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A Course In Miracles (ACIM) assures us that we only have one problem. Our only problem is separation.

It helps to just clear our plate, and have only one thing left on it so we can stop doing a million things to change things in our lives. We go out in all directions, make all kinds of changes in our lives to put out all the different fires, to change all the people who need to be changed so they can be more like us. We do all these things when we find out we could have saved all our energy and just narrowed it down to one thing and that one thing is separation.

What ACIM is speaking about is the separation that happens when we walk through our life and think we must do it all by ourselves. The moment we think we must do it all by ourselves we are in trouble. That is where the problem begins. The problem does not begin when we look in our check book and we do not have enough money for rent. The problem did not begin when we are in the therapist’s office and found out that our parents did not do as good a job as they told us they had done with you.

Keep in mind when a problem begins, we do not know it began until later when we see the effects of it. That is when we figure out that we have a problem. But by then it is already been going on so long there might be all kinds of effects that show us that something is wrong.

We need to know that so we do not waste our time and energy putting out all these fires when we could do what the Buddha said we should do. He said go to the cause of all the effects that are not working. What does ACIM say? It says go to the initial problem. The problem that is causal. The single problem upon which all other problems are founded upon.

When you go to that causal problem, what you are going to find is where your problems began, and it is one thing. We do not actually believe is it is one thing. We think it is our mother. Or our dad. Or our husband. Our own lazy selves. We will not take that breath and get still for a few moments and trace it back to the point in time when we started to believe we had to do it all ourselves. I am not sure we can consciously figure out where that moment is. But I will tell you something right here: Your soul knows.

If you take one breath deeper than you ordinarily go, you can connect to that place inside of you that knows very well when you stopped being connected. We came in connected. The ‘I’ was never meant to stand alone. It was meant to stand with the other part of the ‘I’ that makes all the difference in the world: The I Am. Those two words were totally meant to go together. When we separate the I from the I Am, ACIM will say sooner or later we are going to get to a grievance. The Tao Te Ching says sooner or later you are going to end up in the prison of your mind, in a trap. It is going to be a hard life.

The I Am is going to lead you in a whole different direction. Not only is it not going to lead you into a grievance, it is going to lead you to the opposite of grievance, which is a miracle.

When you come from the place of thinking you must do it yourself, you are going to end up in a land of grievances. I mean grievances against your own self. Grievances that permeate our consciousness and do not show. Nobody would ever guess that all that is going on inside of us, especially if we are dressed well. What grievances are is the place when we are out of alignment with the source of energy that is our source.

We had a windstorm. We live on the top of this wonderful hill surrounded by trees. One wind gust almost sheared off a huge branch, but it did not fall off. So, it is just hanging and swinging. We just leave it there. For three months, that thing looked like it is alive with all the green leaves. It looked so healthy you would never believe it was no longer getting any the nutrients because it was no longer really attached except by a little bit of bark that certainly was not enough to feed the branch and keep it alive.

For a long, long time, we, too, look alive; we look pretty good. We can even keep our jobs for those of us who have jobs that do not require us to think a lot or even be totally present.

We end up walking through our life and we do not even realize that we have sheered ourselves off from that part of our nature. The source. That underground stream, that underground current of life that nourishes you. That keeps you alive. So that you are sourced every single day from that one deep nourishing energy flow. It is flowing through you and you are in harmony with it. You know what you discover? You are not making it all happen.

This energetic force of life. It. makes all the difference in the world. Then you do not run around saying life is so hard. When you are a branch dangling from a giant tree and you are holding on for dear life by a piece of bark, life is hard. Every time a windstorm comes along. do you not think that end of that big branch is going ‘Ah look at the wind’? Because at any moment that thing is going to be slapped up the side of its bark-y posterior. It is going to go flying somewhere and it knows it is going to go flying.

We know when a great wind comes, we are in trouble. We know when something happens, we are going to be freaking out. We know it because we are not connected to the place in us that when something comes along, it says bring it. Who in their right mind would say bring it? Which is why we hold on for dear life and when a wind comes, when a change comes, we do not want it to come. We cannot hold it. Yet we are on this path of life where every day is change.

You have one problem. The problem is you are separated from the thick trunk and the deep roots. That is what the Tao calls it. When we are separated from the thick trunk and the deep roots that do not care how hard the wind is, we walk around frightened all the time. We say it is because we live in a dark and frightening world and everybody in his right mind should be frightened because bad things are happening all the time.

I posit that even if the day went by and not one bad thing was reported in a newspaper or on the radio or TV, that fear, that level of anxiety would still be going on inside of us. It has nothing to do with bad things happening. It has to do with this hypothesis: We have one problem and that problem is our separation. We need to get back in unity. To unify ourselves with the thick trunk and the deep roots that is the source of our life so that when the wind comes, as the wind must, we can hold our ground. We can respond wisely.

The last three months I have been on this very interesting tour of talking with all these nationwide radio stations about The Prayer Chest. It is a book I wrote years ago that was just published in paperback with revisions. It is about a man who has a lot of problems not the least of which is his wife has died. His kids need his support because they are both under 10. He has got a farm and the bank said you have not paid your mortgage in so long we are foreclosing on it. He has got no other sustainable means of taking of himself. He has so many problems going on including the farm that he worked which was a farm he did not even want to work. He inherited that work.

When I moved to New York City I came here with one intention. I worked in the world of training and development. That is what I got my masters in. I came to New York thinking onward and upward. I was at this level in Boston. I am going to move to New York. I am going to climb a couple of rungs and now I am going to be at this (higher) level. I get to New York and I find out I cannot even stay at the Boston level. My $500 a month in Boston afforded me an apartment with a balcony on the 15th floor, underground parking and a view of the river in a safe, gated community. My $500 month in New York got me a studio on Stanton Street in the Bowery down in the Lower East Side.

My New York studio was 9′ x 15′ including the kitchen and one closet. The view out my window was of the moving vans and the trucks across the street that all the prostitutes took their johns to. I would open the front door and see used condoms on the sidewalk.

When I got here, I could not get the job that I thought I was going to get even though I had a beautiful resume. Obviously, it was not like I had trouble communicating. I had a good portfolio. I had done good work. I knew my stuff. I graduated with honors and received a Master’s degree in communication. I was just so prepared.

We think we are the shit. I got here and find out, no I was not. What was it actually? I was going to live in crappy neighborhood. I was in this neighborhood thinking what the hell happened. I had a plan. We all have a plan. We forget that this is the plan of the I, the me, the mine.

We forget that connection is not like a baptism where we go into a church, we do it once and we are good for life. We are going to go to heaven because we have been dunked that one time and we are so covered for the rest of our life. We do not have to think about it again. This is not like that. Being separate is something that if we know it is our one problem, it is the only thing we have to keep working on consistently. Not only do we unify, we stay unified. When we stay unified, we do not have to do the work ourselves.

I interviewed with so many in the business I was in, so many older men down in Wall Street. Every one of them took me to dinner in the evening, outside of work hours. I thought this is kind of odd that we are dining alone. What I discovered was I was a great companion for them in the evenings in their private life. They did not have a place to hire me. I thought how does a person, so like me, land in this place? How does this happen?

This is not to say what is wrong with me. When we ask that question, we are so asking the wrong question. It is the wrong question because there is no answer to that question. Nothing is wrong with you. What is wrong is the connection between you and your source. Like that branch that should be vital, that should be giving fruit, that should be alive, that should be connected, that should be giving nourishment from Mother Earth herself but is not connected anymore.

I was connected to nothing but me rolling up my sleeves and saying I could do it. I thought I have to work harder. I have to go on more interviews. I have to send more resumes. I ended up in the place where I am using my money, my savings, to keep me in a city that I chose to come to.

I did not realize that my lack of connection with source was my problem. My field was not the problem even as less money was going towards training and development. The Bowery and Stanton Street location was not my problem. My problem was I was doing this whole thing myself. Trying to figure out how to make it happen and that was as far as I got.

Joseph Hutchinson reaches a place where he cannot feed his own kids. He is going to have to farm them out to other families because he does not know how to take care of them. He had gone in arrears of his mortgage so long he did not even realize it until the bank manager shows up one day

This is the turning point in The Prayer Chest where Joseph Hutchinson says my life is over. He goes up to his attic and throws a fit. His attic was place he had been going up to, praying to, bringing all his little prayers to. Hoping and wishing things will change.

He cannot believe he has landed in this place in his life. He has got a list of problems and no way to fix them. He does not have a parent to inherit from. He does not have a rich friend. He did not play the lottery because there was not one back in the 1800’s when he was living. There was no way he could put his hands on any cash. He was fighting to keep his farm that he hated.

I was fighting to get a job that years before I knew I had properly gotten my masters for. I was doing the right thing by working but it was not me. Bottom line was that field was not what made my heart sing, but the dollars were great. It was my job to train people to make more money for a company.

I am not saying anything is wrong with that. I am not saying business should not have people like me to train others because that is what they are in business for in the first place: To make money. I am just saying it was not me. Here I was fighting for a job I did not even really love.

We need to look at that. Sometimes we fight for what we do not want because we have been doing it and we do not know another way. That is the I. There comes a day where the I Am is going to replace the I. You have to start with the one problem. That one problem, when you begin to address it, I promise you, begins to change things for the better.

All the deeper teachings, all the writings say the same thing. We need to repair what keeps us apart from that great I Am. The great source of life that we are told every single time is the secret source of everything.

You are to spend your time connecting to that secret source of everything so it can provide you everything you need in your life. So, it can begin to repair what seems to be irreparable in your life. So, you do not have to land in a place where you are hanging on by a thread asking what the hell is wrong with me. That is asking the wrong question because nothing is wrong with you. You have one problem and it is separation.

Then Joseph Hutchinson says the hell with you. He is talking to this attic. This place in himself that says I must figure it out all by myself. ”He yelled out the window. Without thinking he grabbed the first wooden crate within reach, hoisted it above his head and with a snarl more beastly than human, he hurled it out the attic window. The noise of the shattering glass was satisfying. To hell with you he yelled out the window, watching it crash to the earth. He began to breathe easier.”

There is a point at which we are going to recognize that we have one problem. We have been depending on the smallest part of our nature that is not connected to the greatest part of our nature. I am talking about connecting to the greatness within you. The I Am within you that has access to the deep roots. The I Am within you that has a thick trunk. What you are doing is finally connecting to the place that connects us to that power so that you do not have to do it all by yourself.

“He turns back to the room. He heaved a small broken side table up off the floor with a loud grunt and threw it against the shattered window as well. ‘What good are you if you cannot even save my wife?’”

What good is all this work that the I have done if we cannot get a job? I was so qualified. Every door was closed to me. It did not make sense. What good is this I if it cannot take us to our true life, love, work, or happiness? It can tell us where our keys are. It is helpful. But it is not meant to do the heavy lifting of true work, true purpose, true life, true happiness.

“Dozens of crates stuffed with outgrown and unworn clothes, unused quilts, scraps, mending, broken oil lamps, stubs of candles and on and on and on and on. Item by item he cast the contents of the attic out the window. Lies, he screams, all lies.”

There is a point at which we recognize no matter how hard we work we are not going further. We have reached the point of diminishing returns. We are working harder and less and less is happening. Things are getting smaller and smaller.

Joseph runs down his stairs and outside. There is a big pile of everything he threw out from the attic. All the stuff his family stored for 100 or so years in this farmhouse. All this stuff that was handed down to him. Everything he inherited was there in his pile.

All the junk. All the items. All the beliefs about who we are. All the beliefs about what life is. All the religion we were raised with. All the thoughts that we picked up and inherited from our families. That is our pile.

What Joseph Hutchinson was saying was this: My pile of rubbish is no longer what I am going to put my faith in. With what it thinks I have to do and who it thinks I have to be. Because it has landed me in this place where I cannot pay my rent. Where I do not know how to take care of my kids. Where I do not have a wife. I do not have a home. How good can this pile, this belief system, be if my life is not working?

He lights a match. He sets it on fire. He stands there until it burns itself down. He says these two words: The end. “An hour later as the flames settled to glowing embers, Joseph cynically pronounced: The end.” The story of his life was over.

I am sitting in McHale’s Restaurant with my one friend that I made when I moved to New York. I am, literally, weeping in front of the whole restaurant. I could not contain myself. I had reached the end of what I knew how to do and make happen. I had done everything right in my life. I said I have no idea. Every door is closed to me. I have no idea what I am supposed to do. My friend said these words: Maybe you are not supposed to do that anymore. That never occurred to me at all. That maybe this was not the path I was supposed to be on. I am sure my jaw dropped open.

This I cannot get us all the way home. We cannot get ourselves to our destiny. We might get some jobs, but we cannot get ourselves to our destined man or our destined relationship. Our destined woman. Our destined children. Our destined right place in the world. We think if I let go of what I believe to pick up another way of doing our life, we think it means the end of the world. What we found out was when you turned the page in the book of our life, there is a new chapter.

The fact is Life does not come right up to the greatness that we think we are and say I will tell you exactly what you are supposed to do. We could not hear it. I could not have heard that a year later I was supposed to go into the seminary. That was where I was really headed.

You have one problem. Here is the beginning of repairing, bringing into harmony, bringing into unity, that which is out of alignment. It is going to change everything. Here is your prayer. Thy Will Be Done.

That does not mean Thy outside of ourselves. It means the great I Am in me, the part of me that is connected to the thick trunk and the deep roots. The strongest in me. The greatest in me. The part of me that did not separate. The part of me that came into this world and no matter what happened to me, I have never separated. The part that is still connected. We are calling upon that part to take over.

What this is going to do is access the place inside of us, that part in us that does not know, to call on the part in us that does. The part in us that is disconnected, to call upon the part in us that is connected. The part in us that is out of harmony, to call upon the part of us that has remained in harmony.

You are asking what do I do to change the direction of my life into a way of life that works? This is the first step. I am not kidding when I say Thy Will Be Done.

Put down all your other prayers. How do I get the money to go here? How do I get this money to go school? How do I get a reference? How do I get what I need here? How do I lower my rent?

Thy Will Be Done is the prayer that is going to call upon the greatest part of who you are. You are going to give up and let that part take over. You are going to be taken to places, experiences, opportunities and synchronicities that you cannot believe are happening to you.

Put all your other small prayers down because most of them come from the I. Now let a prayer come from the great I Am that will heal the one problem that you have that you did not know is the one problem that underlies every other problem you have.

Something happens to us when we find our place in this world. We can have a nice life. We can have nice things. We can have a nice job. We can have a nice home. We can find a place in this world where we are making a living and everything is OK. That can be nice and we can live that way forever if we want to.

But there is something that this spiritual path promises. There is something embedded in every single religion that promises that there is a place that is destined for us. A place that when we find it, our feet alone can fill it. That nobody has stood in that place before in the same way. Nobody can and nobody ever will.

Now if you do not want to stand in that place that you were born to stand in that is OK. But know that if you do not stand there, there will never be another person born who will even be able to stand in that place that is your place. What does your place feel like?

When you step into this place you can feel it. You cannot even describe it to people what it feels like when you are standing in it. It is a feeling that your feet are exactly where they need to be on this earth. That you are in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. It is a feeling of spaciousness that around you there are no limitations. That nothing can say no to you because you have got to be here and you have got to do what you are doing. You cannot not do what you are here to do.

It is a feeling that everything around you is beckoning you out. The more you come out, the more Life says oh yes we love that. Let us have more of that. The more you express yourself, life around you and people around you, everything is alight with the desire to have more of you bring yourself out into more of life. It is a feeling and feelings are so hard to express.

This spiritual path is about taking that journey to the place where when you put your feet on the ground you know that it is your place. Now a lot of us say you know I had a difficult upbringing. It was hard. My parents were such and such. They drank, they hit me, they were difficult, they did not recognize my talents. Read The Artist’s Way. Julia Cameron wrote this book specifically for people like the ugly duckling who were born into families where they were not heard. Where they were not seen. Where they were not appreciated. Where they were not acknowledged.

Probably 99% of this whole world is born into a family that does not maybe, really get all of you. Or want you exactly the way you are. I used to think, myself, if only I were born into a family that really got me. That got how excited I was. From the moment I could talk, I spent my whole babyhood in a crib just talking. When my brother came, I never stopped talking. That ebullience, that joy, that happiness to be alive. That was just who I was.

Except I was placed in a family where that ebullience and joy and light made other people nervous. So I used to think if I were only born into the right family. The family that I should have been born into, I would have been encouraged. I would have been stroked. That was hardly what happened.

It was not until I began to shed the cloak of that thinking what they call the victim thinking: where this world had done something to me against my will. Because of it, I cannot be whom I am supposed to be. Because of it, I am not going to get where I want to get. Once I began to understand that there is no such thing as anything being done against our inner innate will, what began happening to me is I began to look at what happened to me in a whole different way.

You begin to look at what happens to you. You begin to say what part did I play in this? Our soul moves on from life to life. Our spirit never dies. That ruach that the Hebrews call the soul, it never dies. If that is so, we have choices before we come into this life about what we want to do with this life. What we want to create here. It makes perfect sense if you follow that line of thought. Then you get to choose things in this life to help you attain the very things you need to attain.

Of course, in our logical mind we say I want to get to this place in my life. I want to be a singer. I want to be a dancer. I want to learn my own business. I want to be a corporate executive. We think logically, of course, I am going to set myself up to have the best family in the world. The most adoring family who gives me everything I need every moment of the day. Then I will get there.

However, looked at another way, what if we set it up, what if we choose the circumstances of our life to get us where we need to be. The way we choose them is by putting, directly in our path, the obstacles we needed to overcome in order to have the strength to be the kind of people we wanted to be.

When everything is fabulous, non-stop in our life we do not build muscles. We grow when we overcome the challenges, the obstacles, the hardships, the difficulties, the rejections and the closed doors. We begin to grow in confidence in ourselves. We begin to grow in self respect. We begin to grow in belief about what we can do.

We begin to grow in looking at ourselves knowing we are the kind of person who can make it. So by the time we get to what we came here to be and do, we are so much bigger. We are so much stronger. We are so much more self assured. We have so much self respect. We think that things need to be easy and then we will do it. The way the soul grows is by overcoming the very obstacles we have placed in front of us to overcome.

As long as we think that life is giving us these obstacles, as long as we think that life is against us, as long as we think that something out there is unfairly doing something to me in here, we are going to spend our life blaming this world and hiding in this world when our soul is beckoning us out to do just the opposite: To come out.

The Ugly Duckling is such a sad story when it starts. The story of feeling like you were born into a home where you are not understood. They do not get you. You are not treated the way you need to be treated. You are not being seen.

What do they say? A life lived without love is a life of suffering. We are not getting the love we need. We are not getting what we need in order to survive, let alone thrive. Whose fault is it? Certainly it is not the ugly duckling. He was hatched out of the egg along with all of the other ducks. As far as he was concerned, he was fine. Sure, he did not look like anybody else but he was still him. He liked who he was. He was big and he was gawky compared to everybody else. But he certainly was not big and gawky compared to who he was.

So we make a lot of noise. So we are bigger and louder than our parents want us to be. So we are not exactly how we should be. When our differentness begins to set us apart and we begin to be put down for our differentness, already we begin to feel that the place where we are living is too small. Tell me on some level — if you put aside the logical, linear thinking of how things should be and how life should be: Easy, wonderful, nice, open, free — that your soul sets up your journey, right from the start, by putting you in a pot that is too small.

When we have plants and the plant outgrows the pot, we do not go into agony about taking that plant out of the smaller pot and putting into a new one. I am not sure the plant is weeping either. It is too tight. It is not getting enough nutrients. It has outgrown its space. It is root-bound. It is pot-bound. It begins to wither. It begins to die.

A Course in Miracles (ACIM) says when vine stops giving fruit, prune it, cut it away and praise God. We take this plant out and put it in a big spacious, pretty pot. Now it has more soil. Now it has a nice big space. Now it can spread out. On some level we separate ourselves thinking that human nature and nature are two different things. We think that our experience is completely and utterly different than the plants. We are put in a pot that is small. We have come here to do something large. That is all that our soul is asking us to do.

We have come here with a large voice, a large vision, a large desire, a large heart. When we are put in a pot that is small instead of being welcomed what we are told is are you too loud.

I tell you what I heard my whole life growing up: Boy, are you sensitive. It was entirely the truth. That was my gift. I was sensitive. That is exactly what I was. I could feel things. I could feel the meanness when there was meanness under the words. I could feel the coldness when there was coldness under the words. I could feel when somebody was unhappy and they were smiling instead. I could feel things. How wonderful that I had this gift.

Back then I was told, like an ugly duckling, stop being so sensitive. Toughen up. What is the matter with you? This turned out to be my destiny, this gift. The ugliness, the differentness of this duckling turned out to be his specialness. What was it? He was a swan. Of course, he was different. I am a person who works with people. Of course, I am sensitive.

Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way tells the story of this young composer. When he was young his parents always called him a dreamer. What did he grow up to be? He grew up to be a composer dreaming beautiful music, love stories in music that only a dreamer could compose. Where does that comes from? It comes from the place of your imagination.

When we are not rewarded for who we are, not only as a child, but as an adult. When we are working in a job and we are not recognized for our talents. When we are living in a relationship and we are not rewarded for who we are and accepted as is. When we are living in a lifestyle or living in a community or in a career where we are not getting the love, the support and the acceptance we need, Life is saying get a bigger pot. And I will help you.

It is not like we have to go out and find this pot all by ourselves. Life is saying there are tons of bigger pots. Let me help you but first we have to agree that the pot we are living in is too small. We are pot-bound. What does it mean when a plant is pot-bound? It cannot grow. Now this we understand when we see the plants. But we think we are human beings which is completely different than nature, our human nature, utterly different.

We think that when we are pot-bound and root-bound and we sit in a job that is stifling us that, of course, we can stay here for years and it is not going to hurt us at all. I can stay here for another couple of years and accumulate money if I have to. I can stay here and have my boss give me all kinds of trouble if I have to. I can be in a relationship where there is no love if I have to. The head says oh come on, it is only two more years. What is the problem? In two years, the plant is dead. We fool ourselves into thinking that in two years we will not be.

In two years, I am going to be the same person that I am now except I will have more money in the bank. Except I will have figured out what I want to do with my life and then I will make the move. When I find the perfect pot then I am going to take myself out of this pot. The only way to find the perfect pot is to get out of the pot that you are in and begin the journey to finding the pot that is the right next pot for you.

We think we are going to move from that small pot, move into the next perfect pot and then we are going to live there forever. I am going to find that perfect thing. I know what I am going to do for a living. I am going to be there and I am going to do that. I am holding on to something. I got it now. Now I am going to do this forever.

On the path, you will find people who write a poem or two and say ‘wow, am I supposed to be a poet?’ Or a song comes out. Wow, am I supposed to be a song writer? The life force is saying can you just enjoy yourself here? Can you just write a poem or a song and not make a whole career out of it? You will find out what your career is when you start making all kinds of moves in all kinds of directions. It is going to be revealed to you when you leave the pot.

I cannot tell you what sheer terror it is for human beings to leave their home pot. If they leave their pot what will people think? If they leave their pot nobody will love them. If they leave their pot they will be alone for awhile. If they leave their pot where will they find the next pot? If they leave their pot will they find the next pot? Every one of those questions keeps you sitting in a pot that is too small.

This journey is magnificent. Each pot leads to a bigger one. I am not sure we ever even really arrive at the biggest pot we are supposed to be in. But I know that every pot you leave is going to lead you to a bigger one. The hero’s journey is to have the courage that it takes to take one step out of that pot. To acknowledge that if you do not leave that pot you are going to die.

We like to say you are going to die psychologically. You might die spiritually. You might die emotionally.

What we do not understand is that only reason illness comes in our life is because we will not leave the pot we are holding on to for dear life. Illness says I am here to shake you out, to shake you awake, to shake you up so that you will let go and let life move you, help you move to the next pot.

All of our fears tell us that the un-safest thing in the world to do is to leave that pot. Everything on the spiritual path tells us that the only safe/healthy/whole place for you to be is to leave that pot. So every time you open a spiritual book know that you are pushing yourself out.

The moment you open a book and say yes to this path, you begin to feel the confines of this pot you are sitting in if, indeed, it is too small for you. That is why they say when you follow this path or you begin to seek the truth. The Gospel of Thomas: if you begin to seek this truth at first you are going to be troubled and then you are going to be amazed. Why do we get troubled? Because the moment you start opening your eyes and seeing the truth of where you are you begin to see what is not working and where the love is not.

It is one thing if we are growing up and we did not get the love from our family. We were 8. We were 6, what can you do? But now when we are 26 or 46 and we are living a life where we are not getting love, who can you blame? Nobody stops you from getting out of the pot except you.

In our psychological journey, in our spiritual journey through life, the only way we begin to reveal the truth about who we are is by stepping out of the pot. It is a necessary and inevitable part of every human being’s journey on earth. There is no other way to get to what you are looking for on this path. To the love, to the joy, to the peace, to the happiness, to the You, to the You that you are looking for unless you make this journey and open and know that it is safe to step out to the next pot.

The ugly duckling had only one home and it was a pond. When he could not take the abuse anymore by all the other ducklings, he finally left. He did not know anything that was sitting over the hedges. A lot of times we think that what is over the hedges is death. A lot of times that is our fear. There is nothing out there. It is dangerous out there. It is dark out there. I cannot go out there when, in fact, your salvation is out there.

Now between the old pot and the new pot there is a space. Spiritually and religiously some people call that space ‘the desert’. All the wise men in all of the religions had to make their trek through the desert. Every single fairy tale requires every single hero or heroine to make a trek into the desert or the woods in order to find their proper next pot.

We do not jump from pot to pot. Most of us would jump if we saw that next pot and still hold on to the last one. We could still feel the last one, split our legs kind of; I am almost there. You are kind of hurting things inside but that is OK because you are holding on to the old and new. As long as you are holding on to the old, it is OK to go for the new. In the meantime, it hurts a lot. Eventually when you get hold of the new then you can let go of the old. Then you think finally I am safe.

What the spiritual path says is first of all you are not going to get that new pot. You are not going to get that new pot right in front of your face. Part of what you need to do, to reveal who you really are, is to make that little journey to the next pot. That is where you are going to get your strength. That is where you are going to get your vigor. That is when you are going to start having confidence in yourself. That is when you are going to be alone, maybe, for the first time.

I heard this week that the reason we need to be alone is so that we can find out that we are never alone. How do we find that out? We find that out through the period of desert that stands between our old life and our new, next piece of our new life. It is the desert that tempers us.

In the book The Alchemist, Santiago goes through the desert and it is in his going through the desert on route to his treasure where he gets strong. Where he finds out he has talents he did not even know he had.

Our fear is that when we go inside we are not going to like what we see. When we go through this period of solitary confinement, which is what it feels like, we will not make it to the other side. We will be so alone we will die of this loneliness. The truth is when we step away from our old life, when we step away from living our life for our parents, for our job, for the almighty dollar or for any reason other than living our life for the growth of our soul. When we begin to do that, that is when our true talents come out. That is when our true passions come out. That is when our true gifts are revealed. Then and only then.

Thoreau said where we begin to shine is when we begin to take off all of the teachings we were taught. When we take off everybody else’s we are left with us. That is when we begin to find out who we are. This is the walk from the old pot we were raised up in to the new pot. The next step, that is where we take off the old teachings. That is where we leave some things behind.

Sometimes it means leaving a mother or father behind that says I cannot live without you. You cannot go. Or a job that says the company will crumble without you. Or a lover that says I cannot believe you are leaving me. It has not been working for eight years but I am sure it will one day. Or whatever it is we are leaving that is not working.

The moment we leave it we think we are going to die. I tell you that the moment you leave is the very moment when you begin to live. You begin to live in a way you have not before. When you take a plant out and move it to the next place, the roots are dangling there for a while. I am sure it can feel the air moving back and forth on its little feet. If you do not get freaked out, it is this place where there are no rules. It is this place where a lot of things can happen. It is this place, as Deepak Chopra calls it, ‘of limitless possibilities’. We do not know that there is another pot coming. We are just kind of here. That is what the desert is.

The Israelites landed in the desert on route to the land of milk and honey. They just went through the Red Sea and Moses took them through successfully. There they were on the other side of the Red Sea after being beaten and kept as slaves They get to the other side, they look around and its desert .

They turn to Moses and they ask why did you take us out of Egypt to bring us here? We do not want to be here. We wish we were back there. When we are in this place of the land of limitless possibilities, were we cannot see what is going to happen, we assume that nothing is going to happen. The truth is we are in the place, once we leave our pot, of limitless possibilities where everything in the universe conspires to help us.

I know it is the truth because I lived this truth and I see it working in people’s lives all the time. But we have to be willing to know that our journey lies forward. The moment we tell the life force do not move through me, do not make me move forward is the moment we say to the life force do not come in, do not remove the pot I am in, do not help me, do not change this by changing me. That is when we stop life from happening. That is when death begins. That is when illness starts.

As Eva Perakis says, the moment when our life begins to be peaceful and stops being so filled with suffering is the moment that we recognize that our outside life has everything to do with our inside life. They are one and the same. The inside life is the blueprint for the outside life. That is Buddhism 101. Cause and effect. That is when struggle and suffering begins to end.

What is so interesting is that Life will help us know when it is time to change pots. Sometimes we call these things crises. Sometimes we ask how could this happen? I cannot believe this happened to me. I just lost my job. My house just burned down. I have to leave where I am right now. What that is is Life saying you know what? You have outstayed your welcome in this pot. It is time for you to move on.

I know a woman who is lifting herself up from the pot. She is moving forward and she does not know where that next pot lies. She knows where the resting place in the desert is but she does not know where the next pot is going to be. She only knows about the rest stops in the desert.

She is going to leave this Thursday. She’s going to travel for 27 hours. She is taking a plane to Heathrow. From there a plane to Bombay. From there a plane to Bangalore in India. From there a train to Puta Partee.

Her soul let her know while she was working on Wall Street that she did not belong there anymore. She had what she calls a break down. What the soul does when it breaks down is it says your old way of life is breaking down. A nervous breakdown or any kind of break down of anything in the old life is your invitation to a new one. It is your soul telling you this is not your place. You do not belong here.

How do we know we do not belong here? When we are experiencing the kind of stress that makes us sweat. It is not Wall Street’s fault. It is the fault of us being in a pot that is not a correct fit because there are plenty of people on Wall Street who are absolutely thrilled about where they are because they belong there.

How do we know the pot is too small? We are not happy. We are angry. We are irritable. Things break down. We are filled with stress. We are in pain. We are upset. We cannot cope. All those things are telling us you do not belong here. How fabulous that Life has a way of communicating to us if we can understand what it is saying.

The next thing it said to her about this pot being too small is her apartment burned down. Life is saying you do not even belong here in the home you are in. You do not belong in your old life. Nobody, nobody in their right mind wishes illness or crisis or anything on anybody. We all wish wonderful lives on everyone we love.

Instead of seeing this as a punishment, it was telling her your house has just burned down. She expected every one of her friends to come in and say ‘this is a horrible thing. I am so sorry.’ She said not one single friend came to her house and offered her one ounce of pity. In fact, the exact opposite happened. Everybody came and said this is such a good thing that is happened. This is going to be such a new beginning for you. No matter how spiritual we are, it is hard to hear that. We want to hear a little bit of sympathy.

She said I heard this message so loud and clear. It was time for me to start a new beginning. When it is time to leave our pot, we do not know. We do not just jump out of the pot. None of us are asked to jump out of where we live and how we live into thin air. So she began praying. She began asking what this means.

She started to have the first dream which turned out to be the first of a couple of dreams. In it she dreamt of a guru. She is not a woman who is a follower of a guru. She dreamt of the guru Sai Baba who is a Hindu avatar. An avatar means he is the embodiment of the god consciousness here on earth. He came to her in this dream and he said these simple words: It cannot start until you come. It was a dream so vivid that when she woke up there it was: It cannot start until you come.

Again, we just do not jump out of the pot. What is wise to do is you begin to do what you can do. You know you can pray. You know you can meditate. You know you can ask for help. You know you can begin to call on this life spirit that is helping you move and ask what does this mean?

What began happening around her is the universe conspires to help. Joseph Campbell says 1000 invisible hands come to help you. All of a sudden everywhere she turned, people were talking about Sai Baba. She goes to her therapist and her therapist says yes I know two people who just came back from the ashram in India. Not only do I know them, I knew them before they went and now I know them since they have come back. There are totally transformed.

She began meeting people who began speaking of Sai Baba. All of a sudden she began to do her own research. The most important research she began doing was on her own self. To begin to remove the fear that was going to keep her from making the inevitable step that she had to make. Once we know it is inevitable that we have to move, that we have to leave the small pot, that we have to move to this bigger place, then we just have to get busy doing the work in front of us.

Now we have two choices. The ego, the smaller part of us, the little part of our mind will get so panicked and fearful, you will probably be getting high all the time. You will be in total fear or shut down or in complete denial: We are not leaving where we are! We dig our heels in even more. Or we get busy with that same energy and we begin to do the work we need to do. Which is how do I get myself there?

Not what plane tickets do I need or how do I make the reservations? The inner work to create a space in us so the fear steps aside and we can just do what is inevitable for us to do. We work on our fear. We work on our panic. We work on our faith with God. We work on communicating with the presence of spirit so that we can walk with spirit and instead of alone. We begin to do the work that we can do.

So what inevitably happens? Inevitably in our lives as in hers, she steps out into the desert. She is making this 27 hour trip. She is not going for a week retreat. She is leaving everything behind and to this ashram for six months. She has no idea what to expect. She said the one thing I know that is going to happen – and that is all I know – is that I am going to uncover who I am. Not all of who I am. More of who I am.

Is not that all that the spiritual path ever says? This journey is about finding out about more of who we are. The more we know about who we are, the stronger we get. We get stronger by taking little steps out in our journey. With every step we find out one more thing about us. By even signing up for this retreat she shas found out something about her. She says I am not scared. Why should I be scared? I am not scared of dying. I am not scared of change.

You really have to understand how awesome it is to not be afraid of change. If we are not afraid of change then that means that Life that knows exactly what we want and how to get us there and can just do its work through us unobstructed.

Where are you led? You are not led to the cliff to crash on the rocks. You are led right into the kind of life you have been dreaming of having as you go through the desert picking up your skills on route to getting it. Every step in the desert is going to make you more, bigger, stronger, bolder and more courageous so by the time the life you want comes, the love, the family, the success, you are able to plant your feet and be in the present moment and enjoy it.

You are able to put out your arms and hold it so that it does not fall in on you. You are able to hold all that success and enjoy it moment to moment. You are able to hold it and be with it. You are able to enjoy it as it comes. Things that come that we cannot hold, we lose. Big things that come that we cannot hold, destroy us. If you cannot hold that kind of success you are going to crumble under it.

We do not take the little plant that we were and put it in a gigantic field. We take the little plant we were and put it in the next bigger pot. Then the next bigger pot. Then the next bigger pot. But we have to be willing to leave the original one in order to make it to the next one.

Feel yourself planted in the center of this present moment knowing that there is one of you and only one of you. That you have come here to fulfill your beautiful, significant, magnificent destiny. You have been born with the power and you will be given every single tool you need to go that distance from where you are to the next step to the next step to the next step to where you need to be.

Every step of it is guided. Every step will be lit. As much as you might feel like you are going to have to walk these steps alone, not one of your steps will ever, ever, ever have to be taken alone. This is your destiny and it is inevitable. With every breath you take just simply say yes.

This is from Travels by Michael Creighton. In 1975, Lauren and I were staying at the Craig
Farm. A 60 square mile preserve in Northern Kenya. She and I had met the year before. We were
now in the middle of a passionate romance. A trip to Africa seemed like a fine idea. We had gone
to the Craig Farm because I wanted to walk amongst the animals. That is illegal in the
government game preserves.

We returned later that evening to Lamudown’s camp to spend my first night ever under the
African stars. I had never camped before except one night at the age of 11 in Nassau County Boy
Scout Camp in Long Island. That was a far cry from Africa.

The Craigs showed Lauren and me how to set everything up. Then we had dinner in the mess
tent. They talked about the ranch and the animals found there. They were concerned because
although this was the dry season, the drought had gone on for a very long time. The elephants
had disappeared. They usually had quite a few elephants on the ranch. The elephants had not
been seen for weeks by now.

We talked until the darkness fell. When dinner was finished, Lauren and I headed back to our
tent. It was now very dark. I found that a few more questions occurred to me. One was about the
wild animals. The same wild animals that I had been unable to approach during day, I suspected
might come and visit me at night.

The Craigs laughed. Animals were never in the campground at night. Of course, there was the
time they woke up in the morning and found a big rhino asleep in the embers of the fire from the
night before but this was very unusual.

So how unusual, Michael Creighton asked. I had not yet noticed the easy way these people
simultaneously gave assurance and then took it away. Very unusual, they said. You were almost
never bothered by animals. Of course, there may be the occasional monkey screeching in the
trees keeping you awake but animals on the ground, no.

By now, my concerns had shifted because the fabric of my tent looked quite flimsy. As I
imagined, a sleeping rhino right outside my tent, I wondered would an animal ever enter the tent.
The Craigs said no of course not but there was the time, that the leopard clawed right through the
tent fabric scaring the hell out of the lady inside. She woke up shrieking and frightened the cat
off.

There had been something peculiar about that incident. They could not remember exactly what it
was. Maybe it was food in the tent but there was something about it. It was not as if a leopard
would just come up and claw your tent for no reason. Really, I asked. The Craigs laughed.

They pointed out three hurricane lanterns spaced around the tents. These lanterns were lit all
night long. The light kept the animals away. Count on it, they said. You are never going to have
any animals around the tent.

Now, do you see the stream over there, they asked? Sometimes you find the odd animal on the
far side of the stream but never on this side where the tents, the lanterns and people are. Have a
good sleep, they said cheerfully. Then they said good night. Lauren and I zipped up our tent and
went to bed.

Lauren had camped a lot in her childhood and was relaxed about sleeping. While I, on the other
hand, was far too nervous to sleep so I read for a while hoping to become sleepy. I remained
awake and listened for sounds outside until finally I could not take it. I put on my sneakers. I
unzipped the tent. I held my breath and stuck my head out.

The night was pitch black. The lanterns they had promised to keep on all night long had gone
out. It was not even midnight. With my head outside the tent, I looked like a cartoon character
with my head sticking out, neck muscles straining with tension. Waiting, listening, looking.

This is like us in life. The biggest mistake we can make in the morning is to turn on the radio and
find out what wild animals had been running the streets last night while we were sleeping. Then
we are expected to open our door. walk right out into the wilderness where the wild animals live,
have a happy and free day while we pursue our dreams and turn them into reality.

We wonder why it is so difficult to walk this path. To have our grand vision of what we want to
have Life or God reveal through us while walking through the plains of the Serengeti out in
Manhattan. Of course, the idea of the vision and the reality of living it on Earth seems,
sometimes, so impossibly far away. We are just grateful to get through the day.

We are just grateful to make it to the other side without having a stray bullet hit us, somebody
hurting us, or punching us in the nose. Thank God we just got home alive. A lot of people cannot
say that. Thank God we can bolt up our doors and we are safe for one more day.

Here is the beauty of what happens when you create a vision for yourself. Creating a grand
vision so that you may live that vision is not difficult to put it into practice here on Earth when
you can anchor it down into this world.

What a spiritual morning practice does it anchors your biggest thought about you, your life,
down into the earth beneath the feet that you are walking on each and every day.
The practice I use is called 5-5-5. Five minutes by five minutes by five minutes. Five minutes of
reading. Five minutes of writing. Five minutes of sitting. Most people ask who does not have
five minutes, until tomorrow morning when you try it. Then we say I do not have even one
minute.

The reason we start with reading is if you are going to wake up and read the paper or turn on the
TV or radio, you are going to get the world view according to the world from whatever station
you are listening to. You are going to get the world point of view from the media. How the media
sees this world, themselves and you.

They are going to feed you their point of view according to how they see the world through their
eyes as seen through the eyes of their fathers and forefathers before them. Let us call that
worldview the consensus reality. It is what everybody has decided the world is. That is the world
you are going to see.

In the morning, when you are most vulnerable, the 5-5-5 spiritual morning practice says why do
you not go to your highest thought first. Instead of going to somebody else telling you what this
life is, what this world is, who you are, or what you are, why do you not decide.

Why do you of your own choosing, of your own will or volition, choose the teaching or the
philosophy that is going to expand your mind. That is going to enlarge your consciousness. That
is going to lift you up instead of bringing you down. That is going to open you up instead of
shutting you down. That is going to make you feel stronger about who you are instead of making
you feel like a victim of circumstances. That is going to remind you that there is only one power
here in operation in the world, not two as the world believes.

Five minutes a day of the highest reading that you can find. What if you chose that point of view
in the first five minutes of waking up to read the teachings, both Eastern and Western. You could
pick up the book by Ernest Holmes called The Science of Mind. You could pick the Tao Te
Ching, a Taoist book written 2500 years old that is 81 verses long. You could pick up the
Bhavagad Gita, an Eastern teaching that is as popular as the Bible is in the West.

You could pick up any of these teachings and you would be told that all of life is a movement
toward revealing your wholeness. That means that Life is not against you. Life happens for you.
When we are shivering in our tents, out in the middle of the wild, crazy world filled with animals
over which it seems we have no control and what stands between us and them is a little tent with
a zipper. The reason we are shivering in our tent is because we have picked up the worldview
that tells us life happens to us, not for us.

That there are two powers in operation. One is good and one is bad. If it is your unlucky day,
then you are screwed. You might as well zip up that tent and stay indoors because nothing good
is going to happen.

Here is what all the teachers say: You cannot pick two world views. You cannot have two
philosophies of life. They are utterly and completely diametrically opposed to one another. You
have to pick one. If you are going out into the world and asking the world what is its point of
view, they know what point of view it has.

Open any paper and that is the point of view. It is not wrong but it is going to make you shiver in
your tent. That is the problem with the world’s point of view. It tells you that you are a victim of
circumstance. It does not tell you about the precise and meticulous Law of Cause and Effect that
posits as within, so without.

The world that you create in your own consciousness, that is the world you are going to
encounter when you unzip your tent and walk out. The world that you create in your own

consciousness is the world that is reflected back at you. Every one of your experiences has your
fingerprints all over it. There is something in that experience that is knocking on your door
coming to help open you up to your wholeness, remind you of your perfection, and take you
deeper, past your comfort zone, so you can remember who you are.

Five minutes a day of the highest reading you can find is to anchor yourself in a philosophy of
life you are going to live by. The practice of doing the 5-5-5-daily is because every day is a new
day and you need to remember something, especially when you are entering into the world that is
forgetful. The world would have you forget what it is that makes you so strong and brave.

It was absolutely quiet outside the tent. In spite of myself, I was beginning to feel drowsy when,
suddenly, I heard a distinct dry crack. It was the sound of a branch breaking underfoot. Then I
heard a crashing sound. Something large was moving through dry brush. It sounded to me like an
elephant.

Lauren was sleeping peacefully. I listened some more. There was silence for awhile and then I
heard the crashing again. The crashing had a lazy rhythm exactly like an elephant moving.
Whatever it was, it was really big and close. I listened awhile longer. When I could not stand it
anymore, I whispered to Lauren if she was awake.

She rolled sleepily on to her back. I said there is something out there. Lauren was instantly
awake, sitting up on one elbow. Where she asked. I replied outside. Something big, sounds like
an elephant. Lauren collapsed back on the bed saying, they have not seen elephants for weeks.

We listened together for a long time. Lauren did not hear anything and asked why are we
whispering? I replied, I swear I heard something. Just then, I heard the crashing sound again. It
was very distinct and very loud. Lauren sat upright and asked what do you think it is?
Actually trying to see the source of the sound had not occurred to me before. I do not think we
can. The lanterns have all blown out and it is pitch black outside. Use the flashlight she said.

More crashing sounds. Unless my ears were playing tricks on me, the source of those sounds was
now getting much closer. Now the sounds were only a few feet away. I crept up to the zipper
with the flashlight, opened the air ventilation flap that was covered with mesh mosquito netting
and shone the light out.

The light reflected off the netting. I could see nothing. Lauren asked me what I could see. You
have to open the zipper. I was not going to open the zipper. Lauren asked if I was afraid. Yes, I
replied. Lauren said I will do it.

She got out of bed, took the flashlight, crawled to the front flap, unzipped the tent from the
bottom about six inches. More crashing sounds from outside. Sounds close, Lauren whispered.
She unzipped six more inches, shone the light outside for a few seconds then zipped the tent back
up and clicked off the light.

Lauren said she did not see anything. I do not think there is anything out there. I asked what is
making the crashing noise? The branches cracking still continued close by. Lauren did not think
it was anything. It is the wind. It is not the wind! I grabbed the flashlight from her, approached
the zipper and listened again to the intermittent crashing sounds.

What do you think it is Lauren asked. It is an elephant I replied. It cannot be an elephant. It must
be something else. A big bird in the trees. I unzipped the tent a full three feet and shone the light
out. The round beam shot into the blackness. I swung it around and I saw the branches of the
trees. Then I saw something.

The second five is a fabulous, fascinating and very different experience. When we think of five
minutes to read, we ask ourselves how am I going to squeeze that in? We are holding a remote
for at least 15 minutes looking for something on the TV we know we are never going to find.
There is nothing on.

The first five you are feeding your mind and expanding your consciousness through which
everything happens. The next five minutes you are writing. You are writing from a place within
you. You are going deeper down into yourself so that you may discover, in your depths, what is
going on down here.

Most of the time we do not know. That is why we make so many calls to people asking them
what to do. We do not take a minute or two or five to go down to the place in us that knows. This
is where our compass is. There is where our deep feelings are. There is where the truth about
who and what we are is.

This also has to be the messy place. We do not want to go down to this messy place. We might
have to look at things we do not want to look at.

Here we are in a panic because we have seen something. We stand inside our door and think is
Our boss going to fire us. Are my kids going to be on drugs? Is something bad going to happen?
Am I going to lose an arm? Am I going to be sick with a disease? What bad next thing is going to
happen?

We work ourselves up into a lather. It is not even 7:45am and we have not yet even left our
house. We spill that stuff out on the page and give it a safe place to come out. You are writing
three pages in the morning. One of those pages can give your fear a place to spill its voice so you
do not have to be tripping over it all day long.

Fear says and let it have a page. Then you turn the page over after what fear said everything it
wanted to say. Then maybe you find out there is another voice inside of you that is hard to hear
because it is so noisy from the crashing and dry twigs outside. Or from the sound of the media.
From what is called news which is just bad things happening to people who are presented as the
best people in the world. Victims of horrible circumstances is how it is always portrayed.

You might as well find out if there is another voice inside you because I assure you there is. We
never hear that other voice because we are all tangled up in knots. We cannot breathe in the panic

that the first voice, the fearful voice, tells us what is waiting for us. It sure feels like the size of an
elephant.

There is indeed another voice down there. In religious terms it is called the still, small voice. In
spiritual terms it is called divine intuition. It is your compass and the voice of your greater
knowing self. It is the voice of your consciousness when it is expanded. When you begin to give
it a place to express itself, you will be shocked how much you know that you do not think you
know.

You will be shocked on these pages to find out that the things you are running to other people
trying to get their answers for, you already know the answers. You will be shocked about how
much more you are, and know you are, that you do not know you are when you are out in the
world. The world tells you are so much less than you think you are.

We go to the pages to go down deep. To take that expanded consciousness and to open
downward into ourselves so it is not just concepts about a philosophy of life. It begins when we
open a space to enter into so we can claim it, own it and make it ours.

What good is it if there is only power, not two, on earth if it is not my power and I do not claim
it? What good is it if life happens for us and not to us?. What good is this world as a place that
reflects back my consciousness unless it is my world? Otherwise, these are just concepts. You
will be a fascinating person at a dinner party but your life has not changed one bit.

This is about making this world yours so every step you take is based on that philosophy and
trusting that philosophy. You are living from that philosophy. That is the point of the second five
minutes.

I saw some kind of a round brown shape in the beam with furry things hanging down in front of
the round thing. I could not make it out at first. Then I realized I am looking at a enormous eye.
The furry things were eyelashes. The elephant was so close, his eye filled the flashlight beam. He
was 10 feet away from me. He was huge. He was eating brush and grasses.

It is a damn elephant I whispered snapping off the beam. Then I felt strangely calm. You are
kidding Lauren said. An elephant? You saw it? It is out there? Yes, I said. Why did you turn off
the light? I did not want to upset it. I was thinking the elephant might not like having a light
shone into its eyes. I did not want him angry or confused and trampling the tent.

I did not know anything about elephant emotions but this one seemed calm right now. There was
no point in changing that. Lauren jumped out of bed and took the flashlight. Let me see! Where
is it? Do not worry, you cannot miss him.

Lauren shone the light out of tent. Her body went rigid. He is right here! I told you. I could not
help it. I had been right all along. What about how they never cross the river like the Craigs said?
I do not know but I know there is a huge elephant right outside our tent.

Do you think it will hurt us? I do not think he will hurt us. I have no idea what he will do. Should
we try and get away? I do not think so. I think we should just stay where we are. Maybe we
should get out the back or run to the shelter. I do not think so. We could shout for help. The other
tents are just across. Shouting might upset the elephant I said wisely.

Anyway, what would we say? We would say there is an elephant outside our tent. I do not know.
They might not even know what to do. I think all that shouting is going to make him nervous. He
is a lot bigger than we are. Then I got into bed.

What are you doing? I am going to bed. Just like that with a dangerous elephant outside of our
tent? There is nothing we can do about him so we might as well just go to sleep. I fell asleep
almost immediately listening to the elephant crashing around in the brush outside.

Here is the last five minutes. We expand our consciousness and rechoose it each and every day, a
philosophy of life, of the world, of your place in it. Who I am. Whose I am. We do that each and
every morning.

We lock that into what we are going to believe about the Truth. We are going to find out about
what our truth is. Not because people tell me but because I am going to find out for myself. Do
not believe what people tell you. Believe your own experience.

Then you bring that information down and anchor it into yourself. You begin to discover who
and what you are. You can begin to discover there is so much more. That there is a deeper voice,
a truer voice, a wiser voice that you are not even used to. Then you sit with it.

Out of all three five-minute practices, this is what seems to be the most challenging. This last
five minutes is going to feel like five eternal years. The Buddhists call it holding your seat or
sitting.

In meditation, there are no elephants that you are looking out toward. You are sitting in your
house in a safe place in the middle of the present moment. In this exact moment, all is well. If
you can learn to hold your seat, where the ideas of danger come crashing into your mind and hit
your consciousness saying what if this happens?

You know when that happens? It happens when you say be still and know. You are sitting there in
the stillness and you cannot hear anything higher than all of the crashing of the elephant in the
brush outside of your tent in your own imagination.

Hold your seat for five minutes. Do not expect some marvel to happen right before your eyes.
You are not that special. In fact, the truth is none of us are. What is going to happen in this
exercise is you are going to sit there and you are going to learn how to sit when the thought
forms, like hurricane gale force winds are blowing from the thoughts that are bombarding you
You are going to learn to hold your seat.

Take a breath when those thoughts come and you are just going to say the word: thinking. That is
all it is. The Buddhists say the thoughts are just clouds passing by. Let the clouds pass by. When

they pass by, you are going to notice something for a second before the next cloud or thought
comes. You are going to notice that behind the cloud is a big sky. Behind the thought of disaster
is a gap. That is a moment where you are not spooking yourself out.

If you can just connect to that gap, for a moment, every time when you say ‘thinking’. If you can
recognize the cloud for the cloud, the fear for the fear, the idea for the idea, in that moment, you
have entered into the big sky, the spaciousness that is your true consciousness.

Hold your seat. You are going to have 10 billion reasons not to hold your seat. What is going to
happen when you hold your seat for five minutes every morning, you are going to walk out your
door and you are going to discover that when your boss is telling you what you always feared
your boss might say or your lover is telling you what they do or do not like about you or
someone is showing you something you do not want to see because it means you have to change,
in that moment you are going to discover you can hold your seat.

You are going to look into the eye of the elephant and realize that you are surprisingly calm
because you have been prepared for this.

The problem is not what happens to us. The problem is the panic, worry and stress that happens
before we are face-to-face with what it is that is in front of us. This morning practice prepares us
to stop running away from everything Life is trying to bring to help, grow, open, and expand us.
The longer we are running the other way, the more we cannot turn around and look at the
situation in the eye. It is only when we look at something in the eye that we can finally open and
let it in.

Every single path has a morning practice. Every single path says the way you start your day is
the trajectory of your day. The way you start your day is going to be the level of vibration that
you send out into your day. The way you choose to start your day is the very quality of the day
you have just chosen to have. The day you have has your fingerprints all over it.

Fifteen minutes: Five minutes of reading. Five minutes of writing. Five minutes of sitting. This is
going to prepare you to unzip your flimsy tent and step out into the wilderness that is life full of
darkness and unexpected stuff around every corner. You will be able to see it aright because now
you know what you are looking at.

You will be able, no matter what comes to you, to see it for what it is. Not to set it right but to see
it right. In seeing it right, be able to handle it from your highest, most intelligent and conscious
place.

It will blow your mind who you become. How much clearer, stronger, intelligent, calmer you
become in your day when you give yourself this 5-5-5 morning practice of anchoring the Truth in
you so that you, in your life, can look any elephant in the eye and know how absolutely safe you
are.

The foundation upon which you are going to set your house on is going to make all the difference about whether that house stands.

Without a foundation beneath the life we lead, the first big storm that comes, the first wave that hits us, the first big wind, and we are out of there. We think, oh man, I cannot believe this happened to me. In a story it is called an inciting incident. You are going to love it conceptually. You are not going to love it when it comes knocking on your door. Conceptually, an inciting incident comes into your life and moves you into the story of your life.

The inciting incident comes and throws you into your life in action because you do not have a choice but to act. The reason it does that is because of this: All of life is a movement toward our perfection. Meaning our wholeness. What that means is all of life is interested in us writing a better story of our life. The story of our life is not about the car we buy. Nor about the things we accumulate. Nor about the bills we pay for the things that we have accumulated that we have purchased.

The story of our life is why we are here. It is what we are here to do. It is who we are here to be. We forget or get lost along the way or say stop I do not want to be involved. Life comes in its effort to move us into what it calls perfection, which is wholeness. If it was just wholeness, we would say I will take a little less wholeness and a little more calm in my life. Who would not trade out a little bit of wholeness? But here is the thing about wholeness. There is no happiness without wholeness. There is temporary happiness but there is not the kind of complete happiness, perfect happiness that all of life is a moving into toward our perfect happiness.

Those inciting incidents are sometimes very exciting. When we land in a hospital or land flat on our back. Or somebody breaks up with us. Somebody throws us out of our apartment. In a good story, the story really does not happen until something — an inciting incident — happens. That is when the story gets going.

The Dalai Lama says when something like that happens, he calls it crisis. In crisis, people choose one of the two options. They either go up or they go down.

To get to that perfect happiness, we must know what the problem is. The one problem that we have is separation from who we truly are. If we do not know who we are, we walk around afraid of everything that is going to happen. Because we are not connected to anything deeper than just our clothing, our name, the strength in our hands and what is going on in our memory.

Finding who we are and holding fast to who we are gives us access to a strength, to a wisdom, to a connection to something changeless that allows us to weather whatever storm it is. Not only weather it, transmute that experience into an experience that makes us go up instead of down.

Now the only way we are ever going to be able to hold an inciting incident is to know Life is moving us into a better story of our life. The better story is not at the end of your life, that you existed, and you paid your bills on time. That is not a very good story.

The Tao Te Ching wants you to see it as a flow of water, so you know you are being carried. You are not being carried away, crashed against the rocks because life is unfair, random and stupid. You are being carried into a better story. You are being carried into your wholeness. You are being carried into what they call perfection which lands us in perfect happiness. What needs to come out of us can only come out of us after an inciting incident has forced us to stand in hot water. Like a tea bag, we have no idea how strong we are until we are put in hot water. None of us want to be put in hot water.

How in the world do we get what is in hiding out of us? How do we find out who we are? How do we find out what our courage is like, our creativity, our abilities unless Life helps press them out of us? What Life is concerned with, the better story, is about making a life. That is where our story is. That is why we are here. That is why we came. It is why we incarnated.

You cannot go backwards and forwards simultaneously. You must make a decision. Tao and this world seem different but in truth they are one and the same. The only difference is in what we call them. When we dig down and totally get what it is saying, it is going to change a lot of things.

All of life is happening right here in our life. Right in front of me. The thing the person just said to me. The inciting incident. That means that Life itself, intelligence itself, God itself, is inside every experience that happens to you. It is working on our behalf to help us create the greater story of our life.

If we do not know that, we are like the person who goes into a field of wildflowers and says look how beautiful. I think I will go pick some. You pick up one that is a rose, get pinched with a thorn and say I cannot believe this happened. I hate that. So, you go to another one and get another rose with a thorn. Now your fingers are kind of pricked. Now you have got blood on your fingertips. You are loving the flowers, but you forgot why you came into the field. Now you are all focused about the thorns.

That is our life exactly. That is what happens. Some stuff pricks us. Things happen. We get bloody and we get battered around. It hurts. But what happens is we take our eyes off the big picture. We put our eyes on the thorns and we live there.

We live in that place of I must defend myself against being attacked. I must protect myself. When we are in that place, our story gets this small. It fits in a little Tiffany box that you can put an engagement ring in. Now you are engaged to your broken ego and that marriage is rocky. To the part of you that says you better watch out or this could happen or that could happen. That happened before. That might happen. It is a laundry list of grievances that is so long that there is no end to the grievances.

On the other side of all these grievances is, we are told, is not silence. On the other side of our long list of grievances against the thorns that hurt us in our life, that we have turned in to our story, is a miracle. We put down those grievances, we get a little peace of mind.

When you are engaged to the smallest part of your nature, which is the wave that does not know it is a wave made up of the ocean of consciousness, it is not a hilarious and wonderful time. You are looking out into the world and you are married to a part of yourself that shows you broken people, broken experiences, broken relationships.

You know what all those grievances are? We got hurt to different degrees of hurt. We recall them up. That is what resentment is. It is a re-feeling so we can get that full enjoyment of hating them all over again. Not only did I hate you then, I hate you now. You begin to feel it. It is almost like it is in your stomach. It begins to boil up if you let yourself just think about it. There is a joy in that.

We all do that in the privacy of our mind. Sometimes we are the ones that we have resentments against. All those shameful things we did that, maybe, nobody even noticed but we did. We go over them.

Eckhart Tolle spent the entire New Earth talking about the concept of the broken ego. My word ‘broken’, not his. He calls it the mad ego, the insane ego. Every time you look through its eyes, you are seeing something broken. You are seeing something fractured. You are seeing something wrong. You are seeing something missing.

The problem is not out there. The problem is in here. We do not know that. We do believe we live in a broken world with broken people. We are probably #1 broken of all. The real problem is that we are not.

That is the message of what this new foundation is about. That is why you have got to build your house on top of a foundation that is true. If it is not true, a wind is going to come along in your life and knock that foundation down; knock that house down because it was not built on something that was true. I am talking about a truth that is true for you. If we do not ask what is true for me, we do not know.

We are talking about what we can connect ourselves up with that is real, that is true, that is changeless, that is indeed who I truly am. If we have only one problem — which is, we are trying to do it all by ourselves — then there is one answer. How do we not do it all by ourselves? What is the first step we take towards getting united with the truth of us that is unbroken? Our job is to find out who we truly are. Beneath our list of grievances about everything and everyone is a person — us – who is totally whole. The difference between the small self and the great self. That great self is already who we are.

Decades ago, I am involved with a girl for two years. We buy a house together. We live happily ever after for exactly two years. I knew the first weekend it was a big mistake, but I so did not have a skill in the world. I moved in and I thought, this is so wrong. I did not know how to just take my stuff and move out and cut my losses. I did not have that kind of bravery or courage yet.

Two years later, when we separated, I said you know we are separating all the stuff, and this might not be the right moment. We are going to have to talk about selling the house and dividing the proceeds. She said oh, you mean my house. I said no, actually, I mean our house. Oh, she said, that is interesting because this is my house.

What happened was when it came time to sign the papers, we both ponied up. Our pens in our hands. Money from the bank, putting it out. Except, she said, you know what, I do not think it is a good idea for you to come into my office to sign. If they know that we are together as a couple I might lose my opportunity to have them support me and pay for me to go to law school. It will be so much better if I sign for both of us. Talk about not having a clue. I was OK, that is sounds so good and fair. Take my money, honey. She signs the papers.

Buying the house happened in the first six months of us being together. It is while we were still allegedly in love. While we were in love she was planning for the eventuality of when this day came. It would all be in her name. She worked in a law firm. She was a paralegal studying to be a lawyer. She loved the court system. She loved the fight. When she looked at me and said, I will meet you in court, what she meant was I will meet you in my playground. For me, it was an opportunity to either go up or down.

There is a Chinese sage and he says people used to ask him: Tell us what happiness is. He said I will tell you what happiness is. You want happiness? You want harmony? Say this: Not two. Meaning? There is only one thing going on. There is only ever one thing going on. Everything is one thing.

When we know that everything is one thing, that even Life and your life is one thing. That God in you is one thing. That one thing is life moving you to your wholeness.

We are going to have to revisit the thorns and the grievances once we understand that every one of those moments in time is where a thorn pricked us and we bled real blood, we experienced real heartbreak.

But every one of those instances was an inciting incident to move you, to push you, to press you. Life is going to make you live your fullest life. Live your better story. Life is going to make you be who you came here to be. Life is going to move you. It is going to press you into the story you are meant to lead, and the thorns are part of that story.

I went around and told everybody that sad story. From the day I started telling that story of my life, my greater story, stopped. We need to understand this because we think I got a real grievance. They really did this to me, and they are all real. Our hearts were broken. We did bleed. But if we understand that everything is one thing — we must begin to wrap our head around that even though it seems foreign, weird, and wrong — that means they get off the hook. This has nothing to do with them. This has to do with us and letting ourselves off the hook.

That part of our better story, the great story of our life, why we are here, who we are, that all of life is pressing us, moving us into our great self, stops. Everywhere we look we see her. We see the hurt memory of her. We feel the injury of what she did. We were betrayed. We cannot trust anybody ever again. We are never going to let love in like that. What a fool we were. The next thing you know, we have made a series of decisions where we are now so well protected that no thorn is ever going to get near us again.

We are so safe in that place and we are so shut down. A part of us is so dead. That juice of life stopped moving. We are not going to go into the field of wildflowers, which is our life. Our new job. Where we want to move. Who we want to be with. What we want to say. What we want to write. What we are here to do. We are not going to do any of that because in the field of wildflowers we might be pricked. We might bleed. We say I am not an idiot. That is not going to happen to me a second time. That is a valid story. But it is a boring story.

The Chinese say when you begin with blame there is no end to the blame. When we are carrying around a story immersed in blame where the theme is blame, we are the victim and we have been wronged. When we carry that story and make that our story, that becomes our story. We will build a whole story around that grievance. The broken ego, the broken part of us, does not know who it is.

We might get to the end of our life with nobody ever hurting us again. But we are going to get to the end of our life with nobody ever touching us again. Life cannot come in now. We are smarter than that. We follow the voice inside of ourselves that says this life is all about protecting ourselves or defending ourselves against attack. If we are in that story, we are following the story of the smallest part of our nature that is broken. Whatever it shows us is going to be something broken.

An inciting incident when it comes, the Dalai Lama says we are either going to go up or down. How we deal with the inciting incident is the next step. It is how we are writing our story. Literally, in that moment with your house burning down. With you being fired. With you being lonely. With your wallet being empty. In that moment is the inciting incident and it is calling you to write a better story. But to who do we give the pen to? We give the pen to the part of our nature that is broken. That sees itself as separate. We can make a different choice. We can take the pen and go up and put it into the hands of the part of us that sees the inciting incident differently.

My broken ego is showing me a broken world. It is showing me a broken person. It is showing me a broken remembrance. It is showing me a broken incident. It is showing me a broken me. When I see the world like that, I do not have to fix my ego. My smaller nature is the part that does not know who it truly is. That portion of my nature says I am broken.

We end up in a downside of blame which we never are going to get to the other side of that list of grievances. What is on the other side of the list? Our miracles. Miracles. Our grievances hide the miracles of our life.

The only part of you that can say that is the bigger self to the smaller self. Is the greater self to the little self. When we can do that and even begin to say it once a day, we are going to put a little breathing space between ourselves and that part of our nature that will write the smallest story of our life.

To move our story along, to write a better story, we have got to burn the ship of dependence. We do not do it all at once. We do it each time, each moment, each day.

We are talking about a way of life that works. What that means is we cannot just start anywhere if we want something to change in our life. We must start it in the place that is going to end up being the most effective place we can. Talking about the most effective way of building for ourselves a foundation. What choice we are going to make about who it is we think we are. It seems like we have two choices but, actually, we only have one. That it is a choice-less choice.

If we follow the choice of the broken ego, if we following the choice of being a wave in the ocean instead of being the ocean, instead of being the great I Am that we actually truly are and were born to be, we are making the choice to live the smaller story. We are making the choice to live in the problems. We are making the choice to be a victim of circumstance. That is a very hard life. It is filled with suffering. It is filled with anxiety.

We do not really have a choice. There comes a point in our life where we must choose which direction we are going to go in. Who we are. It is singularly the most important decision we make.

The great teacher Ernest Holmes said the thing you must be able to answer in your life is ‘who am I?’ There is not a more important question than who am I. He wanted the answer that came from the deepest place inside of him. When you can answer that question rightly, and know who you are, you walk out into the world different. The world responds to you different.

There was a man full of suffering, full of trouble, who went to a sage. He says to the sage I need help. Can you help me? My life is full of trouble. I am full of suffering. It was written in the lines in his face. The sage looked at him kindly and said I will give you a choice. Do you want a map? Or do you want a boat?

The man looked around; there were a lot of other people around. He looked around because the first thing we want to do is ask somebody what we should do. Just tell me what to do. He did not even know what that meant. He looked around and everybody was filled with as much trouble and as much suffering as him. There was nobody there who was going to help him with what he should choose. He said I will choose the boat. The sage looked at him and kissed him on the forehead. He said go then. You are the boat. Life is the ocean.

We are the boat until we know who we are and decide who we are. Until we decide, most of us are who our parents raised us to be. Most of us are what the world tells us we are. If you look to the world, the world’s going to tell you that you are a victim of circumstance. Or you are going to take your life into your own hands, and you are going to go a little bit deeper. You are going to go backwards in time to some of the teachings that have always spoken about this issue. Who are you? The nature of you.

Knowing who you are does not mean life is not going to happen. It means when life happens, it moves us forward into the next right place we need to be in so when life happens, we know how to hold it. I think about a woman who is walking home. She enters the front door to her apartment building in New York. She goes into the vestibule. A big guy walks in who she clearly did not knew. He knocks her down. Takes her purse and stands over her in that minute.

She is on the ground crouching against the wall trembling. Why do these things happen to me? You know that is her first thought. What am I being punished for? First thoughts that go through the mind if you do not know any better.

There was a woman who, with her husband, who was a sailor. They went on a sailing trip in the Caribbean. They hit an unexpected storm. She was down in the hull. The sailboat is being tossed. It was a nasty storm. Pitching back and forth. She is there. So is her cousin. So is a friend. They are being thrown every which way. Violently seasick in the storm. The husband is up sailing the boat up on the mail deck.

The first thing an experienced sailor will tell you is get upstairs on the main deck. Not because your seasickness is going to feel better on the deck. But something psychologically is going to change up the vibe.

You are going to go up on deck and you are going to be able to see, amidst the storm, a horizon. You are going to be able to see, up on deck, a bigger picture. You are going to be able to see something more than how sick you feel.

It looked for all the world that this woman was sitting, huddling, in a vestibule. If you are huddling in the hall, crouching in the hall, all you can see is look what happened to me. That is all you see because that is what is here. When you know who you are, it changes everything. It does not say that something like this will not happen. What it says is when you are crouching in the hall, knowing who you are, there is going to be a part of your nature that is going to call to you from within you when you know who you are: that largeness, that greatness.

The Tao Te Ching says hold fast to the power of one. Hold fast, it says, to the great form. Hold fast to the great idea. What is the great idea? The great idea is who we are. This greatness that we need to hold to is the greatness that we come to learn, understand and practice that is me. When we understand the greatness of who we are, we, ourselves, have been prepared for this moment of crouching on the ground.

We need to be set free so that we can remember who we are and that everything we are is going to encompass everything we need in each moment. We only have it when we can answer the question, after having asked it 100 different ways, who am I. Depending on who we choose, what we choose, it is going to determine the story that is going to be written. It will determine moments like this in our story.

Crouched and huddled in the vestibule, she says these words. How many times have I found myself in my life crouching before people? Crouching before my family who does not accept me the way I am. Crouching before my boss who does not respect me. Crouching before the world and all the bad things that can happen to me. In that moment what flashed through her eyes was not her life. What flashed through her eyes was the realization that she has spent much of her life crouching.

When we bring ourselves up on deck, when we remember who we are, we remember what the solution to the problem is. The answer to the question we have been prepared for. Where will we find it? Right in ourselves. We are not going to find it anywhere else. That savior is not coming.

Once we let that illusion go, what we are left with is ourselves. The great within that houses a greatness within us and beyond us. This is what we were given to manage our lives. To fulfill our destinies. To live the way we need to live. To do what we need to do. To become the people we need to become. Everything that is needed is given to us if we know what dwells within us.

It is hard because we have another voice within us. A little bit louder than this still, small voice that says what are you talking about? You will never be able to do that. This is the voice that is the broken ego that shows us a broken world and shows us our own broken-ness at every turn. When we follow that voice, where can we end up except crouching in a vestibule hoping, powerless, that somebody will not hurt us?

That is survival. Please know the definitions of the words surviving and thriving are two very different definitions. Surviving means to exist. Meaning to keep on living. To keep on getting by despite accident or injury. You are surviving despite accident or injury.

Thriving does not look anything like surviving. Thriving means to grow vigorously. You are growing with vigor. You are growing with juice. You are growing in knowing. You are growing in the ways in which a person like you must grow, or be grown, to move forward. No step is wasted on that path, the Bhagavad Gita says.

That part of our nature knows that huddling down in the hull of the boat that we are is going to land us in the smallest place looking out at the world through a porthole. It is nice but all you are going to see is this small little point of view about what the world is. Suddenly we are seeing a small world and suddenly, we have become small. Our dreams are small. Our wishes are small. Our prayers are small. Our thoughts are small.

Hold fast to the great idea of who you are. What will happen is you do not need to wait for a savior to come and save you. You need to develop the muscle that allows you to remember who you are. Every day. When you remember it every day, you know you have been prepared for whatever is brought to you in the day. What is brought to you, you know is brought to you to grow you. If you do it from on deck, it is going to be a totally different experience than if you do it crouching and crawling out of that experience. Calling everybody you know to say I am moving out of New York.

Hold fast to the great form and let things change as they may. According to the Tao Te Ching, when you hold fast to the great idea of who you are that great idea becomes who you are in all your actions. What is needed comes to you. The original Law of Attraction says you will walk in this world without danger.

There is an old Japanese line from a poem. Wrapped within young leaves is the sound of water. That which the young leaf needs is already within itself before it even unfurled itself. It is an invitation for it to open to that which it needs and wants that Life needs and wants to give it.

We think we are different. We think we are human nature. Totally different than Nature. It is the same thing. When we say I have such love in my heart and I just wish I had somebody to give it to, if in your heart is the desire for love than that desire for love is fulfilled by Life. The desire for love was put in your heart by Life. It calls to you to unfurl yourself, to open your heart and let that love out. So that love that comes out of you can be met by the love that will, by law, find its way back to you.

In us is the knowledge of how to handle a situation like that. We have two choices depending on which part of us we are going to follow. We can follow the knowledge that we are wave and the ocean is our life. Or we are a wave in the ocean, and we are the ocean expressing as the wave. It is a very different thing when we are a separate, solitary wave on our own trying to figure it out.

That is why we need to practice knowing who we are because we walk out into the world and we forget instantly. We could have our wonderful time in the morning. We walk right out the door; something pisses us off and then we are just there with everybody else doing our thing. We forget in that instant. It is something we need to practice remembering. It is entirely, absolutely, and unequivocally, not a single exception: The greatness of who you are is who you are.

We can walk around pretending that we are not. Then we crawl away from a situation or we remember who we are. This is the reason we remember. This is the reason we practice; this is the reason we spend a little time being silent for when we need to remember that we have been prepared for this moment. Just like wrapped in young leaves is the sound of water, we have already been given everything we need. We already have everything we need.

In that moment, she did something amazing. She is crouching in the vestibule and she, herself, that great I Am that she was, saw herself and thought ‘I spent my whole life crouching. No more.’ She had had it. This was the last time, she thought, I am going to find myself crouching on the floor.

She picked herself up and she did something absolutely crazy and atypical of her. She went out the door after him screaming. That was the right and appropriate action for her. Instead of running from that which she feared, she ran toward it. She needed to do that. It might be the worst thing to ever do that. But for her, she knew there was an action she needed to take so this was the last time she was ever going to be crouching before anybody for any reason.

For her, she took the power and the energy of that great I Am that she knew she was at that moment. She took all that anger and instead of turning it into bitter resentment, she locomoted herself in the direction of the person who would have her crouch. In her case, with her still small voice, it worked. It is always situation specific. It was the right thing to do. On that day, she discovered there was a power greater than she had ever known herself to be. It was real. It was palpable.

Somewhere we are going to find ourselves in all these stories. We are going to connect and say that is me. If that is them, that is me. The facts give us knowledge. Stories give us wisdom. It is the wisdom of our own soul. We are reminded that this who I am.

This is a muscle we build. Knowing who you are. You need to make a decision who we are going to be and be it because each and every day we begin to take an action that demonstrates how much we want to be this. You will notice that in every path, every philosophy, every teaching, every 12-step program, they always talk about morning. First thing in the morning says to Life this is so important to me and this comes first.

First sometimes means you turn on the radio. First sometimes means you turn on the TV. First sometimes means you open the New York Times or go online. When you change that up, I cannot begin to tell you how much is going to change for you.

The idea is if everything you listen to tells you who you are not, you might as well crouch. It tells you that you are a victim of circumstance. It tells you that you should be thankful for what you have because other people do not have as much as you have. If the whole world in its forgetfulness tells you that you are the son of a shepherd, you should be grateful for it. You are a wave.

What we tune into is making us tune out from hearing the voice that would have us go up on deck or keeps us in a corner crouching and surviving, forget growing vigorously. If that is the first voice we listen to and that is the voice of the world, then the world is telling us that is who we are.

Read anything. It is an endless list of stories of victimization. Bad things happening to good people. That is what sells papers. It is the bottom line for the media. I have trouble with that as us reading and thinking that is our bottom line.

For our bottom line for a way of life that radically works, not just tweaking, but radically changing things, we have got to be able to hear that voice. That I am that greatness. We have got to be able to make the choice to do that first thing in the morning. The first place we go is to that voice. We do not turn on the radio. We do not turn on the news. We do not open the papers. Do not worry that we will be ignorant of what goes on. If there is bad news, our friends will call us.

If we cannot hear our own voice, if we cannot hear that great I Am in us, it is as if we are not it. It is like having money in the bank, but we forgot that we had a bank account. We have got it, but we cannot use it. We cannot live off it. It is very nice because the bank is getting interest off our money, but we are not. What if our first stop every morning is in silence? We are going to hear a voice that we do not often hear in a world that is so loud.

What would happen if you turned the TV off? Because when you turn the TV off, you are going to hear another voice. You are going to hear it right beneath the silence that you are afraid of listening to.

The silence is filled, not with nothingness, but with creative emptiness in which the voice that was given to us speaks with the greatness which we are. When we tap into that, not only does it tell us to go up on deck, it takes our hand and leads us up on deck so we can see the bigger picture of our life. We cannot do that until we turn down the volume on all the other voices we are listening all throughout the day.

There needs to be one place where we are allowed to be still and hear something that will get us up off the floor from crouching before a world that tells us we are the son of a shepherd. That we are nothing more than a little wave. The more you hear that from every direction, the less you can hear voice inside you that tells you who you really are.

We live in a wild and amazing world with 10,000 distractions. But if we turn down the volume of the world, what we are doing, by default, is turning up the volume on the part of our nature that knows it is the boat and Life is the ocean. We have been prepared for whatever is brought to us.

She ran after that man. The police followed her and caught him. It is the last time she ever crouched before anybody. We have a part of our nature that requires us to build that muscle. That pipeline to the part of ourselves that knows who we are.

Take time in the morning. Give yourself 1% to begin to turn down the volume around you and go first to turn up the volume within you. Sit for 10 minutes and breathe. You are going to stop every second breath. A thought is going to come in about something.

With those 10 seconds, you are quieting down the part of your nature that tells you, through a broken little porthole, this is all that life is. Meaning that is all you are. Instead, you are turning up the voice that tells you the ocean is who you are. You are a wave individualized as the ocean.

Holding to the great form, is holding to the great idea of who you are. When you begin to hold to that energy, that strength, that big picture begins to enable you to walk out your door as the person you have always dreamed of being. Thinking one day you might be that person when, in fact, you are that person right now.

There is no such thing as becoming. You already are what it is you think you want to become. Plant yourself in the place that you know so that when you take 10 breaths, you are where you are, where you belong, where the truth about you lives. You go there first so that you may cement this relationship with who you are and continue to build the muscle of it. So never again will you find yourself crouching, not because life did it to you but because you forgot who you were.

When you turn down the volume of life a little bit — he TV, the radio, the magazine reading — and you go first to your own inner voice. You will have a contact with that part of your nature that knows, and it knows that it knows. It knows what to do. It knows the next right step.

There was a woman who lived in a rent-controlled apt., as many of us did or do. She was coming home from work to her rent-controlled apartment. Her landlord stopped her on the steps and said I am so sorry I am just letting you know at the end of the month at the end of the month, you are going to have to leave. We are going to be renovating the apartment and selling it for much more money than you can afford. You cannot afford it anyway because I am going to be moving my family in.

He told her this, just boom. Just like that without any warning. Her reaction was probably everybody’s reaction. In New York you really cannot afford to stay where you are. You certainly, really cannot afford to move. You are kind of between a rock and a hard place as she felt. Her first response was I felt the steam coming out of my ears. I could not believe that he was doing this to me. I could not believe. I have been such a good tenant. I have paid on time. I have been so clean. I have been so kind

We when we encounter situations like that in our life, we kind of have the same initial knee-jerk response. Salmon have much to teach us about the art of facing things. In swimming up waterfalls, these creatures seem to defy gravity. A closer look reveals a wisdom for all beings who want to thrive. What the salmon somehow know is how to turn their underside, from center to tail, into the powerful current coming at them which hits them squarely. The impact then launches them out and further up the waterfall. To which their reaction is, again, to turn their underside back into the powerful current. Of which, of course, again hits them squarely. This successive impact launches them further out and up the waterfall.

Their leaning into what they face bounces them further and further along their journey. From a distance it seems magical. When in actuality they are deeply at one with their element. Vibrantly and thoroughly engaged in a compelling dance of turn toward and being hit squarely that moves them through the air to the very source of their nature. By exposing their underside to the current coming at them. It is the physics of this courage that enables them to move through life as they know it so directly.

So, what does it even have to do with this girl or with us facing any of things we are facing or doing? Except everything. What they do is turn squarely towards that which is coming at them. They do not run. They do not leave. They do not hide. They do not whine. They do not complain. They turn that underside. Another word for underside is their vulnerable side. They turn their vulnerable side to the water. They take the blow. It propels them forward.

It has everything to do with us. Our first instinct is to run. Our first instinct is to leave. Our first instinct is to say why me? When we do that, we miss the opportunity of being able to be fully present with what is happening. Whatever it is. To let that new circumstance come in and move us to the next right place.

Everything in life is a movement toward our perfect, perfect happiness. Meaning her standing on the steps, her landlord saying you know what? You are out of here without so much as a thank you. How could it be that this circumstance that looks this way could possibly be propelling her forward? Yet, on this path we are told everything propels us forward. We cannot see it with our eyes which means we got to use our deeper eyes.

That is what the morning time practice is about. Focusing our deeper eyes so we can begin to see what is really happening in our lives that happening for us. If we do not see that we will high tail it out of there. That is exactly what she wanted to do. Her first instinct was just to shake this guy. As it would be for anybody. She did not.

There is a theory called the Theory of U. As in the letter ‘U’. It is a theory about how to change the way we walk in the world. The theory of U says when something happens in our life, when we go straight towards it, when we go right there, we miss an extraordinary opportunity to create a different future for ourselves. When we go straight at it like that, we end up creating the future that is based upon our past.

So, tomorrow is going to look just like yesterday. All the things we did not want yesterday are going to show up in tomorrow. Because we did not take that moment to go down in the direction; look at what the U is. First you got to go down. When we go down deeply enough there is only one direction to take. Knowing that next right decision. We let that decision take us. When we do not go deeply down enough, we are there with our lists and our pros and our cons.

If I move here this is going to happening. If I do not move, this is going to happen. Those lists change all the time. The next thing you know you have not moved. It is hard to tell which is the way to go.

In the theory of U, when you take the experience — and they call that sensing — meaning you observe, you watch what has just happened. What you hold in your mind is that all things are a movement toward your perfect happiness. As opposed to this is just some random thing happening. You stop and you put it into a context. When you put it into the context, you take a breath and you are observing but your observing with deeper eyes.

You are not calling forth what goes on in our head normally. The next thing you know you are off and running in an unconscious stream of thought that leads you backwards to your childhood and reinforces everything that has not worked. That is the broken ego telling you a broken story about your life when you do not take a breath.

The Tao Te Ching says this: You have got to meet the outer world with your inner world. If you do not, existence will crush you. You will not be able to withstand the changes. They will be so powerful. They will be so hurtful. They will be so overwhelming that we are not going to want to play this game of life. If it is too hard, we are not going to know. We are just not going to be able to find the courage to come out every day. We will be crushed by the amount of changes and things that seem to be taken away from us that actually are not.

The first thing you do is observe. What she did is she took one moment, right there. She stopped. She took a breath which is atypical of her. She took a breath and she just let the situation be what it was. Here is my landlord. He is telling me this information. I do not know why it is happening to me, but I know it must be happening for me if the truth is true. That everything is a movement, toward our perfect wholeness, our happiness.

We say how can that be? I do not have money for another apt. I do not know where I am supposed to move. Things have gotten so much more expensive. This is rent controlled. I have had this for a long time. You cannot get another rent-controlled place like this.

We go to that place instead of the place the Theory of the U says stop and observe exactly where you are. Let yourself see what is right in front of you. The great Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön says one of the most marvelous things about unexpected surprises is they grab you and shake you out of the story you have been telling yourself in your head.

That for a moment when the surprise happens, it stops just like that. In that moment of surprise is a gap between what you have been telling yourself and what the future possibility is for your life. In that gap, if you do not react with force, and react instead with what they call at the bottom of the U, presence. You observe. You open yourself up to what has just transpired. What we want to do is shrink up and close up and close down and curse out. When, in fact, we are invited to be present.

You hold your seat at the moment something like that is coming at you. In doing so everything changes because the future has not been written yet. We think it has. We fill in what the future looks like based on what the past was. This guy is going to throw me out and I am going to be struggling. Or I might be homeless. Or I am going to have to move into the basement of my parents’ apt. I cannot believe I am here again. I cannot believe that here I am in my 30’s and I am still struggling with these things.

That is what we think the future outcome will be based on the story that goes on in our mind constantly. In the moment when you become present, when you stop and observe. Look at what is in front of you instead of what you think is really happening. You become present in the moment.

Here is the law. It says whatever we turn to, we turn into. It lets me know wherever my head is, in any given moment, that is who I am becoming. It says whatever you turn to your attention that is what you are now shaping your next moment to become. When is the next moment of your life being shaped? In this one.

What Pema Chödrön says is that surprise is your best friend. She will tell you the moment you recognize that life is your friend, life changes.

Anything that wishes us well, that moves us toward our perfect happiness, that seeks to remove from us that which we are not so we can have more of that which we are and that which we want, that is a life that is befriending us. When we become present; she calls it holding our seat. When we can hold our seat when we are getting the pink slip. We can hold our seat when our lover leaves. When we hold our seat when the doctor says I found something in an x-ray. When we can hold our seat when we expected a yes and have gotten a no. When we can hold our seat when something fabulous happens, because it is not just when difficult things happen. Oftentimes, we can become just as nutty when something good happens. When we finally get what it is we want.

I am thinking of a woman. What she did was she attracted to herself a man. A very handsome man. A well-read man. Man with a lot of letters after his name. She was so pleased to have a man of that caliber. That is exciting, fabulous, marvelous stress. If we react that way to good stress the way we do too bad, what we will not do is the first thing: Observe.

When something marvelous comes in that seems to be an answer to a prayer, sometimes we close our eyes. We say this is the answer to my prayer. I am walking in. Of course, our eyes are closed. This is just what I wanted. We do not see another thing about this guy. She did not see another thing. Which meant she did not see one red flag after another.

Something bad happened and this woman kept her eyes open. She observed. She allowed herself to go down. When you go down deep enough there is going to be only one direction to take. You are going to see it. It is going to become obvious. You do not have to sweat the decisions you make. You are going to know what they are. They are going to come peacefully. Because they are coming from the place that knows and knows that it knows. She went down deeply enough. She did not know what it was for, but she let herself, like the salmon, be exposed.

You feel so exposed when you are holding your seat. You want to run. You want to hide. You want to brace yourself. You want to defend. In fact, the whole world of the broken ego is about attacking or defending. One or the other. To stand there. To be available. To hold your seat. That is the purpose of a morning practice. To be able to practice holding your seat when something like that happens.

You breathe and you look at what is right in front of you. To build the muscle of observing so you can see what is in front of you. Why? Because Al-Anon says this. They said in the first 20 minutes when you meet somebody, they are going to tell you everything you need to know. Everything and you are not going to want to hear it. You are going to land up in a place and say I cannot believe you misrepresented yourself. The fact is if we were listening, we would have heard in the first 20 minutes, they showed us everything we needed to know.

What did he show her that she did not, could not, observe? That he still was involved with somebody else. This is a very messy situation. This is how the Theory of U works. The Theory of U takes you to your deepest place so that your eyes are open, and you are not jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Which is what we do when we are not available to go a little bit deeper. That breath you have been taking. Down beneath the observing is presence. Meaning I am totally present, and I am looking at this guy.

Some guys you just cannot believe your good fortune. But if you have your eyes closed you are not seeing him. You are seeing what you want him to be. Over here, she is not seeing the landlord. She could be reviewing, in her mind, all the landlord stories she had heard. One bad landlord story after another. But she did not do it.

There is an old story about Buddha. Big giant who went through the town where Buddha was living at the time. Killing and violent. He was wanted by the police at the time. He was just creating such havoc.

Who should Buddha meet on the road but this guy. They are standing face to face. Here is what he did. He observed, the man that was in front of him. Not what he was told about him. Not what everybody said about him. He made his own observation based in that moment.

Where is the story of your life being written tomorrow? In this moment. This moment. Handled with presence. Gives you a whole different sentence starting the chapter of tomorrow because you are entering the story with a fresh sheet of paper. It has not been written yet.

He is standing in front of this guy. He looks at this man who has killed how many people? He says I have stopped. You have not stopped. As legend has it, in that moment, that man heard it. He had heard that he had been running all his life. He had never stopped for a moment.

What I am saying sounds so easy. Stop for a moment. Observe. It is like, of course, anybody can do it. The fact is no we cannot because we are always running somewhere away from something. To stop is an elegant exercise. An elegant practice. You bring the force of all your energy into the moment. You pick up a pen. You write a different line to the story than the story that was written for you growing up.

With our eyes closed, if I cannot stop, if I cannot look, if I cannot observe, if I cannot be present. This is the greatest guy. I am of the age; I want to have kids; I am going to leave my job which she did. I am going to get rid of my apartment which she did. I am going to sell my car which she did. She moved with him to the islands. No matter how many people in her life said do not do this. Wait. Observe. Look. Stop. If stopping were easy, we would all be stopping.

When Buddha said you have not stopped. What he meant was when we do not stop, we perpetrate violence. This is a story about a guy who is a killer. But this is a story about what happens to us when we do not stop. We do harm to ourselves. We do harm to those around us because we have not stopped.

The Theory of U says you got to stop right in that moment. Or the next line of your story is going to look like the line of your story you have been writing since you were four years old saying life is unfair. Nobody is going to love me. I am never going to find a guy. The third part of the Theory of the U is when you come out on the other side. It is called realizing.

She goes upstairs. She leaves her landlord. She did not take any action. She walked away from him. She did not say a word. She was afraid if she would say a word, they might have been 4-letter words. Better she just went upstairs and just left it for another day. She was present. She left before she wrote the next line of her story.

Just be silent in me so I can hear what is really going on inside of me. If I hear what is really going on I will know what to do. She picks up the phone. She calls her boyfriend – one of those noncommittal type of guys. She tells him the story as calmly as she has ever told a story in her life. This is so atypical of her. She is not a calm person. You heard me say she is an actress. They tend to be much more volatile and dramatic.

He cannot believe how cool she is. How relaxed she is. In this place of the Theory of U you are understanding something, and you are feeling something. The will of life being a movement toward our perfect happiness. Understood that is one level. When you connect to it and that is what presence is. You go down to a place inside of yourself where you begin to feel that. When you feel that, then you trust that. I want to know what it knows. It knows my next right move.

Here is what he did. He said I have never heard you be this calm and this trusting. He said it is beautiful. This is just such a different you. It was a different her. He said why do you not move in with me? He who was noncommittal. He who said I am not that guy. He who said do not ask it of me. The next right action takes itself. It takes you. It moves through you. When you follow the Theory of U life itself, the source itself, the greater self that you are and have always been, that is inside of you.

I saw her 7 months after she made her way back to the States. She had yet to pull herself out of that deep, dark despairing hole that she had dug herself into because she did not stop. Until we land here, we do not stop. We do harm to others. We do harm to ourselves. Gently we move a little more slowly in our life. The choices that we make come from the deepest, richest place in us. When they come there is only one thing to do and that is the thing that we do. When you go deep down enough there is only one direction to take. Meet the outer world with your inner world so that it does not crush you. So that it does not exhaust you.

Like the salmon it continues to lift you up higher and higher so you may give birth — which is what you are destined to do — to that new life, that new you, that new idea, that new thing is. That only you can give birth to. We need to come as the salmon. Open. We cannot run. We cannot hide. We take the moment and we let this soft underbelly, we let it [get hit]. When we do we discover what we are promised. The will of life is absolutely without exception for your perfect happiness.

Once in a small village tucked between two mountains, there lived a cobbler named Yakov. Yakov had a son named Mikael who was so ill that he could not leave his bed. So weak that he could neither move nor speak. Yakov and his wife spent the last year speaking to doctors and searching for a cure. But their son’s illness remained a mystery. Yakov realized that it was time to take matters into his own hands. He knelt at the side of his son’s bed and he reassured him saying, do not worry, my son. You will see. Everything will be fine.

Mikiel was too sick to respond. The boy’s mother left the room quickly so her son would not see her cry. Yakov followed his wife out of the room and found her standing behind the door weeping. We must not give up so easily. He is leaving this world, my husband. I can see it in his eyes. Yakov knew there was truth in what she said. He was not prepared to give up yet. He is a strong boy. Strength will not help him, she said. Only a miracle is going to save him now.

She was right. You must go and seek advice from the wise old man who lives in the very last house at the very edge of the village, she pleaded. People said he speaks with the angels. That he can perform miracles. Yakov gathered all the money they had in the world and set off to see the wise old man who lived in the last house at the very edge of the village.

He knocked on the door. A young boy opened the door. He said is your father in? The boy said my father is not in, but my grandfather is. He said tell him that Yakov, the cobbler, has come to see him on very urgent business. The boy took him to the old man whose face was as gentle as his voice. Please sit down and tell me what disturbs you. Yakov told the wise man about his only son and how sick he was. How they had searched without success for a cure. How he could sense that the angel of death was hovering above his son’s bed.

The old man closed his eyes and was quiet. He said I will see what I can do. The cobbler said I am not rich but even so everything I have is going to be yours. I will give you; I will be happy to give you, everything I have if you just help my son. If I am successful my grandson could do with a new pair of shoes, he said to the cobbler. Let me pray tonight and see what the angels have to say. You go home and rest. We will speak in the morning.

The next morning Yakov returned to the house of the wise old man who lived at the edge of the village. He said did you pray last night when the door was open? He said yes, I did pray for your son. My prayers reached all the way to the gates of heaven. Unfortunately, the gates were locked. I am afraid there is nothing I can do to save your son.

This cannot be, Yakov said. He is so young. He is our only child. My wife will be devastated. Yakov could do nothing but sit there in front of the man and bitterly weep. I am truly sorry the wise old man said. But I do not have the power to unlock the gates. Let me try one more time this evening. I cannot promise anything, but I will see what I can do. Come back tomorrow.

Dr. Hew Len is a therapist. He is a man who studied. He went to a seminar of a woman who is a great healer in Hawaii. He got up in the middle of her seminar after listening to her. He thought this is ridiculous. I do not believe anything she said. He left. He came back a couple of weeks later. He sat in the audience. He listened to her again. He thought I do not even know why I came back. What she is saying is just impossible. I do not believe a thing she says. He took off. He came back.

The third time he came back he sat there in the audience listening to this great Hawaiian healer talk about healing. He went back home at the end of that evening and told his wife he was going to leave for a while. He was going to follow this teacher. He had to hear everything she had to say.

He followed her until he totally absorbed, after years of following her, what it was she was teaching. He digested it and made it his own. He created a teaching that then he took out into the world with his own understanding and his own way of making it more contemporary than hers. People in his age group could understand it. He made his to the Hawaiian State Hospital into the ward for the criminally insane.

The ward in the Hawaii State hospital, when he entered it, he said it was devastating how dangerous it was for everybody to work there. The psychologists who worked there. The turnover was huge. Nobody wanted to work there. The staff who were there. The absenteeism was so great that they just did not have enough people to run the ward. When people were on the ward, even the people who worked there walking with their backs against the wall so that they would not be attacked from behind.

It was so dangerous nobody wanted to work there. When he came in, they asked him how he wanted to work as a therapist. They said how do you want to see your clients? Every psychologist does it differently. What do you want to do? Do you want to see people once a week? You want to see them every day? You want to see them once a month? How do you want to work it? He said I do not want to see the clients at all. I do not want to see anybody on the ward.

He kind of worked out his job description really well there. He said I am going to be in my office. He said all I need you to do is to bring me their files. That is what I want. I want their files so that in their files I can see a picture of them. Then I just want to see whatever information is in the files. That is all I want to do. That is all I need.

Yakov makes his way home. He is so upset. This does not look good for him. When the door is closed and he takes off, the wise old man, the grandfather goes to his grandson and he says to him: I have a strange request to make of you. Go into town and find all the thieves, all the pickpockets and all the criminals who live there. Bring them back to me. The worst they are, the better. But grandfather, he said, is not that dangerous? The wise man put his hand on his heart, and he said you must trust me.

Dr. Len moves into his office. He is sitting with files of every single person; whether they are manacled, whether they are medicated, whether is it indicated they will never be released because they will never be cured. He is sitting with a pile of folders on his desk. He opens the first folder. He looks at it.

I am going to read you a verse from the Tao Te Ching. It says hold your male side with your female side. Hold your bright side with your dull side. Hold your high side with your low side. Then you will be able to hold the whole world. Hold the bright with the dull. Hold your high with the low.

When the opposing forces within unite there comes a power abundant in its giving and unerring in its effect. There comes a power in us when we do something. The Tao Te Ching says if we can hold the things in ourselves that we love. The beautiful things about us. The sweet things about us. The kind things about us. The nice things about us and at the same time, hold the unkind things about us, the jealous things about us, the petty things about us, the dull things about us, the low things about us. If we can hold them both we are going to be able to receive something that we cannot receive otherwise. We are going to be able to receive the whole world in our arms.

We are going to be open to receive if we can do something that seems so counterintuitive. We do not like the parts of ourselves we do not like. In fact, we do not love the parts of ourselves we do not love. Nobody loves their jealous side. Nobody loves their rage-full side. Nobody loves their out of control side. Nobody loves their ugly side. We might tolerate it. We certainly spend a lot of time hiding it. We certainly do not want anybody to see it. We do not want it to show.

The Tao tells us something else. It says hold it. In holding it something is going to happen. When these two parts of our nature unite — the part we love and the part we do not love — but we are holding them both. When we do that, we are going to be able to be open to receive what the world has to give us.

A Course in Miracles (ACIM) says I will not be afraid of love today. There is nobody that would say I would not take love. I would totally take love if it came to me. I am waiting for love. My arms are open for love. I am just open for business when it comes to love. Where is he? Where is she? It says to us I will not be afraid of love today. To hold our dull side. To hold the parts of ourselves that are not beautiful, that are ugly. To hold the parts of our nature that are ignorant, that are blind. That do not want to wake up. That are addicted and do not want to give up the addiction.

To hold that side. To love that side. To embrace that side. It says hold but what it means is acknowledge. To hold. To love. To embrace. To make your own. To hold it. What an interesting word. It does not say love it because if it said love your dull side, most people would turn the page. We cannot love those parts of ourselves. We spend so much time trying to hide those parts of ourselves.

It says hold. The way you might hold a baby. The way you might hold your loved one. The way you might hold yourself in a moment when something fearful happens and nobody is around to hold you. Do not be afraid of love today. Yet, so many of us are dying for love. The thought of giving that love to ourselves, that is just crazy.

So, when the wise old man asked his grandson to bring all the thieves, criminals, insane people, and “bad” people; bring them off the streets of the village and bring them to me. It sounds like a dangerous request.

The grandson brings them all back with him. Gathers up all the thieves and pickpockets he can find. He was surprised by how easy it was to find them and how eager they were to come with him. Even they had heard of the wise old man who lived in the very last house at the edge of the village. They, too, had heard he could talk to angels and for that reason they had never bothered him.

When the thieves arrived at his house, the old man invited them in. He offered them refreshments. He offered a place to sit. He went around the room and asked them their names. After each of them introduced themselves, the wise old man began this way. He said I have invited you to my home for a very special reason. I would like you all to pray with me. They started laughing uproariously. This was the most ridiculous thing they had ever seen and heard. The old man was not laughing and looked at them one by one with all seriousness right in the eyes and saw them.

What hold means in the Tao is to embrace a part of ourselves that we do not want to embrace. That we do not want to look at. That we do not want to invite in. What that hold means is it is time to open our house to the very part of our nature that seems dark. That does not fit who think we should be. We need to invite that part of our nature out of hiding. Here is why: the ego, the broken ego. Our broken ego, our mask, the personality that we accumulate over our life, based on our opinions, beliefs, what people want us to be and how they want us to be. This whole mask we put on that is formed — not how we are born — with who we think we should be.

The ego is incapable of loving. We need to really underscore that point of view. We listen to that voice in our head all the time. That part of our nature, that mask, that human personality that we have accumulated to become who we think we should be, who others told us we should be, is incapable of loving. It is incapable of loving ourselves. It is incapable of loving the parts of our nature that do not fit the mask of who we think we should be. We take that part and we put it into hiding.

I worked with a woman who put into hiding the part of her nature at three years old. She learned from her mother who was married to her father to put a part of her nature in hiding. That was a glorious part of her nature. It was the part of her nature that was her intelligence, her smarts, her brains, her ability to think and speak. She learned, when she was young, she was born into a house where the dad did not even graduate high school. Of course, none of this was spoken. We make our decisions when we are kids. Not because everybody is talking everything out. We take up the vibes. We feel it. We sense it. We hear it. We learn everything at the feet of our parents whether they speak it or not.

What did she learn? You cannot be smarter than your dad. Nobody in the house can be smarter than dad. It is going to make him angry if somebody knows something he does not know. We must survive as kids, so we figure out a way to survive. We figure out what the vibe is. Nobody has to tell us. The next thing you know, she takes that part of her nature and she puts it in hiding. It becomes a bad thing. The gift that is her; she was born smart. We all say if I was only born into the right family. She was. We are all born into the perfect and right family. Not because everything is perfectly lovely. But because everything is perfectly designed to put the focus entirely on the thing you came to bring into the world.

How do we bring into the world the thing we came to bring into the world? By putting up resistance and saying you may not go here. By putting up resistance and the world, your family, your husband, your wife, or your child telling you cannot have that. What begins is the process of life, that is calling that compelling urge for what we are, to emerge.

This woman grew up believe she was just stupid. That is the very word she said. That stupidity was her thief. That stupidity was the pickpocket. All the bad words you could use. She never wanted anybody to know how stupid she was. She did that as a gift for her dad. We need to understand that things we put in hiding that we think are bad.

Dr. Hew Len went to the hospital for the criminally insane. What do we hate most? We hate most what is inside of ourselves that we disowned. That we do not want to talk about, think about and look at. the Tao says hold your high side with your low side. Hold your lightness with your darkness. Hold what is beautiful with what is ugly. That is not going to happen. Theoretically, I love it. I am going to journal about this. In reality we are not going to go the mirror, open the door and welcome in and say take a seat. Let me know you by name.

Her being smart was a danger to her being taken care of by her parents. Whatever it is we put in hiding, we put in hiding for a good reason. We need somebody to feed us, clothe us, bathe us and pay for us until we are old enough to figure out how life works. We cannot be thrown out on the street.

She puts it into hiding as a gift to her dad. We do it out of love for our parents. We do it out of the need to survive for ourselves. We all figure out a way to put those parts of us in hiding. It is about the part of our nature that we have disowned. We must go a little further down, deeper down than we ordinarily go to the mask. We must use eyes that are not our eyes. To be able to see what is really going on. Unless we do, we cannot heal a damn thing. We cannot change a damn thing. We cannot fix a damn thing.

You wake up tomorrow, you are repeating the same patterns. Look at what this line is. It comes from the book of Job. Job said spirit gives each of us chance after chance to bring into the light that which gives life.

We cannot get out of that addiction. We cannot and it is spiraling out of control. All of these, according to Job, are chances that we are given repeatedly to do something we do not want to do which is hold the light with the dark. Which is hold the high with the low. Which is hold what we love about ourselves with what we do not.

Dr. Len sat in his office and he spoke two sentences over and over. He opened a file. He did not need to read.

We do not actually even know, need to know, why that woman put her smart self in hiding. Her sharp mind in hiding. We do not need to know, and we do not need to know what happened to her after it went into hiding.

Once we take a part of our nature and put it into hiding, you can rest assured the story does not go into a good place. You might survive your childhood. Then all of Life is going to give you chance after chance to take that out of hiding. We are going to look at chance after chance and we are going to say, life keeps kicking me when I am down.

Life keeps showing you when you are down to look deeper. To not be afraid to love that part that you have disowned. We need to go deeper, one breath deeper down to a place in us that understands what is happening.

if we are following the part of our nature that has created this persona, this mask, that is very clever to live in this world. Not even to admit it to ourselves thinking people are not going to want to know the real me. If we are living that way, we are in pain. If we are living that way, we are holding one side of our nature and not the other. Something is going to happen that is going to have to wake us up to who we truly are. Job calls it a chance. Spirit is giving us a chance to see that we are not holding something in the light.

Why is it important to hold both? If you hold something in darkness that part of your nature does not grow. Anything you do not let out of the closet gets stunted. Anything that gets stuck, that gets trapped inside of us — whatever that might be — your love of singing, you love of music, your love of accounting. You are wanting to be a different person than your family. You are wanting to love somebody your family would not want you to love. You are wanting to come out and not do what everybody else does. Whatever it is about you that is different than the family you were raised in; wanted you to be or needed you to be.

Whatever it is that you gave to them if it is stuck in darkness, trapped in a net, it cannot grow. The light cannot get in. It cannot be healed. A part of our nature, half our nature, is stunted. The life force that is in that part of our nature is frozen.

Far out at sea a tuna fleet surrounded a group of spinner dolphins swimming over a school of tuna catching them in a gigantic net. Small powerful speedboats circled the animals creating a wall of sound that disoriented and terrified the dolphins who sank down into the net. Only the movement of their eyes showed signs that they were still alive. One dolphin crossed the cork line at the edge of the net. It knew it was free. It burst forward propelled by a powerful wild tail stroke. Then it dove. Swimming at full speed down and away into the dark water only to burst from the surface in a high bounding series of leaps.

There is the part of our nature that is trapped in a net from childhood, The only way that you can even see that it is alive there is a little bit of movement happening there. It is trapped in a net and it looks like it is dead. But it is not.

The thing we have put into hiding is not dead. It is waiting for something to happen that we think looks like when I get the perfect job, I can be happy. When I get the perfect guy, I can be happy. When I get my book signed up, I can be happy. When I open the restaurant, I can be happy. When I open my practice and have more clients, I can be happy. When I get the inheritance, I can be happy. When I lose the 30 lbs., I can be happy.

It is none of those things. It all comes back to one thing. Only one thing that part of our nature is waiting for. It is waiting for our hand to turn back and put itself on our body. To hold ourselves the way we keep wanting life, or a guy or a thing to hold us. The only thing that is going to allow that part of our nature to wake up and be filled with that living life force. That life force comes back through us when we open the door and invite in that part of our nature that we have in hiding.

I had a great reason for hiding my gay-ness. It was so inappropriate in my family. It would have killed my European parents. So, it went into hiding. I made that offering to my family to protect my parents who I loved more than anything in the world. Even children who are abused, who are dragged out of their abusive parent’s house still scream for their parents. But when we can open the door, as the old man did, and invite in and hold that part of our nature, something happens.

The grandfather said to all the thieves, criminals, and pickpockets in the room, he might not make through the night. He needs your help. I would like you all to pray for him. They were spellbound by this mysterious old man who could talk to the angels. They all closed their eyes. They all bowed their heads in prayer.

Dr. Hew Len sits in front of a client folder. He says these two lines. I am sorry. I love you. He says them repeatedly until he feels it. Our prayer is answered, manifestation happens, they say, upon the moment of realization. When we feel it. We always think why does the world not hear it. When we say it enough times it drops down and ceases being words and starts to be a feeling that moves through us.

I am sorry. I love you. The ego cannot say those words. The ego, the mask, our personality-self, our persona, the false us cannot say I am sorry. I love you. It comes from the deeper place within us. Only the soul can say such a thing because it understands.

Life has not ruined her life by having her fired from every job because she is stupid. It is spirit giving her chance after chance to wake up and make a new decision to come out of hiding. It is safe now to come out of hiding. It was not then but it is now.

Many of us get on the spiritual path and we layer on this other thing of now I got to be generous. I got to be charitable. I got to be sweet to everybody. Nice. I cannot have a temper. I cannot say an angry word. I cannot curse. We lay all this other persona stuff on us that we are so far away from ourselves. We are like the dolphin not moving. We are trapped in the net of what we think we should be.

The next day after that transpired where all the criminals came together to pray as soon as the sun came up there was a lot of banging on the old man’s door. He opened the door and there stood Yakov. How can I ever repay you? he said. My son looks as though he has not been sick a day in his life. It is a miracle, he said. Then Yakov knelt and he gently kissed the old man’s hand. Behind his back he pulled a pair of shoes that he had stayed up all night making for the grandson. He gave him the shoes. Before the grandson could even say thank you, Yakov danced away down the road.

When the grandson closed the door, he asked how can this be, Grandfather? You are such a good man. You are so honest. You are so pure. These people who I brought home yesterday were cheats, liars and thieves. The very opposite of you. Could you not have asked better people to pray with you and help you unlock the gates of heaven than them?

Dr. Len, all day, every day. I am sorry. I love you. Can you imagine if you take out that which is in your dull side, that which is in hiding, that which is unlovable, that which is undeserving, that which you do not understand, that which you wish were otherwise. If you take it out of hiding, hold it and say I am sorry. I love you.

He was at this hospital for four years. Within the first year, those criminals that were on medications started to come off their medication. Those criminally insane people that had been shackled, were unshackled. Those criminally insane people in that ward in the Hawaii State Hospital, they said would never recover and never gain their freedom, gained their freedom.

There was a whole new feeling in this place. Nobody walked with their backs against the wall afraid of being attacked from behind. Turnover then became non-existent. Absenteeism went away. The place changed. ACIM has this one line: I will not be afraid of love today. I am sorry. I love you. We are talking about ourselves.

Here is what the grandfather said to his grandson. When I prayed the first night for Yakov’s son, I found that the gates of heaven were locked shut. There was nothing I could do. When I prayed the second night, I had the thieves assist me. A good thief knows how to break in and enter. This time he did so with prayers. The prayers of the thieves provided the key to opening the gates.

You see, the thieves represent the things in us we think are bad. The parts we think we need to change in order to be happy. We must recognize and acknowledge those things. When we embrace those parts as the thieves did with their prayers, we are turning the key and unlocking the gates of heaven. Then we can receive the blessings. Then we can receive the good fortune.

Kahlil Gibran says you say that you would give but only to the deserving. The trees in your orchard do not say that. The flocks in your field do not say that. They give that they may live. For to withhold is to perish. It is time to hold the part of your nature, as closely to your heart, that you do not love as the part of your nature that you do. For then once united, the Tao tells us, all parts of you. There will come a power, such a force, that will bring you the ability to receive the whole world in your arms. The whole world means all of life’s riches.

The moment she came to peace with letting the part of her nature out of hiding that she called her stupid and ignorant self, gave it a place at the table, sat it down, spoke to it, welcomed it, held it, loved it, it ceased to be a problem in her life from that day forward. Within a year, she was in college. Within five, she was in her own private practice doing what a woman like her could do better than anybody who had learned that skill in a book.

Hold the part of your nature you feel you cannot hold. Love the part of your nature you feel you cannot love. Welcome the part of your nature you cannot welcome. You will be able to receive the whole world. Everything you have waited for in your arms. For spirit gives us chance after chance to enter the light that gives life. But only your hand can do the holding. Only your mouth can do the loving. Only your heart can do the embracing.

I am sorry. I love you. If you said it 100 times a day, it would not be too many. It would be a beginning and you would have begun.

When you leave a relationship, you do your best to leave it well. How you leave a relationship is going to, exactly, mirror how you are going to enter your next relationship. If you are going to leave a place where you leave the door open, you are not going to be available for your next one. Going to leave in a place of real ugliness, vengeance, and spite, that is how you are going to enter next one. Life actually is a mirror. There is a law. Its name is Law of Reflection. Reflects to us what we put out.

When I left my very first girlfriend after three years in what I can only call hell. Hell would be a good description. Probably two years, 11 months and 2 weeks longer than I should have been there. I left and I was so grateful however I left. I really left well. With gratitude and with peace. I had given her the time, money and emotional support to get the PhD. When I left it was still all but PhD. I had done everything I could do in the relationship. Was as generous as I knew how to be. So much so I ended up at Al Anon. They have a name for it: enabling. I left thinking I really am so glad to go. I am glad that I had this experience. Meaning I will never do this again. Ever in my life.

Everybody at that time was living in the closet. We had two bedrooms. One real bedroom and one fake bedroom. You had to pay for a 2-bedroom even though you know you were not using it for anything. I certainly did not need an office to myself at that time. My parents called and asked if I was there. I had not told them I had moved out. She said, no she isn’t…and by the way, she’s gay. They didn’t even ask for that -why was she giving them that information out of nowhere? Because…that was the one thing I just would never have told my parents.

My parents are not from this country. Think of your grandparents from Italy. They are very, very traditional, old fashioned. I get a call. My mom said would you come home. We would just like to talk. I thought hey, OK. My secret was still good with me. I went home. We sat down at the kitchen table. My dad got up and he said I am going for a walk

You know when you hit a crisis in your life you remember what you are wearing. You remember what they are wearing. You remember the bird tweeting outdoors. You remember everything about that moment. That moment is about to become a moment in your life that is a game changer. You are going to remember every little detail.

She says this line exactly, “We know.” I said, “You know!” She goes, “We know you’re a woman who likes women.” This was a HUGE secret. My parents were not equipped to handle this.

I thought maybe a miracle has happened. Maybe all this pushing stuff down that I had done, all this weight I was carrying, pushing down, all these cigarettes I was smoking trying to push down this secret that kept pushing back trying to emerge. Maybe it is all over.

I jumped at the chance to get out of jail free. I said, “Yes I am!” She said, “What?!” In her whole little Jewish life, she had never bluffed me out. This was a head fake moment. She was bluffing. I fell right into it. She freaked. We begin speaking about it until my dad came back from his walk. First words out of his mouth were, “Well, is it true?” he says to my mother. My mother says, “It’s true…” Therein began an epic Greek tragedy moment of such horrific proportion – it was all my worst fears of what could happen when you come out to the people you love most as the person you truly are. That moment could not have been worse than my worst nightmare about it.

There were things that were said there that should not have been said. Once you say certain things you do not erase them. That was the moment where I learned in anger or in upset or crisis, no words will ever pass my mouth that are said with a mean spirit designed to hurt. To this day I remember the entire conversation as it happened.

What happens in a moment like that is you are on one side of an argument and somebody is on the other side. In my case it was my parents. It could be the person you are living with. Whoever it is.

On the other side of the room, they and you do something together. You each bend down and pick up a rope. You each pick up your side. My side is I am right. My side I did not make myself this way. I have been this way since I have been five years old. How can you blame me for something I am. It is not a choice. It is just who I am. If I am this, I cannot understand why you think I am doing this to you. I am not doing this to anybody.

If I had the choice in this world, I would have chosen an easier route. I would have chosen to be a handsome white man. Or a fabulous, great looking black gay man. Or a gorgeous blonde woman who was straight. Who had her choice of anybody she wanted to be with. Rather than being gay in a family where being gay was tantamount to — there was nothing beneath being gay in the list of things that were the horror in my family. There is nothing worse.

My parents picked up the other side of the rope. How could you do this to us? We are right. This was our worst fear that you would be different. Your differentness would be visible.

They are picking up a rope and you are both right. There is a problem with this. You are both right. From their point of view all they ask for after making it through the war in Europe was a normal, nice girl.

When I was 12 years old and we were moving from Maryland to NY, my dad gave us all a choice. Myself and my brothers. We were all in private school. He said we are about to move so I am going to give you your choice now. Do you want to continue in Hebrew private school? Do you want to go to a regular public school? It was a no brainer. I am so out of here. It was the wrong answer.

Yet another trick question. I thought we had a choice. The problem is we are both right. They did not deserve to have the kind of child that was so out-of-the-box. Because it is what you are. It is who you are. It is not just who you prefer to be. It is a part of your identity. That is the nature of what it is. We were at odds until the conversation was complete. The conversation ended with me.

I was no longer allowed to come into the house which would not have been a problem if I was me now. If I was me now, I could have handled it. I have the skills. I have the tools. I am now more courageous, braver. I would have been in the world. I know how to write a check. At that time, I led a very sheltered life.

All my parents had in the world after they lost everybody in Europe were their three kids and a relative or two. Their hopes and dreams were upon the three children they had. I got what their dreams were and how I did not fit into what their dreams were. He was right and I was right. I left.

I left my job. I left my apt. I left town. I moved away. It was easier to just move away and begin a new life. When we are injured in our life, there is no way to heal from that injury unless you tell the absolute truth.

At that point in my life, in my early 20s, the absolute truth was: Look what they did to me. I went into shock. I could not speak for a while. I was so depressed. I was in such darkness. I had to go get help and support. The beginning of just entering the world of therapy, figuring things out, and telling your story.

All I knew was that something happened to me. I, at that time, would get so pissed off. Yet the Tao Te Ching says the same thing. Verse 69. There is no greater misfortune than feeling I have an enemy. It does not say there is no greater misfortune than having an enemy.

There is no greater misfortune than feeling I have an enemy. For when I and an enemy exist together there is no room left for my treasure. Here we are pulling on two sides of the rope. I am telling you; you could not have talked me out of the position of I am right because I was right. I did not do anything wrong. I was just being myself. I did not even want to tell them for this reason. I would have kept this secret to my grave even if I smoked a million cigarettes to keep it inside of myself from coming out. We do not go into addiction unless we are hiding a part of our nature that is part of our destiny that we are afraid when it comes out, we are going to lose people over. Addiction is a very smart hiding place. We are very smart people when it comes to survival.

The Tao says there is no room left for my treasure. Thus, when two opponents meet the one without an enemy, the one will surely triumph. Which means I got to put down my side of the rope. As long as I am holding the rope there is no room for my treasure. Does not say there is no room for my peace of mind. Does not say there is no room for being able to rest easy. Or to be happy. Or to have a nice day. It says treasure.

Here now is a statement from the Bible. It says when you are coming to the altar to present your gift. Whatever it is. What that means to us is when you are turning to the source of life in prayer. With a prayer for something you really want or would love to have. A desire in your heart that means so much to you. Something you want to do. Something you want to have. Something you want to be. Something you want to do for other people. When you turn to the source of life itself.

The altar is the place when you go to a sacred space inside of yourself and put your deepest wish out. You are told to go and find the brother that you are angry at. That you have not forgiven and go make friends with him. Then after you have done that then you can go back to the altar and present your gift there.

It is saying when you want to go higher, when you want to go deeper, when you want to align yourself with the source of life — for those of you who might use the word God — when you want to align with the divine, who you want to come into oneness and center yourself, the spirit of enmity puts you out of alignment with spirit.

The spirit of I am right, and you are wrong. That feeling, no matter how right you are, that feeling even if you are in the right, that feeling puts you immediately out of alignment with your ability to present your desire, your wish, your need on the altar

The altar is our own self. It is our own mind. It is our own consciousness. We are told do not do it now because you will not be able to make the kind of contact and feel the oneness. You will not be able to receive what it is you are wishing for. You will not be able to give in the spirit of free giving because a part of you is stuck, is locked. Your hands are closed in a fist around the side of the rope.

We say Give me this but our hands, are holding a rope in a fist. Even if Life wanted to give to us, it could not. Our hands are in two fists holding a rope in our rightness. A Course in Miracles (ACIM) says do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? You would think those two things would not be in the same sentence at all. When we are holding on to our rightness, we are holding on to the end of the rope. We might be right. I did not have a piece of a peace of mind from that moment forward in my rightness. Because my hands were already utilized, fisted up, around a rope against someone who was against me.

Why in the world should we present a gift at the altar? Why waste our time? Why waste our energy? Why waste our gift? Why waste our time offering something that we are not open to receive? What this is saying is you are getting it. It would love to be given to you. Ask and ye shall receive. What I learned in Science of Mind was that the universe never says no to us. The ‘no’ is an echo that is coming from within our own consciousness. How in the world can we receive when our hands are busy, occupied, utilized, full of a tug-of-war that has been going on.

See, we do not even see the fisted hands because that is not going on today consciously. We think that was 10 years ago. Ten years ago, does not mean a thing inside our body. There is a place in our body that is on pause in that moment in time and has not, because it cannot, move forward. It cannot move past that place in time. That place in time I had an enemy. The enemy happened to be the people closest to me. Now how do you get out of that jam?

We cannot receive what we ask for. We cannot give and receive freely because we are occupied with enmity. The spirit of enmity is not in alignment with the spirit. The spirit of enmity is closed. It is closed in a fist-sized size, so our heart becomes the size of a fist.

However, at 22, 23 I had an experience. In that moment, I turned back to the source of life realizing I had thrown the baby out with the bath water. It was not the source of life I had issues with. It was the way in which it was presented to me as the infallible truth. I learned I could have a direct experience with the source of life that was my own that was So real, so alive, so present. On that day, I knew my life had changed.

Three weeks later my parents booted me out of the family. Three weeks later I had a skill I did not have three weeks before which was, I knew I was not alone when this happened. That is the only thing I had. Three weeks before, an experience happened to me. I felt the power and the presence in me, around me, and beyond me

Carl Jung says in order to heal from an injury, your injury, your rejection, your disappointment, your abuse. To heal from it, we have to tell the absolute truth. I told the absolute truth about this story about 5,000 times to anybody who would listen. You are not going to believe what happened to me. Hi, my name is August. If you want to know who I am let me tell you the injury. He said to heal from an injury you have to tell the absolute truth. Which is a very different thing than the truth I was telling. I was telling the whole truth about what happened to me. What happen to me. What was done to me.

The injury done to me in the world of effects. Meaning if you look with your eyes what has happened it sure looks, when you are injured, like what has happened has happened to you. Who wants to put down their end of the rope when they are right? You will put it down eventually if you are wrong because you are ashamed. Nobody is going to tell you to put it down if you are right.

We must tell the absolute truth to heal from our injury. Here is the thing about the absolute truth. That story is a very different story than what happens. Stories of what happened to you and you are still locked into that place. That is the problem with a story that is true, factually, but not absolute.

Here is how you know the difference. You can tell your story over and over. You have not moved on. The rope? You still got rope burns on your hands going back and forth from something that happened a decade, two decades, three decades, four decades ago. Do you want to be right or happy? As soon as these people come to me and ask for forgiveness.

We will let down the side of the rope when we get them to say I am sorry. We are waiting for them to say the I am sorry and that is not going to either happen or that is not, if it happens, going to free you. That is not where the freedom is. We are still in jail even if that happens. Here is where the freedom comes. It is in Jung’s word: absolute.

In the deeper story, through the eyes of your soul. Soul is just the deepest part of us. If I am the I, my personality, then the deepest part of me that knows and knows that it knows. That can see through different deeper eyes than my human eyes, my body’s eyes. That is the part of me that is connected to all people, all things, the oneness that every path talks about. That part of me is called the I Am. We know that what has happened to me has happened for me.

With the eyes in our body, on my best day I could not see how what happened to me happened for me. If we keep telling the story of what happened to me, even if we tell it eight zillion times, it is still not going to free us. We are still going to be in the same place stuck holding on to the rope with two hands that are fists so that love cannot come in.

Look at a fist. There is no room for it to come in. So, we say I do not want to be all spiritual forgiving people. I am not that type of a person. That is not important right now. I need to get a job. That is not important I need to fall in love.

Here is what the Tao says: Anywhere in your consciousness if an enemy exists together there is no room for your treasure. Your treasure of love. Your treasure of money. Your treasure of happiness. Your treasure of peace. Your treasure of destiny. Your treasure of place. Because there is no room in your two fists that are being occupied holding a rope of rightness.

Here is what absolute means. It means you go to the place within you. Your soul. You go to the place within. Your divine intuition. It is a breath deeper than you ordinarily go. In 21 years of doing work at the level of the soul, there is nobody that cannot go down to this place. You are designed to access this deeper place.

At this moment my fists are so tight I cannot get at my treasure. My treasure is my happy life. It is infecting these two fists. It is infecting everything. I am closed. Mary Oliver calls it the little, dark acorn of your heart. You become so tight inside. You become so cynical. You will call it by many different names. You become depressed. You become angry. You become jaded. You become bored. You begin to look at the world through these tight eyes thinking the world is just horrible. That is all you can see through the people of your fists.

Here it is why it is not optional not to go down to the level of your soul. If the story, your injury, can only be seen through your human eyes, 20 years later is what happened to you. Which Jung says will never be healed. You go down to the level of the soul so you can see the same story of what happened to you and how it happened for you. Only at the level of the soul. Only at the level of your deeper mind. Only at the level of the deeper you.

What happens is you take a few breaths deeper. What you are doing is your accessing the place in you that has eyes of the absolute. The Bible will call them the eyes of God. Let me see myself as God sees me. Let me see this situation through the eyes of the absolute.

I saw my dad. As clear as day. I said why did you disown me? That is the whole question I had. All these years later, I had one question. I just was reeling from that body blow. I needed the answer to that because I did not heal. I could not heal. Understand this is inside of you. We have access to this place. It requires your ability to sit your bottom on a seat, be silent for a few moments and turn within to access the place in you of absolute truth.

This is what he said. I did not disown you. I pushed you out of the nest. Suddenly, I saw an image of a mother bird that pushes her babies out of the nest. What appears to be prematurely because they do not know they can fly. The mother bird, one day instinctually, pushes them out at the moment that she knows it is time for them to fly.

That is what my dad was saying to me. What are you even talking about? Disowning. What does that word even mean? It is not even a correct word in this situation. We did not disown you. We pushed you out of the nest. We pushed you out of the nest because had I not pushed you out of the nest, your mother never would. You never would have left.

If you would have known me then you would have known how true that was. I had the opportunity to go away to college if I wanted to, but I did not take it. I was too scared. I would not have left. I would have moved right next door, down the street or a drive away. In the basement. I would have been 300 lbs. pushing that secret down.

I would have taken my parents proposition which they offered me in the kitchen on that day that they disowned me. Which is let us make a deal. The deal is if you will be a normal person, get married, have a child so the community can see that you are normal, you can get divorced. Then you can be whoever you want to be. We will buy you house and give you a car.

In my generation, a third of people who are gay ended up dead by their own hands. I understand why that would be. That was a horrible choice. I might have been a scared little mouse, but I was not scared enough to take that proposition. What my dad was saying was you would never leave, and he was right. I could not even go to college. How could I go away a do my destiny? Become who I was destined to be? Never would have happened. How could I have done what I needed to do? How could I have gone to school to become the minister I needed to be? Then I was going to open a church.

The whole thing was wrong from the beginning. I would not have done any of these things. The trajectory of my destiny was so in opposition and outside of their box. It was preposterous. I had to be pushed out of the house in order to be free of having to worry about hurting anybody or protecting anybody from who I was. Whoever I was supposed to be was down such an interesting funky road. It surprised me.

was at that moment when he told that information you would think when your soul shows you what happened to you happened for you. from that day forward I cannot tell a story of what happened to me. I cannot look at this injury in the same way.

Yet, why was I still holding on to that rope even now, now, through the absolute truthful eyes of my own soul? Because I had a decision to make. It is one thing to see your story absolutely true but now you have got a decision to make. Are you willing to put the rope down? That is an actual decision we must make.

Sometimes the answer is no. Not really. It feels so good and passionate. This gives me something to do. This gives me someone to hate. I can get a lot of power out of this. I can get a lot of pity out of this. I can get a lot of attention out of this. You want to put down the rope, have empty hands and not know what Life is going to fill these empty hands with.

In my heart I had to make the decision to put down the rope. How I saw it in my mind? I did a second soul session. You do them on yourself first. Take yourself to the place of ‘I want to put the rope down and I haven’t. Help me to put the rope down. Help to free me.’

Do you know what forgiveness feels like? It feels like not waiting for anything. Forgiveness feels like not wanting anything from anybody. Forgiveness feels like you are free to move on. When people say how do you know you forgave? If you have to ask, you have not. You know because you are free to move on.

I wanted that. Even though I saw this story rightly I had to make the decision to put down the rope. How I imagined it was that there was a part of me sitting by a window with a lit candle waiting for my parents to come and undo the harm they had done. Give me the love I deserved whether I was gay or not. Love me the way a child should be loved.

At that moment, I understood that is not going to happen. because it is not supposed to happen. It is not going to happen because I was pushed out of the nest. He already knew on some deep level, not a personality level, on a soul level that it was his job to provide for me. He needed to do that for me.

We are not talking personalities. Not the story level or the effect. The level of cause. The deeper story. The soul story. Why you are here and all the people who are here to help you. It is the only reason the Tao could say when I have the feeling I have an enemy, there is no room for my treasure. It is the only way the Bible could say put your gift down and go make friends with your brother.

Because you are not free to receive anything. You are occupied with enmity. I was so closed. My destiny did not begin until that day I made the decision. I have got to put the rope down. So that we can be free and have our hands open.

Go and make friends with your brother. Then Come back to the altar. Bring me your gift. Tell me what you desire. Tell me what you want. What do you love? What do you need? Come back after your hands are open. It is not about being a good person. It has to do with being real. That is the major difference between the religious path and the spiritual path. Religion is about being good. I was as good a girl as I could be growing up. The spiritual path is about being real. Telling the absolute truth about who you are and what happened to you. Therein lies your freedom.

I put the rope down. I did not want anything. I did not need anything. I was not waiting for anything. I was free to move on. I had seen that what had happened to me happened for me. Only the eyes of the absolute, only the eyes of your soul, only your deeper eyes will tell you and show you that story. When you see that story, you do not have to ask one million times how do I forgive. It takes you to forgiveness.

That is the soul’s job. Every time you go down to your soul it takes you to the place of absolute truth which leads you on a path to forgiveness. ACIM says: Forgiveness will offer you everything you want. The act of forgiveness is opening your hands and putting down the rope so that you are free and open to give and free and open to receive.

Through the door of forgiveness, we put down the rope. Does not matter who else is holding it. It takes two for the tug-of-war. Once your side is down. It is over for you. You cannot put it down at all, with all your best self-willed efforts, until you know and see with your own eyes how what happened to you — the injury you sustained — happened for you.

Those eyes reside in you. That ability to be free resides in you. That work, you can do it, resides in you. Those answers reside in you. That larger story waits for you. It is all waiting for you to put down the rope in all areas of your life. To anyone you are holding the rope up against. So that you are hands are open to receive, as the Tao Te Ching says, now you have room enough to receive your treasure.

Thus, when two opponents meet, the one without an enemy will surely triumph.

The way in which we walk that allows us to begin to remember who we and whose we are. It has to do with planting yourself in bigger picture of who you are. Of grounding yourself in what is real. In making the choice of who it is you are going to know yourself to be. We are not pretending or positive thinking our way into ‘well, I want to be this. I want to be that.’ It has nothing to do with that. It is about remembering your true identity and choosing that truth identity to take with you into your day. Your true identity and your false one are worlds apart.

Your true identity empowers you. It strengthens you. It strengthens your body. It heals your body. Your false identity fractures you. It separates you from the power that dwells within. It leaves you feeling hopeless. It leaves you feeling helpless. It leaves you feeling so bad about yourself and your body follows suit. The way of life that works begins within us. It does not begin when we get everything that we want. We know that. It begins when we remember everything that we are.

In the old tale called “The Nightingale” by Hans Christian Anderson. There was an emperor in China who had the most beautiful kingdom. He had the most beautiful gardens. People would come from all around the world just to see the gardens that he put together. They were that exotic and that exquisite. However, in the gardens there was just beauty cultivated by the head gardener. But if you followed the gardens, outside the gardens, there were woods. Further outside the woods, there was the sea. Outside of the gardens, in the woods, there was a nightingale.

The beauty of this nightingale’s song was such that even after a day’s work, a fisherman would stop on his way home, he would stop and listen to the beautiful song of the nightingale. If he came by the next night and slowed down on his walk home, he would hear that nightingale sing. He would say every single night the same thing he said the night before. This is so beautiful. It was beautiful night after night. Poets wrote poems about this nightingale. Authors wrote books about the beauty of it.

Obviously, it was only a matter of time until the emperor heard that there was something going on in his kingdom that he did not know about. People were talking about, not him, but the nightingale. He started asking everybody in his kingdom where it was.

Not one of them knew where it was. So, he sent them out, all over his grounds, all over the kingdom to find the nightingale. Nobody in the kingdom could find it except the poor servant girl that worked in the kitchen who would go every evening to drop some scraps of food off for her mom who lived by the sea. She would stop in the woods and just like the poor fisherman, this poor girl would stop. She would listen and it would comfort her.

She told the attendants where to find it. They go and they catch the nightingale. Bring it back to the kingdom. Put it up one night for the king to hear. The king says sing. The nightingale begins to sing a song so beautiful. He hears it for the first time. His tears flow. It melted something hard in his heart. He was overwhelmed at its first song. He said to the nightingale you tell me what you want. I will give you anything that you want. It said your tears are what I want. They are my reward. I will take those.

There began this beautiful relationship between this king and this beautiful nightingale. It looked like a common bird. It did not look like it had any beautiful feathers like a beautiful parrot. It was just grey, common looking bird. He could not deny the beauty of the sound. He listened to this sound. It was so beautiful. Night after night he would bring everybody in court together to hear the song of the nightingale.

Until one day a present arrives the kingdom. This big crate comes in. They open it up in front of the emperor of China. There is a small little box. There is this beautiful replica of the nightingale that they had been listening to, with a little card that said the emperor of Japan offers the emperor of China a very poor imitation of his nightingale.

the nightingale that the emperor of Japan sent, the fake nightingale, was covered in diamonds. Covered in rubies. That night they had a whole big party to celebrate this. To hear the song of the beautiful jewel-encrusted bird. They wind it up. Its diamond tail starts wagging. It sings a song so perfect, in every way. It was of the many songs; the nightingale sang a different song. They were all beautiful. This bird sang one song. But it sang it perfectly. No fault could be found. While it did not make anybody cry, people marveled at the perfection and the correctness of this. The dazzling beauty of the jewels on it.

This is from the book Dying To Be Me by Anita Moorjani. She was a little girl. Keep in mind they lived in Hong Kong which was peopled with Chinese. She, herself, was Hindu. She was raised Hindu. They spoke that language, Hindi, in their home. They practiced as Hindus. But she was sent to a British school with other British children who were British ex-pats. She had three cultures weaving at the same time. Hindu was what she grew up as.

She overheard this conversation between her mother and her friend. Her mother’s friend said so were you disappointed if her second child was a girl when she was born? Meaning Anita. Anita said I felt a sense of anxiety rise within me as I waited my mother’s response. No, of course not my mother said. I love my daughter. But girls are such a problem, especially when they grow up. With girls you must make sure they do not get spoiled. Otherwise they will not get a good husband. The amount of dowry that is required to get a good husband is rising with each passing year. You cannot predict the future my mother said. Every child, girl or boy, brings with them their own fate. Well I am happy for you then her friend said. That you have at least two sons the woman said proudly.

Even in my young mind I was able to detect the sense of achievement she felt when she made that statement. Later when my mother and I were alone together I asked is it true that girls are a problem? No, she said, of course not. Pulled me close and gave me a hug. At that moment I recall thinking I never want to be a problem to my parents just because I am a girl. I do not want them to ever wish I was born a boy.

I have been doing soul sessions for so long. What the interesting thing about your soul, somebody will end up on my couch and end up asking the question: Why am I stuck? What is wrong with my life? It used to work. It does not work now. The harder I work at it, the more it is not working. What is wrong with me? What is wrong with my body that I have gotten this illness? How is it possible that I ended up this sick? I am not the type of person who even thinks bad thoughts or does bad things. I am a good person. How could this life, how could this guy leave me? How could this happen to person like me?

We land in a place in our lives where we do not have the answer to a question. The soul will invariably do something that is the same thing in each case. Your soul will take you to the exact, precise moment in time. When you made a decision that starts out with the words ‘from now on.’ The moment we make that decision

That is great thinking. Nobody will argue with that. That is smart. When you are six years old to have figured that out, that is excellent. But at six you have totally figured something out which is my parents do not want this. Whatever this is. Whatever this package of me is. This thing about me. This energy of me. This adjective of me. This quality of me. They do not want this. I am going to take it away and not give it to them so they can be happy. It is pure genius.

At that moment, we make the decision that something about our true self, our true self, our whole self, is not wanted. Is not liked. Is not loved. Is not welcomed. At that moment, a divide happens quietly in our life. Not a word is spoken. Nothing is said. You would not even know it happened. That is how deeply in our consciousness that choice is made. That wise choice for survival is made. We make that decision quietly, whispering inside of our subconscious mind. That from this point forward I will no longer be my true self. Now I will become something other than my true self that they want.

The song of this nightingale. Everybody stopped. Everybody’s heart was moved. Everybody was brought to tears. Tears are a place in us where something is melting. Where an opening happens, and Life is moving through. We can feel our aliveness in that moment. Whether we believe or not. It has gone straight through to heart of the matter. We are feeling the living streams, the living waters, of life move through us. It is undeniable because down our faces are running tears.

The artificial nightingale, it is covered in diamonds and rubies. When people look at it, it is like how beautiful. The fact that it can only sing one song is OK. It is so beautiful to look at. The tail is made of diamonds.,. It can only sing one song, but it does it perfectly.

When we make that choice, from now on to put something in hiding, we put in hiding that piece of our true self that appears to be unwanted by our parents. This is her true self. The part that they do not want. They do not want a girl. Even though her mother assured us. Of course, we love you the way you are, but she already got that feeling from a neighbor. Not even her parent. From a neighbor that there was pride in having a boy. No pride in having a girl. She took a piece of herself and she put it into hiding.

We take a piece of ourselves. We put it into hiding. Whether we remember or not, we do this. This is the game. This is how we go through survival. It is the game of life. It is where the game begins. When you want to search for what is not working in your life. Look for where the game began. The moment you became artificial. What is that? It is called a mask. What do they call it psychologically? They call it your persona. They call it the personality with which you lead from. You go out into the world. You put on this shiny jewel-encrusted personality so people can see the fabulousness of you. They are going to love it.

What happened to this bird? This jewel encrusted bird from the emperor of Japan was perfect in every way but it could only sing one song. They gave it a special title. They gave it a beautiful pillow to sit on. They put a beautiful little thing around its neck. They had 12 attendants walking around with it and holding it up. It got all the riches. It got all the praise. It got everything it wanted.

We put on this artificial facade. We hide away our true self thinking it is common. People will not love it as much because in the beginning of time, they did not. We did not do it out of ignorance. We did it out of great wisdom. We put a piece of ourselves into hiding to survive and have our parents love us, lavish us with the kind of attention that we would get if we were a boy. Or the kind of attention we would get being the kind of child our parents really wanted. Maybe quieter. Maybe louder. Maybe bolder. Maybe more businesslike. Whatever it is we think our parents wanted. We put on that jewel encrusted persona, and we pass for a living nightingale, but we are not living anymore. We are living behind a mask.

It is not a bad idea. Getting through childhood, it is not a bad idea. It is an excellent idea. The problem only comes later in life because wearing a mask wears out. Wearing a mask is not meant to last a lifetime. It is built with an expiration date inside. This is going to wear out on your 32nd birthday where your life is going to go downhill from that point forward. You are thinking what I do wrong? We never think to look at the mask we are wearing.

We do not look at what the actuality is which is this mask is not built to last. It has an expiration date that says, ‘this mask is to get you through your childhood’. It was not intended to live through and with your entire life. Its purpose has been served.

We need to look at the place where we are out of alignment with our true self. Here is what it sounds like: if people see the real me, they are not going to like me. If people know I am gay, they are not going to like me. If I tell people the truth, they are not going to like me. If I tell them what I really feel, they are not going to like me. If I do this, my family is not going to like me. If I My friends are not going to like me. If I move, the people I am with are not going to like me. If I tell my husband this, that and the other, he is going to leave me.

It always ends with we are not going to be liked, we are not going to be loved, we are going to lose something we have if our true self comes out of hiding. As we are saying all those things, our body, our mind, our strength, our life force is weakening. We are getting weaker, not stronger. We are getting darker, not lighter. We are getting smaller, not bigger. Because we are hiding behind something artificial.

It can only sing one song. Every night the court comes around. All the attendants. All the wonderful people. The Emperor. They listen to the one song, but it is a good song. They are listening to the same song night after night. You would think boring after a while, yet, night after night, they listen to the same song.

When we are behind the mask, our true spontaneous self cannot come out. We are literally singing the same song. If the same song is I am going to be a good girl or I am going to be a good boy, it is a certain type of song. I am not going to upset the apple cart. It is a certain type of song. I do not want to make anybody mad. I do not want to tell anybody the truth.

For me, my from now on came when my dad said one line. He had a very hard life. Both my parents had a very hard upbringing in the war in Europe. I cannot even imagine what it is to have lived the kind of life they did. Losing almost everybody. My dad said this line: Do not ever do anything to shame us.

Now, on one level, you think you want to send your kid off with a big, bold statement. But what he said was, whatever you do just don’t shame us. That was the big send-off. What you do when you hear something like that is you say I get it. You do not want me to shame you not because you are a bad man. You do not want me to shame you because you do not want any attention to come back on you. Attention has always meant negative attention. When attention came on you, as a Jew in Europe, you do not want that attention. Do not do anything to bring attention to us because it will not end well.

I get that now. When you are young you do not get that. You take it. You say from now on I am going to take whatever I have to say that is truthful and I am going to swallow it. So, I swallowed it and began smoking at the very young age of 12 1/2, 13 years old. That is young to start smoking Like the way I started smoking. I did not just start smoking like I will have a cigarette once a week. I began smoking as an addict begins smoking. You are pushing them in your mouth, and you cannot stop smoking. I started that way in order to hold to my decision from now on.

From now on, Anita said, I will do nothing to make my parents upset that I am a girl. What that means, you got to put something in hiding. The thing you put in hiding is not a small thing. It is a part of you that is you. It is the living nightingale. Your true self.

For me, who ended up discovering my destiny was a minister, telling the truth was part of the gift I was born with. Being intuitive, being sensitive, being able to see the truth. You get that when you are at a young age. You do not get that when you get ordained or you get a piece of paper and here are your gifts. You get your gifts when you are a kid and you can sense when things are out of alignment. When things are true and when they are not true. That is when it happens.

I took that whole part of my nature and put it into hiding. The part of me that was sensitive, intuitive. That saw things other people did not see. That knew things other people did not know. That was my gift. I put my gift in hiding.

Anita Morjani put her true self in hiding and almost walked down the aisle in an arranged marriage with a man she did not love, did not want, knew she never would love. Hiding behind a mask. Look what she says. She is speaking for all of us. Everything I was doing up to that point; the way I was dressing, the way I was behaving was an act. I would never truly be what they wanted me to be. I would spend my entire life trying to be someone I was not. I would always fall short. I had not even told my parents because I did not want them to think of me as a problem.

She goes forward and lets her parents dictate to her how she is to live. Who she is to marry. How it is to be. She knows that she is not that type of person. She wanted to have a job. She wanted to go travel. She wanted to be her own lady. She did not want to be forced into a marriage, have kids with a guy that was not really her guy. At the last minute, she did something so outrageous. her living nightingale broke out from behind the screen and she called off the marriage.

Her entire community began to spread rumors about her. Relatives, family members, others in the community were saddened, angry and disappointed to hear the news of calling off her wedding. Go through with the wedding. It is normal to feel this way. Afterwards, it will be better. Go through with it. If you break the commitment, no one in our culture is going to want to marry you. You are not good enough. You are spoiled. You are not domesticated. Your parents brought you up wrong. You have too high of an opinion of yourself. Why is it always, she said, that I was apologizing for just being me? What is wrong with me?

They tried to get the artificial bird together to sing a duet. They are looking around for the living nightingale. It had already flown out the window. It knew what it had to do. It was not wanted here. Once we see that dazzling persona, we figure out we can be what people want us to be. All the neighbors, friends, sisters and brothers are going to say good girl. We love you. You did the right thing. That is good to put your dreams in hiding. That would hurt your parents. That would hurt your friends. That would hurt your husband. Take your dreams, everybody must do it. Do not ask for too much.

When we know that we are going to get that kind of response. Who would not choose to wear the mask for as long as possible? Until Life insists we take the mask off. We think we can slide by life just wearing that mask all the time. Who is going to notice? Who is going to care? So what if I do not do my dreams? So, what if I do not tell the truth? So, what if she marries and she does not do what it is she was born to do? That is what we say. It is just a dream. Who cares? It will go away. I will stop thinking about it. But we do not.

Our body does not stop thinking about our purpose or our dream. Our body does not stop thinking. Our soul does not, for a second, stop thinking about why your here and what your here to do. There comes a day of reckoning that is gorgeous. The line in the Old Testament puts it this way: Spirit, Life, God gives you chance after chance to live in the light of life. We are going to get many chances to do it. These chances are going to feel like kicks in the head. We are going to hate them. We are going to say why me? These ‘Why Me’s?’ are Life telling you come out of hiding.

Within the year, the artificial nightingale broke down. For us, it is10, 20 years. Sometimes 30. Some of us are good and can eek it all the way out into our 50s. We are not coming out, damn it, no matter who drags me out. It is not going to happen. You add an addiction in there and you prolong your need to come out of hiding. Addiction allows us to stay in hiding until we feel safe to come out of hiding as our true self. That is my understanding and belief about what addiction really is. That is why it is not a moral issue. Moral has nothing to do with it. It is safety. Am I safe to come out of hiding?

They call in the music master. Music master says it is worn out. If you want to keep it, you can, but it is only going to play that one song — which is beautiful — once a year. Why do people love that and are willing to accept just once a year? Because out of the mouth of the artificial bird you always knew the song you are going to get.

Think of how comforting that this. You do not open your mouth and say something that going to upset somebody. You do not open your mouth, something comes out and everybody goes what? Is that what you really think? I do not think I like you. When you open your mouth and behind your mask, you got one song, you know the words, you know what it looks like.

For me, it was being a people pleaser. You always did what the people around you needed and wanted you to do so you got their approval and did not upset them. The last thing you want to do when you have fragile parents is upset them. They have been upset enough. My job became how do I protect them? That is an honorable job. At some point we must put down the job of our childhood that enabled us to survive because it is going to wear out.

We cannot live our old life in the small little place behind the mask trying to not let anybody see who we are. It wears us down. We wear out. Our body wears out. Anita Moorjani at the end of her short life, with stage 4 lymphatic cancer. Rushed into the hospital after four agonizing years of her body being ravaged by this illness. It was time for her to come out of hiding and discover who she truly was.

After years of saying, what is wrong with me and why am I not happy, we end up in the place where our mask breaks down. We think, I cannot do it anymore, life is meaningless, I am never going to get there, people are bad, it is not even worth it. We end up in this place that in truth has nothing to do with life itself.

Wherever you land and whatever darkness you think you are or whatever illness you think you have or whatever place you are at – it is not about the outside. I am not talking about your real true personality. I am talking about your real true self. We are not talking about being a bigger personality. We are talking about being a bigger infinite self. Knowing the truth about who you are.

You know we wait until we cannot take it anymore. We are holding on to that mask with white knuckles, all scraped, and a face being scraped across the ground because we will not let go. Marcus Aurelius said fate leads those who will and those who will not, it drags. We must learn our lessons 1500 times until we have our ‘aha’ moment. The aha moment does not happen with the first lesson for anybody.

The ‘aha’ moment comes after doing it the same way trying to do it our way. Until we wake up one morning saying I am done. I do not have the energy to keep doing this way anymore. We do what is called surrender. We do not surrender because we are wise. We surrender because we are tired. We are just so tired we cannot take it anymore.

After five years of listening to an artificial bird that was so beautiful — because you always knew what was going to come out of its mouth. It did not upset anybody. It is perfect. The emperor was so sick. He is lying on his deathbed. You can have all the money you want. It is not going to keep you from this moment of reckoning where Life is calling you to be your true self and come out of hiding. Living your partial life. Living your small life. Living the people pleasing life.

The problem with people pleasing is not that you do not want to not hurt people. You are paying the price with your entire life force by keeping yourself behind a mask, not upsetting people who might not understand or be afraid. That is too high a price to pay. According to Life, it is going to push you past that point.

He is lying on his deathbed. He cannot breathe life in deeply. If you cannot breathe life in deeply, you cannot feel. You cannot feel your own life. You cannot be in your own life. Death, itself, is sitting on his chest talking to him about the life he led. He calls out in this moment as His word was ‘sing’.

But, of course, the artificial bird had to be wound up in order to sing its one measly song. There were no attendants there to wind the fake bird up. When he said sing, nothing happened. He is moments away from his death. In his great life there is no happiness, no life force in him. He cries out sing.

We call to this mask to help us. We call to our small life to fix itself. We call to our small, little life and say come on. What is the problem? I will do anything. Life says take the mask off. The one thing we are so afraid to do because it feels so unsafe. We are so afraid of what is going to come down on us. The disapproval. The rumors. The people being disappointed.

I did not want to let that voice out. By the fifth time I landed in the hospital. Took every allergy test there was. First allergy test in one of the New York hospitals. You are allergic to walnuts. I stopped walnuts. Next allergy test: You are allergic to fruits with rinds on them. I must pull back from fruits with rinds when I do aerobic activity. I am going to do aerobic activity. I am not going to eat any watermelon or cantaloupe. Every single test told me something different.

Then I was doing none of those things and walked myself to Beth Israel on the eastside during a boxing session. I just put my stuff down and walked out. I could feel my throat swelling again with the words that I could not let out. In that moment I was angry, and I had something to say my boxing trainer. At that moment I wanted to say this is not fair. I could not. As I always could not get the words I wanted to say out when I was mad. I wanted to speak that I was mad so we could just deal with it and move past it. But I did not want to bring shame on my family. Of course, I did not remember having made the decision to push my words down.

Who remembers a decision you make at three? Our soul does. I walked myself into the fifth and last time. Checked myself into the ER. Your head is like a balloon, so you go to the front of the line. Everything was swelling up.

A day later I took myself for a soul session and said I cannot keep doing this. This is too scary. It said make a new decision. It is time for you to start telling the truth. Not to harm people. Tell the truth because the truth is what you are here to do. You are here to speak it. You are here to live it. You are here to walk it. You are here to share it. You are here to help other people get to theirs. You have got to start speaking the truth or you will keep landing in the hospital.

She has her near-death experience. Her soul is as connected to the soul of the universe. We discover who we truly are and what stands in the way. Here is what she discovered. On her (what appeared to be) deathbed, I understood that at the core, our essence is made of pure love. How can we not be if we come from the whole and return to it? This meant never being afraid of who we are. Being love and being our true self is one and the same thing

As I experienced the biggest revelation, it felt like a bolt of lightning. I understand that merely by being the love I truly am I would heal both myself and others. I never understood this before. Yet, it seemed so obvious. If we are all one, all facets of the same whole which is unconditional love. She said those words do not begin to explain the tender, regard how she felt held in this unconditional love. She said if we are all facets of this unconditional love than, of course, who we are is love. I knew that was really the only purpose of life. To be ourselves. To live our truth. To be the love that we are.

Who does she meet in that energy of love? Who do we meet when we have soul sessions? We meet the person who wears the black hat in our life who seems to have made us go behind the mask in the first place. We say it is your fault. If it was not for you, if you loved me properly, I would not be in this position I am now. Her father’s energy comes to her.

At the level of the soul, everything is love. Love which created us, it is what we are. Her father comes to her. What did she say? She said I did not have one day where I felt safe near my father. He was so strict. Everything had to be so correct. I had to be the woman he needed me to be, for the community to see; the way he needed the community to see me. To show well on him. The rules. The regulations.

There he was, she said. Loving me. Loving me. He was just loving her. She was just loving him.

She said it that moment that I got that, that my father said to me, the energy, the essence of my father said to me, you are home. She felt like she was home. Embraced in the love of her father. We have always been home. You always have been. You are now. You always will be. We always are in this place. When we come back and realize that all we need to do is be this love we are, and we be it when we allow ourselves to be who we truly are.

When that emperor called out sing with all his heart. When he said sing, you know the entirety of the essence of his will to live and change and do what life is calling us to do. Go with the flow instead of trying to hold it back. Everything he felt was in that word. At that moment, the artificial bird is silent. Our mask cannot help us. Our mask is the problem. Who should fly into his window in his bedroom from the woods outside the emperor’s bedroom? The living nightingale and begins to sing.

It began to sing. Death, itself, turned its head to the living nightingale to hear the song. It was that beautiful — In the singing of the living nightingale, the nightingale asked for what it took back from the emperor. Death began to give it back for a song. Until death, itself, decided it needed to leave and like a mist, it took off. The emperor lay there absolutely blown away.

As we are when we pray, and we finally say I am ready to let go. I am ready to be who I was meant to be. I am ready to live the way life is encouraging me to live which feels so unsafe but is the only safe next step to take.

In our true self is who we came to be. In that truth without that mask we are directly connected to why we are here. The source of life. Who we are. Our identity. Our pure purpose unfolds. We become what we are meant to become by simply being our real self.

What, at that moment, you realize is it does not matter anyway. The price you have been paying is so not worth it. That you are willing to let go of not ruffling of any feathers. Just come out, live fearlessly and do and be what you came here to do and be. Even if you do not know that is, at least you are standing in your own shoes. At least, when you open your mouth what comes out is what you really feel. At least, when you are in the moment being what you are, you are there with yourself. You have not left yourself behind. You are with yourself. You are for yourself. You are in your own corner.

The emperor says what do you want? I will give you anything. The living nightingale said I only ever wanted your tears. I have wanted you to open your heart. Our true self wants to come out. It only wants us to open our heart and live in the world in a way that we feel connected to the world. Alive in the world. Enjoy in the world. It does not want a pound of flesh. It wants our happiness.

Life’s goal for you is your perfect happiness. We understand that perfect means your wholeness. There is no happiness unless the whole truth of you is here. Your true self. When Life calls us, it calls us to be bigger. Not smaller. Calls us into our greatness to remember who we are. Not who we were or who others wanted us to be. We get that. We know that all too well.

The living nightingale said just let me come to you, let me sing to you. Let me tell you about what is going on in your kingdom. Let me go out into the world, find out and bring all that information back to you. That is our soul. Let me help you live in this world. Let me help you walk in this world. Let me be your intuition. Let me be your guidance. Let me lead you into the life you are meant to have. That is all it wants. What does it want in return? All it wants is a couple of tears. It wants you to just be yourself. Be in your life. Stop fighting to hold on to a mask that we wind up. That plays the same old tune not to ruffle anybody’s feathers.

She had her experience as an NDE in the emergency room. When was the holy instant of her release? The moment she remembered and realized who she truly was and connected to the source of life. One with it. Living from it. Coming from it. Returning to it. Never having left it. In that moment with that, realizing if she is just her true self then everything in her life — purpose, destiny, love, money — everything in her life will unfold before her. Because she is absolutely connected to the truth of who she is. She is expressing it as her true self.

The living nightingale. The emperor agreed to those terms. The next morning when the attendants came into his bedroom to prepare him for burial he was bustling up and around. He wished them a good morning. Anita Moorjani knew when she had this experience and returned to this presence, this energy, this consciousness here on earth, in a body but beyond her body; she said at that moment ‘I knew my cancer was history.’

When is our holy instant of release? When does a way of life that works begin? In this moment. We only have to want to come out from behind who we are not and connect to who we are.

This guy walks around the corner and stops right in front of my car. He does not know I am sitting in my car. He starts smoking his cigarettes so hard and so fast. You can tell he is on a very quick break. I thought that was so me. I used to be a 3-pack a day girl.

That is a lot of cigarettes. You must wake up in the morning, with your coffee or before your coffee, and start smoking to get 3packs in until you reach the evening. You are smoking every 10 minutes. You are smoking a cigarette, lighting one from off the other. Watching him, I thought that was just so me. There was no way in hell that you can stop an addiction like that by yourself. You cannot but we think we can.

I remember a woman who walked in to her house one evening into her worst nightmare. She goes into her house and turns on all the lights. Goes to her bedroom and there is a guy in the closet. You cannot handle that situation alone.

We, on some level, think that we are meant to handle our life by ourselves. We make every effort to do it by ourselves until something outrageous happens. In that moment, you know you cannot handle it alone. We think it is the worst moment in the world when we hit a bottom, but it is not. It is a moment of awakening. In that awakening, we remember something we forgot. In the remembering of what we forgot we are set free to walk forward in our life in a totally different way and that is not alone.

The greatest portion of our conflict in our life; the greatest, hardest part of our life is the distance between our personality — me — and our soul. The I and the I Am. The I can do it all by myself. I should be able to do it all by myself. The I Am part of us that knows you cannot do this all by yourself. We were not even meant to.

It is like Cory Ten Boom. The woman who went through the concentration camp. She said you cannot do God’s work without God. It is not possible. Or whatever you call God, you cannot do the work of Life without Life.

Cory Ten Boom is taken away in her 50s along with her older sister who is in her upper 50s. They are cared off to Ravensbrook for hiding Jews in their attic. When she gets there, she knows she cannot do this by herself. She knows she cannot do her whole life. Chances of doing the concentration camp by herself are nil.

We still think there is a portion of our life we can do by ourselves. That we should do by ourselves. That we better do by ourselves. That everybody does by themselves. Why should we not? We hold off a huge portion of our life thinking this is mine and if I need help, I will ask for it. As if asking for help and doing it without assistance is optional at all and that is where our trouble begins. We think it is optional. The moment we think doing our lives on our own is optional, we are hanging out there all by ourselves. Our life becomes so hard. It is because we were not meant to do it all alone.

Cory Ten Boom is taken off the train cars. She walks up to the line. She sees that you are going to move forward in the line where there is a guard. He makes every woman take off her clothes. They look at you and they pass you on. This is Europe more than a half-century ago where everybody is delicate and genteel. Everything was just so private for them. This was the first huge horror.

On a string around her neck was tied a tiny, little cloth bag. In the bag, hanging around her neck backwards down the middle of her back, was a bible. This was a symbol of her connection. If she had to go, she was not going to go alone. It is almost like God had her back. If God had her back, even in the concentration camp, she would be the first to say there is no possible way that the God of life, that Life itself, is not more powerful than what goes on in this place when it comes to me. Not possible that the light does not overcome the darkness. Not fight with the darkness, overcome the darkness.

I know I needed to stop smoking. There is no way I did not know that I had a problem. Everybody in my life knew that I had a problem. I was a TA, a teaching assistant, at the university putting myself through graduate school. My students came in to do their final exams and many of them wrote on the harm of smoking with the pictures of the lungs. They knew I got the message. It was, oh, here are the lungs, teacher. So, I knew I needed to stop but there was no possible way that I had the tools to put down something that became a way of life for me.

When we think we must do it alone, we are asking ourselves, our mind, to take us out of the problem it got us into. It cannot because it got us there in the first place. It is not this mind that is going to be able to get us out of the problem. We need a bigger mind. We need a greater mind.

Understand when we talk about deeper and greater mind, we are talking about what the Tao Te Ching talks about and calls the treasure house within. The secret source of everything. It says within, within this is where the world’s treasure has always been.

I remember going on a retreat during my heavy smoking days. Having broken a cigarette the night before, I cavalierly tossed it away. I was not going to smoke that. Well, the next morning when there was nothing to smoke, I was on the carpet on my hands and knees searching for that broken cigarette that I knew was there somewhere. If only I could get a piece of tape to tape it back up and then smoke it. There I was on my hands and knees thinking this was pathetic. I could not believe I was in this position. OK, keep looking for the cigarette.

You are in this place and you think how low can you go? How low can you go is how low you must go. If there is any lower to go, you will get there. I did not stop until I found that cigarette. I was that guy in front of my car smoking that cigarette for all it was worth. I understand now what a fabulous hiding place smoking was for me.

The name of Cory Ten Boom’s book that sold millions of copies is The Hiding Place. This whole thing is about the game of hiding. Let us not pretend it is not. We are hiding from ourselves. Our own greatness. Our own access to our greatness. Living through the smallest part of our nature thinking this is how it is done.

She is walking up to the front of the line. She knows she is going to have to take off all her clothes and her bible hangs down her back. She does not care about anything but the fact that she cannot go through this experience without her connection.

The Tao calls it hold fast to the Tao. That is the whole point of what we are asked to do. If what we have is only one problem, then there is one answer to that problem. If the problem is separation, then the answer is unification. To unify. To come back to ourselves.

From the Bhavagad Gita: There is a difference between our small self and our greater self. Me on my hands and knees trapped, stuck in a pattern I cannot get out of and me watching myself on my hands and knees in a pattern that I seem not to be able to get out of. Both are true. Both are me.

But look at the elegance of how small a shift in consciousness is required. A small shift in thinking is required to get from oneself to the other. It is the difference between the I and the I Am. The I, is spelled with a small ‘s’. The I Am is spelled with a capital ‘S’. The thing we are talking to, the thing we are after, the thing we need, the thing that is going to help us, the thing we call out to help us, is this that greater version of ourselves.

I am talking about the us that existed before time. The forever part of us. That we are forever means something so huge in our life. It means we can tap that place inside of us. We can find the right next step. The right word. The right next thing. It is our divine compass. It is who we are.

There is a teacher named Joel Goldsmith. He says, you have this deeper mind. Let us call him God. He says, there is a power greater than yourself. Let it use you.

Ernest Holmes says there is a power and a presence greater than you, not outside of you, greater than you know yourself to be. More unlimited, more boundless

Based on the idea that we can use and access that power at any time, it is not different from us. It is not separate from us. It is not other than us. It is right here where we are. We do not have to become it, we are it. We do not have to become anything that we are not already. We must tap into it. We do not tap into it because we think I should be able to figure this out by myself.

There is a power and a presence, that greatness, that is you. You are the wave in the ocean of that consciousness. You are made of it. You are filled with the properties of it. You come from it. You swim in it. You live in it. You think it. It is you. You do not even have to work so hard to access it, to use it.

We let this ocean of mind move us and at the same time we access it understanding in those moments, I am not just the wave. Why do I have to keep acting as if I am just a wave when I have the entirety of the ocean of mind, of consciousness, of history, of life.

Carl Jung called it the Collective Unconsciousness. We can always access all wisdom, right in the moment, right where we are. So why do we not? Because we think we can do it. We think we should do it and have to do it and better do it. We have a problem and the problem is we try to do it by ourselves. What is the answer?

Cory Ten Boom is standing there knowing what is coming but she knows something else. She knows she does not have to do it alone. In fact, she knows she cannot.

The whole path to the Tao says hold fast to that which you know is greater and deeper than you that is you. The ocean is not separate from the wave. The wave is never separated from the ocean. There is no wave without the ocean. Hold fast to the greatest knowledge you have about what you are.

Cory Ten Boom puts out her prayer: Make something happen here. The whole thing is not good, and this moment is not good. I cannot go where I am going without holding fast to you.

Suddenly, a guard goes by her and her sister, Betsy. She sees Betsy, who is sicklier than she is. She is turning white. She turns to the guard and said my sister is very ill. Can we just go the lavatory? He says yes you can. Go over to where the drainpipes are. That is the lavatory. They go into that room. There in the corner, covered with lice and cockroaches, is a little bit of furniture with old ratty prison dresses that were just so threadbare.

This, she said, was not cockroach infested furniture. This was like the furniture of heaven. She could take her bible; she could put it somewhere. She sticks her bible it in that horrible little place. She walks out with her sister back in line. They go through the first inspection.

She gets herself back into the bathroom where they are all headed. She takes her bible out and now she must walk through another set of guards. They give her a prison sheath. She puts the bible back on. Hides it underneath but it is so obvious something is there. She walks by and she asks this question: To Thy Will.

Let us get out of the idea that Thy Will is anything other than the ocean in which we are born. In which we live and move and have our being. It has to do with who we are and what we are. I think sometimes we throw out the baby with the bath water thinking it is religion, so the whole thing goes out the window when we forget religion came after the fact. Who we are preceded religion. Religion is just a way to try to encode it, categorize it and explain it. Sometimes it is explained well and sometimes it is not explained well. Sometimes it moves you closer to that treasure house and sometimes further away.

Cory Ten Boom is almost to the point of seeing this second guard and there is no getting out of it. She has already gone to the lavatory. So, she asked for another prayer: Lord, put an angel in front of me. Then she realizes that angels are transparent, and she says make him un-transparent.

You think your prayers are bad when you are in need? This is to show you there are no prayers that are bad or weird. There is simply holding something fast to the mind greater and deeper than the one you have with your own eyes that tells you that you are screwed.

Anybody who looks at a difficult situation will tell you the same thing. There is only one way to look at this situation in which you are trapped and that is you are trapped.

When you are trapped, you begin to look deeper because you have no choice. You find that within, deeper than you ordinarily look, you are going to see something you never saw before. First, you are looking with deeper eyes than you ordinarily use. You are not using the eyes of the little self, small s. You are using the eyes of the greater self, capital S.

What is the difference between the two selves? One thinks it is a wave. One knows it is a wave in the ocean and it is the ocean. Can you imagine the feeling of thinking you are a just a wave? How limited that thought is? You are watching all the waves crashing and thinking I am next. You hit the shore and you disappear.

But that is not what you are. You are that which holds the waves. You are that which fills the waves and you are the wave. When you know you are the wave that is the ocean, all that dread and weirdness you have about thy will be done, turning it over, letting go; all that stuff that keeps you from holding fast to the Tao and keeps you locked into the place where you think I am the wave.

My doctor told me the end of my story was emphysema. He told me what emphysema looks like and showed me a brochure. My first stop out of bed, on my hands and knees, hocking up the phlegm from all the smoking I had done, and I still could not stop smoking. I was still a wave with no contact to the ocean. No way to get myself out of this situation. Thinking that I was a wave, I was coming to this bad end because that is what happens to waves.

But there comes a time in our lives when we look at different areas of our lives, to shine a spotlight where we need to know we are the ocean. When we need to know who we are. When we hold fast to the power and presence, greater and deeper, that is there to be utilized.

If you are a wave, why do you not use the power of the ocean within you to do some work with you and for you? It opens the doors. It does the work for you, through you. There is an ocean of mind, of consciousness, of wisdom, of energy, of flow. A current of power that moves through you so you can use it.

That woman returns home and goes to her closet. She sees this guy in her closet. She stood in front of him. She recognized that her mind did not have what it takes. She stood there and went one breath deeper. She remembered I am the ocean. She held fast and said give me an angel to be around me that is un-transparent. That is how little it matters what you say and how much it matters where you stand in knowing who you are.

If we come with a cup to this ocean and say I want a little of this power, we are going to get a little of this power. If we come to this ocean and open ourselves up, knowing that this is what I am, we can have as much as we want to receive.

When we are face-to-face with a situation, we cannot heal by ourselves — a man in a closet, a guard in front of us about to take away our most prized possession, me looking at a brochure saying you are en route to having an airway put in your throat. In those moments, we turn to the Self. The self that is us but with a capital ‘S’. It is a wave that remembers it is an ocean.

You are calling forth the energy in you that knows and knows it knows who it is. Do not fear using those words. Thy Will Be Done. Or letting go into something greater than you.

In the moments of our life when we need to remember we are the ocean, we do not have to work at remembering. We are on whatever path we are on remembering the bigness of us so that when the bigness is needed, we are not shy about calling it forth. The same access we are told over and over than we all have. We can have as much of it as we want as often as we want. Every time we go to the ocean, we do not pay the price. We embody a greatness that is who we are.

She is standing in front of the closet and in that moment, she goes from a little ‘s’ to a big ‘S’. She changed. She remembered. She dropped down and she had access to a mind greater than her own. For the next 90 minutes she spoke to this man. She spoke to him from a place that saw him and was not afraid.

The mighty ocean? It is not afraid. The little wave? Is scared every single day of its life. A bill comes in. It is a little high. Somebody says something and it put us and our reputation in a bad light. Or our parents are not as proud of us as they should be. For the wave, every day is a catastrophe. When we are the mighty ocean, it looks at our life as a whole. It knows who we are.

This woman saw this man as a broken wave in the ocean. Not consciously but from that place of knowing that next right step. If you had met this woman you would know she would be as scared as any of us would be. Walking into her house into a situation that was a true 911. But she accessed that place and did not hesitate to.

In emergencies, in crises, in situations where our back is up against the wall, in places where we are stuck, where we are just ground down to our knees, we do not hesitate to go deeper because we have no choice. When we go deeper, we see something we never saw before.

Cory Ten Boom asked for the un-transparent angel to come around to her. She said there is the guard, there is me, there is my sister and there is the woman behind me. The guard manhandles her sister and pushes her through. Then he manhandles the woman behind her and pushes her through. Feeling their bodies. Feeling if anything is hidden underneath. He does that to her sister in front of her and to the woman in behind her but does not even see her.

The best prayers are the ones that do not start with what I need and what I want. As a wave, we start a prayer asking for everything we need or want or think we do not have. As a wave we really do not have pretty much of anything going for us. As a mighty ocean, we are thinking about what our destiny is. About whom we can serve. About who we are. About how we can help. What we can give.

The wave is always thinking about what it can get that it does not have. The great self that we all are is thinking about what it is, what it has and knows that it has. What it is always able to give. What do you do when you have? You give by default. You are giving because you cannot help but give it away.

A way of life that works means the foundation upon which we are going to build our new house has got to be on rock. Our knowing who we are. Who are you? The wave or the ocean?

Before you leave your house, say these words to that which is greater and deeper in you and lives and moves and has your being: Show me your face. If you only have one prayer or affirmation or statement of truth, there is not a more fascinating, surprising, outrageous exercise for you to do that is going to show you how much of an ocean you contain.

Cory Ten Boom ended up in the camp with her bible. They had a special name for her barracks. The called it the crazy place because they said in there, they have hope.

That woman walked away unscathed from the man in her house. They embraced when he left.

When I finally got it through my thick skull that there was no way that a wave could stop a smoking addiction like the one that I had had for 17 years, I stepped into the ocean and asked it to do what I could not do. We cannot do it without the fullness of who we are.

Take out of hiding the greatness that already exists within you. Start to tap into it. What are you waiting for?

This is from verse 30 in the Tao Te Ching. Those who rule in accordance with the Tao, the Way of Life, do not use force against the world. For that which is forced is likely to return. Things that gain a place by force will flourish for a while but then they fade away for they are not in keeping with the Tao. Whatever is not in keeping with the Tao will come to an early end.

Forcing is a very different word than power. The Tao is not about just going with the flow of life. Being a leaf on a stream. It is about having the energy that you have, the power that you truly have, by connecting to who you truly are, the depth of you. Stepping out into the world and acting from that place of power which is a very different thing than force.

Force is the place in us that is not connected deeply. That is not rooted into something real. Putting down your deep roots and connecting to the truth of who you are. From that place, all your energy is powerful. Your presence can be felt before you walk into a room and open your mouth. It is a presence you connect to. A presence you are carrying.

Force, you are not connected to anything. Force, you are all worried about not getting what you want and think you should have. Or losing something that you have that you do not want to lose. Force comes from that place of fearfulness. Not knowing which way to go. Force is another word for manipulation. We try and manipulate the people and the things around us to give us what we want because we do not really believe we deserve them. We are always kind of on our toes. Will it happen or will it not. Force and power are two words that sound alike and have nothing, to do with one another.

When I went out looking for an apt. in New York, I cannot tell you how many places I looked at in NY where I was told it just needs a little sprucing up. You are walking in and the floors are sideways. That is, you must marry a contractor and redo the entire floor. Sprucing up is flowers and some pretty window treatments.

This journey took month after month after month. You know what begins to happen. You start with all the great intentions. I want a nice place. I want a nice guy. I want a nice job. You start with a nice full sheet of paper and you write down all your wishes. By month two, after you have looked at lemon after lemon or date after date. You look at your list and you think: I better shorten this list.

We start crossing off things on our list. When I find myself in moments that I want to shorten my list because I think what I want is too big for this world. Let me shrink my dreams to fit into a world that cannot possibly give me what I want. I need to do what the Tao says and be like an oak tree with deep roots. I need to put down deep roots and a thick trunk, so I am solidly grounded here in my body fully present.

There are some teachings that will tell you your body is not real. Go ahead and transcend your body. You are a spiritual being living a human experience. This human experience is just only a dream. It is not that important. What is important is your connection. I do not know about you, but I actually need my body. Unless you allow yourself to fully inhabit your body, you cannot fully inhabit your life. You cannot fully inhabit your power.

It is the way in which we feel our intuition. Intuition is not something that comes to us from the sky and is emitted through some kind of telepathic thing that comes to us. Intuition comes through this body as a feeling, a sensation, a voice, goose bumps, it comes through you and in your rooted-ness, you know the next right move. If you do not know the next right move, when a door closes you are just going to sit down and bang on it until it opens.

If you are looking for anything in your life. If you are wanting to increase anything in your life, then be effective. Go out into your life with your power. You cannot do that without your body. No matter how many books you read up here in your head, in the attic, unless you come downstairs into your body, you cannot digest all that information. It is just great facts and information that does not turn into wisdom.

Here in this body you must plant yourself. That is why we say stop for three seconds and take a breath into your body. Put your hand on your chest and state a simple statement that seems so silly. I am here now. Deep roots do not come from reading another book. It comes from planting yourself in this body so that the book you read can be assimilated, digested into wisdom into your next action.

So, if intuition comes through us then it tells us that my list is sound. That the things that I feel I deserve, the things I feel I need, the person that I feel I want to love me, who I want to love back can truly — and is truly — mine. I do not take a pair of scissors to the list until I cut the list down into practically nothing. I will just be happy with anything I get. We do not do that. We stand in the truth of what we know about who we are. About what we know about what we need. What our soul needs to make us happy.

On my list was I needed light. When they showed me the apartment that said this place does not really have a really great view. I do not need a great view of the water. They took me into a place that had one window in this dark apartment. When you pull up the shade, there is a wall. Not a great view but they could have gone a little further and said not any view. You could see the brick and the mortar.

After every time that I went looking for my apartment. You go looking for your guy. Or you go looking for your girl. You feel like I must be asking for too much. There is nothing and nobody out there that comes close to what I am asking for. What you do instead of going home with the scissors and begin to cut your list down or go out in the world and begin manipulating. We begin to force ourselves into a place where it is clear we do not belong. Here is what is worse: Where we are not wanted. Let us not pretend we do not know when the fit is not right. Let us not pretend that when the door closes, we do not know that that rejection means no.

. The Tao says things that gain a place by force will flourish for a time. Things will go well for a while if you push your way in to a situation that does not open to you. That does not fit for you.

For a little while things will look like they are happening. Then they fade away. Here is why. There are not in keeping with the Tao. The flow of life. They are not in keeping with the natural order of things. The natural order of things is deep roots and a thick trunk. Meaning using your power to know your right and proper place. Whatever is not in keeping with the Tao will come to an early end. That means you might have a short affair with this person, but it is not going to last. You make have a short fiery job with this boss, but it is not going to last.

You might be in somebody’s place as their roommate for a while to have a place to stay but it is not going to last because we are coming from the wrong place in ourselves. Force does not know what the next right move is. When we are in that place, we do not know what the next right move is. The first thing we see we say I will take that. First thing that looks available I will take that.

In my search for the apartment, I refused to cut down. I needed light. I am a person who needs light. I need privacy. I needed something that is beautifully done.

When I went in and I did not stop. I looked all over the city. Finally, a realtor took me into an apartment. It was on Park Ave South. and 23rd Street. A small one-bedroom which I thought was large but when I told the square footage to my family, they were like you can live in such a little place? To me, it felt marvelous because it was a one-bedroom apartment where I could put my office in the bedroom. I could put a pull-out bed in my living room and begin my business as a brand-new minister. I could have a place to honor what I did. It was more important to me to have an office than it was to have anything in the world.

The last thing I could not live without was an outdoor space. I walked in and I felt it. I looked out the double sliding doors onto an outdoor terrace. It was amazing. 25′ by 15′ sitting on the roof of the building underneath. So much so that on the walls outside of the brick was art. People would come in and do art. This is the feeling I have been waiting for.

Frog was in his garden. Toad came walking by. What a fine garden you have Frog, he said. Yes, said Frog, it is very nice. It was hard work. I wish I had a garden said Toad. Well, here are some flower seeds. Plant them in the garden said Frog. Soon you will have a garden. Well, how soon? asked Toad. Well quite soon said Frog. Toad ran home. He planted the flower seeds and said to them now seeds, start growing. Toad walked up and down a few times looking at the seeds, waiting for something to happen. The seeds did not start to grow. Toad put his head closer to the ground thinking they did not hear. He said now seeds start growing. Toad looked at the ground again. The seeds did not start to grow. Toad put his head very close to the ground and shouting now seeds start growing.

I am looking at my perfect apartment that I knew was mine. I not only knew it. I felt it. When you are planted deeply in your body in the moment, you feel the rightness of your next move.

The Old Testament said spirit will guide your feet. Tell your feet when to take a step to the right and when to take a step to the left. You have got to understand that is exactly what intuition is all about. Everybody has intuition. We are all wired for it. It is our divine compass. It is in there, but we must be grounded in the present moment. That is why we take a breath. That is why we bring ourselves back to the moment literally. I am here now is so marvelous.

I looked at her and said done. This is so what I was waiting for. She said I just wanted to let you know I showed you this place to just show what was possible. I am so sorry this place is already rented.

Forcing means you take the situation and you start arguing right there. You just go at it. You start reacting right there. You have your meltdown right there. You take your list, you cut it into little shards and say who am I to think I could live this way? Who am I to ask for a guy to love me? Who am I to ask for a job with a boss that respects me? Who am I to ask for anything?

What made me think, what made me think this works for me? When you have deep roots, you can do what the Buddhists call Hold your seat. That is why in the morning when you wake up if you have a morning practice. That is when you plant your roots. It means you sit for 5 minutes. In that sitting you think nothing spectacular happened. But later in the day, 5 days later, 5 hours later, maybe even 5 weeks later when a moment like this happens, you can hold your seat.

Then I went out and met my friends for brunch. Right down the street. I told them what had happened when we were waiting for the table. The moment the table became available I said to them I do not think I can stay because I have got to go back to that building. The realtor had told me, the managing agent, would be in on Monday morning. I could see her then. This was Saturday. I am not patient to wait for two whole days. I could not stand that. I thought let me just go back, knock on the door and see if she is in.

Toad puts his head very close to the ground and shouts now seeds start growing! Frog comes running up the path. What is all the noise? he asked. My seeds will not grow said Toad. You are shouting too much said Frog. These poor seeds are afraid to grow. My seeds are afraid to grow? asked Toad. Of course, said Frog. Let them alone for a few days. Let the sunshine on them. Let the rain fall on them. Soon your seeds will start to grow.

So, I march myself right down to 23rd Street. I go right back to the bldg. Look up on the directory for the managing agent who is not supposed to be in until Monday. Knock on her door. I am buzzed into the inner sanctum on the 2nd floor of the building. There she was behind piles of work. I walk in.

Force would have said I walk into this room and I am not leaving until I get this apartment. I will trick her if I must. I will tell her how hard my life has been. I will tell her about my bad childhood. You go in and you are going to figure out a way to make it happen. You know the feeling. Here is what force feels like. Force does not feel like power.

With power, you are connected to something greater than you. It is an effortless energy that moves through you because it is not just yours. Force is exactly what it sounds like. It is you tightening. It is a tension like a fist in your chest. It is you squeezing. It is you making. It is you having. It is you I better and I should. It does not enlarge you. It shrinks you. It contracts you. The problem with force, when you are contracted, the smaller you get the less the life force can move through you. You are closing. You are not opening and receiving. You are left to your own devices.

I am standing in front of her. I do not go any further. I decide not to say a word. When you are planted deeply what you are told to do, what you feel compelled to do, is sometime so counterintuitive we do not believe it. In our fearfulness we must start talking. In our fearfulness we must start defending. In our fearfulness we start flailing, fluttering and swirling around. In our connectedness, in our deep roots we do not have to say a word. It is the presence we are connecting to that becomes our presence that is felt.

I stood there and what I said to myself was there are no obstacles. That was my line. I did not say it from a place of I am going to twist her arm. There are no obstacles from the place of where you are connected to the source of life and your heart sings in the presence of something that you know belongs to you. There are not obstacles because there cannot be.

I said nothing and let the presence just remind me that there are no obstacles. I stood in the silence. I trusted the silence. The Tao will say that stillness and silence will yield you more than action and talking. We do not believe that. Because when we are not connected, we think everything we say…If they hear my point of view. If they just know how I feel. We figure we can talk people into things, and we can. But the Tao will tell us it will come to an early end. That is the problem with manipulation. That is the problem with force. The difference is from a place of power, when you come to an agreement, it is solid. It is locked in. It is coming from your deep, deep place.

That night Toad looked out his window. Drat said Toad. My seeds have not started to grow. They must be afraid of the dark. I will read a story to them Toad said. Then they will not be afraid. Toad read his long story to his seeds. The next day Toad sang songs to his seeds. All the next day Toad read poems to his seeds. All the next day Toad played music to his seeds. Toad looked at the ground and the seeds still did not start to grow. What shall I do? he cried. These must be the most frightened seeds in the entire world. Then Toad felt very tired and fell sleep.

A morning practice is an astonishing thing. It connects you, not only to you, but the depth of you. The reality of you. The truth of you. The you that you do not even know you are beneath the appearance of you. The entirety of every philosophy, of every spiritual teaching, of every sacred book takes us to this place and says look deeper inside of yourself. The deeper you look, scratch the surface of you, you are going to find the real you. The you that is connected to everything. The you that is connected to all power. When you find that then you are going to walk out your door, but you are going to be walking out with the presence of you opening the door before you.

I had not said a word except there are no obstacles from this place. She said to me let me show you something. She said I know why you are here. I got a call from the realtor who showed you the apartment. She said the apartment is rented. She goes into the bottom drawer and she pulls out the lease with a wad of cash on it. You had to put the first and last months in cash.

She says just take a seat and we will talk. I take a seat in front of her desk. She says let me tell you about the woman. She said the woman who rented this place, she really likes the place. She looked at a place across the street also. The place across the street had a tiny terrace.

She looked at a place was a bigger apartment with a tinier terrace. But she got this one and said I will never use the terrace. I will just put my bike out there. I got this one because I think my mother will like it better. Her mother is moving in with her.

She says I have an idea. She picks up the phone and she call the other woman. She talks her out of the apartment she took and into the other apartment saying that she really does not need a terrace this big just to put her bike in. How much more comfortable the other one bedroom will be when her mother comes.

She talked her out of this apartment and talked her into the other one. Hung up the phone. Looked at me and she took the wad of money off with the binder clip. Took the lease in front of me and ripped it into pieces. Said these words now let us start again.

Toad felt very tired and he fell asleep. Toad! Toad awake up said Frog. Look at your garden. Toad looked at his garden. Little plants were coming up out of the ground. At last shouted Toad. My seeds have stopped being afraid to grow. Now you have a nice garden too said Frog. Yes, said Toad. But you were right, Frog. It was really hard work.

If we use our force to get what we want it is such hard work. Having to manipulate people. Having to make somebody hear you. To make somebody give you what you want. To make something happen.

Here is the message of this path in a nutshell. The seeds are going to grow all by themselves. We do not believe that. We believe we must make them grow. We say life is so hard.

We have a talk called the 5-5-5 on the morning practice. It is the only talk we have on the morning practice. You only need one way of starting your morning so that you start sending down your roots into something deeper, greater, richer and bigger than you. You are connecting to the source of life. You are connecting to that which is truly great and underlies all things. In doing so you become more open and available to receive and to hear what your next right step needs to be so that you do not react, flail, force and make it so hard. When it is just you that is the hardness, not life.

The morning practice just gives you a thick trunk which means you can hold what comes to you. You can hear it, hold it, act upon it by taking that next step. In doing so you walk through this world with that powerful presence knowing when to take a step to the right and when to take a step to the left. Inspiration, intuition and guidance will give you only that next right step. When you take it, you get the next one. When you take that, you get the next one. You do not get the whole picture. You get the next right step and you get all the power you need to take it. When you do, you discover the garden grew by itself.

I got to live in a place that was absolutely the place I believed my life and my ministry began to flourish. I was in the place that I had envisioned would be a place that a person like me would be able to be happy, joyful and grow in. It is never Life that is saying no. It is just we who insist on making things happen when what we need to do is allow them to. For that we need to hold our ground.

Things that need to gain a place by force will flourish for a time but then fade away. They are not in keeping with the Tao. Whatever is not in keeping with the Tao will come to an early end. Do not use force against the world. For that which is forced is likely to return. Use the power that you have, and you will discover how doors open before you without all that work that you used to have to use to body slam them open.

Once there was a thief who had mastered the art of thievery. His exploits were legendary. His son looked up to him and wished to walk in his footsteps. The son trained hard to practice all the skills of theft that his father had. He knew that the training could not compare to the real thing. With the impatience of youth, he frequently asked his father to take him along on a heist. But his father always said the same thing. You are not ready. He said when father? When am I going to be ready? You will see.

One night the thief told his son to follow him. Finally, the son thought, a chance for some real action. Together they moved into a large mansion quietly. Once inside, the thief pointed to a door and motioned for the son to enter. The son went in and saw that it was only a closet. He turned around quickly just as the father closed the door on him and locked it. He whispered urgently father what are you doing? Let me out. Instead of unlocking the door, his father went running down the hallway of the mansion screaming thief! Thief! He ran outside the mansion and disappeared into the night.

Finally, our chance comes. We get what we think we want, and it does not look anything like what we think it is going to look like.

Years ago, I worked with a gentleman who was a furniture salesman. Probably the unhappiest furniture salesman you probably ever met. Here is this man who clearly does not want to be in that place. Does not want to be waiting on you. Does not want to be doing this. He had been doing it for 20 years.

When I met him his soul wish was to find out why he was so unhappy. We went, as we always do if you have a question, to the one place you want to go. It is a little bit deeper inside of yourself to where the answers are. Where else, who else is going to give you the answers that you need, that you want, that you are looking for except that part of yourself that knows and it knows that it knows.

Jean Houston is a great philosopher. A great teacher. She is in the forefront of the human development movement. She has been around for a long time. Her dad was a comedy writer. He used to write for Edgar Bergen, a ventriloquist. His dummy was Charlie McCarthy. She went with her dad, Jack, to bring a script to Edgar Bergen. They are in the hotel in the hallway and the door is open. They hear Edgar talking. They look in the door before the go in, they look in and there is Edgar talking to Charlie McCarthy.

He is talking to the dummy. He does not know that they are out in the hall listening. Her dad says be quiet. He is probably rehearsing. They start listening. Edgar is talking to his ventriloquist dummy. He has his hand inside of the dummy. He is saying these things: Charlie, what is the meaning of life? What do you think it means to focus on the true and the beautiful? What would a life like that look like? These are the questions he is asking. Charlie. Jean Houston is 8 years old at the time. Charlie, she said, was answering him with, like, these high and beautiful concepts. She said you would have thought that he was sitting with a sage. The answers that were coming out of the ventriloquist dummy, Charlie McCarthy, she could not believe it.

After a while her dad coughed just to let him know that they are there. He was not stopping. There was no place that they could pause and step in. Edgar looks up and sees them in the doorway. He gets all flushed and embarrassed. He apologizes. He says I am so sorry. Jack said what was that? What were you doing? He said, well, I was asking Charlie some important questions. Charlie was answering me. He said, Edgar, Charlie’s a dummy. He is a wooden dummy. You operate Charlie with your hand. It is your voice coming out of his mouth. It is your mind coming out of his of mind. He said but somehow when Charlie’s talking to me, I learn so much more than I think I even know.

What is he doing? He is accessing the place in his own deeper conscious mind that some might call the subconscious mind. The deeper conscious mind. You got to know that deep down within everybody, at the level that we call the soul’s level. The place in us that knows and knows that it knows. The place that remembers every moment in time. What happened and what it means. The story of the facts of your life and the true story of the essential, deeper story of your life. This lives inside of everybody.

When the furniture salesman came to meet with me. He is now pushing 60 years old. He has been doing this his whole life miserably. With a family and kids, bills to pay. Once you get into a job, you know, maybe you cannot get out of it as easily because you need to have it. Your wife wants you to work. You just feel stuck in this story that is just so small

He goes down to this deeper place within him. He asks this question and his soul responded to him. You were never meant to be a furniture salesman. That was meant to be a tiny little job to pay your bills when you first got married. You were not meant to live in this job and make your whole life about selling people furniture. Your destiny is you love to teach people. That is your greatest happiness. You are a natural born teacher. You love people. You love to learn. You love to help people learn.

We ask and we will always get an answer. We think we do not. We always get an answer.

His soul said you have always wanted to be a teacher. You are never going to be happy until you are. That is what you were born to do. We do not have to go searching high and low for what it is we love to do. What we love to do we would do for free. That is how much we love doing it. We would give it away. We love it so much. Our destiny is not something different than who we are. It is so who we are and what we love to do already. That is inside of us. His soul said teach.

We have our dream. We say I am ready. Why is not it here? If I know it and I want it, give it to me. So, life gave it to him. That week, literally within seven days, his boss came to him, sat him down in his office and said I think I have to let you go.

That is not at all what we have in mind. We do not want to be backed into a corner or be fired when we say we want our destiny and we are ready. We do not ask what our destiny is. We do not want to go down to that deeper place and access where the answers really are because we might be put in a pickle like that. In a position that is totally inconvenient and uncomfortable for us.

Writers will call it an inciting incident. Not exciting. It is exciting but not in a good way. It incites the energy of the story to move forward. It incites the main character to be pressed into a larger story of his life. It incites progress. What happens in an inciting incident is your story is moved forward. A writer would say here is where the plot thickens.

We love thickened plots except when the plot thickens in our life and our boss calls us in and says the job is over. I am so sorry there are younger men who are working for me who are so much happier. Who are so much more in touch with the young people who are coming in. Who love their job so much more than you. You have not been happy for a long time. You have been here forever. I am going to have to let you go. I am so sorry.

Here is what Marcus Aurelius says in his book on meditations on life. It is possible to live out your whole life in perfect contentment. Even though the whole world deafens you with its roar. Wild beasts tear apart your body like a lump of clay.

For nothing can shake a steady mind out its peaceful repose. Nothing can bar it from correct judgment or defeat its readiness to see the benefit that all things bring. Everything is turned to one advantage when he greets a situation like this: You are the very thing I was looking for

This guy, after giving his whole life to this furniture business, gets fired. The young boy, waiting for his moment, gets locked in a closet and betrayed by his father. Here is what they call the spiritual path. The Greek root of the word spiritual is this: to breathe. The teachings are all going to be given to you with one essential agenda: breathe deeply. If you understand these teachings, if you follow them, if you apply them in your life you are going to be able to walk through your life being able to breathe more deeply.

How do you breathe deeply when wild beasts tear apart your body like a lump of clay? Which is what it feels like when the plot thickens, and an incident body slams us. It is great for the writer to say I have just put so many obstacles in the path of the hero in my book. It is just so much fun to watch him overcome it. When we are that person, it is really not fun at all. Yet, there is no other way for life itself to move us in the direction of our destiny of who we are truly meant to be unless something happen. On the spiritual path, they call a divine wound. We are wounded in some way. We are left raw, vulnerable, open, feeling betrayed, feeling angry.

This is an adorable story about a thief and his son. It is charming as hell unless you are the kid. If you are the kid at eight years old, I assure you at 28 you are already in therapy. You had a dad who when you put all your trust in him, betrayed you. How can you do this to your only son? He Having a son is the most important thing. This is what he did to his one son.

This guy gives his whole life to this furniture guy who he works for in this small business. He gave his whole life that he hated to this guy and he gets fired. That is a wound.

It is a radical surprise when it happens. It is always inconvenient. It is always not what we expect. It is not what we want. What we feel like saying is I want to stop the story right here. I do not want to read another word.

But we know in stories, especially in our own, we cannot stop the story. We have ways of stopping the story. One way of stopping the story is we blame. The minute you go into whose fault it is you have put the pause button on your story. You have left the greater story of your life and you are stuck in the story of I am fired.

It starts to bring up all the feelings of you being fired. You start attracting to you all the other people who have been fired. Now you have a group of people chanting I am fired. You get together for drinks. You smoke a little J. Now you have a story except it is the story that they call the neurotic story. The neurotic story is the smallest possible story repeating over and over again. You wake up the next morning and nothing has changed. That is the problem with the smaller story. That is where we get locked in.

We land there when we do not let this wound do its job. Because we think we do not understand what the wound is. We think the wound is a mistake. Here is the truth about the wound. Marcus Aurelius says everything, everything contains some special purpose and hidden blessing. What then could be strange or arduous when all of Life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend? True understanding is to see the events of life in this way. You are here only for my benefit. The rumor paints it otherwise.

When we understand when that wound comes, the eternal has just entered the world of time and is calling you by name. Because the story in which you are living is too small for you now. Life itself, the larger story of your life, is inserting itself into this world of time. Eternity is knocking on the door of time in your life and saying, ‘time’s up’. \

He might hate being a furniture salesman, but it is better than not having a job at all. He is too old to consider how he will move to being a teacher. He does not have the right degrees for it.

The problem with the messages is they are so gentle, so darling, so kind. We journal about them. I have a feeling that I need to make a change in my life. The thing is these messages do not in any way impact us. They do not incite us to do anything Why does it have to be so hard? Why does it have to hurt? Why does it have to be so painful?

I think we already know why. The first 24 times we hear the message we do not want to listen to it. It is not inciting enough to even incite us to go do anything about anything. We wake up tomorrow in the same situation we were before. Only when the pain comes. Which is why they call it a wound. A wound does not heal until you minister to it. Something big or radical or even something wonderful or scary happens. We could get the answer to our prayer.

We think an inciting incident is just a wound that happens that something radically surprising and bad happens. The truth is an inciting incident is anything that radically surprises you and puts you face to face with the fact that you are living in a story a little bit too narrow for your soul.

Awakened by the disturbance, the residents of the mansion got up to investigate. The servants banded together to conduct a room by room search. The son had to free himself but how? An idea occurred to him. When the servants came closer to the closet, he made little mouse noises. Reacting to this, the servants unlocked the closet door to look. At that moment, the son sprang into action. He kicked the door wide open and pushed the servants aside as he went running down the corridors, out the mansion running for his life. Once out of the mansion, the son was able, finally, to get away. He made his way back home where he found his father waiting for him.

Listen to what the Tao Te Ching says. It says the difference between knowing the Truth and not knowing the Truth. We are not talking about the facts of our life. That is the smaller story. We are talking about the Truth. The Truth is the whole story. It is the story seen through the eyes of your soul. The story of your soul that knows who you are and why you are here.

It knows why you incarnated. It knows what your purpose is. It knows what your relationship to Life itself is. It knows the why of every single inciting incident of your life. It will tell you if you ask it. That is why we go a little bit deeper and asked the deeper question. The soul provides you with the truth. It is a story, but it is a deeper story. The difference between the smaller story and the deeper story. The difference between look what happened to me and why what happened to me happened to me is night and day. The Tao says the difference between knowing the truth and not knowing it, how great.

Tomorrow morning you wake up and know your smaller story, tell it, retell it, you wake up the same person. Tomorrow morning after the night before, telling the truth about what has happened to you and why it has happened to you, what it is here for. You wake up tomorrow morning, you are not the same person. In the retelling of the story at the level of the Truth, the essential story, the story of why what happened to you happened for you. In telling the story that way, in that wound, literally, what rushes through that opening is an amazing flow of universal energy that moves through you and heals you.

It is the energy that is required to heal the wound. You get the wound, and you get the energy to heal the wound once you understand what the wound is, and you call it by name. Marcus Aurelius calls it a friend. Back to the Tao. The difference between knowing the truth and not knowing it, how great. Must I fear what others fear? Should I fear desolation when there is abundance? Should I fear darkness when the light is shining everywhere? The Tao says: Nonsense.

ACIM has the audacity to say there is nothing to fear. Either all these teaching are ridiculous and out of touch with life or they know something that when we know it, it is going to change us. We will be able to see it the way it actually is. We will be able to see that everything that happens to us comes with a blessing and comes with a greater story.

The amount of the pain that we receive from the wound is going to be measured by the amount of time we have refused to hear that message. You know that message comes at least 24-48 times gently before it starts body slamming us. Giving a real pain. A real wound.

If we are in human bodies, everybody gets a dose of illness because it is a great tool for this. All these people who have come together in the healing arts to figure out what illness is discover that people who are ill are living in too narrow of a story.

When they expand the story in which they are living in, the healing forces that are in their body blocked from coming through, we also block the life force that comes in to heal every wound we have. That is the great eternal story of our life trying to push itself through into our life and awaken us into the greater story of our life.

There are two ways we can go forward when the plot thickens in our life. If we go one way, we know what the wound is. That wound is going to take us to a healing, into a life that we barely imagine could be ours. If we are going to fight with the wound, if we are going to resist the plot thickening, if we are going to be angry at it and blame. We literally stop the story right there. All that healing energy, all that life force that moves through us. Where is our new life going to come from? Where is our more money going to come from? Where is our new love going to come from? It is going to come through us. We are going to be the vehicle through which it moves.

If we are asking for something more, if we are wanting something more, it has got to come through you. For it to come through you we have got to do something. We have got to let go and release the old story of our life that is a bit too small for us. A bit too snug and maybe has been for a long time. We got to release that story and the let new story come through.

The furniture salesman met with his boss. He pointed his finger at him and said you fire me, I sue you. If we do not understand what the wound is, we do not understand that the person across the desk is our friend. We do not understand that you are just the thing I was looking for as Marcus Aurelius says. What was he looking for? He was looking for a new life. How do you get a new life? You must let go of the old one. This boss was giving him his out. If you do not know that, then your boss is a bastard. These times are hard, and this is unfair.

The boy goes home to his father. His father is sitting and waiting for him. After what his father did, he is so angry. How could you? I trusted you. Welcome back his father says. Tell me, he said to his son, how did you escape? The son gave a detailed report. When he was done, he saw his father nodding. He says now you are ready to be a thief, said his father with a smile.

How great, the Tao says, to know the difference between what is true and what is not true. When you know what is truly happening to you. When you know, as ACIM says, that there is nothing to fear. Everything contains some special purpose and hidden blessing. Do you really need to walk around this world frightened of your own shadow just because everybody else is?

Why would you walk around your life frightened of your own shadow, afraid of every possible bad thing that could happen, when there is light abounding everywhere? Everything contains some special purpose and hidden blessing. What thing could be strange or arduous when all of life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend? Whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you.

How important it is to choose, to depend, on the part of our nature that strengths us, that sees rightly, that knows the Truth, that knows what is coming at it. We call forth the part of ourselves that is within us. To be in your life and so relaxed that you can breathe deeply no matter what is transpiring because you know what is really transpiring.

All of life is pressing in and moving you into the greater story of your life. You are not leading an individual life anymore. You are leading a greater life. It is not just me and me and me anymore. It is we. You start to get connected to the people around you. Your life has meaning to the world around you. Life is always talking to you. Now you can understand its language and speak back to that conversation about who you are and why you are here. Otherwise, all of life becomes about avoiding the bad stuff from day to day that seems to hurt us and prick our fingers like thorns. Make us sad and mad. Make us angry and make us scared vs. you begin to make the decision that the new story is going to written from the part of your nature that can say these words: Thy will be done.

By ‘Thy’ we mean that greatness within us that could speak through the ventriloquist’s dummy that came from the man asking the questions himself. We have the answers. What we are saying is if we can go down deeply enough, beneath the fear. Beneath the fear that everybody has and recognize that beneath the fear is our answers. Beneath the fear is the soul.

Beneath the wave we think we are is this ocean that we truly are. What this path says is be the ocean that you are. Do not pretend that you are not the ocean. Be the ocean that you are. Look at the situation in front of you as the ocean that you are.

What part of you could ever say these words: You are the very thing I was looking for. We have got to be able to say it. The only part of us that could say you are the very thing I am looking for. Being fired is the very thing I was looking because I needed to be free. To go into my next story, I needed a pass to get out jail and I did not have the strength to do it myself. Thank you for giving me what I needed so I can now be set free.

The only part of us that can say you are what I was looking for. The only part of us that can say you are only here for my benefit though rumor paints it otherwise is our soul. Is our essential nature. Is the truth about who we are. We can begin to say these words, even if we do not feel them. We can begin to say them even if we do not trust them yet. When we can begin to say them, we are literally opening the door of that deep within us.

We are beginning to resurrect a part of our nature that has the strength. That has the courage. That has the sight to know that this wound has come not to break me, to me break me open. Not to kill me and lay me out but help me rise up out of a story I have been living that is just too small for me. We have known it for years. While we might be OK living the rest of our life in a tiny, little, narrow story. You will notice that these inciting incidents, the plot thickening, gets thicker and thicker. Everywhere you turn is just another thing that is just reminding you: why are you still here?

The greater story that is the eternal story of our life is an invitation. Is knocking on our door. It will keep knocking. It is going to hound us, literally, until we open the door and accept the invitation to live the greater story of our life.

Have our full attention because that is where our happiness is. That is where our fulfillment is. That is where the answers to our prayers are. That is where the answers to our dreams are. That is exactly why we are here. That is what we are looking for. That is what we want. It is the answer to what we want. But if we cannot see it rightly, we battle it. We blame it. We hate it. We stop it. What are we doing? We are stopping the very thing that has come, like an old friend, to help us move from our unhappy state of being into what is promised us on this path. Our perfect happiness.

A Course in Miracles (ACIM) has such a great line. Whatever it is you are seeking, wherever it is in your life that you are thinking you are not, this whole world belongs to you. Here is how you bring that forth.

It comes from the end of a poem called “Sweet Darkness” by David White: You must learn one thing, he says. The world was made to be free in. The world was made to be free in. Meaning give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. He says: Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

We have got to start letting ourselves be free in this world or we have missed the point of why we are here. Many of us have an extraordinary list of reasons of when we will be free. We will be free when: I have enough money. I am not with my parents anymore, living in their basement. My kids are out of school or in school or out of my basement. We have a list of when we get to be free.

What he is saying is we are free now. If we are not free it is because, we are in other worlds other than the one to which we belong. We are beholding to a world that is not the world we belong in. The world that we belong in is a world where everything and everyone brings us alive. That is a very different world sometimes than the world we find ourselves in. We make excuses for, well, you know, my boss does not make me alive. This job does not make me alive. Where I live, my part of town, does not make me alive. The debt I have accrued does not make me alive. My ex-husband does not make me alive. The way in which I was raised does not make me alive.

What he is saying is start removing the things and the people from your life that do not bring you alive. The only way that we have of moving from where we are to where we want to be, wherever that is, is by feeling our way there, aliveness to aliveness. It is a feeling. It is a sensation. It is going to happen in our body. We are going to know what the next right step is to take the very moment we feel that aliveness in us. It pulls us, literally, pulls us. It invites us to take the next step and to do it. From the love we have to the good love that we want to have by moving moment to moment in aliveness.

That is how important that word is. Aliveness is not just being alive. The kind of aliveness that he is talking about is the kind where you feel compelled with an inner excitement, an inner urge, an inner movement or a compelling notion to move in a certain direction because it makes you happy.

The head will say yeah it makes you happy. Would does happiness have to do with life? It is not always about happiness. It is about duty and responsibility. The heart will say it is about happiness. It is about aliveness. If you think your life is not about those things and that is not the point, then you are listening to the wrong voice. If we do not know who we truly are we cannot pursue the destiny we were born to pursue. That is all about being in our total happiness. The person telling us what life is, is the wrong part of our nature.

Telling us that duty, obligation, responsibility and whatever it is we need to bear in our life is the way in which life was designed to be. Life becomes a problem to be solved rather than a joy, an adventure, an aliveness, a happiness, and an excitement. To the ocean, there are no problems. It knows what it is, and it knows that whatever comes into its field, it can deal with. To the wave, every problem is a problem. Life becomes a matter of life and death. Everything is serious.

Listen to this poem by Mary Oliver. She says you are young. So, you know everything. You leap into the boat and you begin rowing. Listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt I talk directly to your soul. Lift the oars from the water. Let your arms rest and your heart. Heart’s little intelligence. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent penny or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a dead dog 9 days unburied. When you hear a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks. When you hear that unmistakable pounding. When you feel the mist on your mouth and sense away the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming. Then row. Row for your life towards it.

She is saying let your boat sail. Lift your oars from where you think you are going. Let the boat, the current, begin to take you. When you begin to sense and feel that the rapids are there. Where the excitement is. Where the energy is. Where the passion is. Where the falls are. You can feel the mist coming up. You can feel the power beneath you. Put your oars in and let yourself row towards that place of excitement and passion. Because that is who you are. Because that is what you are born to do.

We say if only I knew where that place was, I would go there right now. I am telling you, you do. We wait for an engraved invitation, oftentimes, to go to that certain place.

I will know it once I see the whole destiny written out for me. I will take that step and make that move in that direction. It does not work that way. It comes when you follow that moment of aliveness. When you let your boat move in towards those rapids, towards something that makes your heart beat rapidly, it is going to lead you to the next step. We say I am not going to go until I know what the steps are. All of them laid out. You are only ever going to know the next step.

When I did not know what to do in my 30s, I went to a psychic. Her room was kind of dark. She channels through this entity whose name was Tomo. For an hour he speaks to you about you. My question was what is my next right step?

Through this woman, what Tomo told me was you need to go home. You need to eat some home baked cookies. I wanted the name of the firm that I should put my resume into that would hire me and welcome me. That was the piece of advice. At that time, I paid $65 for that piece of advice. I paid my money and I went home.

It was around 9:00 at night. I was living in the Village at the time. I was living with a roommate. She said how did it go? I said I have to eat home baked cookies. That was a waste of $65. She said that sounds like a great idea. She said let us go do it right now. We got all the fixings. By the time, midnight arrived, I had had my first home baked cookie.

It occurred to me that evening. He did not tell me to have a cookie. Have a home baked cookie. What is interesting is I had never had a home baked cookie. My mom did not bake. My mom and dad were always working. They were always so busy working. They had time to feed us, but dessert was not my mom’s thing. You got fed your main meal, but desserts never were a part of it. Cookies and all the stuff that went with it. The milk. Late at night. The cuddling. The affection. That was not a part of my home.

By the time I had that cookie, I realized there was a piece of my childhood that I was actually missing. What he was telling me was take a bite out of this cookie and get something you have never gotten before that until that night I did not even know was missing. I had the cookie that night. Probably seven others just like it. There was just me and her. We are just going to eat the whole tray of cookies. It started to wake me up to something I did not know was missing.

That week an interesting thing happened. A friend of mine named John came over. He said I found this place called Manhattan Center for Living. A place that Marianne Williamson started in Soho on the East Coast. At the time HIV+ but they did not understand that yet. They called it for people with AIDS. Then she opened it up for people who are terminal in all illnesses. It was open to everybody. Everything was free.

He goes I saw a magic show there. I said really. Could I go? He goes absolutely. I said how much was it to go? He goes, it is free. Everything at the Manhattan Center for Living is free.

The following week I went to see the magician doing his thing at the Manhattan Center for Living for people who were terminally ill. When I went to that place I felt so at home. I felt like that place just had my name on it.

When I walked into the Manhattan Center for Living and realized that everything is free. She and whoever donated their time and their money for this place. Anybody who is ill could walk in and get any kind of service they wanted. I remember I thought I was going for the magician. I remember walking around thinking I belong here. Your head says oh yeah, maybe they will hire you. This is the place you are supposed to work. That is the head. That is the first place it goes. How do I get from where I am to where I need to be? What is the job? Where is the money? Show me the money. That is the head.

The heart says where is the aliveness? My heart started beating when I was in that place for reasons unbeknownst to me. I came alive in a place that was so full of generosity, giving-ness and beauty. all I could think of was that I wanted to be a part of this place. By the time I left that afternoon, I had signed up to be a volunteer.

Keep in mind, if you had asked me — just like anybody else — I did not know the world belonged to me. All I knew was that I would come to NY to be one thing in training and development. It did not work out. So, I was working in an area that I had no interest in. I had a job that we will call a bridge job. What we need to understand about bridge jobs is when you are not in the place that you belong in, you are on the bridge.

We think when we are in the place we do not want to be in and we want to be somewhere else, somewhere else is somewhere else. What we do not understand is the place where we stand is already the bridge towards that which we are heading. Whether you are looking for your true love or your true work. You are already on the bridge. How do we know that now? Because the whole world belongs to us. Which means in any direction we are going to turn, we are on the bridge headed towards that which is ours to have. It helps us to know that. I am standing on what I did not know was a bridge thinking where is my real work?

I was going to school in the seminary but my intention in the seminary was not to be a minister. My intention was simply to study with other like-minded people. As far as I was concerned, I was in the work I was not supposed to be doing. I had no idea what my true work was supposed to be. I was on this bridge thinking where, oh where, is my true work going to be? Where, oh where, is my true love going to be? It is going to be exactly where we are standing.

If the whole world belongs to us and we are looking around and we do not see, we do not find what we are looking for we need to look at what is right there. That is one of the greatest keys of understanding this whole world belongs to you. If you do not find what you are looking for; because what we are looking for is a door that looks exactly like we expect it to, then you have to look and see what is here. Because what is here is the exact right thing for you.

My path to true love and true work started by eating a home baked cookie. You would say that is just impossible. But it was what was offered to me when I went seeking it. I chose it. I went out and said yes to it because it brought me a tiny bit of an aliveness. That word aliveness is really the key. We think the answer is going to come through our head and it never does. It comes through the beat of our heart.

I walked into Manhattan Center for Living not knowing that this had anything to do with true love or anything to do with true work. All I knew was I belonged there. My heart felt so good there. We get messed up because it is not what we are looking for. It is not how it should look. It is not the person I expected them to be. It is not how I imagined it is going to be. It is not how I envisioned it should happen. But it happens the way it happens.

Our cue into making our way to true love or true work is the aliveness, the rushing, the pounding you are going to feel in your heart when you think I want to do that thing. Even when everybody around you tells you that is ridiculous. Why you going to waste your time volunteering? Why you going to give away something? Why do you not spend that time working on more resumes? Why do you not spend that time looking for a job? Why give away something that you should be paid for? The heart has no such discussion with you. It simply beats.

I go into the Manhattan Center for Living. I decide I want to do something that I would never done before. I want to do something called Story Hour. Story Hour was an idea that popped into my mind where I bring in stories to read, home baked cookies, ice cold milk, and stuffed animals for all the clients who are terminal. Who, maybe, like myself, had never grown up in a home where they got the affection, the cuddling, and the nurturing for that inner child inside of them that is now in such terror because they are dying.

Would it not be wonderful if every Sunday they came in and I did the room up just that way for that inner child? I turned the lights down, I read them stories and I fed them home baked cookies. Made, of course, by my roommate

She baked. I got all the stuff. I came in every Sunday. It turned out to be the workshop that was the most popular workshop at the Manhattan Center for Living. Who did I do it for? I did it for them, but I did it for me. The cookie started a conversation about feeding a portion of my nature that had never been fed. I assumed if it had not been fed for me it probably had not been fed for a lot of people. Once we become adults, it takes time for that inner child that might have the need to be held or comforted. Oh please, in NYC, you will be reading the NY Times. Not going to be sitting in bed reading a children’s story to yourself. It is not going to happen. We are too intelligent for that. But in that room, it could happen.

That was a wonderful experience for about six months until I ran out of stories to read. Every Wednesday, I would go to the library to get children’s stories. Not all children’s stories are appropriate. One day I realized I read all the stories that I could think of reading that were good. There were none left that I could tell. I thought well then, you will just have to write one. I had never written a children’s story in my life. But I had rowed my boat toward this experience at the Manhattan Center for Living with all these adults who were just like me. I was compensated for it by being allowed to do it. I cannot tell you what joy there was in going to the Manhattan Center for Living every Sunday and being permitted to do this fabulous workshop. It was so thrilling and so nourishing. It made my heart sing.

There is a juice of life that happens that you can feel when an idea takes you over. It brings you alive. It might make no sense at all. Your head might say this is ridiculous. It does not make a difference.

We have David White who tells us anybody who is not wishing you well towards what makes your heart beat rapidly, you need to take a second look at that person. Not everybody wishes us well. We need to come to grips with that. Many of us are holding on to people who do not wish us well.

They do not wish us well not because they bad and evil people. They do not wish us well because when we move in the direction of the rapids, when the juice of life begins to hydrate us from the inside. When we touch the living waters. It is a religious way of saying when you touch the juiciness of life, those living waters are going to bring you to life. It brings something in you to life. It might not have any demonstrable, any quantitative value in your life whatsoever. You are getting moist from the inside. That which was withering from lack of nourishment and water is being watered.

Why do people not want us to go there? It means we might leave them where they are. Because they do not want to go with us. We think if I love them enough. If I help them enough. If I carry them enough. If I put them on my back. If I make it easy for them. If I pay them to go with me, I can get them to go with me. There are people in our lives we pay to stay where they are. We think it is to get them to come with us. We need to come to a place and understand it is an effort to keep ourselves from going where it is time for us to go. The more people we must carry, the more baggage we must carry, the more we know we are not moving. Not one step from where we are. It is a great subconscious way of keeping yourself from rowing in the direction of where your heart is beating and leading you.

We need to look at that which keeps us from being alive. Anyone or anything. It seems so harsh and yet, what is harsh is the way in which year after weary year we become dried out from the inside. From lack of nourishment of joy and happiness doing what it is we are here to do. What it is we love. Being who it is we want to be because others around us might not approve. Or might not like it. Or might not want it. Or might not understand it. We pay the price. Illness is that price. Depression is that price. Pain and accidents are that price. We think that is not a price. Absolutely it is a price. It is a cry from our body saying what are you waiting for? The rapids are this way.

When had I ever written a children’s book? Never. When have I ever thought about writing a children’s book? Never. That is the head.

The heart said write a children’s book. A story for adults? I have got to do something on Sunday. I cannot come in with nothing. Cannot just give out stuffed animals and cookies. This was story hour. There had to be a story. Had the idea come before; had I not taken the steps that led me to the idea. Had I not eaten the cookie! The idea would not have made any sense at all. Would not have interested me. But I ate the cookie. I ended up volunteering in the Center. By the time the idea comes, you are going to have to write a story or else you are not going to have a story. It was the perfect next right idea with an aliveness that turned my boat around and enabled me to move in that direction.

What did it have to do with what I was supposed to do with my life? I do not know. When know the whole world belongs to us that means we are already on the bridge to where we are going. We are already there. When Native American medicine men, healers, talk to people who are sick they ask them this question. When was the last time you told your story? If we do not tell our story we miss all of these defining moments. These connective threads that lead us from one place to the next. A story enables us to go back and revisit what has happened to us and find that the way in which we got from where we were to where we are. These exact moments of aliveness where we woke up and we decided to follow that feeling in our heart that we cannot even explain why.

I wrote my first children’s story. I spoke it on that Sunday.

Yet moments of aliveness are about doing things knowing that you are following the rapids. The rapids spray you, like a moisturizer from the inside. You have begun to dip into the healing waters of life that refresh you. It has everything to do with your heart and your life force. The reason you are here. Nothing, at the moment, seemingly, to do with what can you do with this. How can you make money from it.

Week after week, I started writing stories every Sunday. I was still no closer, it seemed, to what I was supposed to be doing with my life. If you know you are on a bridge and the bridge is leading you into the whole world which belongs to you, you can rest assured, as the Bhagavad Gita promises us, that not one step is wasted. If these steps we take are in the direction of our aliveness. Even if it means we sit home all day for no reason, because there is nothing else to do but that which we want to do. That which we want to do is paint. because it brings us such joy. Then we know we are tapping into something that we cannot see; we cannot name, we cannot explain. Something that is as true as much your identity — which is your destiny — as anything you have ever done. Our identity comes calling as aliveness in our heart.

It is the feeling you get when you do it. It is the excitement of doing it whether anybody cares that you are doing it or not. Whether anybody knows that you are doing it or not.

There came a day where I wrote story after story after story after story. I thought it is such a shame to just write stories and just speak them one time on Sunday. I wish I had another place to do some of these stories for other people. I worked so hard on this story. Would it not be just wonderful if there was another place to do them? That thought made my heart sing.

What happens to us when we tell our story is not as important as why we think it happens to us. It is our explanation of why we think things happen to us that changes what happens to us. When we start to tell our story from the point of view from that larger self. From who I truly am.

The son of a shepherd or the son of a king? The son of a shepherd is going to tell a very different story of your life than from the son of a king. To the son of the shepherd all these experiences look like me filling time. Me just doing some fun things that were just kind of interesting. Kind of nice while I was waiting for something important to happen to me. The big answer to my question which clearly was not coming yet. That is the son of the shepherd. The son of the king sees the bridge and it connects the dots for you.

I went to the seminary and I asked the man who ran the seminary what he thought about the idea. if I put on, in Greenwich Village, a place for people like me. I am just a person who writes some stories and would like to share them because I think some of them are good. If there is anybody like me out there who has got talent but is not necessarily an actress or a special singer, I would like to do a cabaret one time every month down in Greenwich Village. Could he help me out by loaning me, renting me, his space where we had school?

Could I rent his space? He said you are the second person who has come to me, asking me, to do a spiritual cabaret. I said who else would be asking you? He said somebody in another class. He said let me put you together with her. She is also studying to be a minister.

Margo and I decided to put on a cabaret. We started with all the people we thought were talented and entertaining enough and we put them all together. I brought about 12 people. She brought about 12 people. We decided in the future months we would be putting out auditions in the paper and auditioning people legitimately. But right now, we would start with who we knew.

The interesting thing was the first night. I am always early. Margo is always late. The only other person who was early with me was Carol. She was Margo’s pick. There we were. A half-hour later, 45 minutes later, Margo comes with the keys. By that point, energetically, the vibe was happening.

Carol gets up and she sings. I am the MC for the evening. I also get to do my thing that I wanted to do. I got to do a reading. It began, that evening, an interesting friendship. A year later, she was still singing, and I was still doing my thing. We began to recognize how much we had in common on the spiritual path. Right at the time when we met, she was exiting exactly 30 days before, a relationship. Walking out of it on New Year’s Eve. You must really want to leave when you are leaving on New Year’s Eve. When you are walking out on New Year’s Eve saying I am so done I cannot even spend today with you

Throughout that whole spiritual cabaret, there was such an aliveness with sharing creativity with other people. There was singing. There was dancing. There were shows. We had everything. It was fabulous. What came from it was the aliveness of another person of like mind that was there for the same reason of following the aliveness in their life.

I would never have guessed at that time how to put together what I ended up being and loving – which was teaching with somebody who loved singing. Where together it became so worshipful and so praiseful that when we did it, it elevated us both. We could not wait to take other people with us in our love of what we were learning, teaching and doing in our own lives.

I would never have seen how the two would have fit. Nor the 3 churches we ended up in for the last 20 years doing what we do. It brought that aliveness. It brings you on the bridge to good love. It brings you on that bridge to your good work. They end up being one and the same. We think they are different. They are not. Not always in one and the same person. But one and the same energetically.

When Mary Oliver says when you hear that unmistakable pounding. She is talking about your heart. Do not wait for your head to tell you what to do next. It will not because it does not know how to get you from where you are to where you belong. It is not a straight line. You are not going to be the same person by the time you land there. Do not follow your head. We are talking about the pounding of the heart that says it wants to do something whether it makes sense or not.

When you feel the unmistakable pounding. When you feel the mist on your mouth. When you feel something juicy that makes your mouth water. When you feel an idea inside of you that might make no sense at all but makes you feel inside like you are coming to life. It seems like the aliveness is going to lead you into something new. Into something you have not done before. Into making a move. Something scary, something unknown. It is always going to take you a little bit outside your comfort zone. She says here is what you do. Row. Row for your life towards it. That which you are waiting to find is already there waiting for you.

You are going to make your way towards it. A bit of aliveness after a bit of aliveness after a bit of aliveness at a time. Anyone or anything that it is not bringing you this aliveness is, now, too small for you. There comes a point that it is time to choose what world you want to be in. The world that waits for you to live out the life you have come here to live. Or the one that will be filled with excuses of why you cannot. When we follow that world, we discover how dry life becomes. How barren. How hard. How difficult. How challenging. How cruel.

What we discover is it is not the world that has changed. It is us. Choose the world to which you want to belong and follow it by listening to the pounding of your heart.

There was once a king who was out hunting. He came across a beautiful young man taking care of his flock of sheep. The king went over to the boy and asked him who he was. The young man replied that he was the son of a shepherd from a nearby village. There was something about this boy’s face that so moved the king. It reminded him of his son that was stolen by his enemies when he was a tiny baby. This boy had a mark on his face that was so reminiscent of that. The king was not sure that what the boy told him was entirely true. He asked him where he lived. The boy said I live in a nearby village. The king got back on his horse, went to the nearby village, and found the man who is supposed to be the father.

He asks the man is that your son. The father of the shepherd boy says yes, that is my son. Who’s else would he be? The king was so certain about that feeling that he had that he began to interrogate the father. That is how serious he was about this. At the point of being threatened, the father backed off. He said OK, you are right. He is my son but not technically. Because technically, years ago when he was a tiny baby, I was in the woods and I came upon this little tiny baby. Somebody left this tiny baby in the woods. He would have died. I took him. I thought what a gift from heaven to have found this child. The child I did not have. I have been taking care of him ever since.

It made perfect sense to the king. The king knew his enemies had stolen his son when he was a tiny baby. Taken him into the woods and left him there to be killed by wild animals. This man found him in time and raised him as his own son. The king goes back to the young shepherd boy and tells him the truth about who he is. Once the young man realized that he was not the son of a shepherd but the son of a king, he had no choice but to accept his real identity.

We do not jump when we find out who we are. I am going to tell you one of the most marvelous lines from A Course In Miracles (ACIM). It says the will of Life is for your perfect happiness. The Tao Te Ching says something like that. It says all of life is a movement toward our perfection. It is using the same word.

The kind of perfect is the Greek root of the word that means whole and complete. When we are whole and complete, we are in our happiness. ACIM says life is a movement towards your perfection, towards your wholeness. Being what you are meant to be. Towards being the son of a king and beyond that. When you know your place, when you know who you are, something is going to happen to you that you do not have to ask for, pray for, wish for, or desire for. You are going to enter into happiness. It is going to be a perfect kind of happiness because it is not happiness that comes from something. It is happiness that comes from knowing who you are.

The shepherd boy had no choice but to accept his real identity. He had to make a choice. We have to make a choice. That is the part we do not like. In the story, there is a moment where he has to make a choice. We, too, have to make the choice of whether we are going to stand on the side of knowing we are that wave or knowing we are that ocean.

You cannot live the same life thinking you are the wave as you will when you are knowing you are the ocean expressing as a wave. Those are two utterly different lives. Somebody can push all your boundaries around when you are a wave. They would not think of doing it when you know you are the ocean expressing as a wave.

Somebody can utterly disrespect you when you think you are a wave disconnected from that ocean, on your own, doing your own thing, under your own might. But when you are in the place of your I Am, the ocean expressing as a wave; when you know you are the son of a king, as this story says, nobody would even think of disrespecting you. In fact, that is not going to be an issue in your life at all. When you stand in the place of knowing who you are, everybody is going to know it with us.

We have one problem and that problem is separation. Separation from who we actually are. From the truth. From the bigness. The largeness of who we actually are. We cannot be in that bigness of what it means to the son of a king and, simultaneously, be the son of a shepherd. We cannot be big and small at the same time. We must make a choice and we do not want to make a choice.

There is this old story. There was a great general. He was going off to battle. He was going to fight the enemy who far outnumbered him and his soldiers. He went to do it anyway. He puts the boats together. He takes the equipment and puts them on the boats. He takes all his soldiers and puts them on the boats. Off they go into enemy territory. They land on the shore of the enemy’s country. They take off all the equipment, all the soldiers. Then he gives the order to burn the ships.

Before they went to battle, he gathered them all together. He says this: Look at these boats. You see how they burn. By the time they are done there will be nothing left of them. We have no way to return home. We either win or we perish. Indeed, they won.

Why has this story lasted this long? Whether it is true or false it feels so righteous because there is a moment in our life where we must burn what came before in our life. Even if it is just a belief about who we are. We must burn what we have been dependent upon believing in. We must burn it in order not to have it anymore, so we can walk forward. We have no choice but to make the choice. If we think we can choose both, we do not move.

We have no idea why we are withering. Why we are dying inside. Why we have lost the juice of life. Why we have lost the will to live. Why we have entered into a depression and putting one foot in front of the other feels almost uphill and impossible to make the older we get. The sweetness of life is long gone. That we have only one problem and that problem is separation. It is singularly the most important revelation to understand. Because perfect happiness cannot come to us unless we know that we are oneself and we must pick which self that is.

That is a choice we must make. That is our first step towards perfect happiness. We have 100 ideas for our first steps to perfect happiness. But if the word perfect was not in there, we would be having a different conversation.

We think if it were just happiness, we would go out and buy that thing that would make us happy and we would be right. But perfect happiness requires something else. It means we have got to be in a place of wholeness, of completeness. The Tao talks about it all the time. Hold fast, it says, to the power of one.

Everything changes when we understand we have got to be oneself. We have not decided if we are the son of the shepherd or the son of the king. We have not decided if we are going to be just the wave or if we are a wave in an ocean that carries us. What is the point of being the son of a king if you cannot use the powers of the king to enlarge your territory?

There was a gentleman that I worked with years ago. When he was a young boy his mother took him out of school one afternoon. She said you must come with me. We have to go see something. They went to a city that they did not live in. They went into a strange apartment complex, to a certain apartment. Up the stairs to the front door of somebody’s apartment. She said I found this address and a key in your father’s suit jacket and that is why we are here.

She puts the key in the lock, and it opens the door. He remembers walking into the vestibule. He sees an apartment he has never seen before. But he sees clearly that a family lives here. He can see there are pictures everywhere. Couches and pillows, toys, TV and photographs all along the walls and the bookshelves of his father with this other family.

He said I had to step away from my mom for a minute. He stood against a back wall where his mother could not see him. He said in that moment he knew that life was never going to be sweet again.

In that moment, when you learn something about life that surprises you or that disturbs you or spooks you, you literally make a decision in your life: From now on. In the 20 years of doing soul sessions, those are the words it always starts with. Fill in the blank with the decision you just made about what you just learned about life and what it means about you. In that moment when something happens, you separate from yourself.

He separated from the sweetness of life and he knew it. His life was never going to be sweet again. That was the feeling whether or not he said those words exactly. That was the choice he felt was the only choice he could make. Within the month, he had diabetes. Something he had never had before. Sweetness has been an issue in his life ever since.

Our symptoms are positively genius. They are the effects of what we do not want in our lives on route to getting the happiness that we want.

Look at the words perfect happiness. Because that is what the will of Life wants. Life is a movement, the Tao says, toward our wholeness. ACIM says the same thing but it adds happiness at the end of it. I do not want to just be whole. I want to be whole and happy. The happiness that comes from knowing your place, from being perfectly here. Not hiding parts of yourself. Not being split into two which is the only problem we have.

The decision he made was completely accurate. Who would not make that decision? We learn about everything at the feet of our parents. Our parents are our gods. They are our saviors. Whatever it is we learn at their feet is ours. We end up decades later looking for happiness, forgetting the perfect part. What Life is doing is moving us toward perfect happiness.

We say perfect happiness. We have a litany of things to prove how Life cannot possibly be moving us into my happiness. And we are right because Life is not moving us into our happiness. It is moving us into our perfect happiness.

But if this were true, if I were absolutely powerless over the moments in my life, how in the world could this teaching be moving me into my perfect happiness? That is not possible because things got screwed up from the beginning over which I had no control and now cannot do anything about. That means this truth is not true for me.

As long as we do not understand that every truth is true for us, we are going to opt out along the way and say, ‘you do not know what I had to deal with growing up’. We were left powerless, dangling, with no ability to make a difference and that separation that looked like it happened to us, it is a fait accompli. There is nothing we can do.

The genius of the truth is that it is true for everybody regardless of what has ever happened to us. The truth can make a crazy promise like perfect happiness. This truth is our truth. Perfect happiness is what is promised us.

We get to choose who we are going to be. Nobody can do it for us. We have come to the place where we are poor, where we are broken, where we are begging for the few things we think we do not have. Asking for money, owing credit card debt that we cannot possibly pay off. Not knowing what we are supposed to be in our life. Who we are supposed to be. How to love somebody. How to take the weight off. How to treat our family better. Not knowing anything. We are a shepherd.

It is our job to understand that we have no choice but to choose to heal that separation. We think we do. But we have no choice but to accept that we are the son of a king or else we will not ever know who we are. We will walk around this world broken and poor, thinking that that is actually who we are. That is actually who we are because we only have one problem, and the one problem is separation from the truth about who we are. We walk around as the ‘I’, not the ‘I am’.

We walk around as the small self when all along we are the greatest Self. With the capital ‘S’. That is how the Bhagavad Gita teaches it. It tells you change the case on the word self from a lower case ‘s’ to a large, upper case ‘S’. Now we are going to find the difference is we are not the wave. We are the wave that knows it is the ocean. That this wave has every property that the ocean has.

Everything in the kingdom of the king belongs to his son. His son does not have to beg for it. Everything his father is, he is. Everything in the kingdom is his. He inherits it.

The wave does not have to ask the ocean for anything. Everything the ocean is the wave already is. All that I am I have. When I know what I am, I have everything that I know I am. When I know I am the son of a king, the daughter of a king, I know who I am. When I know who I am, I know I am the ocean and the whole ocean belongs to me.

When I know that I am an only wave and I am not connected to any of the other waves and I do not know there is an ocean underneath me, I do not even get the ocean. I have no idea that there is something other than me, bigger than me, greater than me, within me and beyond me. All I have is the perimeter of how big that little wave is going to be. All I have is what I know I am.

What does Life do when it moves us in the direction of our perfect happiness? It points to the places that are broken. It points to the places where we are lost in believing we are a poor shepherd.

It points us to the place of where our perfect happiness can be if we understand we have no choice but to accept who we are going to be. We are either the son of the shepherd or we are either the son of the king. We cannot be both. We cannot choose both. We cannot have both. We cannot hold on to the story of our childhood blaming everybody for our being a poor shepherd because we will still be a poor shepherd 30 years from now.

We must pick one. The one we pick is going to make all the difference. We must pick the one that is going to get us back to wholeness. Get us back to power. Get us back to our oneself. Which self is it going to be?

If we are carrying what happened to us as children, what was told to us as children even as second-hand faith, somebody else’s faith, somebody else’s belief, somebody else’s idea about who we are, we cannot make for ourselves the choice.

We need to find out who we are and choose to be what we want to be because we inherited a system of beliefs, ideas, and opinions that belonged to everybody but us. Many of us have people around us telling us we are the poor shepherd. All we must do is take a little walk through our Rolodex to find out how many of those people do not wish us well. Some of those people happen to be in our family.

So we get rid of some things, we get rid of some people. We make the decision we are the son of a king. Sure, a lot of people are not going to join us on that journey. We serve them better when we are broken. When we are poor. When we are commiserating with them.

You have no choice but to accept that if you only have one problem then it is time to heal that one problem. It means going back to the moment and making another decision. It means looking at a place that is painful. It means making an appointment with somebody and telling the truth about a secret you have not told anybody but carrying it makes you so sick. It is about putting down an addiction that you need to put down, finally, because you cannot move on with your life it until you do.

Thy will be done is that ocean of powerful consciousness that is dynamic energy that is what and who we are. That can be called the tree, as the Tao will say, with deep roots and a thick trunk. When we say Thy, what we are saying is the son of the king in me. Help me remember I am not the son of a shepherd but the ocean in me. Help me remember that I am not just one tiny wave in a separate, individual, lost little world about to hit the shore and disappear into the nothingness of the sand. We are calling out to the part of us that knows who we are, and we are asking that part of us to help us choose rightly.

You begin to see that everything in your life is not happening to you. It is happening for you. That all of life is a movement towards your perfect, whole, and complete happiness. Because only when you are whole in yourself can you attract another whole person to you. The only thing you are going to attract when you are a broken and poor shepherd, is a broken and poor shepherd.

Happiness comes from the place when we are in our whole place. Then having is not an issue because we have everything that we have when we know who we are. We have all that we are. If we know we are the son of the king, we have the kingdom. It dwells within us.

If I know I am a wave in a magnificent ocean that moves through me, that is me, that expresses as me, I have the command and the power of the ocean at my disposal. If I know I am not a lonely branch hanging off a tree, blowing in the wind, but connected to a tree with a thick trunk, as the Tao says, and deep roots so that when the wind comes, I am covered. When I know that, I have everything that that magnificent, strong, brave, sheltering tree has.

The first step is towards perfect happiness upon which every other kind of happiness rests. You do not have to give up anything to have perfect happiness. You simply have no choice. When you understand you have no choice, you must make that step. You burn the ship and know that you are either going to win or you are going to perish. You will win. Because everything in life is a movement toward your perfect happiness.

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