was leaving so I wanted to get together with all of them that weekend for a party. One of my friends said, "You aren't leaving." I said, "Well I have no money left and as a foreigner I can't get a job here in Indonesia, so I've got to go home now and make a new start back in America."
Again she insisted, "You aren't leaving."
For about a day I was disappointed by the idea of going home after such a short trip, but I remembered Raj's guidance to remain peaceful at all times. I did my channeling each day, as well as my meditation practice, and stayed focused on my desire to live in "paradise" for a year. I began and ended each meditation or channeling session with images of myself joyfully walking along the paths through the rice fields, the sun beaming down and a smile on my face. Or maybe I would be sitting on someone's veranda overlooking the fields, laughing as we sipped afternoon tea.
I filled my heart with joy each time I saw these scenes, thus empowering the vision as a joyful outcome. I had been told by Joliet, a guide I was channeling, that I must always remember that the product will match the process that created it. If I wanted the realization of the visualizations to result in joy, I had to be joyful while visualizing them. Otherwise I might get the picture of happiness, but not the experience of it. Does that sound like anything you're familiar with?
Anyway, I did what the guides were instructing me to do. The day after I announced my departure I was invited to a party at a spiritual retreat center out in Tabanan regency, where there are few westerners. I didn't want to leave Bali without having been to Tabanan so I accepted the invitation...."
Chapter 2 - Love in Action
"Selflessness means to awaken to the true unity of all beings. When you realize that you are one with everyone you meet, suddenly it makes no sense to go on clinging to yourself or disregarding them. They are you. Their happiness is not more important than yours – it is yours!""This habit pattern of 'you' has been indoctrinated to believe that it is a solid self whose existence must be defended and whose interests must be promoted. Self-seeking and self-protection are the two strongest habits in your system, and they are directly opposed to one of the primary sources of happiness in life, which is selflessness."
"Thankfully, my spiritual self took over my body. Before I knew what was happening I had stopped dead in my tracks and started back towards the man, who was now silent. I reached in my bag and pulled out the $3 I had on me and stooped down towards him. I thought I was going to watch myself put the last of my cash in his cup, but instead an awareness dawned within me that more than the money, this man needed to be loved and he needed to feel that love in his flesh. I watched in awe as my hand reached towards his and carefully tucked the small wad of bills between the cup and his hands, being careful to press one finger into his soft flesh as it did so. 'Here you go,' I heard my mouth say, as I quickly turned and started back down the street towards my train."
"Our prayers for others are essential to our own happiness. Whenever Spirit is moving through us it feels really good. It is impossible to not be happy while Spirit is working through you. Sometimes it may be a rush of energy that overcomes you like in the previous experiences I shared with you, but usually it is more subtle. Even in subtlety, it always feels really, really good to experience our oneness with Spirit."
"Try This For 3 Days: Tonglen is a traditional Buddhist meditation practice for developing compassion.... Sit with your back supported in an upright position. As you breathe in, imagine that white light is flowing in with your breath, filling and permeating every corner of your being. As you breathe out, imagine that all that is conflicted, sorrowful, guilt-ridden, or heavy within you is released into the air around you where it is instantly converted into pure light...."
Chapter 3 - Beyond Conditions
"This chapter is by no means a refutation of the two that have come before it. As your naturally blissful self you will routinely manifest happy conditions for yourself and others, but the emphasis now is in learning not to make saviors out of our tools. You do not need to trade your obsession with elusive satisfactions for an obsession with attainable ones.""What would have happened if I had engaged the situation with my personality instead of my higher self? What if I had decided that living there had to mean suffering because, gee, how could anyone not suffer under such conditions? According to the laws of manifestation, even once I left there I would have found myself in another place of suffering, one that simply had different outward features."
"Try This For Three Days...."
Chapter 4 - The Power of Conviction
"I want this book to take you beyond inspiration. I want you to be able to use it to transform your life from one of partial satisfaction, or maybe even utter despair, into one of complete fulfillment. In order for this to happen, you must apply yourself to the exercises given with full focus of attention, positive expectation, and perseverance. And before you will make such a commitment, you must believe that your efforts are likely to pay off."According to String Theory, as we follow the cells of our bodies into their atoms, then their quarks, and eventually their strings, we come at last to the 11 dimensions of possible movement that regulate which elementary particle will manifest. If certain microscopic strings oscillate within this cute little curly shaped dimension, we get an electron. If a different set of rules limiting movement apply, we get a muon. And so on. Dimensions determine masses and charges and thereby select what 'matter' gets to appear in our reality."
"Essentially everything appearing solid to our human senses consists almost entirely of empty space. It is the amazingly small electrons whizzing around the nucleus of the atom at astounding speeds that gives atoms their solid appearance. Our measuring devices (hands, eyes, etc.) are just too large and insensitive relative to the particles they are encountering for us to accurately perceive what is there."
"Which is not to dismiss the significance of your life experience. Within this illusion everything that happens is very real to other parts of the illusion (such as your body and emotional system). The reason we want to understand that we are experiencing a conceptual reality is so that we will be more responsible about what we create, not less so. When you really get that you are the one scripting the contents of the localized experience of this grand illusion which you know as 'your life story,' then you will gain the freedom to create a masterpiece life."
"Try This For Three Days...."
Chapter 5 - The Power of Self-knowledge
"First I became aware that I was holding my breath and had to intend to breath freely rather than letting it happen naturally. As I brought air fully into my body, I noticed a general feeling of anxiety whose source I couldn't identify. Over the course of the two hours this murky sense of unease revealed sadness, anger and profound patterns of disease within my family of origin, going all the way back to my great-grandmother.These patterns were locking me into my identity as a mental being and preventing me from having the freedom to respond to life as Spirit using a mental tool. Beyond that, they were the source of a highly destructive habit I had of rejecting at least part of my experience throughout almost every moment of my life. This habitual stance of rejection was preventing me from ever fully relaxing into a sense of safety or wholeness."
"As the unlimited Self there is nothing to forgive, but as the illusory self-identity that is bound to this one dream-like lifetime I offer this so that freedom may become possible: I forgive everyone who has ever disregarded my cries for help. I forgive those who returned my affections with callous disregard or met my insecurities with ridicule. I forgive those who denied my value and taught me to do the same. I forgive every person who ever stole from me, lied to me, or attacked me in any way. I forgive those who walked away when I needed them most and those who hated me for reminding them of their own vulnerability. I forgive this world, just as I forgive myself for every hurtful word I ever spoke. I forgive you, and I am ready to see you be completely happy."
