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GF: Welcome everyone. Tonight we discuss an essential spiritual force missing from our lives. When I'm done with these first comments, and those following the chat, we will have gathered ample evidence of the fact of this insight as well as ways to recover this crucial force we unknowingly give away.

The power that we're missing is called patience. Real patience is not about waiting for one's expectations to be fulfilled. This is the kind of patience that we have now, and as we will see, it is necessarily filled with impatience; so, it isn't so much that we are actually patient, as it is that we are hanging around, impatiently, waiting for that moment to get what we have hoped for.

This kind of patience is a contrivance. We pretend to have patience while inwardly our own unappeased thoughts and feelings pound on us. What we will look into this evening are some facts about the true nature of patience, and what it is that we have to acquire -- meaning what we have to understand -- if there is any chance for us to become a different order of human being.

The way our present mind meets life is much like a machine, where most of our lives are spent in automatic reactions to moments where an expectation of ours meets either the fulfillment or the denial of our dreams. We have yet to see that our own conditioned expectations always set us up for a sorrow of some kind or another.

And what a sad state of affairs this is; our hopes are tied to the secret source of our heartaches -- not just for our pressing wish to acquire more money, a better house, more respect, another relationship, what have you, but also according to the degree to which we demand these expectations be met.

What must we do to change our unconscious condition? First, we must get to the point where we see, and admit, our essential powerlessness to provide for ourselves what we believe can make us happy. This is a necessary stage in our spiritual development: to realize we don't have a clue how to help ourselves become whole. This discovery alone makes it possible for us to learn real patience.

There are many references to the nature of real patience throughout all great scriptures world over, including both New and Old Testaments. From Luke: "In your patience possess ye your souls." Another, from James: "But let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourself." And the last one that I'll mention here comes from Romans 8:24: "For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeth why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."

What this passage (and the others) would convey to us is that the true spiritual path can't have anything to do with some imagined quality of consciousness that we can give to ourselves because, for one thing, in the very imagining of that quality, whatever its name, we end up becoming impatient to possess it! This is a vital point: Our desires create an extremely powerful second force in us; and gradually, as we struggle to be seen as we hope others will see us -- loving, wise, strong, gentle, and patient -- we come unglued! Instead of being patient, kind, and compassionate, we become the opposite: a raging volcano of conflicting desires that finally explodes. Clearly this approach doesn't work.

In order to achieve our hope for what is not seen -- a new and true patience, a forgiveness of others that sets us free, whatever that spiritual state may be we know exists but that eludes us -- we must learn something altogether new: We must learn what it means to be patient with what we can no longer do and be. There is an immense difference in this idea versus setting out to win a pleasing identity.

At present, our impatience with what we hope to do or become is born out of a series of mental images and expectations that are created in a mind asleep to its own considerations. From these images we take imagined pleasure and power, without ever coming to understand why we remain unable to manifest these self-pleasing images except under certain favorable conditions.

Here is a whole different idea: We must stop pretending. We must learn a new kind of patience -- not with regards to getting what we want, but with those pressing, stressed parts of us that insist we must have (or be) what we want when we want it!

Can we see the difference between these two actions? The former patience is an illusion: the idea that if we are just patient and swallow what we must to get our hands on what we want, that patience will prove itself in the end and we will get our reward.

This new and conscious patience that we speak of has nothing to do with the love of things, or of sensations, but with the love of what is True, what is good and graceful, spiritual in nature. It embraces the love of that which cannot be owned outright by any human being but that must be permitted to possess us if we are ever to know its peace-giving and perfectly patient presence.

Inside of this new idea of patience we can begin to understand so much of what has been so elusive for us, including freeing ourselves from this terrible sense of emptiness that always follows having expectations either fulfilled or dashed. At the end of the chat we will explore some specific ways to develop and realize the kind of higher patience we have discussed in these opening comments.

Now it's your turn. What shall we discuss this evening? You are on.

asabovesobelow: Great topic for my concerns this evening. I have several interests (lifelong) available to me now. I am in no position to take up these simple interests due to money (lack thereof). Does this mean it is false purpose? I have been patient for many years and now I can partake in an honest positive interest I have always wished for. How can I keep things in perspective as I see this may be something I cannot partake in? This seems REALLY unfair and confusing.

GF: Nothing that we do in life is done without a corresponding cost. This is a Law. What we waste in one place (even though we think we might be gaining something) always causes a loss for us in another place. On the other hand, the love of something is literally an undeniable force. If you must be patient with present circumstances that exist due to a past waste on your part, then wait patiently. Do not waste what you have thinking about what is unfair. Use your energy to remember what you love. Love will take care of the rest.

asabovesobelow: I am looking to pursue some other of these interests that are located in other parts of the country. I will have to leave parents (I am one of the most important and positive thing in their lives) and familiar surroundings. I have both pulling at me and do not know which to listen to. I know I can't keep my life still for my parents, but I do love them. I do not want to get into worse circumstances either.

GF: As long as one makes choices based on what they fear will occur, as opposed to what they intend to happen, he will not only go "nowhere," but he will become moribund in his own trepidations.

pam: How can I tell the difference between impatience and the ensuing anxiety from the feeling that my self is trying to tell me to make a drastic change to escape a workplace (and nice paycheck) that feels full of negative energy?

GF: The anxiety you speak of is not because you wish to make a change in your life, but is due to the parts of yourself that are unconsciously considering (and therefore fearing) what the outcome of such change would mean to you. Part of our work is to separate fear from fact. Fear has no home in us without entering into a form we provide for it through negative imagination. Impatience in this instance is always born of an anticipated pleasure in making this change that you want to realize.

TruthStudent: I heard you say once that "fear fears fear" but I don't recall the context… would you please elaborate?

GF: There can be no state of fearing something "to come" that doesn't begin with negative imagination. The more imagined fears we fear, the more "real" they become for us.

TruthStudent: Whoever said that what we call "fear" is fear? We don't just feel the sensations, we label the sensations through thought/memory and then based on the label either pursue or avoid the continuation of the sensation. Am I close to the mark with this?

GF: Yes, this is essentially true.

TruthStudent: Our undeveloped minds think in opposites so we fear life and then seek security from life through creating images of life that we then live from and through. Is this accurate?

GF: Yes, this is accurately stated.

RobF: I have a friend who is adversely affected by a true phobia. Have you written anything that would give insight into how to heal this type of affliction?

GF: I would suggest one of the tapes (T236) from our book store. It's entitled: "Learn the Secret Action that ends Fear." This will bring needed light into the darkness you speak of.

here: How can unwanted, unexpected moments help us reach our spiritual promise? All I see myself doing is fighting to get through them, and when I do, I wait for the next "deal" to fight through.

GF: One of the first major realizations we must have is that all we ever meet in any given moment is ourselves. This means that moments unwanted or otherwise simply serve to reveal the nature we have brought into that same moment. Once this is understood, we can use moments consciously for the mirrors that they are. This changes us. Then we no longer fear "moments," but welcome their instructions.

molly: What about when you reach the level of trust and understanding that you speak of and then things are snatched away from you unexpectedly?

GF: The biggest problem that all of us face on this path towards a life awakened in the Light is that our attention, and therefore our derivative sense of self, is always on things outside of ourselves. If we could only remember to remember that our True Life is an interior understanding of our relationship with the world around us, then such unwanted, unexpected moments would no longer act as sources of pain for us, but actually serve to help us fulfill our own spiritual promise.

molly: But why then do we get to experience love here with another if we are only seeking our self?

GF: This life is a preparation for Love, and our relationships with others serve as little more than a way in which to discover both those parts of ourselves that would prohibit compassion as well as those parts that are kindness itself.

TruthStudent: In all sincerity: Why does there have to be a God, a Higher Power for us to believe in? Could we not just be biological creatures created by the forces of nature through an eventual matter of chance? Why do we need to create meaning to our existence by (even) believing in a God and believing that a superior entity created all this. Please, help!

GF: There's nothing wrong with your question. The only problem that we face as a species created to be self-aware is that we continue to try and create meaning for ourselves based upon either love of or fear of experience. Any person who approaches the study of Truth -- the reality of what is -- gradually has proven to him or her that there exists a compassionate Intelligence that is intimately woven into our being. The fact that we learn lessons that leave us more loving proves the existence of a greater nature expressing itself to us and through us in these lessons that leave us more whole. Lastly, by the fact that we do become more whole for these lessons proves the existence of a "Cosmic Curriculum."

Myno: My 84 year old father is dying and my stepmother (his wife) is controlling things that my Dad's three kids can't live with. Now everyone is fighting over no money and a will never written. Everyone is fighting and hating and we all have loving natures that are now angry and out of control. I need to have patience in love because I'm completely in anger and can't get away from it.

GF: Real Love never turns into anything hateful. It's impossible. This would be like a dove becoming a dragon. Try to use the condition you've described for the purpose of discovering the Truth of yourself and everyone else around you. This may be shocking and will be. But, if you're willing to see how human lives can be turned into trash cans by a turn of event, then you have a chance to change not only your own nature, but to truly help those you love. Don't avoid seeing what you must.

momfez: How does one cope with intense anger between father and son and the shouting of expletives between them? It makes me feel so sad and helpless, yet nothing I say changes the situation.

GF: There's an Aesop's fable about a bull and a lion contesting with one another for a small pool of water. Above them in a tree sits a vulture, smiling. The meaning of this story is: Stay out of any war between others, as all you can do is become a casualty of that unconscious action. If you get involved, then you will find yourself part of the problem instead of learning to rise above the pain (in them and in yourself) that produces such conflict.

aag: You say that you shouldn't "argue over anything." This is not the same as if you disagree with someone and voice your opinion. You just mean that you shouldn't "shout about anything." Is that a fair interpretation?

GF: Negativity is always wrong no matter what one says or does to justify it.

AJ: What was the original purpose of negative states? Anger to fight off a bear, desire to compete for mating, etc.? I would like to put these opposites in their right place.

GF: There is no real center in a human being for a negative state. Negative states are the negative effects of a mind unconscious to itself, trying to resolve a condition it is given to transcend that it doesn't understand how to do. There is no resolution for a negative state in terms of "a positive to balance it." When we bring the light of self-awareness into a disturbance in us, that disturbance is transformed into something new within us. When we don't bring this light, then our mechanical nature resists this disturbance and, lo and behold, a negative state is born that always seeks to resolve itself... which it can't.

Grayson: Is it spiritually beneficial to study how doctors of psychiatry, etc. have determined how the brain works in the earthly, physical world?

GF: Intellectual knowledge is an elementary stage in our development. Far better than a rational understanding provided by the works of others is the personal experience of one's own mind through an impersonal observation of its workings. Such insight not only makes us wiser, but changes the very nature of the mind having been observed.

DanG: Self-remembering is such a key to the work. Is an example of self-remembering to see how low we are in the scale of the universe and how unimportant our problems are in the scale of things?

GF: No. Self-remembering is a very specific act brought about either by the deliberate action of one's attention or a bit of grace that uses one's attention for the purposes that grace seeks. I just gave, in the last 10 days, a full talk on this subject. Contact Chris through this website for information on how to get this talk. You'll find it very helpful.

DanG: Can you give an example of how you self-remember?

GF: Come awake right now. Sense that your body is in a room. At the same time, know that thoughts and feelings are within the room of yourself within that room. Finally, realize that the self aware of itself within the world sits within another world invisible to itself and that is essentially unthinkable. This full awareness partially encompasses self-remembering.

Danna: I still have great difficulty staying present when I eat. I am sure my unconsciousness starts long before I am overwhelmed, but what can I do in that moment to become more receptive to living/knowing Truth to pull me out of unconsciousness?

GF: No intention of ours is any better or stronger than our ability to remember it. What this means is that we must never forget our own tendencies. If we can remember that we have a tendency to go to sleep to ourselves when we eat or stand in a line somewhere, then we have a change to work within ourselves to change what our self does within these moments.

AJ: Does "enlightenment" actually exist? If so, what is the real definition of it?

GF: The answer to your question is yes, but not in the way you think. Every insight a man has about his own nature is a form of light brought into the former darkness of himself. That darkness is changed, therefore it is (and he is) enlightened. This process is in scale, and there comes a time when there is more light in a man or a woman than darkness. That would be one way to describe enlightenment.

rousseau: What is the difference between the natural growth and maturing of a human and enlightenment? I look to my dad who is a realized man to a certain degree, and I can talk to him about what we talk about in class to a certain degree (using different colloquialisms since he doesn't participate in or read your literature). He has actually sparked my own interest in these things as a child. I wonder whether he is enlightened, or how far a person can actually go?

GF: Such concerns are really not important. I can tell you that enlightenment is never a "natural" phenomenon when it comes to individuals.

Grayson: I'm not clear on exactly what "levels" and "scales" are, really. How can I learn more about them?

GF: The series of talks I gave here in June, "The Turning Point," is fully based in helping others understand the idea of scale and levels. You can order this now by contacting Chris through our website. Tell her Guy suggested it. The actual tape or CD album will be on our website as available in the next two weeks.

TruthStudent: We're asleep spiritual beings. Why do we need to realize what we already know? Sincerely: Why wake up at all if we're all to return to Eternity when we pass?

GF: Stevie Wonder said, "When you believe in things you don't understand... then you suffer; superstition is not the way." It is a lie and a tragedy that is passed off on mankind by religious hypocrites and other phony-baloney spiritual leaders that when one passes, he or she -- by some right -- enters into Eternity. Spiritual development is voluntary, not evolutionary.

mikejb35: Do you mean that we enter into Eternity now (or not) by our own choices in the here and now?

GF: Our task is to remember our wish for a real life, to do the work that we know to do given what we understand in that moment, and then to allow the Light to do for us what only it can do. All else is hearsay and a waste.

DanG: I think nobody knows what happens to us when we pass from this earth. Human thought has tried to come up with theories but really nobody knows for sure.

GF: Never mind what anybody or everybody else knows or doesn't know. Find out for yourself, and I assure you, you can.

mobilman: The word "power" is used many times in the Bible. Jesus had it when He walked according to those stories in the Bible. Paul said, "the kingdom is not in word but in power." Do you know of this power?

GF: It's a much deeper subject than a chat room paragraph would allow for, but we can say a few things. There is the power of thought. Its force can manifest things in this world. But without opposites and knowledge, these thoughts not only have no existence, but are effectively powerless. There is another kind of power, and that is the one that sits behind thought and that gives rise to it. This is a spiritual power, actually a form of light.

Broccoli: Does unfulfilled desire make a soul come back to Earth? And if so, and if greed can never be satisfied, how does one get desire out of their system?

GF: Desires cannot be overcome or run out of one's system. They can only be answered with the understanding that no desire in itself is capable of completing the self that is possessed by that desire.

Grayson: I have observed myself during experiences, and found that I have taken some natural drives I was born with and created associations with other things in life to create false beliefs, false thoughts, and my false self. Does this conclusion seem right?

GF: If what you're asking is the following, then your answer is correct: There are natural parts of us that are overcome and subverted by what have become unnatural aspects or desires that seek to serve themselves at the cost of us.

Grayson: If natural parts of us are subverted by unnatural aspects or desires that seek to serve themselves only, then doesn't that mean that the mind has invited them in as being part of what it thinks of as "truth," by associating something or someone to its own nature and coming up with something false that it thinks is "true?"

GF: Yes, which only goes to underline the need for awakening from this order of self that thinks about what is good to another level of ourselves that sees what is true without taking thought to know this.

TruthStudent: Would it be correct to assume that the nature that makes a person seek the Truth is the Truth itself? I hurt, but I still seek answers.

GF: You have hinted at something that one day you will know the Truth of if you will only stay the Course. It is Truth itself that stirs us to find it in ourselves, even though it seems to send us out into a world where there is no truth. When we weary of wandering that world, the world we have always been looking for reveals the truth of itself to us within us.

rousseau: I suffer from most all the ailments you have ever described in your books, tapes and online. I don't really have any specific questions, but I want to understand how to put all these pieces together and move on without these distractions.

GF: One thing a man never suspects is that the things that he wishes would not follow him around, do so because of a secret fascination he has for them. Only as he awakens to the duplicity inherent in his own divided mind does he bring an end to this unconscious conspiracy, which is the same as changing himself. Come back and visit as soon as you can.

AJ: What is the "ego" and why is it such a bad thing according to almost all spiritual paths?

GF: Saying that the ego is a bad thing would be like saying an acorn is negative relative to the oak that grows out of it.

mikejb35: Is the part of ourselves that sees thoughts impartially the Kingdom of Heaven Within or is there more to it than that?

GF: There's more to it than that.

TruthStudent: Please excuse the nature of this question. Outside of procreation, is there a place for proper sexuality in a person's life who is following Truth Teachings?

GF: Yes.

Broccoli: I live in NYC and my building is becoming infested with cockroaches. I feel sick every time I kill one, and yet I don't want them running about and taking the place over. What can you tell me about my situation? Is it wrong to kill a cockroach?

GF: All decisions such as whether to take the life of a creature or not must be found within the person facing the circumstance as you've described.

Grayson: I have read many of your books, and have recently bought many Vernon Howard books and tapes. Can I go to much higher levels on my own with this material and my own experiences alone, or do I need a teacher too?

GF: An individual's work can only go so far without being around someone who knows what he is like better than he does.

AJ: Will we ultimately find God within ourselves? If so, aren't we really God? If not, what is God?

GF: We are not God, yet God is our life. God is indeed within us, but so are we within that Life. Our present mind only knows how to relate to thoughts about things, including God. When that mind has become still, it realizes that it is not apart from that which expresses itself through it.

Broccoli: Is it wrong to be materially successful?

GF: There is nothing more empty in the Universe than material success for the sake of material success alone.

Grayson: Is an occasional beer a step back on the spiritual path?

GF: If it's "Light" beer, nothing bad can happen. Seriously, moderation is the password in all things.

DanG: It seems most of our problems are in identifying with a word such as "depression," "loneliness," and all words in general.

GF: The problem is not identifying with words, the problem is we are unconsciously drawn into the negative content that we freely associate with when we identify with these labels. Words in themselves are meaningless relative to their ability to make us miserable.

Danna: How do you know when your acceptance or unattachment to another's behavior (especially in male/female relationships) is just another form of manipulation?

GF: If you want something from another human being, you may be sure that there is manipulation going on. This is a Law. Trying to be unattached to another person is merely resistance to being attached.

aag: In my vision I often see a fleck that I believe is a spirit, plus I can see into the invisible world for moments at a time. I see various spirits or their movements. This is with eyes open, not closed, although I see them with eyes closed too. I am not scared by them, but it does seem that when I see them in my sight, they are too close by. Any comments? What further study should I do?

GF: It makes no difference what one sees as long as they remain quietly seeing whatever that may be. The meaning of things is not in what our mind tells us is happening, but rather in our own awareness of what happens within us as we relate to the world we see.

Grayson: Is it true that the first part of Love is objective Understanding, and then an acceptance of that Understanding, and that those things must come before TRUE Love can be present?

GF: What we might call real Love cannot be considered apart from its Source, so that our fully conscious relationship (oneness) with this objective state is necessary for Love to be active (through us).

asabovesobelow: I am having a hard time taking seriously most women I know and work with. I see their emotions and behaviors almost always contradictory and "all over the place." I wish not to disrespect or offend but need to work and have meaningful relationships, both personal and professional. What should I do if I am aiming for a higher ground? I feel like I am tolerating and not progressing.

GF: If one wishes to reach the mountain top, why bother about what takes place in the valleys he or she walks through (on the way)? Leave what you must and let what comes find you (as it will).

path4me: Can you elaborate on how "Doing anything in half measures, or leaving things hanging" drains away my vital force as you stated in the "21 Ways We Waste Our Vital Life Forces"?

GF: Fenelon, a great thinker of days gone, once said, "A stone beneath the earth weighs as much as one on the surface of the earth."

AJ: How do "psychic vampires" steal energy? Do they literally take our life energy or do they just make us fall into wasting it according to your "21 Ways"?

GF: Actually both are true. You must understand that we are never in a "neutral" atmosphere wherever we are, and that for the proximity of the people around us there is always a natural exchange occurring between fields of force. Negative, toxic people are human black holes with no choice but to draw into them whatever errant energies get sucked in. Others that draw us into their foolery also steal from us, but only for our unawareness of their foolish invitation.

asabovesobelow: I read and felt that the "21 Ways" spoke to me. I have a hard time understanding the "sexual imagining" part. I wish not to be such a "slave" towards adult material, imagining, and other useless pulls, but do not know what I should do or how to better myself. Aren't we sexual beings? I feel like I can't do anything about this low part of me. Do I have an addiction?

GF: Sexual feelings are not the problem. Wanting not to have them, or wanting to make something more of them than they are, that's the snag on the spiritual path.

$1: Every day I waste so much time instead of being productive. If I were properly conscious, would I naturally be productive in terms of being a good householder?

GF: You will be wonderfully surprised at what happens to you as you begin to awaken to the unconscious parts of yourself that not only waste your vital life forces, but that steal from you the natural delight of being effortlessly efficient.

molly: Doesn't God have a sense of humor? Everyone seems so serious on the spiritual path sometimes.

GF: Humor is a natural and delicious part of the Truth Path. Without it, no one gets past being identified with their own false seriousness.

TruthStudent: In your "Thou Art" prayer, no matter how hard I think, I can't come up with an "X" or a "Z." Please help.

GF: Why struggle with two letters that don't lend themselves to your aim? You have 24 left to find the intent of this exercise in prayer.

aag: It seems that at times there is now so much I have read of your work that there appears in my mind certain contradictions to what I should do in a particular circumstance. For example: "losing energy" vs. "if you put your attention outside of yourself you are inviting a crash" or "bearing another persons manifestations" vs. "telling them what you think." Is it just a question of keeping on working? Is there any way to see through these contradictions in my mind?

GF: The mind cannot do what only spirit is empowered to do. The only way to transcend these seeming contradictions is to recognize that struggling against one or the other can never resolve what it is that one is working to be free of. Learn as best you can to go quiet whenever your mind starts to wrestle with anything. Don't try to "think" your way out; see your way out.

aag: Is there any one rule or thing to focus on above all else in our search?

GF: Until our attention belongs to us, we can possess nothing real.

aag: Is the aim of this search to stop most thought or to just not allow yourself to get bogged down in it?

GF: You cannot stop thought other than by destroying yourself. But thought can be transcended and released by seeing its inherent limitations and liabilities.

Grayson: Was Jesus born of a virgin, and did he rise in the flesh at His resurrection? Also, where can I study more of what the Bible really meant that so many individuals do not know?

GF: We must realize that until the answers to these questions are alive in us, and not just parroted to comfort some ideological need to know, then we will remain subject to superstition and its fearful limitations. For more insight into this subject, and to help stimulate your natural wish to know the Truth from and for yourself, I would suggest you get the tape or CD series, "The Secret Teachings of the Sacred Testaments", Volume One or Two, as you wish.

ABC: Without going into too much detail, I have been divorced for three years and my ex-spouse has since remarried. The main reason was adultery on my ex-spouse's part and the divorce wasn't my choice. Given this circumstance, if I remarried someone who was never married, could I still remain on the spiritual path, or must it be a choice of one over the other? Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

GF: Do not trouble yourself over such concerns. Put Truth first and then let what follows, follow naturally.

aag: There is a voice that I hear that I don't think is mine that comments on my reactions to things, makes associations, etc. It is totally unconscious though. You have talked about seeing into unconscious reaction. I thought the unconscious was unconscious... or is it only unconscious until you uncover it? How do you go about it?

GF: Self-observation is a key element in learning to discern what is "ours" and what is not. Awareness of what has been unconscious begins the process of becoming conscious in a whole new away within ourselves.

aag: This concept of "losing energy" from The Intimate Enemy: Is it tied to the Chinese "chi"? Is it about not getting fixated on anything but letting thought into you and then out of you at more or less the same moment? Is fixation on anything akin to what you call identification?

GF: Yes, "fixation" is what you might call being identified with something or someone, so that one's sense of self becomes an unconscious derivative of that fixation (in thought or feeling).

Diojeneez: St. John of the Cross says, "If anyone affirms that one can reach perfection without practicing exterior mortification, do not believe him; and though he confirms his beliefs through miracles, know that his contentions are nothing but illusions." What is your word on this?

GF: The language of yesteryear does not mean what our present mind takes it to mean, nor what a sleeping consciousness would make of that practice. Anyone who mortifies his body does not what he thinks he does. On the other hand, we can steal from ourselves certain negative states and experience mortification through such acts.

asabovesobelow: Do you feel that we do not have certain things in life because we cannot handle them, i.e., money, availability, certain abundances? I do not know why very immoral people have these things as I struggle to pay the bills. I am not jealous, just confused.

GF: Any concerns we might have about "why" others have what we don't is an avoidance of seeing ourselves as we are.

hudnut: I was reading a little about Buddhism and it more or less advised followers to not accept praise from others or give praise to others. Is this because praise fuels the ego or false self?

GF: Yes, plus the fact that -- in the end -- one discovers that "only God ( the Divine) is Good."

aag: Why did you stop your music career?

GF: It was time.

AJ: Is it possible to rid ourselves of ALL desires like the Kriya Yoga attempts to do? Also, is Kriya Yoga a good path or would it just be a pit stop along the real path?

GF: Until we understand that we are not here to rid ourselves of desires, but do the necessary internal work whose ensuing light enters into and integrates these desires into their natural and necessary form, we can only waste our time moving from one opposite to another. Kriya Yoga aims to awaken certain energies that "burn out" unessential aspects of an unconscious nature. Playing with fire without knowledge gets one burned.

ben: I think I may be more prone to self-deception than most. I tend to answer my own questions, but even when the answers are technically accurate they do little more than serve to dismiss the question. Even these teachings (which I've seen are valid) are often made impotent in my own mind as they are supplied as answers by thought. When something real gets through, I know it, but mostly I only think I see. How can I break out of a circle I don't know I'm in?

GF: Your growing awareness of how parts of your present nature act to placate (you) without actually doing anything real to change you (your nature) will lead you to the end of that nature's influence (over you). Persist!

Lenny: I am such a hopeless case without these principles, and have a new hope now. I don't know this personally, but am reading (Ouspensky, Nicoll, etc.) about the unfortunate and disturbing fates that can become us if we do not succeed in our spiritual work. Now that I'm seeing what I'm up against, spiritually speaking, I feel a great worry for those who don't have the truth. Particularly, I feel concern for family and loved ones. What if they never find their way?

GF: Do your inner work and everyone has a chance that comes into contact with you!

VW: I seem to be caught up in a "catch-22" situation here. I have been working on quieting my mind (it seems like an awfully long time now) and have tried various techniques, but it looks to me that this is just "mind" trying to quiet the "mind." All my realizations feel like they are coming from the mind. It's like my mind somehow needs to be out of the picture for there to be any chance of my mind being out of the picture. How do I get out of this circle?

GF: This is a true observation and is, itself, part of the fruit of your work to know stillness. See more by daring more.

VW: Other traditions suggest celibacy. Is this because that energy that is used in sexual activity is needed to help one quiet the mind?

GF: The sex center, and its energy, is immense in its force -- for a dozen reasons; but as with such concerns there is an inherent danger for those who tread where they should not. Blind obedience to any discipline can destroy as easily as it might help create something new.

Nobody: Why does it hurt me so much when people do not behave as I would like them to?

GF: Unfortunately, our present sense of self is nothing more than a derivative of an image that we hold about ourselves that must be substantiated by those around us to remain in place. When others don't support this image by behaving the way we expect they should, the subsequent crash in us is because of a shock born in realizing that we are wrongly dependent upon others for our identity.

GF: Before we sign off tonight, I want to send along my remaining notes concerning the importance of our work in learning to develop real patience.

As we discussed earlier, until we understand and develop a patience born of true and higher self-knowledge, we cannot hope for anything approaching the calm contentment of a fully conscious life. Real patience has nothing to do with that familiar opposite of impatience we tolerate while waiting for what we want. Not wanting to show just how impatient we feel is not the same as being patient.

Real patience never feels like a punishment or an enforced morality; it is a pleasurable act born of consciously participating in the process of God's life as it unfolds within us moment-to-moment. Such patience is a natural feature of a life awakened to its real place and role in the cosmos; it is both seed and fruit of a faith that cannot be shaken.

To help us grow in the new understanding we need to realize this higher order of ourselves, and to give us a practical way to incorporate some of these higher ideas into our everyday lives, I have designed some special spiritual exercises. Following are five ways that we can work to develop real patience within ourselves:

1. We must develop the patience to let disturbances pass by without picking them up: This means we need to see that the reason we painfully resist any moment of life as it unfolds is that it runs contrary to our present notions of what we need to be happy and free. But the fact is, in spite of all our best ideas, we have never found this freedom from what pains us. Why? Each time we are drawn into a struggle with what disturbs us -- meaning that we become identified with it -- this struggle strengthens our conviction that our expectation is legitimate. How can the source of what sits behind our suffering liberate us from itself? It can't; but to practice the patience of letting disturbances pass by frees us from both our expectations and their pain.

2. We must develop the patience to be concerned with the character of our own consciousness before we attempt to make over the character of another: We are in everybody's life: Nobody walks by us -- not even strangers -- to whom we don't give a makeover in our minds. We unconsciously sit in judgment of all we meet. What causes this mechanical reaction in us? Our present nature is limited to knowing itself through what amounts to a constant considering of anyone (and everything) that it perceives to be different from itself. So, this false nature necessarily looks, as a rule, upon the manifestations of others as a disturbance, a disturbance that we don't know what to do with, except for trying to straighten out what has offended us. So, we must learn to patiently observe and consciously bear this part of our nature that gets negative when anyone or anything doesn't match its desire. We need to put this judgmental aspect of ourselves behind us, and that takes patiently learning to ignore its demands that others conform to our expectations. New freedom follows.

3. We must develop the patience to be kind to those who do not care for us as we believe they should: To be patient with an individual who does not care for us the way we believe they should means that we can no longer do and be someone who meets others with the expectation that unless they give us our proper due, we will have nothing to do with them. What kind of human being is that? This level of self-work takes rigorous self-examination, beginning with wondering why some people are seen as our foe. The answer is simple: They don't give us the deference we deserve. The unconscious nature that runs us through its resentments would prove, by the pain it produces in us, that others are wrong for being the way they are. Now we know that it is what has to go.

4. We must develop the patience to realize that we are not the only one who suffers: When we are suffering, we are sure that absolutely nobody else endures the kind of pain that we do. So, to consider the suffering of another human being almost never enters into our mind, unless it's self-serving in some way. Then we envision ourselves as a rescuing hero. On the other hand, we can learn to realize that whenever someone we know is angry or anxious, whose heart is aching, that he or she is suffering just as we do. This kind of higher self-awareness awakens compassion. And in this awakened state we are willing to be patient towards both that person in pain, as well as towards the pain in us that this same person has stimulated.

5. We must develop the patience to work for what is True until the truth in our work reveals itself to us: If all that a flower needs to bloom is given to it, how much more so must this be true when it comes to the spiritual education of a soul? If we have hope in things unseen, and work patiently for its fruition in us, how could it be that we wouldn't be given all that we need? Our task is to watch and wait; to do the work it takes to come to the end of that false nature within us under whose impatient influence we presently live. This dark nature is the soil out of which grows a level of self that is insatiable; whereas our True Self, and the true patience in which it is rooted, fulfill and perfect each other for all time.

Let us work to realize that long patience within us that we will need for the long run. Remember: Patient persistence in our labors, coupled with persistent patience throughout each one -- these two powers serve not only to perfect the task at hand, but also work in harmony to perfect the hand that undertakes the task.

That's all the time we have for tonight. Remember your wish to be free at all times, and then wait in a working patience to let the Truth do its work in you. See you next month on Thursday, October 2. Until then, persist! Good night to all.

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Remember to mark your calendars for our next chat room! "See" you next month on Thursday, October 2nd.

GF: Welcome everyone. Let me open our meeting with some thoughts about what is required of us if we would realize a more awakened life. We will discuss some of these truths now, and just before the end of the chat I will lay out a set of easy-to-understand personal exercises that you can work with on a daily basis.

Now, let's begin at the beginning with an important point that ought to be more obvious to us than it is (at present): Consider for a moment a simple rosebush, or any tree or plant that blooms and fruits. Have you ever wondered at the miracle of a flower? From where does it come? What creates its delicate, fragrant petals, or in the case of a peach tree, the delicate and sweet tasting flesh of its fruit?

Think about these questions while you recall that these sweet and scented gifts of nature are the manifestations of nothing more than earth, water, and sunlight. And if you ever tasted any of these separate elements then you know there is nothing in them to account for this miracle of elemental transformation. But here's the point of these introductory remarks:

In exactly the same way that the fruit tree or the rose bush produces its crowning form -- and is given all that it needs in order to accomplish this miracle of life -- so too is everything provided for you and me to succeed in the flowering of our spiritual life. How could we be given less to succeed in fulfilling the purpose of our life than the tree or the rose?

Most of us never realize our true spiritual potential because we are too busy running around, trying to figure out how to flower! And the more a human being tries to flower by achieving the culturally, socially mandated dictums of success, the more thorns he or she grows. We say we want to be different, to be transformed, yet for our busy-ness no real flowering, no new fragrance is known.

To flower does not mean to momentarily feel spiritually good about ourselves. To have the fragrance of Truth in our life has nothing to do with being adept at spiritual sayings or the ability to impress others with our imagined grace. Spiritual flowering and fragrance means that we have with us, wherever we go, all that we need to be content.

This contentment is born out of the relationship that only Real Life has the power to grant us, that we have awakened into, and that for this awakening we are allowed to be compassionate, kind, and true. Only then do we stop hurting others in the name of achieving what we think we must have in order to feel ourselves a success in the way we envision it.

In this world, what we think of as the moment of our flowering comes in those times when things go right, or somebody says something nice to us, or the news is whatever it is that we've hoped for. In that moment we feel ourselves rising on the tide of these expectations now being fulfilled because events have occurred allowing this to happen.

But this level of life, one that is lifted by the events in the world, is the exact same level of life that crashes when the winds change. And as long as we believe that favorable conditions of life are required to line up so we can feel successful, we will spend the rest of our lives trying to control everyone and everything around us; and these actions are the bitter fruit of fear.

The flowering of spiritual understanding is the same as learning to live in a Higher world. And in our awareness of this higher life we are given everything: there is a fountain of new impressions, a flood of life-force. By a new kind of light breaking loose in us we see within ourselves all that must be done to succeed in fulfilling our life purpose.

And so, just as it is given to the rose or the tree, all that we need is also given to us; Real Life is pouring into each of us right now. Here is all this perfectly abundant energy and what happens to it? It's thrown away, wasted. And just as a flower fails to bloom that has been cut off from the elements it needs to blossom, most human beings wilt for this wastage of their vital forces.

Instead of allowing our hope for a real life to be stolen from us by our unconscious involvement in what is stealing our life force, we must make a new action; we need to go to work inwardly and begin to catch all the ways in which certain parts of us are throwing away our chance to awaken.

Just before the end of our chat tonight I will give you a list of "12 Ways We Waste Our Vital Life Forces." Once we can see where we squander what we need to succeed in our wish for the Higher Life, nothing can interfere with our awakening to that same New World within us.

What do you feel like discussing tonight? What have you been working on within yourself, and how can we use this time together to grow in greater self-understanding? Remember, the more your questions are able to reflect the real discoveries you are making through your inner work, the more valuable this chat will be for everyone involved. What's on your mind?

ruthann: Is accepting all circumstances without judgment part of the process that you are discussing? Our expectations and desires seem to cause the most problems.

GF: In the end, we must see that all things in us that judge any condition in our life are themselves always reactions to the condition they judge. What this means is that the "I" that sits in judgement is nothing more than one's own past brought forward to act as a discerning power. Our past, by its very nature, judges not only the condition, but judges us as well at the same moment. The reason being for this is that each time we draw upon who we have been to know what to do, we are automatically held captive in the closed circle of our own consciousness.

Bonj: I appreciate your flower analogy. Can you explain what it means when a person loves to grow thorns? Do we purposefully hurt ourselves with our own thorns? This is hard for me to understand.

GF: It is hard for us to actually understand that there is within us a nature that cares not in the smallest way for what it does to us in exchange for the sense of self that it lends us as it drags us through its considerations. An example: One is sitting at home and thinks of a friend who betrayed him in high school: first just the thought, then comes a trail of associations, all brought up from a memory operating under its own power, calling upon relative negative emotions to sustain its push into the mind. That nature loves the negative state it actually creates, even as one may feel himself saying, "I wish I wasn't suffering from this recurring nightmare."

Bill: I'm in the midst of looking for a new home for my fiancée and myself, which I suppose could be thought of as trying to figure out how to flower. It is stressful at times and the choices are hard to make. In what spirit should one go about an endeavor like that?

GF: Everything depends on what a person is living for. If the only way we know ourselves is by the objects and possessions we surround ourselves with, then you can see how painful it would have to be to be looking for a new place to live. Under those conditions, one feels as though their very life depends upon finding the "perfect" place. If we want a life in God, in Truth, then it matters very little what we have or surround ourselves with, because our lives are being redirected to an interior world where perfection is not a condition to be sought after, but a state of higher consciousness.

augus: I spent a few years reading your books and Vernon Howard's, but about a year ago I started reading the "Commentaries" by Maurice Nicoll. Now I find myself absorbed in his "Commentaries" to the exclusion of everyone else. Is this a story you've heard before? As you know, it's hard to ride two horses at one time. Would you advise me to also include more reading of your works and of Vernon Howard's?

GF: You must understand that True understanding is in scale. What this means is that there is knowledge that one can take from books -- and to that end, Nicoll did indeed leave a brilliant legacy -- but for the individual sincerely interested in awakening, the knowledge taken from books (any books) is severely limited. There is an ancient saying that it takes a lighted candle to light a candle. It's been around as long as it has because it's true.

augus: I am doing this work on my own. The people I work with don't know I'm trying to do this work. With them (along with my family members) I am doing the second line of work. Is this enough, or do I have to join a Fourth Way group?

GF: I would never suggest to anyone arbitrarily finding a group to join simply because they call themselves this or that line of any work. There are very few True sources out there. In the meantime, continue your work the best you understand it with your family as you've described. Try to plan a visit out here to Oregon at the Life of Learning Foundation. You will find much food here.

Jilli: If I am doing the Work and don't have the opportunity to be at a foundation amongst other spiritual students, does that mean I can't grow as much as a student who is surrounded by truth?

GF: One must always remember one thing: This work, since time began, is about an individual's relationship with the Light of a Living Truth. It is that Light and Truth that determines what one receives from it, not what one insists or dreams they can otherwise acquire, regardless of their surroundings. Having said this, it is a great benefit to be in the atmosphere that a True working group provides, because within it there is not just knowledge available, but special conditions are provided for under which one's knowledge of the Truth is both tested and purified.

nadine: I find it so easy to obsessively fixate on "easy pleasures" like the joy of eating, for example. It seems like I have to use will to look beyond this fixated energy. This seems dependent on my own state of mind/sincerity of the moment. So, does daily "working at it" help to slowly ease it away? Why do I cling to passing pleasures as if this will finally make me happy... when I know intellectually that this is untrue?

GF: The work you are doing as you have described it is valuable, but only part of the puzzle. The sleeping human being lives with a "hole" in his or her soul. This hole is a certain sense of being incomplete that always finds from our own past what it says we need in that moment to fill it. This hole is actually a set of unseen opposites that we must become conscious of to be free of what they drive us to in order to satisfy their essential insatiability.

nadine: I see the insatiability you mentioned coming from "the hole in the soul." I would really like it if you could explain further about this set of opposite forces that perpetuates this cycle.

GF: If you will go to the "Audio Tapes" page in our Book Store (on our website), there is a talk there entitled, "Let God Give You the End of All Your Wants" -- tape 238. This will provide valuable insight into what we've discussed. If you don't find help in it, you may return it with no questions for a full refund.

Leslie: Is my belief that Jesus is the Son of God -- and that He died on the cross to save us from sin -- going to limit me, in your opinion?

GF: In the long run, in the True Life of an individual who seeks to live in this Living Light that is often referred to as the Christ, there does come a time when all images and beliefs become self-limiting. The reason for this is that the spirit-filled life is not apart from the spirit that it is filled with. And, while we may for awhile have to relate to higher life through ideas and beliefs, the day must come -- and it will if we're sincere in our wish -- when we set aside "childish things."

Leslie: Are you referring to my belief in Jesus being the Son of God when you say we need to "set aside childish things"?

GF: No, I am referring to any beliefs that we must call upon in order to feel at peace within ourselves. Think for a moment what this means instead of throwing it away. As long as any relationship we have with God, with the Christ, depends upon anything conditional, to that extent we are ourselves subject to fear of loss. The moment conditions change or someone challenges the sense of peace we have derived from that belief, we are thrown into a negative or stressful state. Christ's life, the True Light, doesn't need anyone to believe in it, any more than you have to believe in the sun above you in order to receive its healing warmth and light.

Jilli: Does the Work enter your dreams? Lately I've had dreams in which I am self-aware of negative states.

GF: Yes, there's no question that at certain stages in a person's development, the interior work to be done is no longer limited to one's "waking hours." In fact, you would be surprised how rich the so-called invisible world is with all of the various lessons and teachers that we need to continue our development. Persist with your work and you will watch as increasingly you are guided in both worlds.

mikejb35: I too have had some dreams lately, but not the good kind. It seems that the evil forces are really going to work on me at night, not giving me a moment's rest. Any suggestions?

GF: First, I want you to understand that if you are sincerely working upon yourself, that no dark night -- regardless of what is dredged up in it -- has an ounce of power to keep you from realizing the truth of yourself. When you lay down tonight, meditate yourself to sleep the best you can and unemotionally, when you are quiet, say to yourself, "I wish to be protected while I sleep." Direct this to God as you understand Him and you will sleep better.

mikejb35: In my waking moments, I see so many lies around that it too is like a nightmare. I feel as though everything is crashing about me. Any suggestions about this?

GF: Yes, let everything fall apart. The self that wants to control the world around it projects positive outcomes, but does so from a secret base of fear that nothing will work out. Let the world that this self projects be detected and dropped, and God will see that you receive a new home that is genuinely unshakeable.

Slick: Every night I have a recurring dream about two guys I knew in high school. Is this dream just nonsense coming out of memory, or is it trying to tell me something about myself?

GF: There are really three orders to dreams. For now it's enough to say that most dreams for most people are just recycled garbage pushing its way back into the mind for reasons known only to whatever unconscious associations or impressions befell that person during the day. Other dreams provide us with a window into ourselves when we realize all characters and conditions in the dream are merely uninvestigated expressions of our own sleeping mind.

cyk1: How can we learn more about the dreams we have? I have many vivid, sometimes unexplainable dreams that can't be attributed to past thought or occurrences.

GF: How does one make discoveries about anything that he or she is drawn to? Enter the world you wish to explore. Start where you are, with what you can.

Barry: How does one stay awake, so to speak, in the dream world of sleep? A major part of our life is spent sleeping in bed.

GF: As you awaken to yourself in this world, the energies that permit this new consciousness begin to "work" their way into subtler places in the structure of self.

Right-Now: You have discussed many times about our thought nature having its own agenda so to speak. Does that mean that there is an intelligence behind it that we are unaware of?

GF: You may be sure of your question. Within all of us there is a continual upwelling of certain unconscious, dark energies whose very passage through the psychic system stimulates the intellectual and emotional centers. As these movements are registered, our own conditioned thoughts and feelings wrap themselves around these states, and not only tell us the nature of these states, but define us by them at the same time.

Slick: I experience crippling anxiety and am unable to take practical action. How can I get past this terrible place?

GF: Do the best you can to see the following: The energy of anxiety is really only half the story behind the suffering you describe. These states in their various forms appear within us. What is in our power is to withdraw our attention from these negative states wherein we are instantly resisting the conflicted condition, so that we bring an end to our own identification with what amounts to our reaction to our own negative reaction to these states. Ponder this is and you will get help in letting go.

james: I am often troubled by strong feelings of nostalgia. The focus of the nostalgia can be anything, such as some traveling I have done, a person I met (or even ridiculously, have not met). My mind just goes to these places without warning and always leaves me with heavy, longing, sad feelings. Can you help me understand please?

GF: Our present level of self only knows itself through the sensations it gives to itself as it considers images that it generates within itself. What this means is that one's mind will drag up an idea or an image of someone or something, and in the instant that it does, appears with it a certain sense of our self that now longs to know more about that image. This is where imagination kicks in and we supply ourselves with all manner of sensations, nostalgic reactions notwithstanding. It's all an illusion, and can be seen as such once one awakens to the process by which these thoughts steal one's life in exchange for a sensation of living.

seeker: Is it possible to be perfect, or is this the wrong question?

GF: Until we can understand that when we think of the idea of perfection, we always approach it through something imagined, then we will never realize the inherent limitation in any and all such images, as they are always expressions of a mind limited by thought and time. It is when we finally expire, not the wish to be perfect, but the self that seeks this perfection through its own estimations of how to reach it, that we begin at last to know something of our own original nature that lives in a world unaffected by the limitations of trying to assess itself by measuring "this against that."

james: Why do I feel the need to impress certain people I meet?

GF: All forms of desire to impress others are rooted in a secret form of fear that floods the mind when thought tries to measure itself by evaluating others. Until a person recognizes two things, they will never be free of this fear and that compulsive need to win approval. First, no one on this earth has the power to grant you the peace your heart longs for. No one! Second, and to the same point, the people that you wish to impress so that they will like you, secretly cannot stand themselves. And when you see this, you will begin to be free of wanting anything from anyone.

Jilli: Does an aim have multi purposes? If I have an aim one day not to express negativity, I not only see how hard it is not to be negative, but it seems to show me many negative states. It seems if I don't have that aim, I don't notice as much.

GF: One must have an aim, moment-to-moment, day-to-day. No intention of ours is ever any better or stronger than our ability to remember it. When we have an aim, we are no longer merely the unconscious creature of our own self-serving consciousness. Our mind has been seeded with an intention based in a higher form of will, whose wish it is -- within us and for us -- to see the Truth about us according to that intention. Never mind any so-called negative effects of working diligently with higher intentions.

Jilli: What is the difference between depression and conscious suffering? Identification?

GF: At the root of all negative states that hold one captive there is always one's unconscious consent to embrace the state in question. This embracing can be in the form of either resisting it or welcoming it; it matters not. This is what it means to identify -- where one's sense of self is derived from the energetic condition it is in relationship with. Conscious suffering is the deliberate detachment, not from the state one suffers from, but from the self that ordinarily unconsciously identifies with it.

cyk1: I have been having serious difficulties conveying my true self and abilities towards others regarding business matters. I believe they do not have the potential to truly see due to their own lack of trueness. How can I make sure I am not doing something wrong inwardly that causes me to repel what I believe to be good? Or am I "barking up the wrong tree"? I think persistence is good, but is it?

GF: If you are trying to convey what you are calling your "true self" to others, then it does not surprise me that you are receiving different forms of resistance from them. Does an oak tree stand there and say, "Look at my mighty limbs, would you like to climb upon them?" Does the moon claim, "See how softly I shine?" One's true nature expresses itself without effort. Our task is to catch the part of ourselves that wants to be seen in any light whatsoever by anyone. That work of watching ourselves produces natural humility, a beautiful feature of your own True Nature.

cyk1: With all due respect, an oak tree does not need to keep a 40-50 hour per week job to help get out of past debt from when it was an acorn, while keeping current on basic overhead for himself and the acorns he is growing.

GF: As long as any man or woman believes that it is necessary to live in this world according to the socially mandated ideas of what it means to succeed, he will always find himself a day late and a dollar short. Even if he has the money, he sacrifices the fulfillment of his soul for the passing satisfaction of being seen as someone special in this lost world.

cyk1: This oak tree is in this harsh world as are we, but is not subject to other oaks trying to limit its natural ability and is not surrounded by scum. This is why I asked if you thought I may be pursuing wrong directions if I am not gaining in this practical manner.

GF: You have to ask yourself what it is that you believe you're gaining. Until you understand that your present purpose in life is being dictated to you by your wish to fulfill purposes inculcated in you by a world that knows nothing about contentment, you must chase empty ends.

AJ: Putting all New Age ideas about reincarnation aside, will our "true self" survive after our physical body dies and is gone?

GF: Who you really are was never born and cannot die.

c: Who you really are was never born and cannot die? Does this mean that I will suffer forever if I don't "wake up" once my physical body dies? I suppose this rules out suicide as a way to escape.

GF: While I wouldn't say that your conclusion here is correct, neither are you far from the mark. Nothing about our soul (and its destructive tendencies) changes just because we shed our mortal coil. And suicide is not an escape; it is an entrance into a condition worse than the one thought to be escaped.

AJ: Cryonic suspension (freezing the body after death to preserve it) is gaining popularity. The belief is the "astral self" needs an "anchor" on this world in order to continue to live. What do you think is the root of this fear?

GF: There is no end to the insanity of a world driven insane by the pain of not knowing what it's for. So it goes with the world, so with its peoples. Do your inner work; let this crazy, psychopathic planet go where it wishes to go. Don't go with it.

Slick: I get bored with most things almost immediately. How can I cope with feelings of monotony in my daily life?

GF: The only thing that is monotonous about one's own life is his own recurring thoughts and feelings about it. See the truth of this and work to drop the feelings you have of being bored, that are born out of reliving all that you don't want.

james: When speaking to a crowd or certain people, something always happens inside me that makes me want them to look away so that I can bury my head. Can you please help me understand this?

GF: This is deep, but if you'll consider it, you will begin to walk away from what now punishes you in front of other people. The only thing that troubles us or pains us in any way about any other human being is what we secretly want from him or her. And when you realize through your work that no one can grant you the fearless life you long for by their approval, you will at last begin to detach yourself from caring what others think about you.

sandy: I tell myself everyday that life is bad. Is this all right?

GF: If you mean that you tell yourself that life is "hard," here's something to help you get over this stone in your soul. The only thing that is hard about this life (for any of us) is that we are still ignorant of its purpose for us. Once we realize what we are meant to do with our lives, everything that happens serves our new understanding, including the so-called "hard times."

ruthann: I have had a severe insomnia problem since I was seven years old. Every once in awhile (while I wait, hoping I'll go to sleep), I sense that I am actually afraid to fall asleep. It is 48 years since I was seven, and I have found no solutions that help me fall asleep. Do you have any suggestions?

GF: As best you can understand this idea, work at it: So much of one's insomnia is born out of resisting the fact that one can't fall asleep. The mind sits and says: "When will I drift off? Will I be up all night?" Don't think about your condition; bring it fully into your awareness of yourself lying in bed. Meditate instead of cogitate. You will drift off once you stop resisting your own interior state.

cyk1: My typically long fuse is running short with my so-called friends/associates regarding their lack of consciousness, consideration and choosing to live a life of self-centeredness and fear. I was always good at letting go and being kind, even before I heard you phrase it that way. Why am I seemingly regressing in this department? I wish for like-minded people and situations, but keep getting bad people around me… lies and more lies and inconsideration… any suggestions?

GF: Vernon Howard, a great man I worked with for many years, often told his students, "If you can take it, you can make it." Here's how this applies to what you've said: A dove does not instantly grow a sharp beak and talons. A lamb does not run with wolves. Seeing where we have deceived ourselves about our own interior life and its quality is the first step in being where it's possible for these genuine changes to occur, and the subsequent inflow of grace that comes with it.

james: I have recently finished reading Paul Brunton's A Search in Secret India, and found it very inspiring. I know you also have experience of India. Do you still think it is a worthwhile journey to make for spiritual growth?

GF: Come here.

Bonj: I realize that I do bad, but I also do good. Does the good that I do cancel out the bad that I do?

GF: In a word, no.

Bonj: Can you explain further? Doesn't light cancel out darkness?

GF: In terms of Truth, the Light does not cancel the darkness; it transforms and fulfills its potential.

jss: In the morning, just before I fully wake up, I get caught up in a whirlpool of thoughts for about 5 to 10 minutes. Now that I have become aware of this, how can I work on it?

GF: The moment you open your eyes in the morning, do not lay in bed waiting for these waves of thoughts to drag you into their unconscious whirlpool. Sit up on the edge of your bed and come as fully awake to yourself as you know how to do.

cyk1: Do we really have "chakras" in our physical body? I ask because I read an article about some sort of "power novas" they just discovered in space that they believe are pure, dense energy masses that provide energy for the rest of the universe. This sounds exactly like the idea of the "chakras" in us that are the source for our "prana" that circulates.

GF: The short answer is that there are indeed energetic centers in the body, and that our body -- with all of its energetic forms -- is a microcosm of the universe.

Jon: I wish to end my anger that seems to flare itself at a moment's notice. I wouldn't say that I am an angry person, but there are times when I cannot control it. I know this anger lives deep within and I want to go deeply to remove it.

GF: The solution that you hope for does exist -- if you're willing to do the interior work it takes. Not coincidentally, just last Friday I gave a special talk on how to end the unconscious ache of being a captive of anger. Let me strongly suggest you order the tape from this talk by contacting Chris here at the Foundation. Just go to the "Contact Us" section of the website and you'll be able to reach her.

augus: Whenever I have feelings of resentment or anger towards someone, I find myself more and more witnessing a definite change in the person towards me if I inwardly acknowledge their divinity.

GF: Better than seeing what you call the divinity of another -- something largely imagined to begin with -- is to see yourself as you are in the moment. Our awareness of bitterness or blackness of spirit is what changes not only the atmosphere around us with others, but our self is changed as well; and this is good for everyone.

Jilli: Can you change another person's angry reaction, by, in that moment, acting from truth rather than old reaction? Will it change the person who is not working? Will it change their anger by seeing you react differently?

GF: This is a good, meaningful question. The answer is "yes"; what you have described is not only possible, but (in many ways) such a conscious action on your part may be the only chance that person ever has to "taste" his own nature -- and all because you have not answered his bitterness with a bitterness.

Barry: John Trudell said on a tape it's OK to be angry at what's going on in our country. If someone is not, don't trust them. What would you say to John? Part of me agreed with him. Why do you say that anger is totally wrong for us humans? We are animals, correct? When my cat gets angry at another cat for invading its territory, is that wrong or just natural instinct?

GF: For your cat, it's instinct and natural. We are another story. Each of us is created with animal natures (all these natures within us), but we are also created to transcend (or die to) these creatures whose only answer is to meet the challenges they face with violent force. We may -- if we have it in our hearts to choose so -- be so much more than mere dumb animals. We may be divine.

Jason: I have noticed so many things that need work in my life. At times it feels overwhelming. I had an intimation this week that if I just would work on one thing, it would affect everything. Am I on the right track?

GF: Yes. Never forget this following truth: The only thing in us that ever becomes discouraged over what we discover living out its life in the dark of us is the darkness itself that we have discovered there. Its only power is the deception of discouragement. Remember the Light. Let it fight for you, and the sense of defeat inherent in discouraging thoughts will melt away in it. You have Truth's promise.

DebbiE: I have said the 23rd Psalm to my child in order to help him fall asleep. Despite the section about "the valley of the shadow of death," it seemed to help him for he wanted me to repeat it on another scary night. I know that it has a much deeper message than appears on the surface, but it's nice to know that scripture can help him.

GF: Of course it's nice to teach what truths we can to those we love. Far better than reading scripture is awakening to the Light and the Life that that scripture describes. As you work and do more to awaken, your very atmosphere will sooth the frightened beasts in your children.

MikeD: I am struggling with the paradox of ownership versus attachment. For example, I own my debts (i.e., the responsibility for them), but I realize that I should not be attached to them. The same goes for ownership in terms of manifesting the success. But how do I avoid being attached to either?

GF: Asking how one avoids being attached to something is like asking how do I let go of the anchor I'm holding onto that just fell off the boat. When we understand, when we're able to see that no attachment exists without dependency, and that no dependency lives without fear behind it, then we no longer have to ask ourselves how we shall detach ourselves from what we know is hurting us. The seeing is the freeing.

Jilli: Are our relationships with other people always a mirror of ourselves?

GF: In a word, yes. We meet ourselves everywhere we go through the life that reveals -- or that reflects back to us -- what we have brought with us (in our nature) into that moment.

seeker: Why am I content with who/what I am? I do not commit crimes. Isn't this enough?

GF: If you are content with what and who you are, as you are, what's the problem?

Jilli: When I feel negative toward someone, is that always something I need to see about myself?

GF: Yes, this is an accurate way of meeting negative manifestations that come up in us when we meet others -- regardless of their character.

Jilli: What is an example of positive behavior that is false?

GF: It's not the behavior itself at question; it is always the interior motive behind our actions that determines not just "truthfulness," but what we receive for our efforts.

Bonj: I appreciate the time you spend with us monthly. I wish it could be twice a month. I really am helped by everyone's questions and your answers. Have you considered expanding our meetings?

GF: A number of students do have an ongoing discussion group, or at least the forum for this, in our Community Zero set up. This is a special web address for any Tape Club person who wishes to join. The site also has other benefits not found on the our website available to the public. You can e-mail Chris or Tim through the usual web link on the Homepage if you want more information.

alex: Somewhere growing up I was instilled with the idea to always do your best in all things. I have been gifted with many above average accomplishments but never anything major (this includes spirituality). In every way I am attached to people happy being STUCK in their problems (while I try my best to meet life and respond accordingly), and to top it all, they are outwardly prospering more than me. I can't seem to achieve my independence.

GF: We should strive always to be and do the best we can. What others do or don't do is of relatively little importance to our true success. And real independence is spiritual, not physical. Nothing in the world can keep you from realizing this truth… nothing.

Barry: Is expressing emotions -- as in rock 'n roll -- not right for the soul? What if it's negative hard rhythms with spiritual lyrics? Nature is not always peaceful (hurricanes volcanoes, etc.).

GF: As we grow, we become increasingly awake to what is good for us and what is not. The more you can be present to yourself, and not caught up in the "pulse" of what you are living in, the clearer you will see what serves you and what does not.

GM: I have a neighbor who is always looking at me very strangely, and if I greet her, she will answer and then turn around and just stare at me. She might make some off-the-wall comment about me. Also when she comes near, I can tell because I feel a very hot feeling go over my face. I don't understand it. Maybe I'm psychic or something? I get these hot feelings when one of my kids are going to call me or when my husband is coming home from work. I'm trying to figure out if this is normal.

GF: These things are normal, and we should be careful not to make too much of them. Human beings -- by in large -- are completely undiscovered territory. Our task is to bring into this darkness (of our own hearts and minds, with all their sleeping potential) the living Light that awakens us to all that we are. Then, by the way, we no longer are concerned with how others behave towards us.

GF: Our time together on-line has nearly run its course, so now I wish to give you the remaining notes that I promised to post before we sign off.

As we discussed before the chat, all creatures in life are created to reach their natural fruition. The Great Life generously provides all of them with everything they need to fulfill their promise. This same abundance holds true for our spiritual awakening as well. Everything we need to succeed is forever raining down upon and within us.

The spiritually awakened life is not something that one achieves, like an award for fine art or some other measured performance. The true Higher Life comes to us naturally and reveals and expresses itself in anyone who realizes that, like the sun above us, this Living Light within us is always present.

It is we who are absent from this eternally indwelling Life, not because these vital forces are withheld from us, but because we waste them. Following are 12 Ways We Waste our Vital Life Forces, and for whose loss we remain sound asleep spiritually. Study these thieves closely and catch them in the act of stealing your chances for Higher Life as they drain away your vital life forces.

1. All forms of useless talking: Useless talking is a plague. Not only does it waste your life forces, but it also drains the force of any hapless soul you corner to bend his ear. Besides, most idle gabbing serves only one thing: a false sense of self. Useless talking wastes our vital energy, and until we stop wasting it, we will never hear what Real Life would have us learn.

2. Being wrongly involved in the lives of others: We get all wrapped up in the life of everyone else around us -- even commenting to ourselves about how strangers dress -- because we have no life of our own. Until we can stay out of other people's lives, we will never know the pleasure or the power of what it means to be ourselves!

3. Daydreams of any nature, past or future: It makes no difference whether our daydreams are filled with pain or with pleasure. Daydreams always rob from us because in exchange for them we are paid only in the coin of our own past sensations. And in exchange for these false fulfillments we throw away the possibility of receiving new impressions that are Real Life themselves.

4. Using excessive emotions: Do you know people who are always on the edge emotionally? Everything is a big deal, a crisis. When we live like this, not only do we drain ourselves by allowing our centers to be pumped up and then drained mechanically, but we also tend to drain everyone else we meet with these same unconscious actions.

5. Useless thinking, such as speculating "why?": When we ask, "Why did this happen?" in that very moment we throw away what we need to change the nature that caused the conflict we question. "Why?" is after the fact; it is only in the middle of the fact, only when a person is present and awake to himself, that he can catch the parts of himself that compromise him. Stop useless thinking.

6. Being identified with anything: To be identified with something means to merge yourself with it psychologically. We never identify with anything other than what are our own images about people and events. When we are identified like this we are connected to something beneath us, because thought is a lower aspect of our being, not its Divine character. In this way, we pour ourselves out of ourselves.

7. Overindulging ourselves: Overeating, smoking, drinking, over-anything is a killer. It is the result of an imbalanced nature seeking balance in what it claims will bring it the comfort it needs. When we overindulge in something, no matter what it is -- whether it's emotion or Eskimo Pie -- we are at that moment costing ourselves our spiritual lives, not to mention our physical well-being.

8. Being concerned with how others see you: Why do we care what human beings think of us? Because our present level of self derives its sense of being by thinking about what others are thinking about it; and the more this self can feel that the picture it holds of how others see it is a good one, the better this pathetic self feels about itself! What a lie. What a waste!

9. Puttering around in order to keep yourself feeling productive: Do you want to know what it would be to be productive? It would be to be awake to yourself right now. Then you wouldn't have to try to figure out ways to busy yourself so you feel like you're doing something with your life, because God's life itself would be busy doing with you what you are intended to have done with you.

10. Rushing through or to anything: Rushing about is a way of life on this planet! Why is this? We feel incomplete; we don't have what we think we should to be happy and whole, so we rush to get "there" -- to what is imagined as missing. Why do we feel this way? We have holes in our souls. And the more we rush, the more we drain ourselves of the only thing that can make us whole in our soul.

11. Becoming frustrated, impatient, or angry: When we're frustrated, we think we're frustrated with something. We are never frustrated with anything other than our own understanding, period. All impatience and anger is an act of lashing out at what our present nature calls the object of our pain, when our own unenlightened state is the cause of our conflict. Want more light? Stop wasting fuel!

12. Wrestling with anxious feelings and trying to think our way out of pain: We wrestle with anxious thoughts and confused feelings, trying to pin them down. To us, it feels like this struggle is mandatory to be free of their pain. This is a lie. The more we wrestle with what is wrecking us, the more we get wrecked for our relationship with them, so that we lose both the fight and our vital forces.

For extra benefit I highly recommend that you make your own list of the ways in which you are letting your life be stolen. Everything we do to discover where our vital life forces are being drained out of us ensures we will have that much more Real Life of our own.

Our time has run out. Remember, your wish to awaken must be supported by your inner work to that end. The Truth wants us to succeed in becoming whole and higher human beings. Let it help you by helping yourself to a sincere study of these ideas. Persist with your wish to be free.

See you next month on September 4. Until then, remember yourself and keep the Light with you at all times. Good night.

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GF: Welcome everyone. Before we begin tonight let me present a few thoughts about what is required of us to walk away from useless suffering. No one can hope to know such freedom without first understanding certain truths as to what keeps us captives of unconscious negative forces. We will discuss some of these insights now, and more at chat's close.

Nothing is harder for us to accept about ourselves than the yet-to-be seen fact that, whatever form this pain may take, we play an unconscious role in our own habitual suffering. Some of us are prone to high anxiety, while others can't escape those low dark states associated with depression and self-loathing. But the fact remains:

We must challenge this involuntary, and often intractable, refusal to even entertain the idea of our complicity in what compromises us; for without gathering the self-knowledge we need to nullify this conflicted condition in our psyche, how can we hope to end the heartaches that begin there? How can we hope to heal something we won't even look at!

On the other hand, nothing is healthier for us than the beautiful process of awakening to how we have been unwittingly involved in our own aching. And we stand in good and wise company if we will consent to make such a discovery in ourselves. Down through the ages all True teachings have disseminated the following lesson:

Freedom from any compulsive, self-wrecking behavior must begin with our recognition that we are voluntarily serving that which compromises us, even though we may strongly claim the counter is true. Such a conscious awareness of (this) conflict inherent in our own divided mind may be difficult to endure, but only if we fail to realize this last point:

This conscious awareness (and it alone) is the seed of a new action that eventually flowers in a self-wholeness that is one and the same with the true self-freedom we are all seeking. With these ideas in mind, let's gather the rest of the facts we need to let go of all regrets by separating ourselves from what has been useless suffering.

If you watch animals in the wild, as the author enjoys doing, one thing is obvious: The nature of any animal and its natural experience of life are indivisibly related. For example, deer attract biting flies. In the high heat of summer you won't see one without the other, and I have seen deer driven nearly crazy by these pests. They have no choice in this seasonal torment.

I make this point because, much in the same way as an animal's nature attracts to it the elements that define that creature's life, the same holds true in many ways for human beings. Not only does our present nature attract what we call our life experience, but it also determines the way in which we see and experience these same events.

We may doubt this timeless truth -- that one's inner nature determines one's experience of the outer life -- but the outcome remains the same. To continue the earlier metaphor, all of us know what it's like to find ourselves in a swarm of stinging thoughts and feelings -- where we are unable to outrun them or otherwise escape their punishing presence.

But this is where the similarity ends, or at least where it ought to, between our nature and that of our animal brothers and sisters. An animal has no choice but to tolerate what its nature attracts to it from the world around it. We alone may choose what we receive from life; that is provided we are willing to awaken to our True Nature.

All of us have felt certain deep and silent promptings to realize our Original Self, even though we may not yet have recognized them as such. For instance, we all feel intuitively that we are not created to live in torment of any kind, that we are more than hapless victims forced to yield to passing conditions. And as we shall see, this is a true intuition.

We are not made by that Great Intelligence that balances whole star systems to suffer from the conflict inherent in what amounts to an unbalanced understanding of our own essential nature! And this is why if we ever wish to gain conscious control over our present nature -- along with what it attracts into our life -- we must gain true self-knowledge.

But this needed higher knowledge cannot be acquired from sources outside of us; it must be gained through honest self-discovery. Only real changes in the level of our self-understanding can change our present nature, for they are very much related. Change one and we change the other, including what it has been attracting into our lives.

Most of us know or have seen someone whose unconscious thoughts and feelings serve to attract painful events into his or her life. Of course, as a rule, this same person blames his unhappiness on evil people, or on a world set against him. But our higher understanding allows us insight into the real reason for his continuing misfortune.

The problem is that when it comes to understanding ourselves by looking into the mirror of our own experience, our once clear vision fails us; which helps explain, in part, the Sufi teaching regarding the necessity for "polishing the mirror of the heart." But as with all such spiritual ideas concerning being more self-discerning, there is more to it than meets the eye!

For by the degree we empower ourselves to see what is Real, so are we at once set free from the powerful grip of painful illusions that once imprisoned us. Before we close the chat tonight I will pass along a simple illustration to help shed more light on this last crucial insight.

We can get started now, but please do keep your questions and comments based in your own discoveries, and not in mere philosophical speculation. What do you want to discuss? What are you working on in yourself? Let's see what we can learn tonight. You are on.

Akaysha: Do you believe it is necessary to dredge up past issues, acknowledge and make effort to release them, or that we can move forward without doing this?

GF: No, there is little to no true value in recollecting painful past issues. One of the things that one must come to discover is that whatever it is that may need correction in our life, it can only be corrected in the moment that it is present in its essence and met in that same moment by one's awareness of those contradictory elements in himself. Then the Light does for us what it is intended to do, which is make us whole. That's the healing.

Eric: Sometimes when I see nervous, anxious, worrisome, despairing, and any other self-tormenting thoughts and/or feelings surging through me, I seem to detect another little subtle thought saying, "These thoughts and feelings are necessary; there is no escaping them." And that vague thought seems to come (especially) AFTER I have questioned the necessity of those earlier self-tormenting thoughts and feelings. Please, do you have any insight into that?

GF: What you have described is absolutely natural as long as we remain in relationship with the very nature that is providing the same punishing thoughts and feelings you've described. It has to say there is no escaping "me" because without this painful opposite in you to resist, this sleeping sense of self can derive no other sensation of life for itself. This self is resistance itself. Knowing this lets us let go.

Peggy: I appreciate your comment about the fact that we are voluntarily serving our compromising states. I say I want certain things, but I am not doing what I need to do to manifest them. This has been going on my whole life. I look forward to your further comments on this phenomenon.

GF: Yes, by all means stay until the end of the chat to read the remainder of the essay that goes deeply into this problem and then delivers new knowledge that can become a true solution.

BillH: I have noticed that some activities don't bring the sense of happiness they used to. Is there a good way to tell if this is due to a problem such as depression versus a positive change of growing out of those activities?

GF: The difference between having outgrown the love of a lower sensation versus being a captive of a dark depression should be something fairly easy to discern. For starters, when we are ready to leave certain worldly pursuits behind us, we are not made unhappy due to the understanding that has brought us to that point. On the other hand, if we find ourselves sorrowful over something, whatever it is, it's clear we haven't outgrown either that condition or the consciousness attracted to it.

James1: I too have had these activities make me happy in the past but now leave me empty. Have I grown beyond these sensory vibrations? Is my looking back the pain? I've caught glimpses of my first response to new things: dread. I want to see more, but it's scary and shameful.

GF: In the long run, what we eventually realize is that what we really want is not something new to desire, but to be free of wants (that compromise us) altogether. This losing interest in the world's power to please us begins with losing interest in the pleasures that once made us content. To that extent it often feels as though we are losing ourselves because our former sense of self depended upon these same sensations.

mikejb35: How do we move from independence (once gained) to interdependence with others, such as in relationships, business dealings, and the like?

GF: The assumption in your question is that you have already gained independence, but if I may say so, the condition that you're calling independence should be placed under a certain amount of doubt. Here's why: True independence is automatically perfectly interdependent with all people and events it enters into. False independence is usually based in some kind of fear or control behavior by which we want to protect ourselves from some forthcoming pain.

Diojeneez: God told Moses, "I am that I am." Vernon Howard says, "God IS consciousness." Please, make the connection.

GF: One of the main stumbling blocks for spiritual seekers of a God-centered life is the fantastic but mistaken idea that one can have a life in God apart from the life of God that that life is in. Of course there are stages to self-realization relative to relationship with the Divine, but "I am that I am" simply means that there is nothing apart from me to know me other than what is me.

Diojeneez: Ah, so God is the absence of me. So the question, "What is God?" makes no sense.

GF: In essence, that's correct. Even God himself says to have no graven images, and originally was the God with no name for just this reason. A divided nature can never know what is Whole.

mobilman: There is us and there is the One. Where my question lies is in who is expected to do what part of this transformation?

GF: There is an old teaching that says something like this: "If one wishes to have God's life, he or she must give everything toward that desire, even though nothing that one does toward such a desire can actually effect the outcome of that desire. Then, knowing this, one must forget that he knows it. The reason for this is that True self-realization is something God grants on His own, in His own way, and all unbeknownst to the one who would have such a transformation take place. Our task is to love the Light; the Light will do the rest if we'll simply hold it first and foremost.

Rael: I see the hardened pattern of habitual responses in which my life is lived, but have been experiencing an ever diminishing energy to find freedom from this cage. Is there a source of new energy to be found?

GF: The energy that one needs to proceed upward on the interior path is given to him or her in direct proportion to the clarity with which they see the actual content of their own being -- much in the same way a man groggily napping in his house finds instant energy to leap from it when he sees it is on fire. So is it for us. Our task is to watch ourselves and allow what we discover to lead us where it will.

redgreen: Guy, are you awake?

GF: The reason that your question cannot be answered the way you wish is because whether or not I am what you would call awake is not the issue. The only thing that one should be concerned with is what is going through him or her right now, and not the condition of any other human being around them. Besides which, no matter which way I would answer your question, it would produce a problem for you. Work on yourself to awaken and then you will know without asking who is or is not awake.

TJ: The way in which I have grown through listening and understanding many of your talks has been through repetition. If I relocate to Southern Oregon for the sake of being closer to a true source of truth, will I receive the same benefit? How could I when it takes me several times to listen to one talk or idea, let alone several per week? I think it would be great to be in proximity to Life of Learning Foundation, but want to know if it's the right method.

GF: There is a tried and true axiom that says it takes a lighted candle to light a candle. If your interest is in awakening to yourself, then you would do well to come for a visit and see how the talks impact your life. The difference between being in the atmosphere of the live meeting versus listening to a tape is the difference between standing on the seashore and smelling the ocean air versus buying an aerosol can called "Ocean Spray."

TJ: I have been on several of what appear to be promising job interviews where I'm told many positive things, yet I'm left hanging, avoided, and lied to. I am wondering if it is me or something I am doing to make these people uncomfortable. I see their sleep and know the job is not right for me but I desperately need income. Please comment. I'm running out of financial resources.

GF: There's no way that I'm able to tell you through a written answer what you seek to resolve this confusion. I can fairly much assure you that the old idea "it takes two to tango" is never far off the mark. However, try as best you can to not ponder past defeats, as this only builds unconscious resistance in you in moments forthcoming where you need to be present to yourself and awake. Start over -- that's the Golden Rule. It always works.

mikejb35: In the Old Testament, it says something like (God speaking): "I will write my commandment (of love) on their hearts." Is this the same as saying that God placed the Kingdom of Heaven within?

GF: Yes, that is basically what the statement means, although the interior meaning of "my commandment of love on their hearts" has to do with a Living Light that is the actual essence of the spiritual heart that longs for God and His life. In other words, it is not a place one reaches for, but a presence interiorly we are created to become conscious of and in.

Diojeneez: The Kingdom of Heaven is within, but conscious men like Swedenborg say there are actually three heavens, and "few will understand me." Swedenborg is no idiot, so I researched this. In some saint biographies it said, "they passed into the third heaven," at death. Is that related to these teachings at all?

GF: Christ himself said "my Father's kingdom has many mansions." In this he is referring, as are other True men of spirit, to the fact that within our own sleeping consciousness there dwells a Living Light whose presence may effortlessly penetrate into what amounts to an infinite number of higher kingdoms. These same kingdoms are often referred to as being in a triad, hence the number three.

DocBlock: Is the west coast higher in vibration than the east coast, or are the only vibrations within our own minds?

GF: I'll answer this question, but only in the hopes you can understand the higher meaning of what I say. First, just like in the human body and its various centers of sensitivity and organic relationship with its own parts, the earth is fashioned similarly. That means there are indeed places where naturally higher frequencies may be found. But these differences mean almost nothing to an individual who is still thinking about life instead of investigating the thought nature and its low vibration.

Eric: When I see myself anxiously and worriedly fawning in order to gain the approval of another person, as I have spent the last 3 weeks of my life doing with a girl I recently met (if only I could just relax and be pleasant), should I just watch and endure the pain of watching my present nature in action? And should I also make the "non-effort" of not trying to do anything about it? Am I on the right track here?

GF: First, catching yourself being a weak man for the purposes of pleasing the opposite sex is a good discovery in itself. Make it your intention to watch yourself as closely as you can while trying to be someone instead of doing the natural work of seeing that only something in you that feels it's no one struggles to be someone in the eyes of another. This kind of observation will gradually free you from the futile and painful practice of trying to impress others.

TJ: Certain loved ones of mine are being faced with horrific circumstances and losing their ability to function naturally. This is affecting all around them and there seems to be no way out of these problems. How can we stay focused on God's love and keep faith when certain horrors come into existence? It is hard to believe God is allowing this when a loved one loses necessary human functions to live and is caused to hurt others.

GF: I would turn your question around and instead of asking how can we stay focused on God's love and keep faith in the face of certain horrors to come, ask what is it in me that wants to identify and derive a sense of self from any imagined horror? Everything that takes place in our lives is potentially what each of us needs for the next step in our own spiritual development. This includes not only our own suffering, but the suffering of those that we love as well. Once we learn this great secret... that the entire cosmos serves the spiritually seeking man or woman, we are well on our way to realizing our place in God's great heaven.

Langston: Can you please provide some insight on how one should approach moving closer to a location where Truth is taught, when a result of that move will cause one to have to "leave behind" their family?

GF: If by "leave behind their family" you are referring to small children and a wife, then one must be very diligent and discerning with such choices. We are responsible for our actions in this life until they are complete, and that includes taking care of those who are necessarily dependent upon us. If on the other hand you are talking about a family being your parents or other relatives, pack your bags; it's time to leave things that are meant for children to the children that want them.

Langston: Yes, in fact I do mean a wife and small child. I am standing before a crossroads here. I want to provide for my family, and I necessarily do so, but I need to also be surrounded by like-minded people and an authentic school. I have asked my wife to come with me, but, she refuses.

GF: I understand what you have said. Now you must understand it would be not only improper, but actually unjust were I to guide you with actions in this circumstance. You alone know the conditions of your relationship, and you alone must make the determination as to the extent of what it means to be responsible versus being afraid of feeling guilty. Keep working on yourself and hold your wish for a new life in place. God will never leave you out of the picture.

BillH: I recently read some material which covered concepts like our "inner child" or "inner critic" and the value of having a dialog with them. Are these examples of the false selves you speak of or something else? Is there value in having dialogs with inner selves that don't normally have an opportunity to speak?

GF: There is no value having a dialogue with oneself, regardless of what we may call this "self" with which we speak. Your time is far better spent listening to the dialogue in your head that doesn't need you to take one of the parts in the play.

BARRY: I was listening to an old live recording from KPFK today coming back from work. You said something like "I've had students who believe they are observing or being mindful, however what they are doing is using the mindful practice as a new sense of self." How does one know the difference? I feel I'm observing most of the time correctly, but maybe not?

GF: It's important that one try to discern the difference between being awake to the whole of oneself versus being absorbed by the act of trying to be awake to oneself. When we are awake to ourselves, there is a seer who is conscious of all things being seen, including its own presence in the mix. In self-absorption, we are secretly identified with seeing and as such are deceived as to our action.

redgreen: It would be supportive to know that at least one person is awake. With the exception of a handful of celebrated spiritual people, I am not aware of anyone being awake.

GF: I hate to pop your bubble, but 99% of what the world considers celebrated spiritual people are in some ways worse than asleep. The best I can tell you is that a lion never fails to recognize another lion, and never mistakes it for anything else. Within you is the Christ Life, that nature of Light that can never mistake darkness for anything other than it is. Strive to realize this Light in yourself and it will not only guide you where you need to be, but it will effortlessly confirm your actions.

BARRY: I don't know what to do with my life and feel I don't fit in. I'm 32, have no career, no money, no direction of what I should do with my life. Is this a good thing? The "TPIC" has lots of ideas about what I should be doing, but how does one know what the person that is anchored outside of time should do with one's life? Should I just wait until I just know?

GF: Look, you may not know what you want to do with your life, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you want a spiritual life you must learn what it means to be a good householder. This means that you must provide for yourself by some measure and must never be a dependent upon others or our social welfare systems. Begin with starting in the right place, which is throwing yourself into whatever it is you most fear doing, including meeting if necessary the parts of you that want to do nothing. You'll learn from this if you'll do it.

BARRY: It has been said that one's calling is pointing to the road (or the direction where to look for the road) but not giving a map. Do you agree?

GF: No map exists by which one can move from what is untrue to what is true. Truth alone is the guide and the goal.

mobilman: On the subject of attention, I once heard you say something to the effect that "if we are aware of anything, we are aware of the object of our attention, but not the nature of our attention." Does that mean we have more than one type of attention?

GF: True awareness must include both object and subject, as awareness transcends the opposites that produce the illusion that there is a difference between the observer and the observed.

ruth: I have read material by some authors that say we can "experience" God and be aware of Him and His kingdom. I long to be able to do that; however, I don't know how to even start the process. Do you have any advice?

GF: Start where you are, not where you want to be. It is in the growing awareness of our actual condition that we are at last made ready to receive something that is already within our condition, but that is covered up by our identification with that condition.

MichaelCorrinet: "I" experienced "God" directly when I was seventeen. I spent three years of utter bliss and clear thinking, then gave it up for reasons too lengthy to go into here. I'm just starting to reawaken. Any advice?

GF: Lend your whole heart, your mind, and your soul to your wish to realize your relationship with the Living Light. If you indeed had an awakening as you've described, you can never give up such an opening in yourself, and it only awaits your returned attention for its re-intervention into your life.

MichaelCorrinet: I want to awaken fully again, with all my heart. I live in a darkness brighter than most people have ever imagined, yet I yearn for what I had.

GF: You may be assured of this: There are instances where for reasons known only to God, he touches a soul and illuminates it. Sometimes it's only for five seconds, sometimes it lasts for five months. But He withdraws His Light, and when He does, there is a terrible darkness born of that absence. The thing to remember is that this terrible darkness is not a punishment, but stands as invitation for that same soul to give itself up to the Light it longs to live within.

BARRY: Which book or tapes would you recommend for the questions I have asked in this chat?

GF: I think that Design Your Destiny would give you some needed (inner) direction as well as the right encouragement to start (life) over. As for tapes, if you haven't heard the material in the "Heart and Soul of Freedom" album, it will prove helpful in countless ways. As always, just return anything that you feel doesn't add more light to your life.

BARRY: What would you think of someone putting these ideas of yours into rock music? Also, is it possible to be just a messenger and not a priest in doing so? I don't have all of it figured out, but how could I deliver it?

GF: The day may come when these teachings are presented in a musically staged performance. It is in the back of my mind, albeit distantly. Whatever we do that isn't motivated by love must fail (us) even if it seems not. And what we do for love succeeds without messenger or "priest."

BARRY: Would you say most thought is useless? It seems to me most thought is an addiction.

GF: You are not far off the mark.

Diojeneez: "An evil generation seeks a sign, no sign will be given but that of Jonah the prophet." The first part is clear, what does that second part mean?

GF: I have never considered this question, and I have no immediate insight into it either.

Kieran: Because of your teachings (and my work), I am starting to see the shallow values in myself and others. I am beginning to be able to really laugh at myself now. But I am also laughing at others' ignorance and vanity, etc. Some see me as being uncaring and insensitive even though I naturally have less anger in me because of my work. Could you give any advice please?

GF: Be careful not to identify with anything in you that feels in any way superior to those around you. Light is naturally recognized as being different in nature than darkness. So let it be with your understanding with regard to others with less self-knowledge.

TIPS Question 1: You say that everything we do and every action we take is born out of an opposite. I can understand and see that. It seems an inescapable law of this existence. Yet you also talk about transcending these opposites. Is this an awareness of this law and knowing it is taking place, or are you talking of a life under a different law which governs our action?

GF: We have within us a certain conscious property that is not of the same order of life, or reality, as is thought. Commonly we call this aspect of ourselves higher awareness. This light that is a form of consciousness can dwell in the opposites and be conscious of their content without being drawn into being identified with the "this or that" aspect of these opposites. This is why we do the work to awaken ourselves, because this higher nature lives above the ache of the opposites.

TIPS Question 2: Our world appears to celebrate the public expression of all kinds of emotion. What is the proper place for emotion in our spiritual work?

GF: Higher emotion never has self-consciousness or a motive attached to it. It is a pure and innocent energy that requires nothing to confirm its existence in order to feel the contentment that is its natural being. Public expression of emotion is almost always for the purpose of winning attention or otherwise placing someone in the spotlight of self-generated sensation.

TIPS Question 3: Since the beginning of human history this planet has been ruled by the aggressive use of force. Why? Will it ever change?

GF: Because the only strength that human beings know is the assertion of an opposite, which of course is not real strength but always a form of resistance bred of conflict.

TIPS Question 4: How does your work relate to the 12-step programs? I've noticed similarities.

GF: The only time it's possible for true change to take place in one's life is when at last that same person realizes that he is incapable of making true changes through his own efforts. Then that man or woman has been made receptive to a relationship with something greater than themselves that alone can heal themselves.

TIPS Question 5: If your disturbance arrives on the back of another, how do you use AAA [accept-agree-allow] and keep from being taken advantage of?

GF: By working to accept, allow, and agree to any moment such as you've described, one will find they cannot be "taken advantage of" because there will be no separate self sitting outside of that relationship to either act as judge or victim.

TIPS Question 6: What is it about people (me) who always seek comfort, avoid going the extra distance, and feel as though they have tried and tried to reach their goal, but haven't?

GF: By and large, the reason that most of us won't go the extra mile is because there's no one there within us capable of asserting such a will over our essentially divided nature. Before we can actually "do" real inner work, we must have discovered how fractured our present nature actually is. The awareness of this division within us is the beginning of its coalescence, which leads to the ability to do what you have asked.

TIPS Question 7: How can I be more productive as a human being and translate that into my business?

GF: In the end, clarity is the same as productivity. The more clear we are within ourselves about ourselves and our aims, the more effectively we not only achieve these, but are able to communicate them to others.

TJ: How can we then see with more clarity? Do we always need crisis to give us clarity or are we meant to be limited in certain ways?

GF: Clarity is not an effect of something, but is its original state. Clouded minds want to clear themselves, which is impossible. We need to see where confusion dominates our life and then stop doing the will of those parts of us involved in this secret form of self-punishment. Then clarity reveals itself in unlimited measures relative to our capacity to receive such wholeness.

TIPS Question 8: You have both condemned the use of imagination and spoken of the right use of imagination. This is a powerful mechanism of the mind. Would you elaborate on the proper use of imagination in the work?

GF: The improper use of imagination is when the mind works by itself to produce first an image and then a self in relationship with that image that derives its experience from that creation. This is classic division in the mind and is destructive in that it leads nowhere other than to self-induced pleasures.

TIPS Question 9: You have given us many practical steps (such as "accept-agree-allow") and I'm seeing that the most important thing I need to do is to be awake to the moment that brings the lessons. What can I do to strengthen my ability to remember that intention?

GF: Never make an excuse for yourself again when meeting the fact that by falling asleep to yourself you stumbled and fell and hurt yourself or someone else. We must all continually work to realize the relationship between our experience in life and what we are connected with in our mind that produces this experience.

TIPS Question 10: Is it right to feel a sense of urgency to do this work?

GF: Either one feels such an urgency or one doesn't. There's no question of right or wrong relative to the sense one has that his or her soul depends upon the steps needed to develop it. If I myself feel an urgency for transformation, then that urgency stands. If I don't have this, then I don't. Learn to obey the parts of you that are telling you what you must do to fulfill the purpose of your life. Learn to disregard all other interior voices.

TIPS Question 11: Is there a way to tell if another person is beyond all hope of turning from Darkness?

GF: Yes, but best to concern yourself with increasing your love for the Light than to worry over such things. Besides, it is only the Living Light in one that can make such a determination without negative or self-righteous judgment in it.

TIPS Question 12: How do you receive your wisdom and knowledge?

GF: One must learn what it means to ask for what one really wants. Anyone who asks for a life in the Light -- and who will pay for what they receive -- will be given what he or she requests. It is a Law.

TIPS Question 13: When one has a chronic illness that affects not only the body, i.e. fatigue, but also mind (severe vertigo/dizziness) how can one continue to work at not getting identified with one's inability to maintain attention and make real progress?

GF: Everything, no exception, can be used for one's spiritual development. Identification with unwanted conditions can consume what little energy we have, so instead of allowing yourself to be caught in such self-centered considerations, drop these thoughts as you catch them and you will find new energy available for new and higher interior work.

TIPS Question 14: What can I do to maintain my awakened state for a period of time?

GF: Don't ask what can I do to maintain this or that, but use your attention to catch where it is that you get put deeper into (spiritual) sleep!

TIPS Question 15: If a person is doing something illegal and it affects one, should it be left alone and let it run its course, or should one intervene and try to make it right?

GF: We must never do what we know in our hearts is the wrong thing for us to be doing.

TIPS Question 16: This question is not to justify eating junk food, but could it be true that refined foods can be transformed to a usable form when we have grown in our spiritual life? God created all things. Man changes these things, but once we are living a higher life, will our bodies use the elements differently?

GF: We are in bodies that require certain elements -- in certain states of balance -- in order to know physical well being. Don't eat foods for the sake of convenience or just for their pleasure quotient. The rest will handle itself.

TIPS Question 17: Many people believe that they need to pay money to spiritually oriented therapists who can tell them why and how they are ailing and what to do about it. People believe that emotions can be suppressed and uncovered through this. How true is this notion that they can get better?

GF: Let those who think the path to true self-newness can be found by reliving what is old and without life find their own way through this mistaken thinking.

GF: Our time has nearly run its course for tonight, but before we say good night I wish to send along the rest of the special material I wrote for our discussion on how to walk way from useless and unconscious suffering.

Imagine a young child alone in a darkened bedroom at night... maybe you can draw upon your own experience as this story unfolds. A truck drives by, headed down the neighborhood street, and its bright lights pass through the bedroom window -- causing a large shadow to suddenly appear on the opposing wall.

The child, awakened by the truck as it rumbles by, opens his eyes to see this menacing looking dark shape race from one corner of the room to the other. And because he witnesses what he cannot understand (as his youth allows him no knowledge of the actual nature of nighttime shadows), his tender mind is instantly flooded with fear.

Hearing the child cry out, caring parents rush into the room to explain the truth of what just happened: "Darling, what you saw dive into that dark corner and disappear is nothing more than a shadow; and you must understand that even though we can see their form, shadows are not real; of themselves they have no substance, which means they cannot hurt you."

Then, one of the parents -- perhaps using a flashlight to back-light a hand so as to cast a creepy shadow on the same wall -- would use her deliberate display to make this final point: "It's only our fearful feelings about these shadows that give them the power to frighten us." And then, drawing nearer to her son, she makes sure she has his attention: "Watch closely now and your father and I will show you the truth of this." And right at that moment the child's father turns on the overhead light in the room, making the shadow figure disappear. She continues in a gentle but firm voice: "So do you see, my darling? Shadows are really nothing more than a temporary form of nothingness that our own fearful reactions make seem real. But they are not!"

When she sees her child smile back, she kisses him good night and turns off the light. Her mind is at peace, knowing full well that her son will never again feel the punishing fear that comes with believing in shadows. We may share this same confidence if we wish. All that is asked of us is to see what is true and then to act upon it.

Just as this attentive parent intends -- for the new knowledge she delicately plants in her child's mind -- that he should never again be tormented by the presence of any shadowy shape, so too does the Living Truth hold out a similar instruction for us to take into our mind: All thoughts are but mere shadows. They have no substance of themselves other than what we impart to them as we see them start to take shape upon the walls of our own unenlightened mind.

One brief illustrative example will clarify this last idea. Take a man who catches a glimpse of a couple ahead of him as they just turn the corner. For a second he thinks he has seen the love of his life walking hand in hand with a complete stranger! Fear and anxiety race through him as he runs to confirm what he's afraid to even imagine. But here's the key lesson in this unfolding drama: What this man actually sees in his mind's eye as he sprints to the end of the next corner is not what he had seen only the moment before; for he now sees life around him through the torment-filled thought-bred images of what his life will be like once he turns the corner and confirms his worst fear! We have all been battered by some such bad dream.

These painful emotions of high anxiety feel as real as they do because they are born out of our being fully identified with dozens of unwanted and fear-filled images passing before our mind's eye. These pain-filled images are a lie. They always are. Besides, as it turns out, the woman he saw wasn't his sweetheart after all!

This happy ending is not the point; there's even a happier ending in store for us if we will follow this spiritual story all the way to its full unfolding. When we think about any painful event, be it only twenty minutes old or as long as thirty years ago, we are looking at nothing more than a shadow of something that once was, but that is no more! But these pressing thought-produced shadows running though the mind have connected to them, through unconscious emotional associations, the very stuff of the suffering that first appeared with them; and it is important, for the following reasons, that we recognize how this psychological process continues to unfold from here:

Like the small child in our story who gives the passing shadow on the wall the power to produce fear in himself, we unknowingly imbue our own imaginings with the power to punish us as we -- seemingly, naturally -- struggle to resist these painful images passing through our psyche. Which brings us to an essential point in this study:

The pain we feel in ourselves as we recollect what once wrecked our life is real in itself, but the cause of this suffering is a lie. Can this be? Let's see. A simple question answers the mystery: If there weren't something in us wanting to revisit these painful old images -- to feel their familiar old pangs -- then would we? The answer is "No!"

And once we can see the truth of this finding, as it applies to the aching we feel, then we are ready for the next step in letting go of what lashes us: We can dare to consciously doubt the conclusion that our own feelings would have us accept as being true: That we have no choice but to believe in ghosts! Thanks to Higher Understanding we now know better!

To help summarize this advanced lesson in letting go, here is a special short poem whose wisdom you can always call on to help you remember the truth that helps set you free. Dare to apply this truth-filled understanding to any moment that you find filling with self-wrecking states, and watch how you can make even the most stubborn sufferings disappear: The "feel" is real, but the "why" is a lie! Let this truth about tormenting feelings find a home in your heart and mind and you will never again find yourself feeling lost in moments of emotional crisis.

That's all the time we have for tonight. See you next month, August 7, same time and place. Until then, remember yourself, your God, and to always put the Truth first in all things. Good night.

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GF: Welcome and good evening. Our chat will begin once I post these opening remarks on what each of us can do -- on a daily basis -- to develop more harmonious human relationships.

Deep spiritual work reveals the truth that hellish things on earth manifest as they do because their dark cause dwells hidden somewhere in us. Tonight we look into this interior abyss and shine into its unseen corners a beautiful light of understanding. We will illuminate the center of the earth where dark forces are always celebrating some victory over unconscious human beings.

Imagine the chief devil calling together every possible evil entity that is in range of his magnetic voice and saying, "How can we interfere up there? What can we do to further deceive human beings? We must keep them in the dark so they can't see the Light that wants to rescue them. I want something so evil, so sinister, that no one will know what happened. Who's got it?"

The flames of all the little imps dim a little bit because they're afraid; but two days later, they all come back with a few ideas, although nothing spectacular. Then one tiny imp hops on the shoulder of the devil and whispers something in his ear. Great flames shoot out of the devil and sear the little imp who cries out "Thank you!" Then the devil exclaims, "Ah! I have the plan in hand!"

He looks around at all of his lieutenants, each of whom is assigned to certain individuals on earth, and gleefully instructs them: "I want you to go up and spread the idea of "tolerance." Go tell the stupid human beings up there that they should start teaching the idea that the tolerance of others is the same as the love of them. Oh yes! This is my best deception yet! It's a real killer!"

We have had sown into our minds a certain social contrivance, a convenient mechanical reaction called "tolerating" people who do not meet our approval. We "tolerate" those who don't please us or who rub us the wrong way. And we believe that our ability to tolerate another individual is the same as learning to live in harmony with him or her. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

It is through just such a deception that human beings have almost lost the possibility of being able to see how true Love is being choked out of us and off this planet. As surely as there are objects that choke the throat, there is that which chokes the soul. Now let's examine this idea and learn what it will take to remove this unnatural obstruction.

We must begin by recognizing the following truth: All forms of tolerance have their root in one form or another of resistance, a fact that should make the next truth obvious to us: We cannot resist something, be negative towards it, and be in a loving relationship with it at the same time.

Here's what this means practically speaking: When we unconsciously think "I will 'tolerate' this person by putting up with his dark manifestation, but only because I don't want anyone to see just how negative he makes me" -- then what has happened to us? We come to believe that we are "loving" because we repress our wish to lash out at whoever disturbs us.

Government and social institutions heavily promote this idea of "tolerance" to maintain the illusion of a progressive, evolving society; but to love one another has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with harboring resistance while calling it acceptance. Resistance isolates, separates, and chokes. Love embraces, welcomes, and breathes freely. But there is more yet to see here, if we will.

The whole notion of this order of tolerance is rooted in the idea of superiority, as only a superior person tolerates an inferior human being. When we are with someone, and we must "tolerate" him or her, we are in a state of secret self-love that keeps itself in place by having that which it quietly denigrates. But this unconscious state of self is only half the limitation.

Unconscious self-superiority keeps itself in place through a process of resisting what it imagines it isn't like, but by the fact of the negative reaction proves its unseen likeness. Shakespeare said, "Methinks thou dost protest too much," because he was pointing out that what we most strongly deny in another is what we unconsciously recognize in ourselves.

The first step in harmonious relationships is simple: We need only realize the spiritual truth that we cannot meet someone whom we are not like in some way, even if we don't actively express what we don't like seeing in him or her.

The deception is that we're sure we're unlike everyone except for those who match the images we have of ourselves. And so it goes that we live from -- see our lives through the eyes of -- a kind of "self" that is in a perpetual state of resisting anyone seen as being "not like me." But Love cannot grow where resistance rules.

We're not created to resist anything; we are created to grow through everything. Resistance to life kills the process of spiritual development. When we resist what life would show us about ourselves, we effectively close the door on the Light that wants to help transform us by showing us the things we don't know we harbor in our soul.

Before we close our chat tonight I will give you a very special exercise. Just as we can be taught the Heimlich maneuver -- a swift action that can be taken to dislodge what is choking the body -- we can learn a spiritual maneuver that we may call upon every day, as often as it is necessary, to help us dislodge something that is presently choking our soul.

What do you feel like discussing? What struggles can we shed light upon that will help you grow and go higher? If you will keep your questions real, personal, and to the point -- resisting the temptation to be speculative or to otherwise ask merely curious questions -- then our time together will be extra profitable. So, let's get started. What is on your mind tonight?

Ruth: How do we actually stop our resisting? How do we know that we aren't pretending that we have… so that the resistance is actually still being perpetuated?

GF: You cannot stop your own resistance to whatever it may be, be it a thought or a condition, for the very act of wanting to bring that thought or condition to an end is a state of conflict-born resistance. It is the light of awareness, our willingness to watch ourselves and not push away the thoughts and feelings that pound on us, that brings about the change in one's consciousness. No opposite can overcome itself. Only the Light can reconcile these essential twins.

Langston: A few moments ago, I met someone. Something was not right about him, as it is with everyone I meet. I can hear all sorts of things telling me to hate that person or find some reason to think negatively towards him. I try to turn my attention inward but I cannot see where I am like that person. I do feel the pain and shaking, though. Can you please provide instruction?

GF: Are you familiar with the East Indian instrument called a Sitar? It has nine sympathetic strings that resonate with whatever dominant tones are being played by the instrument. They resonate in "sympathy" with the vibration that sets them in motion. So is it true when it comes to human beings who set us "vibrating." We wouldn't "sing" the "notes" we do around them if those "strings" weren't within us.

Ruth: One of my greatest challenges is stopping judgment -- both of myself and others. When you indicated we don't meet anyone unlike ourselves, are you saying factually that we all have faults, and that we need to recognize and accept that in ourselves and others and that may help stop "judgment"?

GF: To be a human being, as we are presently constituted, is to be something to an earth that is parched and cracked. By this metaphor I mean to imply that our present level of consciousness is so divided that it is literally the "ground" of faults. Spiritual truths, the essence of awareness of our condition, is a kind of water that mends and unifies this ground by its own nature. Every human being has degrees of the faults that all other human beings either exhibit or have found ways to mask. This is why we should "love our enemies." What we see in them reveals us to ourselves as we are, not as we dream ourselves to be.

Beatflux: Why do I feel the need to prove others wrong?

GF: There are a number of answers to your question, but all have the same essential root. There is a very distinct and equally dark sense of self that is born in any moment where we judge another. The allure of this judgment that we make is hidden in the fact that we couldn't point out how "wrong" someone is without having first consulted our own unconscious righteousness. And there's more still. Another aspect of this same dynamic is that we live with a very self-compromising belief that we are beyond reproach, especially from someone seen as being less than ourselves. This horrible condition of our divided consciousness not only keeps us a victim of our own egotistic ignorance, but effectively locks us within the cage of that same consciousness by denying the action of any corrective moment. See all of this and ponder it. The punishment of proving others wrong will end.

Beatflux: Could you please tell me what righteousness is?

GF: There is a righteousness that is born out of one's spirit being in true relationship with life wherein life itself sees and governs all around it. Then there is righteousness (the way I used it earlier) that refers to judging others from a sense of superiority born out of being unconsciously separated from life.

Ruth: You mentioned life seeing and governing all that it observes. Is life or "the life force" another name for God?

GF: You can use a word such as God or the Living Light as it pleases you. The name is of little or no consequence; our awareness of its reality is everything.

Jilly: I am beginning to see these dark forces inside us. I feel pain and I try to the best of my ability to watch the pain also. I wonder if this is "the valley of the shadow of death"? And will the pain I feel continue to try to trick me into going back?

GF: Just as with the classic idea of the "dark night of the soul," so is the "valley of the shadow of death" a metaphor of an interior event that takes place many times for the developing aspirant. Each time we see what has compromised us, some darkness in us, that moment of fear or corresponding hopelessness is not caused by the darkness itself that we have glimpsed. This moment of feeling that we are in a dark or fearful world is a reactive projection of a part of ourselves that does not want us to proceed with the process of discovery in that moment. In essence, we feel lost because our present nature has seen, perhaps for the first time, that it is lost. It keeps a hold of itself by lamenting itself, but we must let go of this same self, and proceed along and within the Light that has revealed it. Keep going.

cd: In Seeker's Guide to Self-Freedom, you wrote regarding past wreckage and healing: "Do this special kind of inner work and the healing you want will follow, which includes the healings necessary with, or in, others. This is a spiritual law." I like the idea of healing others as well as myself, Could you elaborate on your thoughts regarding spiritual law?

GF: There are certain "Invisible Eternals." By this I mean that the universe is governed by timeless principles whose laws not only support the world that we live in, but supply it at the same time with the continual and perfect equilibrium that we all live with and within. This "Balance" goes unseen, but recognized in popular ideas such as, "We reap what we sow," and "What goes around comes around." These principles point to the presence of perfect math: 2 + 2 is always 4. So is it true when it comes to our relationships with others. When Christ taught to "Love thy neighbor as thyself," he was stating this law that has to do with spiritual healing that you've asked about. When we act with kindness or compassion towards someone who has hurt us or betrayed us, as difficult as this may be to do, we are the first to receive the wholeness of our how healing act. This is always the truth. Every moment, each of us is giving out what we receive.

Jilly: I don't trust any of the answers that I give myself. It is so noisy and there is so much confusion going on in my mind. Do I just stay there and watch it?

GF: Yes. There is no need to "trust" or "not trust" one's own answers, providing that one will remain watchful and willing to see what goes on in the midst of all that mental noise. The True answers always appear to us from out of a kind of interior silence that may or may not provide us with a particular direction, but that always proves to us our True Nature was never in jeopardy to begin with.

mobilman: Could you explain about how revolving I's work and possibly some ways one might deal with them?

GF: One example of these "revolving I's" that you speak of, I write about in The Intimate Enemy. If you haven't read it, get it. I describe what I call a "TPIC" -- which stands for the "temporary person in charge". This TPIC appears in any given moment where another "I" in us -- that we'll call the temporary person in captivity -- suddenly finds itself incapable of dealing with an event it meets. In an instant, and all without seeing it, our identity moves from one who is lost, to one who now knows exactly what to do to get out of that situation. Here is a perfect example of where we don't see how one "I" in us instantly moves into a new identity that is the opposite of the one that preceded it. To see this switch of selves in operation is to cancel the suffering it perpetuates.

Jilly: Do we have thousands of TPIC's inside us? Is each TPIC unaware there are many calling itself one?

GF: TPIC's are like a tree with bigger branches that lead into smaller and smaller ones, but we need not concern ourselves with their "numbers" as the solution to the suffering they cause is always the same: the light of awareness coupled with conscious inner work. And yes, all are unaware (of each other).

likestolearn: I would really like to relocate for spiritual growth purposes but I have never even traveled (or taken a vacation for that matter). Everyone that is near and dear to me is rather conservative and will always stay here, "home." Would making this move be beneficial for me or harmful to the real loved ones in my life? They play real parts in my growth and life.

GF: If you're asking me what my personal view is of whether or not one should dedicate his or her life to their spiritual development, regardless of the cost, the answer is an unequivocal "yes." Everything else in life is temporary besides that which we find within us that is Eternal.

Jilly: In reading Maurice Nicoll, he talks about buffers being inside us to protect us from the contradiction that we have. When we are ready to SEE, then will the buffers fall away?

GF: Buffers never fall away by themselves, anymore than an iceberg melts as long as it remains in the deep north. It is the light of awareness that effectively "melts" these obstructions that are creations of an unconscious nature that seeks to protect itself from imagined nightmares.

Deepa: Anything I say (even this) feels like a lie the moment I've uttered it. Why so?

GF: This isn't an unnatural feeling, and in some respects even has truth behind it. But don't get caught up in being identified with what becomes an imagined self. We must all continually work our way through whatever conflict presents itself before us for the purpose of keeping us its captive. When we speak, let us watch ourselves speak. If we ask questions, let us be aware of the motive behind them. This awareness is enough to turn lies into Truth.

Diojeneez: If you can use the darkness to end the darkness, then why do so many saints in all religions, many of whom were conscious men, "leave the world" to embrace the hermetic or monastic life? Are there benefits to this?

GF: As challenging as this may be, try to understand that to every teaching there is a time, and a time unto every teaching. For some there may be benefits in a "monastic" life, but by and large not those who seek that life for the purpose of escaping the world around them. We cannot escape anything we fear or want something from. This is why working with "the darkness" precedes the birth of the light within us.

likestolearn: I too feel like the hermetic life is the only way sometimes and that almost everyone is much more asleep, like in a coma. I am disappointed in the world and faced with the question of this type of lifestyle... any comment please?

GF: You are correct when you assert that this is a world populated by sleeping and self-punishing beings. But what one does with such a discovery -- how one answers the ache that comes with seeing such truths -- is as important as the discovery itself. We cannot grow as long as we resist anything that we see. Resistance and self-development are antithetical. Much of what we resist we do so because of what it stirs in us. If we will see what stirs in us, we can be free of that unwanted stirring.

Bil: Having worked so long, so many times it seems I've reached "somewhere" higher, and then wind up feeling it was all imaginary. In many ways, it seems like wasted effort... seeking some illusory "place"… the same old fears and negativities returning. Any insight to quell the futility of my being on a road to nowhere?

GF: I know this will sound paradoxical, but I assure you it is positive in its meaning. It is only when at last we realize there really is nowhere for us to reach, that we at last arrive where we have always wanted to be -- with ourselves, in ourselves, and all sustained by a Spirit that awaited our realization of its perfectly present presence.

Jilly: In this month's Tape of the Month, you talk about the four natural states of the mind. The third one, prayer, you talk about how if you don't pray, the mind will go into negative images, etc. Is this form of prayer the same as awareness?

GF: Awareness of oneself, conscious and active attention to the moment, is in itself a form of prayer. One reason being that when we are fully with ourselves, we are in the only position where it is possible to see the effect of what we are connected to in that same moment. It is consciousness of this connection (which is usually of the unconscious kind) that changes at once what we are in relationship with for having seen our actual condition.

likestolearn: In your last chatroom, a participant asked about a writing that stated something like "mere pills will not keep me alive, and metal discs [money] will not affect my life." This rings true but I cannot ignore the fact of common medicine I use on a regular basis just to get along. I need this or something to help my condition and allow me to live normally. Should I pursue natural or spiritual means to cure what ails me?

GF: There is an idea called the Golden Mean. It refers to the middle path, or what we will simply call a naturally balanced life. Find out for yourself what's the best path for you with regards to all possibilities, including what medicines you use. The best approach is always the one in which we are conscious participants.

Likestolearn: Despite growing and becoming happier almost daily, I can't seem to get past my money troubles (serious past debt, maintaining employment, etc.). I believe it is largely in part because of this sick world and its systems that are greed-based and loveless. Lack of monetary flexibility is stopping me from a lot. What am I doing wrong?

GF: Learning what it takes to become a responsible householder is a pre-requisite to one's continuing development. Keeping employment should be as simple as breathing, as should be the ability to supply oneself with a simple life through the dollars earned. Clear up your debts; this is mandatory. Persist.

cd: In a recent falling out with a relationship, I struggle with the difference in "understanding" and blaming myself for it all in trying to learn my piece of the "wrong." How do I learn from the disaster without blaming myself (which only causes more pain)? I want to see the truth about myself, and about him as well. I face his cruelty and rejection every day, which has taught me a lot, in between incredible pain. I can't make "things" right.

GF: I understand your concern and conflict here, so let me explain something that may help you with this situation and others that may appear in the future. We cannot learn where we have erred in any relationship by thinking back upon that relationship. The real correction comes with being conscious of ourselves in the moment of a self-compromising act. This shock of seeing ourselves changes ourselves instantly, whereas considering ourselves through memory only keeps this problem nature in place.

digger: What is a good answer to someone who says that my work to become more aware and to understand myself better sounds selfish?

GF: It's impossible to answer people such as those who would accuse us of being selfish for our very wish to transcend our own selfish nature.

Beatflux: Does peer pressure only exist when a person wants approval?

GF: Yes.

alc4: I have difficulty formulating questions to ask for spiritual guidance, while at the same time I remain confused about it all. Why this contradiction?

GF: It takes time for our "usual" mind to begin formulating ideas around what stimulates our mind yet to be realized. This is natural and should not be a stumbling block. Take one idea, one only, and develop it. Think through the question until what you wish to be clear about is truly clear to you. Such knowledge of problems is their solution.

dudeman: Is it possible to have a meaningful relationship with a person who is not on your level of this work? Will she always have difficulties due to the fact she is a woman and subject to extreme emotional ways of thinking? (No offense to the ladies.)

GF: No, not only is it possible for such a relationship to flourish, but you can help each other to the degree you are willing to discover each other's nature in action. Extreme emotions only upset a man who is unbalanced emotionally. His reaction is his proof of the need to work with what he has been gifted with in his partner.

digger: Is there a way to translate this work to society and to government? Or is this work always internal?

GF: Not only is this Work always and only internal, but it was never intended to be embraced by the masses.

Taiji: Why isn't it for the masses?

GF: Much in the same way as a chick needs the yolk-sack in order to develop and fulfill its destiny, so does what is True and Light-ful need what is false and dark for its revelation. The masses have what they treasure, and are incapable of wanting anything higher than their presently unenlightened mind. If you doubt this, ask yourself why Christ told his disciples to leave the "dead to bury the dead."

James1: We are to use "what is false and dark"? Am I understanding this correctly? Please elaborate.

GF: We are created to (be able to) turn "darkness into Light" by bringing these forms of incomplete life forces into conscious awareness. All negative states and their inherent forms are fodder for the mill of the self-working man or woman.

Diojeneez: What is the difference between humility and arrogance disguised as humility? It can be tricky (sometimes) distinguishing the two.

GF: What is the difference between a king snake and a coral snake? The answer is, one is a friend and eliminates harmful pests, the other is poisonous and always bites the hand that picks it up.

Langston: Can you give us something to remember in those times where darkness declares: "You don't need any more Truth classes, you understand everything needed to grow, so stop studying"? This declaration is quite subtle and/or overwhelming.

GF: Did you know that one of the most powerful of all spiritual exercises is the simple act of self-honesty? If someone walks up to you and tells you, "Langston, you are the essence of love," you would know in a moment that that person was a liar, a cheat, and a fraud because you know, or at least sense, some of the truth of your present nature. Meet darkness' voices with honesty and they will disappear.

Langston: This sure is a tricky, nagging condition. When I read your answer I heard a question ask: "Yeah, but when is it okay to stop going to Truth classes?"

GF: The man who loves the Truth never asks when does this Love reach its fruition; he knows there is always a greater Love to be known and embraced.

Daniel22: Why do people have a fear of success? Why do some people sabotage themselves when things start going well?

GF: The question shouldn't be, "Why do people have fear of success?" but rather why do people live with fear at all? Once you understand this, you will know the true meaning of success, and there will be no fear in it, regardless of its nature.

dudeman: Should we meditate on and ponder the idea of scale? Almost everything I can see seems to be in scale. When fathoming the size of outer space and it energetic forces, I get an almost cold, insignificant feeling, and feel like a mere dust particle that does not really matter. Please advise.

GF: The pondering of scale is essential in our fulfillment of our spiritual possibility. Pay no attention to whatever troubles you when you consider yourself in relationship to what you see within your mind. The very parts of us that seem to make us feel inconsequential are secretly enlarging us.

reynard: From reading your books I see the truth that organized religion isn't the answer... however since I've been raised a Jehovah's Witness and have strong conditioning in my background, I am still feeling the need to associate with a group of "Christians." What are your thoughts?

GF: The need for relationship along the True Path is an essential one. There is no rule or law that says one must not spend any time with any particular group, be they this or that orientation. Stay awake and watch how you feel around those you spend time around. Your awakening nature will change the company you value by itself, and lead you at the same time to those nearer the new truth stirring in your heart.

mick: I do not enjoy a job I've been at for some time now. My thoughts "think" I should be happy wherever I am (Mr. Howard said something to this end). Surely he didn't mean to stay at a job I feel is not for me? Maybe I'm clinging (wrongly) to what he said because I'm scared to leave. Your comment please.

GF: There are two words along the spiritual path that never lose their significance or power. They are -- "risk it!" Only action reveals the secret cause of confusion and inaction in such cases.

Diojeneez: Lao-tse says that when you align yourself with the Integral Way, you eliminate the "illusory boundaries between darkness and light." Are the boundaries between light and darkness illusory?

GF: Yes! In much the same way as night and day exist within one another.

Diojeneez: Isn't unconsciousness darkness and consciousness light? Are you saying there is no difference between them?

GF: In the "end" all is Light; but from "outside" this understanding "darkness" exists and is real for the purposes of revealing the Light and its life-transformative properties.

MikeS: Why do I feel like I'm in a hurry to find what is Eternal before I die?

GF: All anxiety is a lie. The catch is to recognize the difference between an essential need born of an interior wish for real relationship with the Divine versus the flash and fire of a desire whose sole purpose is to keep us in its service, and keeping IT eternal. Recognize this difference if you can. Simply drop the anxious self and what you seek is already there.

dudeman: Is there a way in which to help and teach children in this work without shielding them from the necessary life events they need to learn from? How can one raise kids with this trueness?

GF: We can do no different than we do with ourselves. And as we grow in spirit and in understanding, that very light not only protects us from what is dark and punishing, but it extends a certain kind of protection to all who are around us who depend upon us.

dudeman: So just being in our company is good for them and will help them automatically?

GF: IF you are working for and within the Good, what else can happen? But just because you may be attracted to the Light does not mean someone else will.

Daniel22: I am new to your books. Is there a "best" one to start with ?

GF: I would suggest that you choose between either of these two titles that attracts you the most: Design Your Destiny or The Intimate Enemy. Both are filled with helpful insights and encouraging truths.

James1: We seem to be constantly searching for inspiration in any form, but it mostly translates to us in feeling. Physically speaking, is there a sensation you can describe when we are in the Moment? Or is it something you'll know when you get there?

GF: Sensation exists because resistance produces it. When we are awake and aware in the moment, to that degree there is no resistance, which means that sensation as one knows it is not present. But just as there are higher emotions, so there exists a higher presence within oneself that need not know itself through or by sensation.

Diojeneez: Vernon Howard used a very interesting example in saying, "The speed of a man in a rowboat depends upon how deeply he dips his oars." What would constitute deeply dipping our oars while on the esoteric path?

GF: The degree to which we will risk what we mechanically assume is valuable in favor of what we sense is truthful and right for our development.

Mobilman: Not sure where I got this but is it right that we learn the right decision by suffering the wrong decision, or is there a such thing as a wrong decision?

GF: Action purifies knowledge, turning it into Wisdom.

Diojeneez: There is a story in the Catholic faith of a man named Saint Martin who one day gave up his own clothes to clothe a beggar. Everyone laughed at him. The same night, in his sleep (it is said) he had a vision of Jesus amid a crowd of angels saying, "This man gave me his robe!" Is this the esoteric meaning of "do unto the least of your brothers as we would unto Him"?

GF: Yes; it is a simple story to illustrate a complex idea most often misinterpreted as being about "giving to the poor," etc.

steveb: Are there tapes available of Guy's TV show?

GF: Contact Chris through our website and she will give you complete details.

GF: As discussed in the opening comments, to one degree or another we are conditioned to be "tolerant" of others. This kind of tolerance is rooted in an unconscious form of resistance; all such psychological resistance is a form of separation, and separation is isolation. Isolation corrupts the soul because it is shut off from the vital mix of elements created to transform its nature.

The human being is created to develop in the "likeness" of that marvelous Intelligence that made us. This Divine Intelligence didn't create anything that it fears or hates. It's a ridiculous thought to walk around and believe (as we all do because of the strong sense of self that it produces) that another person is our enemy simply because we feel enmity for him or her.

Now don't be mistaken, there are plenty of unpleasant people; our world is packed with them! But, given the negative effect of resenting others, and the fact that (for now) all we know to do towards those who disturb us is to resist them, could it be that when it comes to our human relationships we have been blinded to one of the main reasons for them? The answer is "yes."

Just as the wind moves through a tree and carries its pollen to the blossoms of another tree, our relationships are intended to be pollinations. They are intended to act as conditions for us that create between us the possibility of understanding that, in reality, there is no such thing as this separate self that lives only to create what it must then tolerate!

Now, for the special spiritual exercise I mentioned in my opening remarks -- the practice designed to develop harmonious human relationships. Remember that the point of this study and the new understanding it reveals is to help us get past the unconscious thinking that we can do something against ourselves and expect a positive outcome.

This idea of tolerating human beings can't possibly be the seed of something celestial. This part of us that has become a master of tolerating those whom we can't stand has come to be as strong and prevalent as it is because of how superior it makes us feel when we are around them. This unconscious self-righteousness is not an act of love, but a form of hatred; it is a weakness.

Here is the swift action we can take to dislodge the darkness that is choking our soul and its possibility of understanding the nature of true Love: This exercise is called the "You-I Maneuver." You can work with it every moment of the day, whether you're with people or you're sitting alone and thinking about someone.

To employ this maneuver effectively, you will need to be as sensitive in your interactions with other people as a spider web is to the slightest breeze. You can do this because your True Nature is created to be just this sensitive. Any energy that touches us sets off a resonance within us that we are created to be conscious of as it moves through us.

When we're around other people, and start to have a negative reaction toward them, what we don't catch is what occurs within us before it occurs to us that we must tolerate this person. In this moment an unregistered resistance impresses itself upon our soul, and from it takes shape a reaction that always begins with the word "you"-- as in "You are this," or "You are that."

There is this instant sense of separation between one's self and the person one is with; and from this is born an actual surge of pressure that surfaces inside of us that has identified the one outside of us as being the cause of our sense of conflict. But now we are beginning to know better than to blame another for the negative states revealed in us.

So in this same moment when we look at that person and feel this pejorative word "you" start to take shape, we are going to add the word "I" to it: Now it's "You-I." Inwardly you will be working to realize by this new expression something like this: "You . . . I have seen the exact same character in me."

For instance if an angry person comes to you, instead of tolerating his or her negative state, work with this maneuver like this: "You . . . I have seen the exact same anger in me."

This exercise is good for any negative manifestation you react to in another, so that you never allow the momentum of the negative "you" that is produced through intolerance to exist without understanding that the "you" that resists only resists seeing evidence of itself (through the life of another).

In that moment we disarm the lie of the "superior" self and steal from it its corrupting power to produce the illusion that we are different from the people we tolerate. And in the collapse of that opposite, Love and compassion are born. I can no longer treat you as someone to be "tolerated"; I realize the fact that you and I really are "neighbors" because we share a common pain.

Here is a summary of the exercise called the "You-I Maneuver." We need a new intention in all of our relationships, something like this: I will not suffer you; I will suffer us. I will not cast you out as being something inferior to myself; I will not do that because I can't recognize in you anything as being an inferior condition in you unless I have it in myself.

Our work, if we're willing, is to catch that surging separation called "you are different from me." And then, in that same moment, to apply our new understanding that cancels this unconscious act of resistance. Instead we embrace the realization that "you" and "I" are both exposed in this God-given moment that God meant for the purpose of transcending ourselves.

Remember that "tolerance" is a lie because it produces a "me" that is always apart from what I am tolerating. There cannot be Love where there is separation. Work at the "You-I Maneuver." Learn to watch this low-level self that is trying to destroy the possibility of Love awakening in us.

Risk leaving yourself open by refusing to identify with the parts of yourself that would have you believe that resisting Life can lead to being embraced by it. Do the inner work it takes to make this exercise personally meaningful and you will understand the greatest secret on earth: everyone on it has a gift just for you -- if you will only take it.

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GF: Welcome everyone. Before we begin tonight I would like to help shed some light on a subtle but significant idea concerning what I call the "circle of self." We will examine the secret mechanism in us that drives us through certain unconscious life cycles where, in moments of crisis, we think we are making wise choices, only to realize we have chosen against ourselves once again.

To begin, we must examine two important ideas: first, that the most vital moments in our lives occur when we are most conscious of ourselves, when we are fully present to all of the lessons this same moment brings into our awareness. It is in these moments that transformation of self and awareness of self are as one movement.

The second idea is equally important. As a rule these moments in question, where we are enabled to transcend ourselves, occur during those times in our lives when something "unwanted" happens to us. It is for this conflict we feel with life that we are more or less made to become conscious of both the disturbance and ourselves at once.

This discovery holds many implications. If it's true that self-transformation is facilitated by moments of heightened self-awareness -- and that this higher consciousness stands in sharp contrast to what must be our "usual" state of being -- then we should inquire into the nature of this lower level of consciousness whose presence seems to preclude the possibility of real self-change.

Let's put two and two together. A disturbance comes along in our lives and leads us to see ourselves in a new light. So what is it that has been disturbed in us by the frontrunner of this necessary life lesson? The answer is surprising: We are momentarily pulled away from and out of the habitual flow of our own mechanical thoughts and feelings. Let's look at this idea more closely.

Moments before that unwanted shock of reality whereby we see life anew, our thoughts and feelings seemed to be the light; after all, we followed their course; their guidance we accepted blindly. It's only in those vital moments in the midst of the disturbance, as the lesson in it is received, that we see we had been living in the darkness of ourselves. We had been deceived.

Can we take the "leap" here? Can we see from these first few lessons the startling truth about what is required if we want to help make truly positive changes in our lives? Let me spell it out: If higher awareness is our partner in realizing our True Self, and life's disturbances serve to bring us into its company, then we should learn to welcome these disturbances in our lives!

When I brought this idea up at a recent meeting with several students, they responded to it much as I imagine you are right about now: "Hold on a second. I've spent my whole life trying to avoid disturbances. Now you're saying to invite them in! What in the world are you talking about?"

Instead of instantly closing our mind to this new idea, let's explore it together. Let's see why common disturbances in our lives can help us unlock the higher consciousness we all long to know. With willingness to learn the truth about ourselves as our guide, we ask the following question: What's the first thing that happens in the moment in which we are disturbed?

I think we can all agree that our first response to any moment of feeling disturbed is an involuntary surge of thoughts and feelings whose basic cry is "Don't disturb me!" After all, it seems "only human" to resist those moments where something disturbs us. Which brings us to this next logical question in our exploration: "Who" or what is it within us that does not want to be disturbed?

This question may sound silly at first; but let's not judge too quickly. For while it seems more than obvious that it is "I" who doesn't want to be disturbed, this isn't the whole story. If we will dare to look more closely, this is what we see: This sense of "I" in us that resists the disturbance is born out of being identified with the "status-quo" of our own habitual thoughts and feelings.

It is this sense of self that's woven from the fiber of repeated thoughts and feelings that does want not to be disturbed. And when life naturally moves left or right -- falling out of step with whatever dream parade we may be marching in at that time -- this self gets "tripped up" and we fall down. Clearly we have mistaken our thoughts and feelings for being the same as our True Self.

Yes, it goes without saying that we spend more time with these thoughts and feelings than with anyone or anything else. In one sense they are our closest "friends." They not only tell us what we should do and how we should feel, but they define and direct our lives as a result of this assumed identity. But let's be clear: We are not them.

We are an individual being with multiple features; so that even though one's True Self includes the world of his or her thoughts and feelings, our True Self dwells effortlessly "above" them. The resistance we feel to life's disturbing moments comes when reality contradicts what our thoughts and feelings tell us we need to be whole and happy.

In other words, we resist whatever we do because our thoughts and feelings "tell" us that things should not be as they are. Upon hearing these laments within us -- that our mind justifies with its backlog of reasons -- what choice have we but to start feeling angry or sorry for ourselves? Now we feel bad for what an uncaring world has done to us; and this is where things get really interesting.

Whom do we turn to for answers on how to get rid of this unwanted feeling? We turn to our own thoughts and feelings, to the same self whose dream has been disturbed, to tell us what to do to escape the pain come over us. And please keep in mind that this present pain wouldn't even exist for us were it not for having listened to this same self tell us last time how we could live disturbance-free!

And what do these thoughts tell us to do to get rid of the ache we are in? They tell us to go get something, go fix someone, get rid of something. In short, we are suddenly sure of what we either need to go do or become in order to free ourselves of this suffering. In other words, in all such moments as these we are given something new to desire.

In case it isn't already clear, what disturbed us the first time, and gave rise to our "new" desire, is that life itself came along and shook up our established sense of self that had been identified with former desires. So that when reality shifted, we shook. What we need to see is that this self that shakes is not real. Otherwise the cycle starts all over again.

Just before the end of tonight's chat I will finish these thoughts and offer you some new ideas and insights about specific ways we can work inwardly to walk away from this circle of self and the unconscious desires that drive it along.

What would you like to talk about tonight? Have you been working on some special condition within yourself and need some clarification? Let's get started with your questions and see what happens. Please do keep your questions and comments to real issues. Speculative thinking and other philosophical meanderings are meaningless if real self-change is our wish.

What do you want to discuss? What's on your mind? Let's get started!

Shady: So in a sense you are saying the disturbances in our lives help us learn our true nature, and the exciting part of the disturbance itself is that we will learn we can walk anywhere, through anything, and be?

GF: That's precisely what I'm saying -- that lessons in life that transform us ride in on the back of events, and that these events are always for our development if we will see through our negative reaction to them for the Truth that provided the lesson now before us.

Shady: If we looked at disturbances differently then we have in the past, we might quit trying to avoid them and see them as life-giving experiences? I can see that I have been programmed to wrong thinking, and with that comes many disturbances. So if we accept each disturbance, then it will teach us something more about who we are, right?

GF: This is essentially correct. Once we recognize that there is no moment in which we cannot be aware of ourselves, and that this awareness itself relates us to every movement of life, inward or outward, then the whole of life, including its disturbances, acts like a beautiful mirror in which we may both explore and discover ourselves.

Shady: Sometimes in the middle of a disturbance, a lie comes to you that where you are you are (1) not where you belong, and (2) you are picking up more selves here. Then confusion sets in. Do you have any comments?

GF: Confusion cannot present itself to us as a meaningful negative state without there being within us, prior to its onset, a certain unconscious assumption that we already know, or at least should know, the meaning of the event we are in. The whole point of self-observation and awareness is for a process of revelation within us, not as something that we use to prove ourselves or our knowledge in that same moment. Just watch without "willing."

Grayson: Concerning the disturbances you have just talked about, can we use past disturbances, from when we were not yet awake, to remember and relive them, and thus create a whole new experience of them now, vanquishing the original inner experience?

GF: The only time it is possible for any of us to change is in the moment the event transpires. All consideration of events past are merely the reliving of dead images vivified with stored sensations. Drop any concerns over any disturbances from your past that appear and ask you to deal with them. In Truth, these times are dead and our best approach is to be dead to them.

Bev: This is completely on target for me! My life lately has been a seemingly unending string of "unwanted events" -- in a BIG way. Prior to your comments, I kept thinking God was trying to teach me something, or worse, that He is punishing me for something (à la Old Testament Job!). It's hard to get knocked down so many times and "keep perspective."

GF: If we can only remember the following, our lives will be filled with new understanding: The only thing that gets knocked down by an activity expressed in the present moment, is an unconscious structure made up of our own past preferences that we are identified with. The new moment is an invitation and an emissary of Truth, not an adversary the way our false nature presently views disturbances and their necessary lessons.

Bev: Gee, though, couldn't Truth be satisfied with ONE huge negative event at once? Why is there the need to pound away with multiple events at the same time... I guess Truth wants the message to get through to me loudly and clearly!

GF: If you will continue to work with these principles, I promise you that one day the whole idea of a negative event will simply cease to exist to you.

Bev: One other thought for me on this: I can even see when I am having an emotional reaction to something that it is more "the dream" of something that I am reluctant to let go of than the thing itself. The "dream" is so powerful it becomes hard to distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. Is this some of what happens with the false self?

GF: It can be accurately said that the false self lives entirely in imagination. The nature of this imagination is the thoughts and feelings that pass through the mind that, as they form, call into existence a "self" that knows itself by considering these same images. These images are loaded with familiar sensations, good and bad, and the self that receives these impressions knows itself accordingly.

lilcanuk: Are not dreams also another way of expressing one's self?

GF: If you're not familiar with the New Testament, there's a passage in Corinthians from St. Paul. He says, "Our hopes should be in things unseen, for who hopes for things seen?" When we realize at last that all dreams belong to the finite world -- because they are creations of thought and emotion -- then we cease to dream a self into existence, because we know that the self that we long to be cannot be measured or defined by any dream.

nowishow: I am in a place within my industry that is about to "explode" and change the industry and limit almost all the competition. Because I'm just a "small timer" I may very well be passed over or excluded unfairly. I've taken rejection and understood it was not God's will, but this seems wrong. How do I see the good of losing an honest chance to help myself and family?

GF: Such questions are always challenging when we find ourselves beset upon by a world in which we have ourselves set a goal to become something out of the ordinary. We all need to learn what it means to "do" what's in our power and to refuse to get caught up struggling with what's not. As best you can, work for the dream you have but don't let ambition become the source of an endless ache as it sets you against those who you feel have set themselves against you. It isn't in your power to make others decent or act properly. It is in your power to walk away from the self-compromising -- and ultimately self-destructive -- states of anger or resentment that flood in to blame others, all for the sake of giving you a sense of being in control.

ruthann: Oh, please explain how we have the power "to walk away from the self-compromising and self-destructive states such as anger and resentment"! I try to stop the states, but I don't succeed.

GF: It is not (and must not become) a question of trying to "stop" these states. The issue is that no one will leave behind something that they find of value. Consciousness of these states -- not resistance to them -- is the needed medicine, as only our seeing what they do within us, to us, can lead to letting go (of them).

mobilman: Recently there was a change in my ATM card and pin number. A small thing, right, but there was a type of crisis in it. There was anger and something telling me why I needed to fight with the bank over this. But I did something different this time. I accepted the change and the whole crisis fell away. Comments?

GF: One of the principle lessons behind all True spiritual teachings has to do with the idea that "resistance to the disturbance is the disturbance." This means that when we will simply let a thought that comes up in us, whose presence creates conflict, go its merry way without unconsciously interacting with it, not only does the problem disappear, but the self that was troubled goes with it.

heather: I want to know why when I am upset I want to go buy something? It always makes me feel better, for the time being, but for awhile it caused lots of problems.

GF: This is difficult to grasp, but you'll see the Good of it if you'll work with the following idea: Our present nature is not a unified being. It is a series of alternating selves, each of which rushes to the foreground when the one before it either runs out of steam or meets an insurmountable object. In essence, we buy things (we don't need) when we're upset because a certain self jumps in to try and please the pained self, and does nothing more than cause more pain. This is why only self-understanding can heal us.

Grayson: When someone "relives" an old negative experience, is it the original "I" that came up during the original experience that has resurfaced now? Thus has the original "I" lived on inside the person, festering over time?

GF: There is no such original "I" as you've described as existing within any act of re-living one's life. Certain negative states, particularly when they have been relived and relived, do take on a form of self-consciousness in us that one might say becomes a negative "I" in that person. But apart from that phenomenon, the reliving of old experiences is the function of old "tapes" within us simply playing when something in life turns on the mental machine.

Grayson: Can it be true that our subconscious, or unconscious, is made up of things from our past, from infancy onward, that we once took in wholeheartedly as reality, and have buried themselves within us, even if we consciously know they are not real now?

GF: There are such creatures in one's unconsciousness, but they are only aspects, not the basis.

ruthann: I am appreciative to discuss real issues: I am caring for my mother-in-law, and I am going back-and-forth between the feelings of being highly used by her, and truly knowing that is such a "low" feeling, then going to my unfortunately rather consistent feeling of "hating" myself. Please advise.

GF: We must all learn what it means to discharge our duties without always trying to find something in them by which to know ourselves, for either the better or worse. If you must take care of her, what difference does it make what she does toward you, other than drive you crazy trying to figure out how to change in her what can't be changed? Use the relationship to release yourself from the parts of yourself that get caught in these dark dialogues.

Grayson: When someone does not want to work on a required project, or even go to work, is it only the personal thoughts OF the work and not the work itself that one really fears experiencing?

GF: Essentially it is never the thing itself, whatever that thing may be, that we fear in life. No fear, of a psychological nature, exists without the unconscious influence of images produced by negative imagination that one has become identified with.

Grayson: When someone wants to complete a project, but in the present does not want to work on it, is it a spiritual exercise to push through the mental and emotional resistance and get started?

GF: Only if he or she can use their resistance consciously.

cd: Working through how I deal with conflict, I get confused when to stay quiet and when to try and work it out with the other person. Am I compromising myself to want to work it out? I try and listen to see if it is fear that is motivating it, but I get confused again.

GF: Your question indicates that you recognize that most of the time when we want to "work out" our differences with someone, it's because we fear the outcome of leaving it as it is. On the other hand, one must learn to work in the opposites with others. Your life, if you'll use it so, is a grand experiment in consciousness and its development. Do not do what fear tells you to do, but neither should you be afraid to be a peacemaker, if that's the role called for.

cd: I fear leaving it as is and I also fear trying to make peace… that's why I have let it be. It's always that "what if something I could say would make it better?" that keeps its hold on me.

GF: One last lesson when it comes to all relationships that are stressful for whatever reasons: Most of the time we are far better off bearing and then dying to our own sense of discomfort than we are trying to relieve that through a false action to try and make the other person feel not disturbed. This cannot be done, even though it appears like it works. Use the tension as a springboard for self-study, and you will see changes in both you and your partner.

Diojeneez: Lao-tse says that the mind, "once calmed, naturally expands, and ultimately one's mind becomes as vast and immeasurable as the night sky." How interesting! What does it mean?

GF: It means literally what is said, but I'll add a point for clarification. Awareness is the true medium of comprehension of all things in creation. The more awake one is within this higher awareness, the more that person effortlessly lives in a kind of unity with what is unbounded before their eyes, as well as their own thoughts. This is a great truth and a great invitation to all who accept it.

BNevrgivup: This higher self you speak of, is it the condition of absolute awareness between suspended thought?

GF: Your description would be one way to define what is essentially a different and higher order of our own being. One can think of higher awareness relative to thought as being similar to the waters of an ocean through which all manner of fish swim. The fish change position, but the water never loses itself because of the movement through it.

nowishow: I am in my first few years of this wonderful work and doing great! I am wondering where do you and others like yourself get your energy to stay on the path seemingly every second? Am I doing something wrong when I feel like I am not up for hearing /learning more at times, or am I just at some sort of standstill?

GF: Each of us has in us a certain undiscovered well of vital and ever-new energy. This well-spring is the foundation of the present moment, and our relationship to it all depends upon the degree to which we are receptive to what the present moment is trying to impress upon us. The more conscious we are of ourselves, as we are, in the now, the more we see that is true about both ourselves and the now. This Truth is the water in this well, and it never runs dry.

Floyd: What are the active, passive, and reconciling forces that desire is comprised of?

GF: The best answer to your question would be for one to become a truly interested observer of his or her own desires. The intellectual explanation serves very little when it doesn't correspond to direct understanding through experience. I will mention however that desires, regardless of their nature, are always the expression of the activity of the opposites. One's conditioning modifies the form. No opposite can cancel itself, and forms never stop rising in the mind asleep to itself.

Grayson: Is one reason that we really want to go along with our thoughts the fear that our thoughts will grow and grow and become too uncomfortable to bear?

GF: The principle reason that one unconsciously consents to "go along with" his or her thoughts is because there is no one there, other than another set of thoughts, thought of as being "self," that are identified with the original set of thoughts. This can be either -- in the so-called positive way, or through resistance to the thought.

Eric: I heard Mr. Howard say the most amazing thing on one of his tapes. He said that I am able to recognize Truth because of the Truth already put into me by Truth itself. Truth alone can recognize Truth. Would you say that there is a very deep meaning and an important significance to this idea? It seems to connect with the idea of not interfering with what you observe in yourself.

GF: This Truth that you have stated, once understood by us, becomes an unsinkable ally and friend in the truest meaning of the word. When we finally realize that it is impossible for us to know anything that doesn't already dwell within, we are well on our way to a new and whole consciousness.

Diojeneez: Saint Catherine of Siena said, "All the way to heaven is heaven, because He said, "I am the way.'" What exactly is she saying?

GF: The wise and awakened through the ages have all passed along the essential same message and invitation: The kingdom of heaven, the realm of Living Light, pure Mind, dwells here, now, and within each and every one of us. There is no time in which this understanding is reached. Therefore, the whole way to heaven is taken while walking through heaven that one just doesn't recognize is heaven.

nowishow: I use artificial cosmetic coverings to preserve my natural youthful appearance. I've grown accustomed to it but I know I should be free from it. Is it wrong to aim for this when nature happens to do something different in my case? I honestly feel I would not do this if I were 10-15 years older.

GF: Nothing that any human being is compelled to do can ever lead to freedom and happiness. You know what you must do. Do it! Face the fear and you will realize that all you're looking at when you see something that you "don't want to see" is a set of conditioned thoughts and feelings, whose very presence in you is not only a punishment, but is producing the very aging that you resist.

Poppy: I was in a car accident and had a experience not of this world (near death experience). Everything that I experienced made this world non-existent. What we call paradoxes in this world, I was a part of there. At first I was very disturbed that I was nothing and this earth world did not exist. Now I am curious and want to find out more. Who am I really? I want to find these answers. How do I find these answers without having to start from scratch?

GF: If you did see what you have reported, then there is nothing in the universe, besides developing your spiritual nature and its understanding, that will ever truly satisfy you again. If a man or a woman has a glimpse of a world without opposites, and yet that contains all opposing forms, he or she would be like a person who had not had a drink of water for 30 years and suddenly saw in the distance a cool pool. Persist with your wish to know consciously the world you accidentally entered.

Poppy: How do I get to that place were I was silence and my every desire was fulfilled because I was absent of desire and I was everything and nothing at the same time except that time did not exist? I tried meditating but all I have become aware of is that my mind is constantly talking and never shuts up, or I fall asleep. How do I speed up the process so that I know myself as I truly am? Mostly I am confused.

GF: I do understand what you are saying, and I want to encourage you. But I also want you to understand that a lasting awakened life is never the result of an accident. We must work within ourselves if we would realize the reality that lies hidden in us. You might find some welcome help in a tape entitled "Preparing Yourself to Answer God's Invitation." This is tape #220 in our on-line bookstore. If it doesn't help you, do return it for a full refund.

AJ: What is the purpose of life here on earth?

GF: It is for the development of the soul through a relationship with an indwelling Spirit, and everything this entails.

BNevrgivup: Your books and lessons have changed my life, because I now have a clear understanding of how we think..."opposites." The only thing left is to face my imagined fearful circumstances. Your comments on fear would be helpful.

GF: The power that fear holds over us is that while the conditions that cause this fear are fully imagined, the sensations these imaginations produce in us are real. One must learn to use what we'll call "Higher Reason" when faced with a moment of whether to risk his fear or not. True self-knowledge allows us to act from what we know is true, as opposed to acting from a reaction to negative sensations that are defining us. Risk it!

cd: I have a hard time grasping what you mean by "opposites." Is there something that could clarify what that means?

GF: Understanding the opposites is important to your work to understand yourself and its hidden workings. One example of these hidden opposites that hold us in their workings is when, being afraid of someone, we feign strength by being aloof. The desire we enact is not ours but comes to us from the opposite of what we enact. For more on this subject I would suggest reading some of the related materials in Seekers Guide to Self Freedom.

ruthann: I intellectually understand that I need to release myself from the parts of myself that are caught in "dark dialogues." Am I correct in thinking that they are the thoughts and feelings that are the false selves that you are discussing tonight?

GF: One of the predominant ways in which our present sense of self is produced in us is through being identified with these familiar thoughts and feelings about either our enemies or loved ones. Freedom from this kind of psychological captivity comes as we recognize that we are captives not of exterior conditions, but of our own unexplored consciousness.

Diojeneez: Vernon Howard said, "This will sound dreadful to you, but it's part of my warning. If your Light goes out ONCE through your arrogance, your stupidity, your carelessness, you will never ever know or remember that you once had it." Don't people fall asleep by carelessness and catch themselves sleeping all the time? No one can be perfectly conscious, right?

GF: Mr. Howard was trying to illuminate a certain and definite stage in a person's relationship with darkness in him or her. It is when one finally agrees with the will of what is essentially "wicked," that he or she loses this Light because now the darkness in them sees darkness in them as being the light. Where would one go when one is fully lost, believing he has found the way out?

Floyd: What is the root fear (or root desire) beneath the fear of making personal connections (i.e., fear of making eye contact, etc.)? What are we afraid of? What are we desiring?

GF: The root fear when it comes to personal relationships has to do with the fear of that person not recognizing or acknowledging you as you want to be seen or believe yourself to be. We feel threatened in relationships with others, casual or intimate, because of how strongly vested our sense of self is with the images that we hold of ourselves. Images are only capable of imagined relationships.

nowishow: Can we really know so much about laws and awareness to the point where we stop attracting ALL the bad things we once did? Is this how people have great revelations and discover (secrets) of the universe, or is there any awareness besides thoughts that pass through us?

GF: I assure you that not only is it possible for us to understand the great laws that govern our existence, but that we can "know" them so well that we cease to exist as individuals outside of that existence upon whom life seems to be acting indiscriminately. Persist with your studies.

Nowishow: What I mean is how can I become more receptive/aware? I pay attention and yet feel like I'm hitting some sort of ceiling.

GF: Who hits the ceiling but the one trying to escape the floor? All obstacles are imagined limitations of the mind that has set for itself a certain place it wants to reach. In real life no such place exists, nor the self kept from it. Watch without wanting. Watch without wanting.

Johnny-T: I have noticed a sometimes strong resentment towards my best friend's six year old. The kid is spoiled and selfish, manipulative, and plays it for all it's worth. Why am I mentally feuding with a child?

GF: It's extraordinary, isn't it? Did you know that most adults have a secret fear of children because children don't play to the adults' images of themselves? But as far as this resentment towards the child, here's a great Truth that we all need to see more deeply: We cannot resist or resent anything in anyone that it is not an unconscious feature in ourselves. Our resentment acts as a buffer, keeping us from being aware of our own condition that is similar to what we have to "suffer" in another.

Diojeneez: Gurdjieff said something a little shocking! He said, "I am under no laws but God's. Do you really think that you would starve if you did not have a stack of green paper and a pile of metal discs? You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed through your veins wards off disease and death? Dismiss all magical beliefs today. God's laws forever give and never take." Could that really be true!?

GF: It is the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth.

Johnny-T: These ideas are sometimes presented as God being a state of mind, and people often draw parallels from their thoughts, to the Bible and what it is saying. We cannot twist God and His word to our interpretation like a theoretical debate in which we are biased. Any comment?

GF: God is not a "state if mind," and -- as you said -- He is "unsearchable." Concepts are traps as long as they are not recognized as being descriptions of reality. We are confined by the extent to which we define our own consciousness and God as its source.

Johnny-T: Is it wrong to borrow money from person(s) who did not earn it or who obtained it from less than honest ways? History is full of this and even our own government has done this. I do not know if I am trying to rationalize my desires or over-analyzing because of fear.

GF: William Shakespeare said it best: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loseth both itself and friend." This truth applies everywhere and in all things, including one's spiritual life.

heather: I would like to know why I (at age 51) feel that I can't live in a traditional marriage anymore and want more independence and not to be so controlled?

GF: Only you can know these things, and anyone who tells you reasons betrays you.

James1: In terms of a life-long relationship, is there any point in asking, "Is she the one?" I know I just want the feeling of security of the answer. How better can I see into this?

GF: There is no point is such questions other than to produce a certain kind of fear-laced hope. Learn to "taste" the state that asks such questions and you will want better food!

lilcanuk: When you judge another, is it because of what you lack in yourself?

GF: We point out in others (in negative judgment) only those things we are ourselves.

Grayson: What exactly are the specific things that happen to a person who judges another and even bullies him or tries to humiliate or "put one over on him"?

GF: We are punished by the punishments we would give others.

Grayson: Is the desire for a better house or way of life simply the only manifestation the lower self can think of (albeit wrongly) to bring forward the same experience that only the Higher Self can know and give?

GF: There is nothing wrong with conscious preferences. It is only when preference becomes pain – because of identification with the desires – that it becomes a stumbling block to one's spiritual life.

GF: We are nearly out of time, but I want to give you my remaining notes on escaping the circle of self and walking away from the unconscious desires that drive it along.

To briefly review, we spoke of how we must learn to welcome life's disturbing moments -- as these same moments of "shake-up" are the secret catalyst for truth to help wake us up. And we learned how these unwanted times are crucial for true self-transformation, because they both reveal and make it possible to step out of the formerly unseen "circle of self."

When we left off we had reached this new understanding: In those unwanted moments where our life has been disturbed, we only know how to do one thing: turn to our own habitual thoughts and feelings and let them tell us what we need to no longer ache. Our pleasure is that this new desire replaces the old pain. Our displeasure is that this swap doesn't work! Now let's see why this holds true.

The only "self" that we know to turn to in moments of our distress is the very level of self responsible for that unwanted moment in our life! It's like asking a burglar what to do to keep him out of your house the next time you're away.

The problem is that this level of self is what it is because of how it knows itself -- meaning that the only reality this nature knows is the one it supplies itself by identifying with past thoughts and feelings it "sees" as being separate from itself. So, whenever life contradicts what this self "thinks" it knows is true, it sees life as trying to take away its happiness.

Each time this happens, the only recourse that our false self has is to reinvent itself, something it does by creating what it sees as a "new" desire to step in and replace the now thwarted one. This new desire lends the false self a sense of being new itself.

The secret drawback is that nothing our present self can desire can ever be new! All such longings are created from the reconfigured content of its own thought nature, and even one's most clever thoughts are still the stuff of the past. This discovery in itself should be enough to snap us out of running in these circles, but we have one more thing that needs to be seen:

Hidden in all of this mental running around is an unquestioned assumption that just because something in us resists life doesn't prove that it knows better than life what should be happening. Parts of us believe they know the best path to contented living even though, for all of their certainty, our conflict with life is unabated. Let's see what's "behind" this undetected deception.

In order to continue its pseudo-existence, the thought-self continually considers life around it using the content of its past experiences to gauge whether things have gone well or badly. And so it tells us how we should feel depending on its assessment of the moment, a conclusion based on a false assumption that it understands the true meaning of the moment it evaluates.

Unfortunately for this often-shocked sense of self, it doesn't know that the true nature of reality is nothing like it dreams it is; for as we now know it to be true, every moment of reality is new. This means that the essence of Now, the truly present moment, is unknown. This discovery sets the stage for recovering our True Self and its native freedom from painful desires.

It is our willingness to take part -- to be a part -- of this unknown moment that gradually awakens us to our own higher consciousness. It is our full awareness of the present moment that frees us from the fear of being disturbed by it, because in this higher self-awareness there exists no essential difference between ourselves and all that unfolds in the present moment.

Again, this pure present moment, the new "now," is absolutely unknown. Its secret nature is endless space, pure silence. It has no "individual" qualities because nothing exists outside of it to lend it any subjective attributes. And I stress these ideas here because of what it means to our study as follows:

The only so-called observable qualities any given moment may have are those given to it by a thought self that "names" that event according to its own conditioned nature. And it is from these self-assigned qualities that we then think (further) about what the moment means; so we find either satisfaction or disappointment in it, never knowing that we read our own labels.

But what we don't see is this: The nature in us that labels any moment in our life as being a "disturbance" is the same nature that created the conditions that caused this! Our inner task is to be aware of this truth, which empowers us to act consciously in any moment of disturbance brought about when our false self goes into conflict with life.

It is seeing our present nature in its action of avoiding some aching, continually creating the circle of self as it creates one new desire after another, that enables us to break its hold upon our lives. And as we awaken to this higher reality through awareness of ourselves, we also become aware of a new consciousness that can be described as this:

We realize that our True Self is the same as the present moment. And in the true present, in the Now, there can be no disappointment because of this great and wondrous spiritual fact: Life desires and fulfills Itself.

Let's summarize: We must see that desire is always an inadequate response to any moment wherein we find ourselves feeling disturbed by some action of life. When that disturbance comes (someone bothers you, a piece of bad news lands in your mailbox, etc.), realize that life is not asking you to fix it so that you can remain without having to change. Instead see this truth:

Life is asking you -- inviting you -- to take part in a whole new moment of relationship with it. Life is saying, "Let me show you the New and True You that already has its home in me."

So, instead of becoming lost in that instantaneous response of resistance, repulsion, and negativity, try to watch the whole moment rather than wanting to control it. Let go of your resistance and there goes with it whatever desire was about to dominate you again. Drop the names of your pains and you let go of all the reasons you have for them! Now you are free.

Our time has run out. Remember that the freedom you long for cannot be found by listening to the parts of you that want to run you through the same old changes. Dare to walk out of the circle of self and don't look back! Remember yourself, your wish for the Truth, and keep the love of the Light ahead of you at all times. God will see to your success.

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I want you to remember for the rest of your life on this earth that you were never created to be the slave of any negative thought or feeling, that you were never created to be the subject of some limitation.

The only way you'll ever know the truth of that statement is when, through what is ultimately a long process in this education of the soul, you begin at last to experience the dawning of a new light inside of you. This light is born out of your love of the Light. Your love of Truth is what gives birth to the truth in you that you love. It's always been that way. There's nowhere to go, there's nothing to do. There's only this willingness on the part of the soul who wants to learn the lessons that he or she is presented with all the time. There's only the willingness on that nascent soul's part to discover the unclaimed territory of itself, which currently has been claimed by something quite foreign to the purpose of that soul.

Part of that education and discovery is the following idea that I want you to remember, and I'll show you how it works: There is nothing that can stay in your mind, there is nothing that can stay in your heart, that you do not willingly remember. What does that mean? It means that when there is a painful, fearful, anxious, or hateful thought or feeling in your mind -- so that you look out and see a world that is painful, hateful, or fearful -- that thought or feeling remains in your mind because you are under the spell of a nature inside of you whose will is exactly the same as the negative state that you are identified with.

You were created to be the sovereign governor, the one within who decides what remains within you. Nothing can be held in the mind that isn't remembered there.

Have you ever had in your mind the image of someone who hurt you, or the image of something that didn't work out ten years ago or ten minutes ago? How does it stay in your mind? You fight with it, you try to fix it, you try to do something with it. You remember it. No image can stay in the mind, no sensation can stay in the heart that is not remembered there. Whatever it is in you that wants to remember that pain doesn't remember it for the purpose of freeing you from it -- even though this is what it seems to promise -- but does so because it keeps you a captive of that desire, of that nature.

So I don't have to remember anything I don't want to. Now I'll say it to you positively: I can remember whatever I want to.

Throughout time, the saints, sages, and wise ones have talked about what it means to remember God, what it means to remember yourself. I am telling you the interior meaning of what it means to remember yourself, to remember God, to remember the Light. In the moment in which you first discover that something in you is holding in your mind and heart a bitter picture, a bitter thought, an angry feeling, a regret, self-pity, whatever it may be, you must realize in that moment that you're remembering it willingly. But you don't know you're remembering it because you're a captive of what it's showing you as being the cause of that pain. This keeps you from seeing that the real cause is that you are agreeing to it. You are saying "I" to the will that whips you, because the will that whips you promises you relief from the whip if you will just chase what it shows you to chase.

I am given by my Creator the ability to remember what I want to. In other words, I am given the ability to no longer have to remember the things that have been imposed upon me by the will of my past – the will of what I have been, the will of what I didn't get, the will of what they did to me. And when I start to understand that, then in the moment where that pressure comes over me -- where I begin to see a dark world filled with dark people doing dark things towards me (whatever it may be that the individual uneducated soul sees) -- I can let that all go. I let it go by first seeing the fact of it. I don't have to hold anything in this house that I don't want in it. And what I don't want anymore is to feel as though life is against me. I don't want to feel anymore like I've got to straighten out the whole universe.

Then, instead of the partial, you remember the Whole. You withdraw your attention – which is an extension of your will – from the partial. You withdraw your attention from the object that the dark will is calling the dark problem. You withdraw your attention from the partial and you put your attention on the Whole. You remember the Whole as best you understand it. You remember the Light that has no burden, as opposed to identifying with the burden of bitterness that comes through blaming someone else for your pain. You come awake to yourself and you move from something that is isolated and separated through an unconscious action of a dark will inside of you, into something that has surrendered its small will to a greater will.

And listen to what happens: When you will remember the Whole, when you will remember God, when you will remember Love… you will begin to irritate the heck out of the devil – the darkness. When you're feeling anger and enmity, see that what you're feeling is because you have been made to remember something painful, and then caused to identify with the sensations both of the pain and the promise of being relieved from that pain. And instead of remembering hatred, remember Love. Instead of remembering your tiny little life, remember God's eternal life. You bring into your present painful understanding the higher understanding that you are growing into and that is growing into you.

The dark will of desire is what occupies the soul at present, because it promises the soul that it can find outside of itself something that will bring an end to the pain of the desire. And when the remembrance of the Light is brought into that dark will of desire, in that moment when a man or woman will remember the Whole, remember God, remember themselves and their wish, that dark will of desire is rendered powerless. It is suddenly captured and made into something greater that benefits the soul, even though prior to that moment, it would have hated anything that revealed its own limited, dead-end life. And in that moment when the Light enters into it, the same dark will of desire realizes that it was always the ground in which, and upon which, everything it ever wanted already existed. But it had to have the Light to cancel the opposites. It needed the Light to reveal this fact to itself. So the Light enters into the darkness that doesn't comprehend it, and the darkness is changed by the entrance of that Light into something that is greater than it was before.

Remember what I'm telling you. You were given by God, by Truth, by the Living Light, the ability to choose what is in your mind. You were given the right to determine whose will you live from. Your task is not to will the greater; it is to surrender the lesser into the greater – to change your understanding of your relationship in this world so that you no longer struggle to overcome something, but instead see that all you need to do is give up the nature that lives to fight with what overcomes it.

You must see it, over and over again, and then right in the middle of the darkest moment – right in the middle of that punishing thought or feeling that's come over you -- you remember what you have been told, and then you work at it. You find something that is broader, greater, bigger, kinder, truer, more loving, more wide, more deep inside of yourself… because it's there. In your uneducated, unenlightened soul dwells the whole of the kingdom with all of the mansions, and the punishment of the soul is the deception that the only house it has is the little one that now holds it captive – the one it must now fight to tear down. Don't fight to tear down anything. See through the deception. You see through it by an act of being willing to give yourself up.

You have to give up this little will, the one that fills you with the powerful and fiery thoughts and feelings when it's captured by something. You have to give it up, but you don't just give it up in the sense of "I'm throwing this away." Instead, you turn it over. You let it go through the natural process of remembering its relationship with the Greater Light that gave it life, and then it gives itself to that Light, and then that Light gives it Real Life.

GF: Welcome to our chat tonight. These are difficult times, at best. So before we begin I want to give you some new ideas to work with that are vital for any of us who would do our part to ensure peace on earth.

There is one essential reason why there is war on this earth, and why this conflict continues as it has down through the ages. The answer may surprise you. We do not understand our own pain - our suffering. Six-and-a-half billion human beings live in ignorance of their pain. But this is not to say that we live pain-free.

In fact, without exception, human beings carry on their shoulders and in their hearts massive amounts of pain. No matter what religion you are, you have pain. No matter what part of the world you live in, no matter your economic condition, no matter your social conditioning, no matter the color of your skin - you have pain. All human beings have pain.

It is because we are presently not aware of most of it, and because we do not understand anything about the nature of it, that ignorance of our pain manifests itself in war. So, even though it isn't a popular topic of conversation among human beings, we must examine our pain if we are ever to gain the understanding to end war for good.

The interaction of all matter and energy in the Universe is governed by a grand set of Universal Laws. These laws can also be called Timeless Principles, Everlasting Forces, Fundamental Truths, and many other names. For our purposes, I'm going to call these forces Invisible Eternals.

As human beings, we are the embodiment of these Universal Forces. We are the embodiment of the principles that produced the universe that we live in. Until we understand something about these Principles that govern all and everything, we can't begin to understand ourselves, or our relationship with others.

One of these Invisible Eternals is the force of opposition. Everything created is born from opposition. Everything destroyed (incidentally, so that something new can be created), is done so by opposition. This is true inside of us just as it is true outside of us in the world and in the greater universe. Let's look at some commonly recognized examples:

Opposition is a major part of what modifies the movements of stellar bodies (in our galaxy, solar system, etc.). Collisions of tectonic plates create immense oppositional forces, which result in the formation of new land and the raising of mountain ranges.

There is opposition in the action of wind moving through a forest. The wind strengthens the healthy trees and cleanses the weak, making for a noble forest. Our immune system opposes the diseases that attack us. It does so not only to defeat the attacker, but also to learn about its tactics in preparation for the next battle.

Now, where there is opposition, there is always a form of conflict. In the physical world, this state of conflict is natural and accepted. After the winds pass, and the trees return to their normal state, the trees don't sit and hate the wind. Bacteria don't complain, "I hate the immune system because it wouldn't let me in."

But human beings are different. When we experience opposition and conflict, we resist it. We think about it. We hate the things that we are opposed to. Conflict inside of a human being creates pain.

What we fail to realize, however, is that without those opposing forces working their way in us, we could not change. We could not grow. It would be impossible. All things would stop because nothing would be created or destroyed.

So, we must ask: "What is it about this human nature that is different from the nature of the wind and the tree, that is different from the nature of the solar system, that is different from the nature of the tectonic plates? What is it inside of me that turns what is natural opposition into hate, anxiety, frustration, depression, and pain?"

When we look closely at ourselves, we see that all of these negative states find a home and their expression in us due to opposition to what "I want" in any given moment:

For example, one person wants all human beings to be Jewish or Muslim, while another insists they all be Christian or Buddhist. This group wants more money and that group stands in the way. You want me to love you and I am not acting very loving at the moment. I want to be left alone and you won't be quiet. So can we see the real root of conflict here?

I want what I see as necessary for my "peace" of mind, and when you don't want that same peace, in the same way, what happens to me? I get frustrated. And what follows frustration? Anger. And what follows anger? Violence. War. This is why before there can be peace on earth we must learn to see what makes us warring!

These wants -- these unconscious desires -- are the root cause of pain, and thus the root cause of war. We couldn't be frustrated, hateful, or angry because things didn't go our way unless we had a desire -- a picture in our mind -- of how they should go. So we rarely see the world around us as it is. We only see things in relation to how they fit in with our desires.

If we look at ourselves honestly, we can see that we don't actually meet people directly; we instead meet our evaluation of them. We don't actually have conversations with people; we talk to ourselves inside our mind about the conversation we're having while we're having it. We do not look out and see something as it is; we look out and describe to ourselves what we see.

When the world that we have imagined in our mind does not match the world of reality, we get frustrated. We feel pain. We get angry. We blame things outside of ourselves for the pain we feel inside. And we never see that it isn't the things outside of us that make us feel bad; it is the mechanism of desire inside of us that is the real cause of our pain.

Now, before we close out this first part of our study, you do the "math" given what we have discovered. No frustrated desire, no pain; no pain from frustration, no anger; no anger, no one to blame; no one to blame for my pain, no war.

Before we end the chat tonight I will finish these thoughts and offer some additional ideas on what each of us can do to give birth to a world without war.

Now let's get to your questions and comments, but please work to remember that our task here on-line together is to address what is real and what leads us to authentic self-transformation. Let's discuss the issues you are working upon within yourself, which means let's not spend our time with frivolous philosophical or religious questions. What would you like to talk about tonight? Let's see what we can learn together.

BillH: What is the distinction (if any) between observing conflict in the world and having a feeling that there shouldn't be the conflict. Or in other words what do you do if seeing some foolishness "bothers you"?

GF: In truth there is no difference between getting angry over the violence that one sees in the world and the violence within one that gets upset over what is seen. It's a good thing that you are seeing these more subtle aspects of your own psychology. Keep watching. The Truth will help you to understand these seeming contradictions in your own consciousness.

justme: I have this subtle, fearful, way-overprotective nature that seems to stop me from having real relationships. I am afraid to pay close attention and see the truths about people I love, and it saddens me. I sometimes wish to try to keep this horrible world from them despite my faith in God. What am I caught in here and what can I do to end the sad feelings I get when I see into somebody I love?

GF: First let me say that we must never allow any fear that we have about what we suspect to be the "truth" of someone to interfere without perception of the same. The Light by which we apprehend another's nature is in many ways the only true way in which we may safely know who is right for us and who is wrong for us. On another note, it is not your place (or anyone's for that matter) to shield someone else from this world and the lessons that it offers. When we try to protect people from what causes them pain, we effectively interfere with their realization that the world they encounter is but a reflection of their own nature. The only way we can really help one another really love one another is by encouraging each other to do the interior work it takes to discover the truth of ourselves.

justme: I have a once close family member who has been afflicted with a bad, common mental disorder. This person's life is torment at best. Our fears seem to be coming true in that this person's young children are growing and now taking on not-so-pleasant personalities. This affects all of us and it is the one thing I cannot understand although I try by letting go and being kind. Please advise.

GF: Naturally no one wants to see anyone that we care about fall into the hands of negative characteristics such as you have described. More than likely, it isn't that you cannot understand what is happening, but that there are parts of you that do not want to see the fact of what has transpired. Resisting life is futile, especially when it comes to refusing to see what others are making of themselves. This doesn't mean to be happy over the events, only to see the waste in wanting them to be different.

mobilman: Do you have understanding regarding this scripture: "Consider the lilies, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

GF: We often discuss in our ongoing meetings here at the Foundation the spiritual truth behind one of the Invisible Eternal principles I mentioned at the outset of the chat tonight. Walt Whitman once said that, "A blade of grass is made of the stuff of stars." How much more so is that true of us, and if that is indeed the truth (which it is), then we are not apart from the Grand Intelligence of this universe, nor its intent for Goodness to be ours everyday of our lives. This is how we are "arrayed."

Jilly: Does consciousness make a shift when you are aware of choosing against self?

GF: It could be said that consciousness is not unlike the reflection of a mirror, and that everything that passes into it and before it causes a change in the reflection, but not in the mirror itself. When we choose against ourselves, it is done in an unconscious act that reflects instantly in this mirror to reveal the conflict inherent in any divided act. This "shift," this "fluctuation," we can and must be conscious of through our awareness.

Jilly: I'm sorry; I must have stated my question wrong. What I meant was does consciousness make a shift when we choose in favor of God because of the knowledge we have gained through the work?

GF: Every act of will that is an expression of the Light that has entered us to make whatever choice is so indicated, changes our consciousness in that moment.

nrg-gate: On page 165 of "The Secret of Letting Go," there is this sentence: "The Truth itself promises that nothing bad will happen to you." Later, in same paragraph is the statement: "...the real danger lies not with the unexpected but with remaining where you are in your present life-level." Help me understand.

GF: There is no contradiction in these two ideas. Nothing bad occurs to the Good in any human being. This is because what is Good in us is created for the purpose of transforming all that it meets into an expression of Itself. The "danger" mentioned has to do with what happens to the soul that chooses the "good" that it prefers due to the pressure of the desire to fulfill itself according to one's conditioned need. Such a soul isolates itself and in so doing ultimately destroys its chance for Real Life.

Grayson: Does the following sound real or delusional? Sometimes, after going into the present and watching troubling thoughts, I see objectively my own and others' thoughts, and then feel freer. Sometimes, I go beyond this and receive insight to great things happening outside my immediate surroundings; I realize that somewhere children are having a blast at a park, or a young couple is walking near a lake, and I identify and suddenly feel more joy, peace, and freedom.

GF: Only you can know the difference between what is certainly possible as you've described it, versus the possibility that this is all taking place in imagination. The good news is, if you just keep watching yourself in the present moment, these issues will resolve themselves. Either way it turns out, don't let yourself identify with what may be a gift or an act of self-deception.

Grayson: I believe I could have worded my question better. I was not referring to definite, specific things happening outside my surroundings, but rather to the knowledge that no matter what is happening here, somewhere in this world people are enjoying themselves right now, and that is just as important to the world as my own situation is, and I seem to identify with that. Does this sound right?

GF: If you're asking me, "Is the nature of happiness, happiness wherever it may be expressed?" the answer is yes. We are each created with the potential to live in a world of intelligent principles instead of being captives of ignorance and the states it produces that punish us. Happiness exists as an objective entity, as surely does darkness.

Grayson: The real point I meant to ask about was whether it is "right" and truthful to feel joy and happiness because people somewhere in the world right now are experiencing that.

GF: If you are asking me to confirm that one might feel happiness while watching a child playing happily, the answer is yes. If you ask "can one feel the happiness of someone 500 miles away?" the answer is there is no difference between the happiness of "there" or "here." It is wrong parts of us that want to feel themselves special that separate such things in our mind.

Jilly: In a tape of yours I listened to recently you said something to the effect that awareness precedes a thought. Can a person stop certain thoughts/see them and not let them enter beforehand?

GF: The more one awakens to the activity of thought and its purpose in the mind, the more thought naturally quiets down, as it is no longer fueled by a form of unconscious self-fascination. Awareness always precedes thought, as surely as the sky must precede the bird that flies through it. Work to be more like the sky, and less like a "bird brain."

Eric: I just watched a Vernon Howard video and he said that I could easily, effortlessly drop all of my problems, worries, anxieties, burdens, false hopes (in other words, drop being "me"), etc., right now! Why do I refuse to do it?

GF: What Mr. Howard says is true. And in a deep but necessary spiritual paradox, you will only know the truth of this statement as you discover all that you can about the nature presently occupying you that cannot live in any other dimension other than the negative states you've described.

mobilman: I recently discovered that I have been identifying with money. I didn't realize it until an event where some was taken away (which I believed was unfair) and a storm overtook me. I realized that if money can make me happy, it can also make me unhappy. Comments?

GF: All desires are double-edged swords. The pleasure one gets from an image he is attached to is necessarily connected to a kind of dependency, which in turn breeds fear and anger when the conditions that supported that attachment collapse.

orion: I have had moments in observation where I was suddenly disturbed by an outer event and I could feel my heart jump -- a very unpleasant sensation. I am able to sit back from these disturbances and watch them, but then become upset that, after all my practice, something like a loud noise or an angry stare can cause such a physical reaction. Will the reaction ever go away?

GF: It is never the first reaction that is our problem. The physical organism is created to respond to physical stimuli of all orders. It is the second reaction that steals from us our peace and quiet of mind or heart. This is the reaction that either blames something outside of us for upsetting us, or that turns on us and belittles us for not being as spiritual as we had imagined. Study this in yourself.

James1: Is it true that I have become so consumed by fear that I don't want to do anything?

GF: Fear, unattended to in us, not only isolates us in an imagined fearful world, but serves to produce for us all of the evidence we need to confirm this delusional and dark conclusion.

James1: Do I address matters knowing that I am (what feels like) enveloped in this fear? Should I ask, "How has this fear manifested itself in and around me?"

GF: Yes. Don't think about what fear gives you to think about. That's how fear sucks you into its world. Instead of thinking, or being absorbed into feelings of fear, learn to watch these thoughts and feelings while they try to convince you that their life is your own. This watchfulness is a kind of light that will reveal to you the difference between the darkness that calls itself you, and the you that knows better.

mobilman: A decision I made recently appeared as though it was wrong. The second guesser came and began to tell me the reason this happened was because I did this and I should have done that. It worked out, but even if it hadn't, it didn't make the decision wrong. Comments?

GF: One must begin to realize that within one there is a certain nature that is only happy as long as something needs to be fixed. This same self cannot come to a decision and make it without flipping into conflict instantly over what was thought to be best. Here's a new action to take decisively: Choose what you must and then be done with the "second-guesser" in you who really only lives to steal life from you so that it may live.

Jilly: Can a bad relationship hinder spiritual development, even if you are working spiritually but the other person is not (whether it be a spouse or a child or other family member)?

GF: Nothing in the universe can hinder spiritual development in the soul who is willing to use all of one's conditions, regardless of their nature. This isn't to say that there is some benefit in dwelling with dark individuals, only that the light in us can use everything around it.

Carron: Someone who has been present through my life, someone who once thought the world of me, has now backed away, and by trying to make things better I've made it worse and the closeness is gone. I've tried to sit with the pain, and not react, but I see this person each day and try to find the "lesson" in the rejection I am feeling… but pain ends up finding it's way back.

GF: Where in the world did any of us get the idea that spiritual work is the antidote for pain in life? It is not the antidote, it is what allows us to work through the parts of us that produce this pain. Only when we are awake to the dynamic in us that produced a painful attachment will we have the capacity to naturally drop our interest in the sensations such attachments produce. Then we are free of pain because we've lost interest in what causes it in us in the first place.

orion: In social situations I move into an autopilot state, engaging in the same typical unconscious behaviors with the same people. No matter how much I remind myself to remain conscious, I have trouble being present and become aware of how unconscious I was as soon as I am alone. As such, I find it desirable to avoid others. What should I do?

GF: Always move toward the conditions that you want to avoid, not away from them. The parts of you that direct you to stay away from situations in which you find yourself asleep are the very sleeping parts that are compromising your wish to be awake. The only way to realize this and release yourself from these self-wrecking aspects is to bring them into the light of a conscious action to see them as they are.

saqib: Last year this time I came across the teachings of Vernon Howard. After some time I had an experience of being nobody. I just felt so in the moment. "I" the experiencer was not there, and it was so filled with awe I couldn't even speak about it. After a few weeks I was me with my conditioning again. Since then I have been quite unstable, confused and divided. My desires make my prayers and meditations look hypocritical. I have had enough from books and tapes. Please help.

GF: I understand what you have said. You may be assured of the following: Any awakening of a real nature has an actual organic effect on the brain. It takes time for the organism and the self that is the extension of it to orient itself to new orders of energy. Don't get caught in resisting your condition, imagining negative pictures about yourself that punish you, or otherwise identifying with parts of yourself trying to pull you down into fear or self-loathing. Go back to work on yourself. Drop all self-concern.

rousseau: I have felt the same disorientation occasionally when reading too much of Vernon Howard's or your books and tapes. I have to back off and just live, then come back to them a month or more later. I wondered if there was a reason for this. Actually I sometimes also tended to become "hard to deal with" during these times according to my family. I don't exactly know what changed in me that they noticed.

GF: Such cases are each individual and must be treated as such, which is one of the reasons why – in true cases – there is no substitute for being in the presence of the teacher helping to elicit such movements. As a rule the Light always feels "disorienting" to what is shadow-like, but this is not to say other (less flattering) factors may not be involved here.

saqib: Please clarify one thing for me: Going through these changes of adjusting to new levels of energy, do I enter a spiritual tradition of Sufism (for instance), or remain self-observant and to myself?

GF: Follow your intuition, but know that no "path" in and of itself has value; it is the person that makes the "tools" valuable, not the other way around.

saqib: Are you in any relationship at the moment with the spirit of Vernon Howard relative to the Sufi's teachings of a relationship or connection between living masters and students?

GF: The whole point of any true teacher or teaching is that the Spirit of Truth is timeless and not individual, so if one awakens, he or she realizes the same Spirit of Truth as apprehended by their teacher.

doctree: Is it foolish to leave an abusive relationship even if you have nowhere to go and might have to camp out for a while?

GF: It is never foolish to leave anyone or anything that abuses us in any way whatsoever, no matter where we might have to be for some time. Put what you know is true and right before what you fear and imagine in the night.

ScJ711: I keep having dark feelings inside whenever I think about the nature and motivation of evil or demons, especially since they exist on higher realms and are intelligent enough to understand that the universe has an eternal law of karma. Can you help me gain the proper perspective on this?

GF: No one can feel the nature of evil and remain in that relationship so as to be damaged by that unless they have been deceived into allowing their attention to remain on such darkness. Your awareness and your attention belong to you. Reclaim them and you will release yourself from these fears born out of being deceived.

Grayson: I think I see spiritual significance in the lighthearted quote, "You wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you ever realized how little they did." This Truth seems to kind of take the "self" out of situations. Does this sound right?

GF: Yes, that's exactly right. People rarely think of others without themselves being the center of those thoughts.

doctree: You once hinted to me that increasing my inner conflict would be good for me. I did not understand at all at the time and now only a little bit more. Can you explain what you meant?

GF: I didn't say you should increase your inner conflict, only that you should be willing to be more aware of just how much internal conflict already exists within you. Make your intention moment-to-moment to watch yourself as you are, instead of trying to prove yourself in whatever situations you find yourself in, and you will discover all the conflict you need to transcend it in yourself.

RobF: In the "Go Quiet" exercise in Design Your Destiny, when you tell us to watch and observe our thoughts, is that the same thing as when you tell us at other times to come awake and aware of our surroundings?

GF: Yes, they are one and the same.

Eric: I believe that self-deception may be a pretty important "area" of study. Please, what would you say is a particularly cunning and dangerous self-deception that we should be on the lookout for?

GF: Since a mind divided in itself cannot see itself, this same mind never recognizes that it sets out with one end in mind and four minutes later is working towards a completely different end. Before one can work on ending self-deception, one must first end the deception, the illusion, that he is "one" to begin with. Only discovering how divided we are can end the deception that is born in the dark of this division.

Diojeneez: Awhile ago I encountered something that completely baffled me. It was Swedenborg's interpretation of Genesis, which looked (at least to me) exactly like everything thing I've heard you teach! Maurice Nicoll and Vernon Howard have done things like this as well. How is it that your whole teaching is contained in the first book of the Bible, but more than that, how is it that you even perceive the esoteric meaning of the Bible to begin with?

GF: It is difficult for us to understand that it is not men or women who are teachers of Truth, but it is the Truth that teaches itself through such individuals. This being said, there is no individual who finds Truth, but that the Truth you have described expresses itself through various individuals throughout time.

justme: Do you know why we gain different insights at different times despite being in the same situation or hearing the same teachings? I believe I am paying attention, but seem to hear new ideas from something I've heard dozens of times before. Does this mean I am not being fully awake? Could I be doing something better?

GF: Yes, what you have described is one of the reasons why it is so important for an individual to do "continuous" inner work, and to keep the company of others who do that same kind of work. The reason for this is that we are not "one" within ourselves, but "many," and each of these aspects of ourselves have, in essence, separate "ears" that hear the Truth differently at different times. The Truth eventually unites these aspects into what is whole.

ScJ711: As I continue to understand this false nature in me that creates feelings of guilt, fear, and judgment, I find myself coming across many spiritual teachings that talk about entities attaching to our souls at some point in our evolution that could be a product of the false self. This has produced a lot of fear in me, but I know I'm ultimately in control of my soul. I would really appreciate if you could help me gain the right perspective on this.

GF: You might want to get a copy of "Secrets of Cleansing Your Heart Mind, and Soul" from our website. What you have said is true. There are subtle forms that attach themselves to us as surely as thoughts are forms that we become attached to ourselves. Fear of such possibilities only helps to ensure the possibility feared. Drop this concern and choose self-study over self-fascination.

pkay8: I'm having some trouble with meditation and "going within." I've been reading your book The Lost Secrets of Prayer. It's really good and reader-friendly; I just cannot get myself to let go. Do you have any words that might make it click?

GF: This is hard to understand at first, but think on what I say here until you understand it. Don't "try" to make your mind quiet. Real meditation is about living in the awareness of what one actually is at the moment. It is this awareness that is the true nature of silence, and only as we live in relationship with it - through meditation - do we begin to experience the presence of its nature. Then silence is not a creation of ours, but a condition we awaken to within ourselves.

Diojeneez: Vernon Howard had this booklet about human sharks in which he says that "people want to be the stars of their little sick shows entitled, 'How Important I Must Be That The Whole World Is Out To Get Me!'" My question for you is, why exactly does the false self want to be important, and how does that desire function within me?

GF: One of the unseen deceptions that secretly drives human beings crazy is that, on one hand, their false nature is literally compelled to think about itself and put itself before all else, and on the other hand, nothing this nature can do (since it is false itself) can make itself feel real. In the long run, this nature just loves to vibrate with no concern for what shakes it up.

briant: Although not a promiscuous person, I have always "looked" at other women and never seemed to be free from the desires of X-rated material and the darker sides of things. For the first time in my life, I recently felt free from all of that and was no way interested in any other curiosity -- just my fiancée. How can I keep that real life feeling? I do not want to be caught up in false, meaningless attractions.

GF: There is no sickness in any of us that does not make us feel sick when it is active. Awareness of ourselves reveals the fact of this whereas the desire of such things masks both the sickness and the pain it produces. Work to remain awake and aware of yourself, and don't hesitate to ask God as you understand Him to give you more of the light you need to be free.

Jason: Is it possible to remember and honor one's memory without this false self? I am trying to honor the memory of a past loved one but when I try to remember them in a proper manner, most of my thoughts are about me.

GF: We spoke about this in our class last night. What is Real, True, Good, and Right in us -- relative to ourselves and our loved ones -- is not an act of memory in any way. Love is timeless… as is compassion, respect, and all other noble qualities. When we live our lives working to reflect these Higher realities, we are automatically in relationship with every possible counterpart that has had a presence in our lives.

2big: Someone I know is incredibly negative. Everything is wrong, bad, someone else's fault, etc. I am using this to see more deeply into how I myself do the same thing, just to a lesser degree. Do you have words of wisdom to help me and my friend see more clearly how to use so-called bad things to move to a higher life? Is it just expectations about a certain outcome that get us in trouble? Or is there more to it?

GF: One of the most powerful and ultimately self-transforming principles that we can and must awaken to in our lives is that nothing and no one that we see in life, and certainly no experience that we derive from that relationship, actually exists outside of our own consciousness. What this means is that negative people set off negativity latent in us that we then blame them for. This is why if we learn to love our enemies, we can begin to use them and their darkness for the purposes that the Light within us has allowed this relationship to exist in the first place.

Eric: Tolstoy said that these Principles are simple, understandable, and few in number. As we truly work more and more on ourselves (not just in imagination), do we begin to see connections between things that before seemed completely unrelated? I think maybe I have experienced this seeing connections, and I'll tell you, it's actually a fun experience.

GF: Yes, precisely, and the reason this is "fun" is because when one sees that he or she is a part of the perfection of the Divine, there is no more fear that one has to run the show in order to star in it.

Diojeneez: What is this idea of charity Jesus always talked about? According to the Muslims he says, "Charity does not mean doing good to him who does good to you, for this is to return good for good. Charity means that you should do good to him who does you harm." I'm very confused, I thought we shouldn't even keep the company of those who love the darkness?

GF: Do not hate those who hate you, but bear (consciously) the negative reactions that appear within you that seek to punish them for their transgression. This is laying down your "life" for the sake of your brother.

ScJ711: In order to be free, we have to understand our dark side, and as long as we stay without understanding, we will be in fear. So I understand that evil on the earth's plane of existence is born out of deep fears and deep pains at the core of someone's being. So forgive them because they're in pain and are not aware of the karma they produce. But what about the forces that work against us on higher realms? Every time I let this go I have an emotional response. How do I understand and proceed?

GF: Your task is to remember the Light and put it first in your life (as best you understand this), and to let this living Light "fight" the "battles" that it will. Be an observer on the field of consciousness, not a "general" in the midst of trying to win some war you cannot.

Diojeneez: What is this Law of Opposites you and Vernon Howard are always talking about? I only understand it in bits and pieces. Can you define it?

GF: Any attempt to describe it under these limited conditions serves nothing. You might pick up a copy of The Intimate Enemy which discusses some of the dynamics you wish to learn.

2big: I used to like most all music and listened to a lot of radio. Now I find most music and the radio irritating and prefer silence or very quiet background music. Is this good? Did your taste in music change as you sought the higher life?

GF: Clearly this is natural as one's nature seeks what best reflects itself wherever one may be.

briant: I never try to sit and meditate but almost always stay in an observant state throughout the day. Should I try to sit and practice, or go with what I am doing to gain more understanding to life?

GF: There is benefit in sitting quietly, free from exterior distractions and intending to meet life without sensations such as life elicits from our normally engaged mind.

steveb: Would you recommend some music for meditation?

GF: As a prelude, perhaps. But for the true purposes of meditation – which is communion – music becomes a hindrance, not a help.

Carron: Any suggestions on how to release our thoughts of attachment?

GF: Such letting go begins with realizing that these thoughts you have described are not "your" own to begin with.

DebbiE: You have said on numerous occasions (yourself or through others) that I have all the answers within. I seem to not have as much need to ask questions. I think I must be getting somewhere with the work.

GF: So be it.

Grayson: I don't seem to fully understand scales and levels. Can you elaborate? If not here, can you give me a good source on those topics?

GF: You can find some help in seeing into these principles if you listen to either volume one or two of the "Secret Teachings of the Sacred Testaments."

Grayson: These multiple selves in us you have been mentioning tonight, are they the different "I's" that conditionally pop up in different situations that make up the lower self of thoughts?

GF: What you have stated here is essentially true, although these various lower aspects of "self" are not limited to one's thoughts.

Grayson: Should the lower self of "I's" be considered something to ultimately kick out for good, or is it naturally beneficial to a full life if understood and used in the right way?

GF: There is no "you" that can kick anything out of you anymore than an auto can kick a bad gear out of its own transmission.

GF: Our time together on-line has nearly run its course, so now I wish to give you my remaining notes on what each of us can do if we wish to give birth to a world without war. I will spend a brief moment summarizing a few of the more important ideas we discussed at the outset of the chat. They are important enough to review once more before we continue our investigation into the secret causes and potential "cure" for this conflicted planet of ours:

There is a set of grand universal laws that govern the interaction of all matter and energy in the universe (including human life). One of these Invisible Eternals is the beautiful principle of natural opposition. Natural opposition is the force responsible for all birth and change in the universe.

Natural opposition in itself is a constructive force, however, we, as human beings, transform it into a destructive, negative energy by comparing in our mind "what is" to "what should be."

This comparison of our image of the way we think things should be to the way they really are, causes frustration and pain. We then are moved to look for something outside of ourselves to blame for the pain we feel inside, so we fight and there is war. Must this pattern persist? How does all this relate to stopping war?

This war with Iraq is the manifestation of an immense pressure between opposing forces. Everyone involved has objectified its/his/her pain. The US has objectified its enemy. Saddam has objectified his enemy. Every dictator in the world, and his willing or unwilling countrymen, have in some form or another given a name to what they see as causing their pain.

When this latest war ends, the "victors" will have a momentary reprieve. They will enjoy victory just long enough to conceive the next desire that will bring along with it the next thing to blame for it not being fulfilled. The "losers" will not get a reprieve, but will instead harbor even greater hatred for the ones who "caused" them pain. Another war will follow.

This is why the time between two wars is not peace. All throughout time, war continues to manifest because its seeds are never destroyed. And this is where we come in. This is what every True teaching has been trying to disseminate since the beginning of time. If we want the war to end, we must let it end in us.

We must bring the opposing forces into our awareness. We must see them as they are -- not as we are. Instead of naming and defining what the cause of our pain is -- so that we can have a new desire, a new enemy, a new plan -- we must learn about the mechanism inside of us that creates pain.

We are created to understand that we are the embodiment of all of the Invisible Eternal Principles, and that they have their place and their power within us, but these opposing forces were never intended to be used by our minds to create negativity, hatred, fear, and pain.

Just like the wind in the trees, these opposing forces are meant to exist merely as a potentiality that is expressed, and, at the end of the expression, all the conflict is meant to be gone.

You and I have something in us that is capable of transcending these forces. In that moment of anger, that moment of fear, that moment of anxiety -- that moment in which we feel thwarted and frustrated -- rather than turning our lives over to a mental construct (that instantaneously creates desire and pain), the whole thing can be let go -- consciously forgotten.

In those moments where we feel negativity swelling inside of us, we can become aware of ourselves and the mechanism inside of us that creates pain and war. We can realize that every desire, every wish for things to be different than they are, is a secret dictator on another campaign to run our lives into the ground. Which brings us to this:

How do we answer a dictator, any dictator, wherever he, she or "it" appears in the world around us or within us? We take away his power by taking away its "source": his money. This strips him of his supporters, which leaves him with no forces to implement his evil. How does all this happen? We implement a policy of radical isolation.

What is radical isolation? It is just what it sounds like: No trade. No interaction. No deals. None.

Why? Because "trade" is how the tyrants of this world get their money. And this money is what keeps the generals in place and the army deployed. The generals and the army keep the psychos in power. And there you have tyranny and oppression. (Please remember that this is an interior story for our spiritual development and not a suggested political action.)

Try to look at the big picture here. The world has tried polite sanctions for many years, but they are not meaningful. Sanctions in the eyes of the world mean "I'm not going to trade with you on this thing. But I am going to go ahead and trade with you on the other, because if I don't, my people might have to suffer, which means I won't stay in power."

The collective will of the world today is non-existent. It cannot enact real sanctions. Can you imagine President Bush getting on television and saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, I really mean this. I realize now that war doesn't work. Hatred and violence begets more hatred and violence. So what we're going to do instead of dropping bombs is enact a total embargo of Iraq. This means that as a world, not one country will trade with the oil rich state of Saddam. Now, among other unpleasant things, this will mean gas rationing. But, we're through with this dictator. We're going to isolate the evil so that the goodness that is inherent in that country, in its oppressed peoples, can have a chance to be strengthened and grow free."

Do you think this scenario impossible? Life teaches otherwise. What happened to any drug addict or alcoholic who finally kicked his or her damaging habit? It has to be that there was something inherently good in that body which was strengthened to the point where it could understand the destruction that was taking place. Once the understanding was there -- once the person could see the whole of the situation -- that person could never go back and touch what they were involved in any more than they could stick their hand into a fire.

What does radical isolation mean for us personally? We know that anger is bad for us, self-pity is destructive, anxiety and stress rip us apart. But what do we do with these negative states? We make trade deals!

Why? Because as individuals we do not have a collective will. We have "generals" and "cabinet members and diplomats" inside of us -- some of which say no, others of which say they need the trade. "I need to feel sorry for myself, because this time it's really important," "I need to be angry at that person; just look at what he did to me!"

We never say, "Anger, I know you are a destroyer of happiness. I will not trade with you. Fear, you have fooled me once too often. Self-pity, you have punished me for the last time!" We don't practice radical isolation. We practice appeasement instead.

There was once an international policy of appeasement whose high point came in 1938 with the Munich Pact made between Britain, France, and Nazi Germany. Basically it said: "Hitler's OK. Let's make a deal with him and give him what he wants; he promises he won't bother us if we do this." The next thing you know the world is at war. So how does this lesson apply to us?

No matter how much we want to feel bad over that breakup, no matter how much we want to blast that person who didn't treat us right, no matter how much we want to get angry over whatever -- we must not let those negative energies express themselves through us. Instead we must work to isolate them in our awareness of them.

This action leaves them alone in the Light -- and robbed of the powers they need to make deals in the dark (of us). This is a difficult task to undertake because there are parts of us that secretly enjoy much of this pain. We feel consoled in our self-pity. We feel self-important when we are angry. We absolve ourselves from responsibility when we blame others.

But if we hope for a real end to conflict, then this inner work of radical isolation is the cost. When we will do our part to weaken the negative parts in us, it serves to strengthen the good because another Invisible Eternal is that health, balance, and goodness are intended to prevail. Light always triumphs over darkness, Good over evil, Peace over war.

Each of us must do the work to end war inside of us. This higher spiritual action alone is the pathway to the kind of Real Peace that no dictator, physical or psychological, can ever take away from us because the conditions of our awakening consciousness won't permit it.

Our time has run out. Remember all that we have discussed this evening. Choose the true inner path of peace by refusing to be a part of the conflict that calls you to enlist in the war within you. Choose in favor of the Light, and it will fight the good fight for you. Do persist with your inner work. And now, good night.

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I live on top of a small mountain in southern Oregon where each morning, from a chair seated next to a large window in my small house, I sit quietly and watch the world turn. Right outside, usually less than ten to twelve feet away from where I am seated, it is as though Mother Nature mounts a wildlife parade just for me.

Deer, wild turkey, gray tree squirrels, rabbits, and more than a dozen species of birds all congregate and then move through an area just beneath a cluster of spreading oak trees. The birds come for the seed I provide in a number of stations, and the turkeys come for their table scraps. Why the rest appear as they do is anyone's guess. Maybe they just enjoy the party!

At any rate, come early March, signs of spring appear and this change means many things to my visiting friends. For most birds, mating season begins in earnest. This usually means lots of singing, posturing, and aggressive, territorial behavior, while for some of the other creatures, this time heralds a season for giving birth to young conceived some months before.

But regardless of these varying conditions, one thing remains in common to one and all; and it is apparent to anyone watching with an eye willing to observe and learn: these creatures are constantly active. They are as alert and as sensitive to life going on around them as is a silk spider web responsive to the slightest summer's breeze.

And along with this natural feature of all wild creatures, in fact very much at the root of what enables them to expend so much vital energy, is another highly noticeable behavior: their lives are a never-ending search for food. Apart from propagating their own species, feeding themselves is their principle work on this earth.

The silent turning of the seasons, the latent desire of all creatures to fulfill the purpose for their being, the invisible hand that ensures that necessary supplies of food stuffs will be there for them at the right moment; these elements, their balance and concert with one another all speak of what the Wise have called (and still do) the "Invisible Eternals."

These Invisible Eternals are the unseen Timeless Principles that sit behind the expression of our physical world, and that are to its existence as is the sun to the shadows that pay silent witness to their creator. To be able to see these Eternal Forces as the true backdrop of a greater reality is to become a witness to an Intelligent Universe at work.

For the one who would become consciously aware of these Invisible Eternals, the same is brought into a whole new order of reality where intelligence, action and harmony are as one thing; herein the Light shines upon and animates all creatures alike. Even conflict serves something greater than its lesser causes.

This journey of awareness between one's first glimpse of this Higher Reality, and one's realization of it as the ground of one's own being, is the true spiritual path and task of those who would know and be known by Truth. And we are created to enter this Higher World, to know this heaven and its Love while we dwell on earth. Make no mistake about this.

All Scripture, the Wisdom teachings regardless of origin, confer this same truth. To take one example, the great Christian mystic Boehme points out that Christ taught, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them the eternal life." Here Christ did not say, "You may know life eternal in a time to come (i.e., after death)," but now, in this life.

If anyone has "eyes to see" these Invisible Eternals -- where the celestial is hidden in the common -- and "ears to hear" the truths about themselves and their relationship to these everlasting Principles, then such a person is ready to begin the inner work required for the next step to make this change in their being. Yes, it takes work; and any who teach otherwise mislead.

What is the nature of this inner work that we must do, and how can we be sure it is required of us? When is this work to be done, and who or what determines all of the above? These are the questions that seekers have been asking since time began.

Our need to discover and realize these Invisible Eternals cannot be over-stated because, the truth is, we are their embodiment. It is this same fact that makes it possible for us to awaken to their existence, align ourselves with their will, and to realize our oneness with them. Now let's take one of these Timeless Principles and see how exploring its Wisdom increases our own.

One Timeless Principle that is evidenced throughout creation is that all things "lesser" have their origin in something "greater." For instance, the branch owes its being to the vine from which it originates; the rivers run back to the seas that give them birth. And so it is when it comes to these Invisible Eternals; amongst them are found "greater" and "lesser" Truths.

With these insights to guide us, let's look into one of the greatest of these Principles taught by every great teacher since time began. In these so-called progressive times, this all but forgotten Principle is as simple as it is prophetic: "We reap what we sow." Share this fact with someone who hates his life and he will hate you for the truth you tell about why he feels as he does!

Everywhere you look today people are only concerned with getting what they want, when they want it, and as fast as possible. The fires that fuel their appetite (for this envisioned success) create so much smoke that they lose sight of the fact that all they reap for their insistent sowing is one regret after another. And of course when things go badly, there is always someone to blame.

If we are ever to realize our Timeless True Self, if we long for heaven on earth while we live here, then we must sow the seeds that help bring that Higher Life into fruition. One cannot expect to reap what one does not sow, and imagining or hoping for a higher life is not the sowing of true spiritual seeds any more than dreaming about climbing a mountain is the same as reaching its top.

To sow spiritual seeds means that we do spiritual work. Spiritual work is always interior work first, even if, as a matter of course, this work becomes manifested through some outer or social action. What is this interior work by which we sow the seeds of the celestial within us? Following are four ways to work at sowing the seeds of a Higher Life.

1. We must learn not to burden others or ourselves with our disappointments, fearful future visions, or past regrets even as, in the same moment, we learn to ask Truth for more insight into those unseen aspects of our present nature that is, at once, reaping its regrets even as it sows more of the same dark seeds.

2. We must learn to sit quietly with ourselves and wait patiently for the Light of God's Peace to replace those dark, noisy thoughts and feelings telling us we have too much old baggage to make the Journey Home. Each time we sow these seeds through some quiet meditation, we reap the strength that comes with realizing that this Silence that comes to us is our real Home.

3. We must learn to remember our intention to start our whole life over every moment we awaken to find ourselves reliving some past conflict. To sow these seeds of a refreshed outlook born of remembering that our True Life is always New, is to let go of who we have been and to begin reaping a life free of anger and fear.

4. We must learn to look our fears, our weariness, our anxiety, directly in the eye and, instead of seeing what is impossible (according to their view of life), sow the seeds of a whole new possibility by consciously daring to doubt their dark view of things. Our refusal to identify with self-limiting negative states reaps us the reward of realizing ever-new and higher realities.

The key lesson here is that it is not enough to just sow seeds in this physical life, regardless of how sublime they may seem when we set them out. Even those seeds that "succeed" in rewarding us for our effort can only grow forms that must fall in time. If we wish Heaven, Wholeness, Love, and Light to fill our lives, then we must sow their Eternal Seeds within us. That is the Work.

Make your own list of ways to work at sowing the seeds of a New Life, being careful to remember the infallible Principle behind another of the Invisible Eternals: the inner determines the outer. Set yourself to the task of being an inwardly awake person and watch how you begin to reap the awareness that makes all things possible.

GF: Welcome everyone. Before we begin our chat tonight, let me introduce you to some helpful ideas about what is required of us if we wish to realize our True nature.

First it should be explained that real self-transformation has little to do with trying to somehow change the form of our present nature by struggling to become more of "this" or less of "that." Real self-transformation and the realization of it are one and the same. This is what we will discuss, in part, at the outset of our chat, and again before we say good night.

Seen or not, everyone everywhere is looking for his or her "heaven." Watch people closely and this search becomes terribly evident. The man seated at his desk dreaming of when he will have his life to himself, the woman at the luncheon counter trying to resolve some relationship issue in her mind… from the more than obvious to the totally unexpected, one thing is clear:

All of us, moment to moment, are looking for a little peace, a little happiness of our own. Some of us seek this heaven in worldly things, within plans for a better tomorrow filled with new pleasures. For others, bliss is someone to hold, or being held rapt by some natural wonder. And some are sure that their conditioned idea of heaven is the same as living in its grace.

But, regardless of where in this world one seeks his or her heaven, two things ought to be clear: first, these heavens of ours never last. They lose their luster. Reasons always abound, but in one way or another, reality collides with our dreamboat; and as it sinks into life's unknown and unwanted waters, goes with it our hope that "this time" we had made it!

Second, it isn't until we have had enough of coming up "empty" that it occurs to us that not only have we been looking for heaven in all the wrong places, but maybe, just maybe, what our heart longs for isn't to be found where we have been searching for it. The ancients teach, "Why seek ye the permanent in the passing, the eternal in the temporary?" This is our study tonight.

I live on top of a small mountain in southern Oregon where each morning, from a chair seated next to a large window in my small house, I sit quietly and watch the world turn. Right outside, usually less than ten to twelve feet away from where I am seated, it is as though Mother Nature mounts a wildlife parade just for me.

Deer, wild turkey, gray tree squirrels, rabbits, and more than a dozen species of birds all congregate and then move through an area just beneath a cluster of spreading oak trees. The birds come for the seed I provide in a number of stations, and the turkeys come for their table scraps. Why the rest appear as they do is anyone's guess. Maybe they just enjoy the party!

At any rate, come early March, signs of spring appear and this change means many things to my visiting friends. For most birds, mating season begins in earnest. This usually means lots of singing, posturing, and aggressive, territorial behavior, while for some of the other creatures, this time heralds a season for giving birth to young conceived some months before.

But regardless of these varying conditions, one thing remains in common to one and all; and it is apparent to anyone watching with an eye willing to observe and learn: these creatures are constantly active. They are as alert and as sensitive to life going on around them as is a silk spider web responsive to the slightest summer's breeze.

And along with this natural feature of all wild creatures, in fact very much at the root of what enables them to expend so much vital energy, is another highly noticeable behavior: their lives are a never-ending search for food. Apart from propagating their own species, feeding themselves is their principle work on this earth. Which brings us to the point of these first notes.

The silent turning of the seasons, the latent desire of all creatures to fulfill the purpose for their being, the invisible hand that ensures that necessary supplies of food stuffs will be there for them at the right moment; these elements, their balance and concert with one another all speak of what the Wise have called (and still do) the "Invisible Eternals."

These Invisible Eternals are the unseen Timeless Principles that sit behind the expression of our physical world, and that are to its existence as is the sun to the shadows that pay silent witness to their creator. To be able to see these Eternal Forces as the true backdrop of a greater reality is to become a witness to an Intelligent Universe at work.

For the one who would become consciously aware of these Invisible Eternals, the same is brought into a whole new order of reality where intelligence, action and harmony are as one thing; herein the Light shines upon and animates all creatures alike. Even conflict serves something greater than its lesser causes.

This journey of awareness between one's first glimpse of this Higher Reality, and one's realization of it as the ground of one's own being, is the true spiritual path and task of those who would know and be known by Truth. And we are created to enter this Higher World, to know this heaven and its Love while we dwell on earth. Make no mistake about this.

All Scripture, the Wisdom teachings regardless of origin, confer this same truth. To take one example, the great Christian mystic Boehme points out that Christ taught, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them the eternal life." Here Christ did not say, "You may know life eternal in a time to come (i.e., after death),” but now, in this life.

If anyone has "eyes to see" these Invisible Eternals -- where the celestial is hidden in the common -- and "ears to hear" the truths about themselves and their relationship to these everlasting Principles, then such a person is ready to begin the inner work required for the next step to make this change in their being. Yes, it takes work; and any who teach otherwise mislead.

What is the nature of this inner work that we must do, and how can we be sure it is required of us? When is this work to be done, and who or what determines all of the above? These are the questions that seekers have been asking since time began. For now, one thing ought to be clear, and the rest of it we will touch on before the chat's close:

To enter the Everlasting World where the Light of Conscience is awake within Itself requires first that we learn to align ourselves with the Eternal Principles that are its secret foundation. And then, as our faith grows in the Goodness of this Higher Ground, that we surrender ourselves, our will, to the Truth of its Eternal Being.

Just before the end of tonight's chat I will enlarge these last thoughts and offer you some new ideas about specific ways in which we can do the work to align ourselves with, and realize, what is our own True Nature.

What would you like to talk about tonight? Have you been working on some special condition within yourself and wish some clarification? Let's get started with your questions and see what happens. Please do keep your questions and comments to real issues. Speculative thinking and other philosophical meanderings are meaningless if self-realization is one's sincere desire.

All right then, you are on. What do you want to discuss? What's on your mind? Let's get started!

rrogoff: Do you have a recommendation for how to stop temptation (like with smoking)? I need some advice about freedom from voices. I would like to know if I am at all on the right track.

GF: There is an important principle at the root of all True spiritual teachings, and it applies to your question. The principle is that "resistance to the disturbance is the disturbance." What this means is that when we struggle to stop ourselves from doing something against ourselves merely out of the wish not to suffer what we do to ourselves, we may be assured the behavior will continue. We can't end our wrong relationship with the parts of ourselves that tempt us and then torment us for falling into their hands until what we are tempted to do no longer holds any attraction for us. This approach is not trying to dominate what is defeating us, but is based on the idea of illuminating what has been deceiving us. Until we recognize the difference, we will struggle for no true gain because we do not understand that what we are against within us is a secret part of us.

rrogoff: Am I in a dangerous position to just not worry about it? Will I further harm myself? Knowing that I have surrendered to these voices, what is the key to dismissing them? I study and study and they seem to have free reign. Is there a way I can tell if I'm on the right track? Is this a lifetime of study I am facing to get rid of these hostile voices?

GF: Clearly I can't diagnose your condition online. But I will tell you two things. First, you have the God-given right not to be negative. You have been created with what has authority over any harmful voices. Your task is to decide what you want for relationships in this life. Then having decided, you must not only choose, but work to align yourself with the Light that can and does defeat what is defeating you. Go into our online book store and order tape T234 "Seal the Gates of Hell." I believe it will help.

ADB: I'm having a hard time differentiating when I turn the awareness of a dark feeling in me into an identification with that feeling and that dark nature. Can you help me tell when I've become identified and not just aware? It all seems so subtle, too subtle to detect accurately.

GF: Try to recognize the difference between being aware of a negative state versus being absorbed in it. In awareness of a negative state there is always a kind of conscious discomfort born in the awareness of being "apart from" the state. When we are absorbed in a state (i.e., identified with it) there is just the dull anxiety or pain without any consciousness of ourselves having been compromised by that state.

ADB: So when I can say to myself, at a particular moment when I'm aware of "heaviness" inside, that I am aware that I've been overtaken by depression, then I can be assured that I'm not identified (at least for that moment) with the depression? Am I interpreting your answer correctly?

GF: Self-observation is not what we do in order to end a condition. Trying to end any condition in us in our consciousness ensures that condition stays in place. Self-observation, awareness of a state, brings that state in us into a certain order of intelligence that knows exactly what "to do" with that state. Our task is to embrace the Light, not to create it.

rrogoff: What does it mean to be identified?

GF: To be identified means that one’s sense of self is vested in his thought about something, like when we get a new car and then we feel pain when it gets a scratch.

hawkeye: Is there a way to help someone deal with the pressure they feel in stressful situations, like test taking?

GF: If you can help this person to learn the difference between doing what is in their power versus struggling against what is not, then you may help. In this instance, all stress is counterproductive to the condition it meets. It is a mechanical reaction that produces the opposite of what it seems to bring. For instance, it feels like stress protects us. It doesn't. It punishes us even as it steals our ability to think and to respond intelligently.

nobush: Should one drop all search for self-improvement and just live in a state of 80% "no mind"? I'm about through using my ego to figure life out. Is this good? I mean, I don't "get" life or my purpose here… what I'm supposed to do with it. Life seems cold and isolating to me, and it always has.

GF: The question you've asked is born out of frustration. Frustration always defeats the individual whom it occupies. A state of being awake is not the same as walking around with a blank mind. It is into minds that have been dulled with frustration or fear that negative states find a way to prove to a person that life has no point. Start over. Just work to be as awake as you can, and then let life reveal to you causes for you in it that you have yet to imagine.

nobush: I'm going to ask you the same question in a different way because I have touched the power of it but don't "get" it yet. Is the idea of the spiritual path to just drop one's thinking? This allows one's soul to give one guidance. It speaks when you're silent. It's silent when you think. If this is so, how does one know when one is receiving the soul's guidance?

GF: To be inwardly silent allows us to become conscious of a whole new order of ourselves, one that doesn’t “allow” self-compromise of the presence of other punishing self-divided states. No one “guides” himself to sorrow.

Rael: I have been troubled about the upcoming war, the battle of Armageddon that we are about to start. I see the folly of starting such a conflict, but see that protesting it is equal folly. What can we do in such a situation?

GF: You're in the right place to understand the following instruction: The war in this world is a reflection of the unseen war in each of us. Before there can be peace on earth, each of us must understand this spiritual truth. With this in mind, find all of the different ways you can in your day to let the conflict or violence end with you. An example: Someone says something cruel – don't fire back a "missile." Bear the darkness in you and it ceases to affect the world outside of you. It is changed, you are changed, the world changes.

801: Regarding self-observation: I find myself making thought comments such as "What is this feeling?" or "I don't know," or simply fear, bitterness, etc.... is there a way to shut out all commentary? I think I'm doing it wrong.

GF: You must not try to shut out thoughts and feelings. What's disturbing you is more your resistance to the internal chattering than the chattering itself. Learn to watch these parts of you the same way you would watch a flock of seagulls swooping down on a beach. Their squawking has nothing to do with you.

Truition: Conscious risk clearly brings the struggle between our thought-self and our true self into plain view. What guidance can you provide for taking useful risks?

GF: Never allow a psychological fear that appears in your mind to go unchallenged. Learn what it means to meet what frightens you with the intention not of overcoming the condition the fear points to, but with seeing into the nature that produced the fear to begin with. This is most helpful if you can do it.

RAY: Can you explain how we get the things that we don't want based on thoughts?

GF: Many times, certain fearful thoughts will tell us that if we do what they instruct, we will be protected. As we follow the guidance of these thoughts, we are resisting whatever it is in life that produced the condition that gave rise to these thoughts. The more we resist any condition, the more likely it is that condition will persist. Try to see how this works. Ever hear the expression, "Don't think about that 'Pink elephant'"?

Eric: Is the following statement a proper thing to say to God at a moment in which I have truly observed anything whatsoever in myself? "Please teach me how to NOT do anything about what I just observed." Is there something better to say? Now I seem to "monkey around" with what I observe in myself, which keeps me going in circles.

GF: If you open a door into a room that has been dark for a hundred years, the light that floods in effortlessly dismisses all of the shadows that filled the room before. When we see things in ourselves, we do not have to comment to ourselves or to God about what has been seen. The light of self-awareness does for us all that is necessary.

nate100: I have developed the introspective relationship with myself that is necessary to identify my flaws and work out insecurities, but sometimes I am confused about what negative feelings are caused by emotional baggage from the past, and what negative emotions are accurate for the specific situation.

GF: I can answer this easily. All negative emotions that one identifies with are destructive. There is no difference between emotional baggage and an emotional state that punishes us. Try to recognize (which is what real self-awareness allows us to do) that the presence of negative energy in us - unattended by the light of awareness - is always constrictive and self-compromising.

Grayson: I have goals as a writer. Previously, I have put myself into the future I wanted to create, but know this is wrong. Should I just focus on the present love I have for the building of the story and take it moment to moment, or are future goals good to an extent?

GF: Apart from practical applications relative to knowing it takes 30 minutes to get from one end of town to another, goals as you have described them are inherently self-limiting, and ultimately self-lashing. Stay with your love of your craft. Love will not only perfect what you do, but it will bring you into its act.

RAY: How do we align our thoughts in the outer world so our true nature doesn't bring the opposite of our outer world thoughts?

GF: Just as no wave exists without having been born by invisible currents in an ocean, so is it true when it comes to thoughts. They are an expression of subtler forces, deeper energies. It is our awareness of this deeper aspect of ourselves that is an inlet, a window into the true nature of the thoughts that both occupy us and that we project out into the outer world. Make your aim to be awake to, aware of the kinds of thoughts and feelings you have, and that same awareness will handle the rest for you.

Grayson: Are the individual "I's" of the lower self made up of clusters of thoughts and emotions?

GF: No individual "I" exists apart from some relationship with an opposite. Most of what we take for being "I" is born out of some form of resistance. These "I's" have associations, and these can be said to exist in various clusters according to type.

stevie: Are all positive feelings that we experience in our unawakened state false, like our negative feelings?

GF: No, you must understand that when we speak of negative feelings being false, it isn't that they aren't real, but rather that the sense of self that they produce through their presence is a false "I." It is temporary, a condition born out of a relationship with a passing emotional condition. Positive feelings are also real. But again, they are an aspect of our temporal life that produce only fleeting sensations of well-being. I hope this helps.

suzannemly: I struggle with living in the same surroundings and being with the same people as I work on being in touch with my true nature. I often feel a strong desire to move away from my family and responsibilities. I feel I should be able to live in both worlds, if you will - the outside one I'm used to and the inside one I aspire to spend most of my time in. Do you have any suggestions for transcending this duality? Do I just ride it out, or is it my higher nature telling me that I need to physically move on?

GF: It may be that one needs to make a move with regards to their environment, but I can tell you that there should be no necessary contradiction between one's exterior world and their wish for an interior life. The real Work on this earth has always been about learning to use the world around us as a mirror to transform the world within us.

Grayson: From your books, I have the idea that when one full "I" is in charge, its opposite is there also, like when one works toward a goal, the opposite fear of loss will be there, too. Is this right?

GF: Essentially that is correct.

Eric: It seems like as I go through my day I sometimes catch myself being my usual self, whether it be the way I walk or my facial expressions or whatever. I have this serious nagging thought (feeling?) after I observe my usual self that I will never be able to stop being me, like I will be chained to the old me forever. What do I do? Do I observe this nagging thought and just continue observing with patience and persistence?

GF: You must understand that your false self has no interest in you freeing yourself from its influences over your life. Of course it tells you that you will never succeed. Next time you hear this, ask yourself this question: Is it the light or the darkness that tells me I'll never be free of the dark I'm in? When you know this answer, you know what to do with your own negative reactions.

trusting_soul: I am wondering why it is that every time I try to understand and open myself to what you are saying, all I find is that your answers leave me feeling as though you want me to have inner turmoil. Why question things inside that have no real answers? Why mess with things that aren't broken?

GF: Thinking that my answers are intended to lead you to inner turmoil misses the mark entirely. I cannot give you what you already have. Our present condition interiorly is constant turmoil that we are by and large unconscious to 99% of the time. It is the gradual awareness of these conflicted parts of us that brings an end to them. Conflict cannot end conflict. This is what we must discover if we wish to be free. It begins with self-awakening.

Grayson: Would it be right to say that emotions are "echoes" of thoughts, so that if I have a negative emotion, if I can do the work to try to find the thought, I eventually will?

GF: No, emotions are not echoes of thoughts, they are a completely different creature in terms of their order of being. However, negative emotions do support negative thought. Be awake to the thoughts and feelings and your awakedness will do for you what thought cannot.

Roy: In this remarkable work coming through you, I see a repeating theme --to increase our consciousness by self-observation and not identifying. To me, nothing else is attainable without this condition. When I get comfortable with something I suspect it has become mechanical, so it is with my self-observation. Can you help me to discriminate real self-observation from just thinking I'm observing myself?

GF: True self-observation always includes the awareness of the thinker and the one who thinks he's watching. If you are not aware of your thoughts, then you are your thoughts. There will always be in true self-observation a sense of inclusion of all things observed, as opposed to the common sense of ourselves which is always due to something exclusionary.

jaybird: Can you briefly state an effective way to use feelings of discouragement for spiritual growth?

GF: You may have this backwards. We don't use clouds to realize the sun. When the clouds are gone, the sun is there. Discouragement is a lying, negative state that drags us into it because we get something out of the relationship. When we end our relationship with what is false, lo and behold the True appears. That's growth.

Judy: As much as I try to do this work, I still catch myself occasionally either making a critical remark about someone or feeling a pang of envy about what someone has, etc. I am aware immediately that I'm doing it and try to drop it, but I get upset with myself that I get these feelings. Why in the world do I care what other people do or have anyway? Any suggestions to overcome this?

GF: Learn to watch the second reaction. What's the second reaction? It is a negative response in us to having seen a negative response in us. This is a trick of the false nature to keep itself in charge of our faculties. Drop the second reaction. Do this and gradually the initial reaction will begin to fade away because of your willingness to work through it.

stevie: How important is meditation to our inner work? It is not something I practice. Should I be?

GF: There is no substitute for watching one's mind quietly, attentively. Meditation, spending time by yourself watching yourself, is not only a good practice to do at whatever time is available to set aside for it, but in the long run, meditation is life. We are created to participate in the interior world of ourselves. Meditation is both the window into that world, as well as the way in which we participate therein.

Grayson: When I come into the Present, I see not only my own thoughts and emotions, but others' and how people are affected by them. It seems then that my lower self is very insignificant, and I seem to see others more objectively and clearly. This brings a sense of freedom. Does this sound right?

GF: Yes, this is quite accurate what you have said. When we can be awake to our own inner life, that awareness helps us to be aware of the inner life of all others. This is the real beginning of True compassion.

Eric: I feel like I'm losing my sense of humor, maybe because my humor was or is based mostly in vulgar subject matter or making fun of somebody else. Nowadays that kind of humor doesn't sit right. Does this sort of thing happen often in the Work?

GF: Yes, it does. The real changes that take place in us almost always occur before we become conscious of those changes. In this instance, you are beginning to awaken to how distasteful darkness is. Keep going.

LMAC: The last several years I've noticed that I am more emotional than when I was young. I'll cry with warm fuzzy thoughts, reading greeting cards, people telling me their triumphs and great misfortunes (like deaths in their family, etc.). Something tells me this emotional feeling isn't quite right to be expressing it to this extent. I feel embarrassed if anyone sees tears welling up in my eyes while they are talking to me. Can you shed some light on this for me?

GF: Your intuition is correct. And there are any number of interior reasons for excessive sentimentality such as you're describing. Nevertheless, persist with the wish to watch your own highly charged emotions. If you will do this with a wish to understand what is producing this kind of pressure in you, you will become gradually conscious of certain hidden emotions that are the source of these states.

Rousseau: I am thinking about compromise, particularly the difference in negative compromise and surrendering in a good way. It comes up in relationship after relationship, including work, family, everywhere! I wish to have more clarity when dealing with others to save myself from the frustrations that self-compromise brings, and to develop the ability to choose in favor of myself more.

GF: The only time that we feel like we must compromise is when we feel like we can't win. That's where the negativity comes in. Any situation we're in with others where we're trying to win, has already caused us to lose something of ourselves. Try to notice where it is you want to "come out on top" and dare to let go of Rousseau in these moments. That's proper surrender. In that action, there is no compromise.

dhaselhoff: What advice would you give to a student who has a real hard time concentrating?

GF: Attention is a faculty of ours. It can be developed or strengthened according to one's realization for the need of this feature. It is our awakened need for some element of our own undeveloped consciousness that is the stimulant and ultimately the provider of what we need. There are exercises for developing one's attention in my book, The Lost Secrets of Prayer. You might start there.

Grayson: Sometimes when I catch my thoughts, I tend to see how this most recent thought came about by tracing the cause/effect of the line of previous thoughts before it, and sometimes come upon one originating thought born from an exterior experience that started it all. Is this practice worthwhile to pursue?

GF: Anything we can do to increase our understanding of the “thought machine” helps free us from its mechanical life.

nobush: The last time I talked to you, you said (in reference to anger): "Is a little fire better in your hand than a big fire?" Would this apply to all negative emotion we identify with?

GF: Absolutely.

stevie: When I am presented with a moment that causes conflict in me, I get muddled and confused in my eagerness to understand and use the situation. Should observing come before understanding the moment?

GF: Getting muddled and confused in any given moment often indicates that we are trying to defeat or overcome the moment. Best if you were to learn what it means to come to an interior stop and catch the parts of you that want to win in the moment, that want to prove yourself in the moment, and just let these go. Working like that will help you to watch the whole of the moment and yourself better.

jaybird: Is there such thing as "social responsibility" or "social justice" in the context of the spiritual path? If so, how is it defined (and practiced)?

GF: The idea of social responsibility and social justice was created by people who want power or authority over others who are not acting according to their morality. There is such thing as responsibility and justice, however. They are natural features of an awakened mind and actions that occur spontaneously in true conscience.

hudnut: Is it possible for a human being to be afraid of divine love (agape)? And if so, how does one go about addressing such a condition? (Could it be merely a fear of the unknown?)

GF: The physical being, the flesh as Saint Paul called it, is incapable of divine love. It has no relationship to it, and therefore instinctively resists it. Don't be concerned about how to address the birth of divine love in yourself. Merely work at inviting this higher relationship between yourself and God, and God will do in your spirit what is necessary for it to become his beloved.

RAY: Is it our birth right to be abundant?

GF: The answer is yes, but if by "abundant" you mean wealthy, powerful, and packed with social position, the answer is no. True abundance is spiritual in nature, and all other forms of abundance are secret emptiness because they are in time and must ultimately dissolve.

James1: Is it wrong (opposite of Truth) to want or have worldly abundance? I know the problem of identifying with such things.

GF: The real question ought to be: “Can one fill the hole in one’s soul with things of this earth?” And the answer is what you must find. When you do, you will have the answer to your question.

Rael: Where is true knowing found? By this I mean that the only way I presently know that I know anything is to have a mental conversation with an imagined person in which I am explaining to him what I know or don't know. But this knowing is temporary, and ultimately proves itself wrong, or at least useless.

GF: What you have said is the beginning of knowing, and you don't have to think to know that. True knowing is a quiet, passive state of a mind that is whole in itself and to itself, in which it is an instrument and a witness to a certain order of Intelligence that knows without thinking what is right, true, and necessary.

BNevrgivup: In your weekly update, you discussed "Public Opinion," and our dependence on favorable views of our self. This is a trap, as you put it. What if you are hated unjustly and rejected unjustly? How do we cope with this situation and the constant fear of rejection which we cannot control?

GF: I have said the following before, but I'll restate it. The only thing that troubles us or frightens us about another person, is what we secretly want from that person. When, through our inner work, we realize (as scripture states) that only God is good, then we will cease to look to others for anything other than natural social interaction.

RAY: In order to go beyond the mind, do you meditate and focus on the silence between thoughts?

GF: Try to understand the following. It's deep. The self that wants to go beyond the mind is a fabrication of the mind it wants to go beyond. When mind sees the truth of what I have just told you, it quiets on its own. Then, the natural state of silence is realized as the ground of that same mind.

jaybird: You (and others who teach higher principles) often counsel us to "drop" negative emotions when we become aware of them. Yet, these feelings often seem to stubbornly refuse to be dropped! Why is this and how can it remedied?

GF: No negative state is truly yours. These conditions are either leftovers of some conditioning, or visitors of some natural expression. Either way, the reason that we can't get rid of negative states is because by trying to get rid of them we identify with them. The awakened mind sees these levels of being without deriving a sense of itself through their being.

Rousseau: One superficial question on the Vernon Howard we sometimes bring up… when I search for his work in the public library, I get results of children's books. I'm curious if this author is the same author as you studied with?

GF: Mr. Howard was, in his early days, a prolific writer of children's books.

barry: There is the idea of the middle way, and then there is the idea of total non-identification with the negative state. So where did the Buddhists get the middle way from?

GF: To not be identified with negative states does not mean that one sits and judges the state and then decides not to be identified with it. All forms of judgment are forms of identification. Real non-identification is born out of a mind that understands that it is not what it sees. We are not the thoughts and feelings that we see pass through us, but become them when we identify with their content.

barry: So do we end discouragement through simply non-identification with it, or is there something more to it at a thought level?

GF: Everything begins with bringing our awareness to any condition as it arises within us. This light of awareness penetrates all states of self and discerns from an Intelligence its true nature. Through it we are given the correct action to take toward the state, etc.

LMAC: I've been overweight since I was a small child. I'm learning to be awake as I am eating, but I can see myself still eating beyond the point of physical satisfaction. Do you have some books or materials that may help me see this insidious problem I've had for over forty years?

GF: I invite you to e-mail Chris through our "Contact Us" page and ask her for tape #205 entitled "The Truth that Frees Us from the Addictive Nature." I believe it will help you with your present condition and wish for freedom from it.

Kraig: How do we tell the difference between Truth and the false mind?

GF: Just as one knows the difference between a star and a shark… one lends light and the other “bites!”

barry: I'm a rock 'n roll musician. Most of the lyrics are negative, I guess. So should I just drop my love of this music? I know you were a musician at one time. Is this why you stopped?

GF: Why would one drop what one loves because others do what is not loving? Be your own artist until you no longer wish to pursue the craft. I stopped because I began another path.

Langston: I was watching the Lakers game yesterday. I noticed my aversion for them because they are show-offs, have too much talent, etc. Then, it occurred to me. When I am at work, and I know more then someone else, I show off! Would this prove to be living from a level of existence whose nature is divided? If so, what is my next step?

GF: What you report is a good indication of what is the seed of compassion. We never judge anything so harshly (in others) as we have hidden from ourselves in us. Ask God, the Truth, to show you more – and then be willing to see what appears before your inner eyes.

Suzannemly: Do you think seeking a spiritual mentor, someone you actually spend physical time with, is preferable to self-study, reading, chats such as this? If so, any suggestions for finding such a mentor?

GF: The student who seeks light must eventually seek this, and some accept a candle while others want to be near the sun. Each must follow the dictates of his or her own awakening heart.

straydog: I'm still not getting over my friend who died. I've read many of the things that you've told us about grieving; I've stood there and left the empty gulf empty. But still many times the gulf is bottomless, and your advice is just words that bounce off me. My experience is (now I'm just guessing) probably similar to when you lost your friend Vernon, but on my own scale. I wish that I were as awake as you were. I'm in big trouble here… what now?

GF: Grief that persists is secretly a negative state of self that keeps itself “alive” by holding an image of what it has lost in order to continue feeling lost and alone. You must come to see the truth of this by witnessing yourself calling up this image so that then you can feel the pain associated with it.

Grayson: Can you give me some insight into how I can handle the following situations? I have friends with whom I enjoy spending time. We work together and with other very negative people. My friends have always thrown back at them what they dish out. With my new insights into the truth, I do not. I have thoughts that tell me my friends cannot understand me, and thus deem me "weaker" or "inferior" for just walking away.

GF: What matters is not what such “friends” think. Besides, truth be known, what you think are their thoughts are secretly your own (about them).

kobya: I've been working on myself for some time now and know I have grown to some degree. Recently something I considered "bad" for me occurred and I allowed a hatred for Truth to own me for a month and was negative to everyone. Now it seems I've lost some of my desire for Truth. Any thoughts or encouragement?

GF: These incidents are somewhat to be expected. You should know that anything in you that “hates” the truth is not you, but a false nature that drags you down into its considerations and that then punishes you for its ill deeds. Just drop this sense of self when it appears, and remember what you love, not what it tells you that you don’t love.

confusedwilly: How can I obtain peace? Is peace such an abstract thing that one may find it hard to maintain?

GF: Peace is the natural fruit of a quiet mind and a heart that has reconnected with the Living Light within it. We do not “maintain” this higher state of self, but it maintains us when we will put its Life first (in us).

kobya: I know I can't be happy in my current career because it requires me doing things I am not comfortable with. I truly feel I will never be comfortable with these aspects and finally (after years) see that nothing is wrong with feeling this way. I fear quitting though because of what may happen to me. What do you suggest?

GF: These moments are difficult, but critical in the development of our soul and its relationship with the Light of God. We see (our situation) by this light and see the “darkness” in it. You may be assured (but not comforted, yet) that the Light that reveals this condition will guide you safely out of it into something better suited for (its) development (in you). But you will have to “risk” the fear you feel to learn the truth of this relationship.

GF: Before our chat time on-line runs its course, I would like to pass along the remaining notes from my opening remarks. We are inquiring into what is required of us to realize our relationship with the Eternal Truth that lives within us.

As a quick review for those of you not with us at the beginning, and to refresh the minds of those who were, I introduced the idea of our inherent spiritual longing to search for, find, and to realize "Heaven" on earth. Added to this thought was how elusive this state of self-wholeness seems to be, regardless of how, or where, we have been conditioned to search for this, our "bliss."

Then, with regards to how to realize this unanswered need we have for the Supersensual Life, we touched on what the ancients called the "Invisible Eternals," the Timeless Principles that serve as the secret foundation of all that exists. We left off with the idea that awakening to these Higher Realities is one and the same as realizing our (God-given) True Self.

Our need to discover and realize these Invisible Eternals cannot be over- stated because, the truth is, we are their embodiment. It is this same fact that makes it possible for us to awaken to their existence, align ourselves with their will, and to realize our oneness with them. Now let's take one of these Timeless Principles and see how exploring its Wisdom increases our own.

One Timeless Principle that is evidenced throughout creation is that all things "lesser" have their origin in something "greater." For instance, the branch owes its being to the vine from which it originates; the rivers run back to the seas that give them birth. And so it is when it comes to these Invisible Eternals; amongst them are found "greater" and "lesser" Truths.

With these insights to guide us, let's look into one of the greatest of these Principles taught by every great teacher since time began. In these so-called progressive times, this all but forgotten Principle is as simple as it is prophetic: "We reap what we sow." Share this fact with someone who hates his life and he will hate you for the truth you tell about why he feels as he does!

Everywhere you look today people are only concerned with getting what they want, when they want it, and as fast as possible. The fires that fuel their appetite (for this envisioned success) create so much smoke that they lose sight of the fact that all they reap for their insistent sowing is one regret after another. And of course when things go badly, there is always someone to blame.

If we are ever to realize our Timeless True Self, if we long for heaven on earth while we live here, then we must sow the seeds that help bring that Higher Life into fruition. One cannot expect to reap what one does not sow, and imagining or hoping for a higher life is not the sowing of true spiritual seeds any more than dreaming about climbing a mountain is the same as reaching its top.

To sow spiritual seeds means that we do spiritual work. Spiritual work is always interior work first, even if, as a matter of course, this work becomes manifested through some outer or social action. What is this interior work by which we sow the seeds of the celestial within us? Following are four ways to work at sowing the seeds of a Higher Life.

1. We must learn not to burden others or ourselves with our disappointments, fearful future visions, or past regrets even as, in the same moment, we learn to ask Truth for more insight into those unseen aspects of our present nature that is, at once, reaping its regrets even as it sows more of the same dark seeds.

2. We must learn to sit quietly with ourselves and wait patiently for the Light of God's Peace to replace those dark, noisy thoughts and feelings telling us we have too much old baggage to make the Journey Home. Each time we sow these seeds through some quiet meditation, we reap the strength that comes with realizing that this Silence that comes to us is our real Home.

3. We must learn to remember our intention to start our whole life over every moment we awaken to find ourselves reliving some past conflict. To sow these seeds of a refreshed outlook born of remembering that our True Life is always New, is to let go of who we have been and to begin reaping a life free of anger and fear.

4. We must learn to look our fears, our weariness, our anxiety, directly in the eye and, instead of seeing what is impossible (according to their view of life), sow the seeds of a whole new possibility by consciously daring to doubt their dark view of things. Our refusal to identify with self-limiting negative states reaps us the reward of realizing ever-new and higher realities.

The key lesson here is that it is not enough to just sow seeds in this physical life, regardless of how sublime they may seem when we set them out. Even those seeds that "succeed" in rewarding us for our effort can only grow forms that must fall in time. If we wish Heaven, Wholeness, Love, and Light to fill our lives, then we must sow their Eternal Seeds within us. That is the Work.

Make your own list of ways to work at sowing the seeds of a New Life, being careful to remember the infallible Principle behind another of the Invisible Eternals: the inner determines the outer. Set yourself to the task of being an inwardly awake person and watch how you begin to reap the awareness that makes all things possible.

Our time has run out. Take time to study tonight's lessons and you sow the seeds of Truth in your mind and heart. Then do the inner work that truth shows you as being needful to do, which it will. The rest of it all just happens according to the Invisible Eternals that are now at work within you.

And now, good night everyone; see you next month on Thursday, April 3, same time and place. Until then . . .

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Good news! Guy Finley's latest work, "Let Go and Know Peace" is now available for ordering. Visit our Homepage, Breaking News, or the Bookstore to order your copy of this amazing new pocketbook. Uncover "The Three Common Thieves of Peace," realize "Seven Insights into True Silence," and discover "The New Happiness Born in Self-Wholeness." Copies are available only through Life of Learning Foundation.

A gift just for you (and more!): Have you browsed our completely revised website? We have more good content than ever! Visit our Homepage and sign up to receive a FREE weekly Key Lesson from Guy Finley. Become one of the Foundation's Key Lesson Friends simply by using the "Free Gifts" link on our Homepage. Plus... have something nice to look forward to each Tuesday… you will love these timeless truths delivered right to your desktop!

See Guy Finley "live" on cable TV now in eleven cities around the country. Check the Appearances page on the website for locations. Help others gain access to these powerful ideas by contacting TV stations in your area in order to have Guy's talks added to their schedule. If you are interested in helping, send an e-mail to “Barbara” at maillist@guyfinley.com.

Help us grow… construction has begun on our new annex building! If you want to help us build, or make a contribution, please call or e-mail the Foundation. All charitable donations are tax-deductible and can be made through our website or by mail. Please send your contribution to Life of Learning Foundation, PO Box 10, Merlin, OR 97532. You will receive a receipt by return mail. Thank you for your support!