Here’s another confession I have: I dislike affirmations. Like the following:

I am important. I am the Most Important Being in Existence.

This is so because of the oneness of All That Is.

What’s there to disagree with? It goes to the heart of what humility is, what false humility is, and addresses that the perception of separation is what creates problems in the first place. It’s not about arrogance, but about letting go.

The problem is that it’s nice in theory, but the execution of getting to truly know this has its own problems.

My first taste of affirmation was as a teen. I was in a fairly screwed up family dynamic: the pushy, British stiff upper lip Borderline Personality Disorder mother (not to use labels or anything!) and being expressive, I showed my pain. This was uncomfortable for those around me, so I was sent off to healers who of course focused entirely on me. One of them, a rebirthing therapist, actually helped by doing rebirthing (conscious, connected breathing) gave me an experience of what it was like to feel intensely without too many labels. Yet another thing she did was to send me home to do affirmations. 30 of each one, handwritten on paper.

Lines.

All of them were positive, like above. All of them sounded good. Yet they also felt like punishment. Like what teachers made you do when you did something wrong.

That’s just how it was introduced to me, of course. But it’s also the essence of what an affirmation is.? It is the intellect telling the heart and body to learn something. “Hey, you! There are problems here! Learn this so the problems can go away.”

But how do you learn about the oneness of the universe and the importance of Who You Are, if you treat parts of yourself as separate from others? By shouting a command from my mind, I was treating my heart as subordinate, as the one making mistakes. And of course my heart retreated. Nothing likes to be given orders like a punished child.

There are, of course, ways to talk to the heart. And to the body. Ways in which speaking and listening become the same thing. Talk without words. Desires without expectations. Paulo Coelho calls it “The Language of the World”, the universal language. It’s the same language that enabled Siddhartha in Herman Hesse’s book to understand the universe from the sound of a river, by understanding it through this language.It’s the language of the trees in the wind when your mind stops and just observes and feels. When the mind feels and the heart thinks, and you are completely present in your body. It’s the language of Being.

So now, when I tell myself “I am important” the sense of the affirmation above, I deeply listen to the reaction of my heart. I’m not telling myself to do anything. I know I’m not mistaken or wrote in the perceiving that I’m unimportant, or even the times that it seems like this statement is a complete falsehood. I am opening myself up to Truth, which means opening myself up to my heart as well as all the reactions that come. It’s the big-T “Truth” that encompasses all the little truths, such that my heart feels pain when I really let in that possibility.

So now a conversation with my heart may look like this:

I am important. I am the Most Important Being in Existence.

Are you sure?

No. But I know it’s Truth, and I want to live it.

I know it is too, but I’m here to make sure you know it.

Is that what all this confusion and pain and believing the opposite is about?

Sure. You have to what’s not the truth before you can see the truth for yourself. For ourselves.

Even in this conversation, it is implied that my heart is something separate from who I am, and that’s obviously not the case. But that’s part of the journey of life here: we experience something as separate so that our mind can grasp just a little part of what the universe is.

It’s not equipped to see too much. But this helps us look at the little truths with more passion. The truth of the dandelion swaying in the wind. The truth of childlike wonder in running through a summer’s sprinkler and pointing it toward others in play. The truth of our own hearts. The Language of the World.

That sort of exchange is more of an affirmation of life than any exercise from an external source can be.

The bottom line is no one can truly know their importance, in an ultimate sense, until they also know that they are the universe. That is the nature of Being.

To summarize the previous article, having an imbalance of centers will restrict the perception of what choices are available. If you are imbalanced towards one center, you will only see possibilities based in that center, even if they are inappropriate ones. The imbalance creates a buildup of energy that can fixate into patterns of behavior that may not always be appropriate. Thus in the example of the person insisting on being ‘rational’ above, there is usually no awareness that there is another way to be. The consciousness is seated entirely in one center and has no easy routes to other centers, and so only sees the options from that place.

So let’s get on to… Techniques for Balancing.

Focusing on the trap

To continue the example in the first part of this series, the solution to the downward spiral of the trap (when you’re in an obsessive loop that just gets more and more dysfunctional) is to bypass this trap by using other centers in your body. What is normally recommended is moving over to the actual center instead of the part. In the case of the Moving part of the Intellectual Center (which is still in the Intellectual Center) this would mean fully Moving centered activity: going for a walk, exercise, dancing, cleaning, or certain forms of energy work. However, utilizing any other center can often help break this pattern, including higher centers.

Doing non regular activities (e.g., going for a walk in a forest) can often help anyone stop circular thought or emotional patterns. Likewise, listening to emotional music and singing along with it can help intellectual or body patterns. And finally, stopping to do a Sodoku puzzle can help distance oneself from emotional and body roadblocks.

The usual downside with using the method of focusing on the trap is not really the method itself, but how it is approached : reading material and thinking about ‘how to approach’ something means that invariably you will be using the intellectual center somewhat. Having a living teacher can mitigate this, but most people read this method from books or online. This is why doing nothing but reading self-help books rarely provides a full balance; there will always be a thought-based focus.

Balancing the centers again means knowing when and how to access ALL your natural intelligence at a given time. Some situations call for certain specialization, and allowing yourself to naturally gravitate to that portion of your entirety is much more efficient than first moving to your comfortable or “favorite” center and then struggling to move from that one to where you really need to be in order to process the situation you’re in. So the trick is, then, is intuitively knowing what center to use that works for you and having the access and openings in place to use it without effort. This intuitively knowing must be intuitive: it cannot, for example, be based in the emotional center. It is also based in a good communication between the centers being already in place, so that when one center exclaims “this one’s for me”, it is heard.

Therefore, another method is to simply focus on opening these connections.

Building up Inter-center communications

Again, when there is an open, well-used connection between all the centers, it is far more easy to see all the choices available in every moment. Like building a highway system between cities, it can take time and attention to cultivate these connections. They are all available to all of us in childhood, but for the most part blockages and decisions cause many interconnections to become unused.

The most basic example is to simply go through all of the parts of centers in the table above and practice being in them. Practise moving from center to center as Figure 2 describes: moving from the part of one center to the part of the related center. (e.g., Emotional part of Intellectual to Intellectual part of Emotional). After exploration, ask yourself these questions:

• Were you completely immersed in the experience?
• Was there an extra resource of energy that came?
• Was there a sense of fun and playful exploration?
• Did you involve other centers? (e.g., if you are exploring the emotional center and its parts, were you analysing it while doing something?)

When you are fully immersed in a center, you are tapping in to a greater resource of energy than is normally available to you. Perhaps you have seen people participating in tribal African dances. If someone does not have a background in this very Moving centered activity, then there will be an attempt to do the movement from another center. They will think about the moves, and then do the moves while watching themselves and evaluating. However, there can be a shift in which suddenly there is no thought about doing it “right” – one simply dives into the experience of being completely in the body and loving the motion of limbs, the freedom and play of intense motion. It is at that moment that the Moving center is fully activated. It is also in those moments that access to the higher centers are more available.

All centers’ energies are more available to you when there is that sense of immersion and play. University professors usually learn to play with their thoughts in order to keep the joy and energy going of a purely intellectual experience. Emoting actors must have a great sense of play to keep the energy repeated throughout every performance. Balancing the centers is work, but for it to work, there must be a great deal of play as well.

It is useful in the path of balancing centers to have a series of exercises that aid in experiencing other centers and communication between parts of different centers. Again, this is because trying to learn something exclusively from printed words is a surefire way to keep yourself in the Intellectual center. Some exercises can be done alone, but it is recommended to do things in a group, or at least one other person. It is much easier to trick yourself into keeping to a familiar center when you’re alone. In a group there is a natural play and family feeling.

Here are some exercises that may help revitalize connection pathways between your centers.

Exercise 1: Instinctive-Moving Center connection

The instinctive center governs instinct, basis processes of the body, and a repository of memory. This exercise comes from Vipassana Buddhist meditations.

First, sit (or stand) and do nothing but pay attention to the breath. For a few movements, watch the inbreah and outbreath. Notice how it affects every part of your body. Notice the rise and fall of your chest, the gentle sensations in your nostrils or mouth, and how each breath creates a tiny motion everywhere in your body. Watch the impulse to breathe and the internal sensations. Enjoy the moments and, after some time, play with your breathing. How does pausing at some point feel? What parts of your body will speak up then? Simply notice and listen, then go back to playing.

The next part is a moving meditation. You will be noticing your body as it very slowly walks back and forth in a straight line. Ever so slowly, notice shifts in your weight. Notice all the movements in your body, from your breath to how your arms help you keep your balance. Notice the impulse to move and how it connects to your muscles. Again, play with your motion and notice the results.

Now, after this is done, evaluate yourself: did you immerse yourself and feel alive and in that state of play? Did you become somewhat childlike? Was there a joy in simply being alive? There is no “right” way to do this exercise, but these are signs that you are activating the energy of other centers. If you feel there is still more connection to be had, find some way to do things differently. There is always a way to turn a ‘chore’ of an exercise into a playful exploration.

Exercise 2: Emotional-Moving Center connections (group)

This exercise must be done in a group of at least 3 people, preferably 5 or more. Because Western society is primarily Intellectual centered, this exercise is extremely beneficial to most people. It also usually creates a good amount of laughter and fun.

It is something called “impulse passing”. It is to be done as quickly as possible, without pausing to stop for thought or to collect one’s self.

In this exercise, an impulse is simply an emotive sound and a movement. It can be any combination of the two. The sound should not be a word, but rather a sound with emotion attached such as “aiiigh!” or “blech” or “ooOoooo” or an animal-like sound. Again, it can be any sound you wish it to be so long as it is not a word. The impulse movement should ideally involve as much of the body as possible and be able to be performed in about a second. It could be making monkey faces, a mock punch, a wiggling of the feet or body, pulling one’s hair, etc. It should not touch others, but other than that, anything is allowed.

The group should arrange itself in a circle. The exercise is first done between adjacent people. An impulse is passed between individuals by one person showing an impulse, and the other person “receiving” it by repeating it. The receiver then creates a completely different impulse to the original person or the other person adjacent to them. Again, it should be done as quickly as possible. Usually when there is a pause it is a sign that another center is in operation. Emotional and moving centers react very quickly; there is no need for pauses here. (This does not mean people should not be cracking up with laughter, of course!)

It takes a little time for people to be comfortable with this, but is great as an introduction, to shift energy, or simply to allow more room for the Moving Center and Emotional Center.

After some understanding of the exercise is achieved, a slightly more advanced version involves passing multiple impulses in different directions around the circle. Care must be achieved to not lose impulses; it requires people to pay attention to the circle. If someone is “caught” with multiple impulses being passed to them, one “giver” will have to keep repeating the impulse until they know it is “received”. Still even more advanced variations involve passing across the circle by eye contact.

This is a wonderful exercise because when there is no pause between impulses, it is virtually assured the intellectual center is not engaged. It is also extremely playful and draws a group closer together.

Exercise 3: Moving / Emotional / Instinctive Center

This exercise can be done alone, but it is best done with a group of people doing the same exercise together.

In this exercise, you lie flat on a floor. It can be a carpeted floor or on a mat, but it should be comfortable and give you free range to move a little from side to side and not bump into people.

The instructions are to breathe, connect to your diaphragm, and express as sounds or movement. There is always something in your body to feel and/or express. Often this comes out simply as laughter. You do not require an intellectual understanding of what is going on. Allow things to come out either via motion (without getting up) or via sounds.

When you connect to your diaphragm, there is often laughter there. Allow this to come. It is easier to connect with it when surrounded by a group doing the same process and a “model” to look at. If the connection does not come at first, practise nudging it a bit by forcing a little laughter and seeing if it connects with something. Don’t force too hard; this is about connecting, not doing something the “right way”.

What can occur is an “ecstacy-agony” cycle, where laughter connects to sorrow/pain, which brings one back to laughter again. Doing this regularly can help bring non-attachment to emotional states: each state will always flow into another when nothing is resisted.

Again, this exercise is hard to describe without seeing a good example in front of you, but if you try doing it with at least one partner, it can lead to great discoveries.

This exercise is difficult for most people because there is an assumption that things need to be “there” in order to feel and express something. So laughing for “no reason” is considered impossible without faking it. However, there is no such thing as a void in the universe. What this means is that there is never a place with no emotion in your body. There is never a time that you are feeling nothing. You also have the power in your consciousness to shift your focus to different parts of your body and feel different emotions there. What most people describe as “feeling nothing” is either feeling a calm peace, or feeling a block of some sort, depending on the ‘heaviness’ of the ‘nothing’. This exercise can also bring up energies stored in the instinctive center, and so can be wonderful as part of a healing process.

Conclusion

These are some examples of exercises that are available. I haven’t listed intellectually centered exercises because most of them are well known. Psychological exercises tend to be about the Intellectual-Emotional connection, while formal dance, martial arts, and movement meditation tend to be about the Intellectual-Moving connection. It is very helpful to invent your own exercises, as this brings a sense of your own play and creativity to the process.

Balancing the centers and building up communication between all the centers in your body is a lifetime project, much like working on childhood issues and fears that block your perception. There is thus no “magic” fix to do it immediately. It takes patience and some discipline, but also a sense of play that is the primary way to be willing to move to completely different modes of perceptions and experiencing life.

Please feel free to suggest other exercises here!

Question: I’ve come across the topic of enlightenment so often lately that I’d like a clear perspective on it. I find the idea confusing because it seems to be a worthy aim for the spiritually focused, yet it is said that those who say they are enlightened are not, and others say that it is better to work for personal maturity rather than enlightenment. Others say that it’s no fun being enlightened, while others say it’s pure bliss. So what is it really? How to get there, what does an enlightened life look like in our here and now life?

The concept of enlightenment, I find with some humor, is one which is filled with much non-enlightened thought: that is, thought based in separation and ‘ego’. Firstly, the concept is a label for an experience decidedly without labels. It is an experience of utter freedom â???? but whatever thought you have of what enlightenment is will always be accumulated from others. It is again, something someone else tells you is a better way.

Second, in most people’s thoughts it implies an end to growth, conflict, and issues. Once this magical state is achieved then there is nothing more to learn; one can live in bliss. It is thus a more new age equivalent to the concept of heaven.

Lastly, there is the assumption that enlightenment is ‘better’ than what you are experiencing at this very moment, in the Now. It is separate from what you are in this instant. It is somewhere you have to get to.

Some others’ references to enlightenment:

• In Hinduism, it is moksha, a final release from one’s worldly conception of ‘self’.
• In Buddhism, it is the end of suffering. The mind is free from craving, anger, and other afflictive states.
• In David Hawkins’ levels of consciousness in Power versus Force, it is the level at which non-duality is perceived.

It is the latter which seems to describe it for me, but there is of course value in all of them. When reading, it is always easy to intellectualize the concepts, which is very hazardous when dealing with something beyond the intellect. The key is the usage of perception in the description. It is not something you take a pill for, to transmute “bad” energies into “good” ones.

Channeling

To give the perspective from the “other side”, we asked about enlightenment when channeling :

We find no particular merit to the term ‘enlightenment’ other than in acknowledging for you the possibility for greater awareness of Love. You are already complete simply as you are. By this, we mean that you are All That Is, and nothing less.

Within this completeness, of course, is a universe of range for experience and perception. You can experience complete separateness and disunity. You can never actually be less than All That Is, but within your entire being you can experience extremely limited perceptions.

The perception that most people would call ‘enlightenment’ is simply an awareness of the fundamental interconnection of All That Is. Because it is a perception, from this state there is nothing that happens to you (an external force operating upon you) but rather simply experiences of you meeting your Self. Externally this looks identical.

There is thus no true need to transform negative emotions or thoughts, because you are All That Is, which includes them. Having different perceptions of what these energies are leads to radically different experiences. It is hard to see the interconnection and oneness of All That Is while disowning parts of yourself, but it is still possible to choose this. Indeed, while having expanded perception you see the beauty and wonder of all choices.

This perception is of course not an end, but rather a beginning. Greater perceptual awareness will always lead to more energy, more growth, more freedom, and more possibility. The perception of oneness is not the same as the experience of it, which is what the soul craves; to know Self through experience. This you are already doing.

And so, we wish you to understand that you are already engaged in the process of knowing and loving your Self, whatever you may be doing. Enjoy your process. It is the process that is important, not the “result”. From here comes the old adage: you are already enlightened, but you simply do not perceive Who You Are.

Those who advertise

It is of course true that those who advertise their state as enlightenment as ‘better’ are not likely to be in this state, for then they would not see it as ‘better’. It may be there are those who perceive true oneness are in a state of pain. Ramana Maharishi had painful cancer in the final year of his life, but was said to be peaceful and serene through the pain. Again, it is the Zen koan: “Zen is like a finger pointing at the Moon”. It is much more helpful to know the moon: point towards your Self.

And so if you perceive Who You Are, are you really any different? Is it any better? Again, that is your choice. There is nothing lost and nothing gained, for you are always Who You Are.

To honor this, I thought I’d share some channeling surrounding what healing actually is. Any similarities to actual persons in the examples are 100% not an accident. Nothing is!

On to the channeling…

Questions: What exactly is healing? How does one “do it”? It seems like a lot of times we think of healing as “getting over it”.

When we use the word ‘heal’ or ‘healing’, we are talking about allowing something to revert or assume its natural state. Most of you go through your lives with some part of you either physically or emotionally in a other than natural state. This creates conflicts and imbalances which allow you further opportunity for learning and growth. Healing, then, allows those parts of you to revert to their ‘normal’ state: A state of rest, a state without conflict, a state of peace.

Let us suppose there is a man who has some issues surrounding touch. They come for a variety of reasons, and mostly relate to his feelings that others have had a lack of regard, a lack of acknowledgment for who he is. This lack of regard or acknowledgment manifested in various ways, depending on for whom it came, but this has been a pattern in his life and has created a sense of internal conflict for him. On the one hand he feels he should accept touch, but a part of him wants to say ‘f*ck you’ (actual channeled words!) to himself and to all those others. So, how to heal this? What has he done to heal it? What will allow this situation to revert to it’s ‘natural’ state?

A lot of this depends, of course, on choice. There are myriad possibilities for what this natural state could be. There is no one right answer. In the case of healing of physical malady, a burn on the skin, then one would expect the cells of that part of the body to end up looking like, feeling like, and acting like the ones that were there before the injury. Well, what if the choice is to hold a memory of the injury as a reminder for something. In that case, the body could create scar tissue that would serve as a reminder. It would feel different and it would look different. Who decides which one is the natural state?

So let’s go back to the man.? As we see it, he has many possibilities open to him, and any one of them could be (if he wanted them to be)? his new natural state. It’s a matter of perception. And he could change his mind about it at any time and choose something else. The only real choice then, is choosing whether to experience this as conflict or choosing to create a different perception.

Question (follow up): So what would be a different perception of this conflict described above?

Why must he choose one or the other of acceptance and ‘f*ck you’? Why should they be mutually exclusive? Why can’t he have both? Again, it’s simply a matter of perception. The perception that one or the other is wrong is simply a perception he has decided to accept. The perception likely came from social or cultural or familial sources, but he is in a position to choose to accept or not to accept any of those perceptions that he has adopted in the past. The trick, then, is in figuring out what he wants and using that as his perception. What he wants. We don’t say that is an easy process, for often what you want is covered over by what you think others want. And allowing yourself the freedom to identify what you want is often difficult.

Although to some people channeling can seem a little ‘cold’, being present with the energy is one of the warmest, loving experiences I know. It’s also detached. This may seem contradictory, but to me goes hand in hand with the entities involved loving us so much they would never interfere with our choices and learning. There’s also a sense they give us that they don’t see any ‘problems’ with us, even pain. It’s their perception of perfection in all my experiences and my past that greatly aids me on my journey.

Too add to the last paragraph, I notice when I’m being asked “what do you want?”, there’s really no “you” in that statement. Look into the eyes of the next person asking you that. It’s more like “what desire is there?”? This is a real symptom of a consumerist culture – there’s little curiosity on who the person is we interact with, even our selves. Imagine the confusion of a teenage boy when being asked this regarding his future career. Knowing what you want goes hand in hand with knowing who you are, which is the spiritual journey in a nutshell. Acknowledging the magnitude of this question brings a great deal of self-honesty and reflection, resulting in a sifting through what we’ve been told we want from the inner radiant desires from within. We all can grow out of what we’ve been programmed to be and inhabit the magnitude of what we are.

I hope it’s helped you as well!

Many think of letting go as either a psychological process or a sacrifice. We’re often told to ‘let go’ of struggles and desires after things don’t work out. Buddhist teachings can advocate us to ‘let go’ of attachments. Though this is in essence a very positive thing, in many I’ve tried to help these thoughts can lead to a subtle force of conformity directed at the Self. There is a sense that one should change in order to let go. One should conform to the image of non-attachment. However, this creates a backlash: any kind of desire to change one’s self causes resistance in response. This was part of the true teaching of Siddhartha Gautama, which has been left to us as ‘desire causes suffering’.

Instead of thinking of letting this way, look at it in a new light: as surrender. That is, as the release of all expectations and desires to control the experiences in life. In letting go, there is a complete surrender and trust to the expansive magnitude of the present moment. This is a space which can be called “The Void”, as described in a previous post. Because of the absence of expectations and control, there is an expanse of pure openness present. This is like the darkness before the dawn; anything can come from that space. It is a supply of pure potential, of mythology and dreams and abandon all at once. The birth of the universe is literally there when there is no attempt at control, and new directions in life can appear in a moment’s notice. These are the benefits of ‘dark nights of the soul’.

In my own life, this has been a great season for letting go. I got let go from my job, I’m having a serious illness where I can’t walk without stumbling and get disoriented easily from walking a few hundred feet. Long seated emotions from abuse in childhood have been coming up along with all the emotions attached to them – volumes of sadness, rage, and self-hatred. Even though these changes have limited me in so many ways â???? my career, health, and emotional well being â???? there is not a helpless feeling surrounding them. In a strange way, surrender is extremely empowering.

Surrendering completely to an experience is something that requires great trust. For instance, say I am having doubts as to myself being a ‘good person’ because of childhood abuse. I have angry, shameful, and painful feelings towards myself and others, and the thoughts arising from this feeling-world are in conflict : some believe these feelings and support them, while others don’t and say that these conclusions are wrong. The thoughts are at war. I may create affirmations for myself surrounding my own worth, but these merely support one side in this war. Even if that side wins, it will only be a temporary victory; no one can ever destroy any part of themselves, only suppress it for a time. Surrender goes beyond sides; it goes beyond duality. It is seeing the oneness of both ‘sides’, and inviting this into a daily experience.

True surrender involves letting go of all preconceived notions. This means that to surrender to the experience of self-doubt, anger and shame, one must let go of any thoughts that joy is better â???? or even that joy exists. For that one terrifying moment of true surrender, there is nothing else other than the experience in front of you. If it is pain, there is nothing but pain. If there are attacking thoughts, there is nothing but them. There is an openness to concluding that I’m ‘bad’ if that’s what I see. All of this arises from an immense soul-driven commitment to know the truth about Self, no matter what.

It is the desire for Truth above all else that drives us to know Love.

The paradox of surrender is that the more you surrender to uncomfortable experiences, the more you will rest in joy. This is not truly a paradox, but merely an expression of what joy is, as also described previously. Joy is your natural state; a state of not resisting. Whenever there is no resistance, no matter what is the experience, there will be a quality of joy.

This also relates to what knowing is. Within the experience of surrender, which is to say within the experience of not knowing, is a deep knowledge. This is beyond the knowledge of things, of labels, of science and form. This is the knowledge of experience, of seeing how the flow of life moves within you. It is this knowledge that forever ingrains a fundamental trust in the universe, and it is this trust which dispels fear.

Put more succinctly:

Only those who are certain of nothing can ever truly Know.

These connections with others are a foundational part of living. Without them, we would quite literally go insane or feel tormented, as those in solitary confinement in prison sometimes do. Exploring connections is hard wired into our bodies, and even when lives of relative isolation are lived, there will always be an element of this exploration.

Exploring longer term connections, the depth of them, is termed ‘a relationship‘. We all have different preconceptions of what a relationship is – as many preconceptions as the word ‘love’. It is in longer term relationships that we meet the dichotomy between these preconceptions and what is head on. Conflict can be the natural result. We also see how much the ideal of ‘relationship’ we have works within ourselves, for we can try to fit ourselves in a mold very easily in an attempt for intimacy. It is a dance with essentially the present moment, Now.

In this dance of intimacy, which can also be termed ‘knowing the Self’, I’ve identified two fundamental forces and motivations based in Love:

• Knowing Love through interconnection. This is the desire to know one’s wholeness and completion through seeing how fundamentally interconnected we are with others. We connect with others via sharing ideas, emotions, and space, and feel the joy that comes from this experience of oneness in whatever form it takes. It is a desire to fully experience the knowledge that you are not separate from anything in the universe.
• Knowing Love through autonomy. This is the desire to experience wholeness simply by being exactly who you are in this moment. In other words, it is the sure knowledge there is nothing lacking in you, and that nothing can be found in another that cannot be found in the Self. There is thus no empty need for connections with others. There is nothing you can ‘get’ you cannot find already there, and so there is no need for any pretense in order to gain anything externally. All of the universe is within you.

These two forces sound diametrically in opposition. Most people place more emphasis on one than the other; some are focused on new experiences and connections at all costs, and yet others are about maintaining and building identity. Yet the paradox involved in all this is that they are not separate at all. Wholeness is found both in the universe and in the Self, without conflict. ‘As within, so without’ was the maxim of the alchemists studying inner transformation. This has parallels to the psychological concept in Bowen family systems theory of differentiation. A healthy balance is obtained by a core self that is maintained in the midst of stress and deep connection. The oneness of the above concepts shows itself in the world through the fact that the depth of your connection with others is always equal to the depth of connection you have with your Self. Again, this is not theory, and it is not simply in the long term. It is a truism of every moment of your life. When you lose connection with Self, you may indeed feel ‘highs’ of connection with others, which can feel as intense as opiates. But this connection always feels around the corner, not Now. This law of connection is itself an expression of the oneness of the universe.

Relationships are the most visible manifestation of this oneness. If a man feels inner lack, or emptiness inside from not being connected to Self, then it is common to seek someone in a relationship to fill this apparent void. He might even obsessively seek more and more connections with others, seeking to know wholeness through the eyes of many others. But because of the utter unity of inner relationship with the Self and outer relationships with others, this soon manifests as co-dependency, conflict or other ‘problems’, even in short term relationships. I also see this in nightclubs and dance events; when others are in close proximity and there is no firm knowledge of Self (autonomy), then there is a natural diving into others that is in essence a giving away of the birthright of knowing wholeness. It often pleasurable, but it will always contain seeds of experiencing the separation the action comes out of. This is not a punishment, but a continual invitation to know Self.

The other side of it is common to those involved in spiritual quests, as I was:

When I was in my twenties, I was coming out of a very isolated and empty family. Because of the framework and pains I had accumulated through childhood, connections with others were painful, and I thought that heavy meditation was the answer. Eventually I would ‘get it’ and find enlightenment. I was determined to find the wholeness in myself, so I would retreat into long meditations and avoid connections with others until I obtained this. Of course, the denial of the interconnection with others led to even more disconnections within. Depression continued and I thought that I must not be meditating hard enough. It took a lengthy trip to India to see that I was literally trying to cut off part of myself in order to find ‘wholeness’. This in itself was violence to myself, and it took me some time to recognize this. On my return from India, I immediately dived into a tumultuous and emotionally heavy relationship, which was necessary on my path to balance and knowing Self.

The ultimate expression of Love in this world, is seeing another as Self. This is not a theoretical statement, but a simple expression of the non-duality that is underlying all of life. If you look at the two forces described above, in fact the only way of harmonizing them without conflict is through this perceptional transformation. This is in fact what the root of the Hindi word ‘Namaste’ is. I see that we are truly one, and I honor this unity.

You could think of a third force in addition to the two above, a neutral force. This is referred to as “the observer”, “the ether”, etc. It is a state of potential, of simply being and allowing. It provides the framework that lets harmonization occur, where “the observer becomes the observed”, as Krishnamurthi said.

So then, given this state of the universe, how do we experience this oneness? How do we know Self, and truly experience the joys of the interconnection with all aspects of life? According to Gandhi, ‘The ends are the means’. As superficial as it sounds, it is good to ask yourself how you would act if you knew the truths above in every aspect of your being. Would you still look for the same distractions? Would you not look in the eyes of those surrounding you in life? Would you still have the same short, shallow breath through much of your day that keeps you from experiencing what is actually going on in the present moment?

There is no substitute for experience, and the greatest lessons are always obtained by completely being present in life, without any escapes or attempts to be anywhere else but Here or Now. When disconnections have been built, it is of course natural that the first experiences would be painful, but this is nothing more than an awakening of awareness. And it is through awareness â???? being fully and utterly conscious of Self and others in their completeness â???? that Love is manifested on this Earth. Is this not what we all wish to bring?

Question: There is a concept across many traditions of inviting or surrending to ‘The Void’. What exactly is ‘The Void’, and what is the process of surrendering? What can be gained by it?

A simple way to describe the Void would be absence of all expectation. In other words, a total acceptance of what is. Not what could be. Not what should be. Not what might be â???? but simply what is. We have noticed that the concept of accepting what is is paradoxically simple, yet inherently complex. It is difficult for the human, caught up as you are in the illusions of life as a human, that is, possessing a body, interacting with others and perceiving things simply on a physical basis, to consistently recognize that there is so much more, and yet at the same time so much less than what it is they perceive. To be completely immersed in the Now, then, requires such a large degree of trust that one has no need to manipulate reality to become anything more than what it is.

The void, then, is again the absence of all expectation and a complete immersion into all that is the present. This ‘all’ must include, of course, all your dreams, desires, pain, love, and humanness. So a complete acceptance of all these things takes place for one to take place in the Now. Simple, yes? Yet when you consider each element, each one seems to bring with it so much more, so many issues, so many requirements of your time and energy and thought, that it seems impossible to divorce yourself from those in order to reside completely in the present. We remind you, then, that there is no need of course to separate yourself from all that you are. There need only be the joyful expansion of your perception to embrace all that you are into this one present moment.

Surrendering, then, to this absence that also includes everything requires, as we said, an enormous degree of trust. You must trust yourself. You must trust your perceptions. You must trust that you are not truly separated from any part of you. And you must trust that this joyful expansion can actually take place. We invite you, then, to dip one toe into the Void this time with us.

Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Place your awareness, if you will, on a spot located on your forehead between and above your eyes, often referred to as ‘the third eye’. To enhance sensitivity you may likely massage this area. While breathing comfortably and deeply, bring your awareness then to this spot. And as you do so, notice how it grows. It grows to encompass all that you are, all that you ever have been, and all that you ever will be. Notice too the sense of love and acceptance that comes simply with this noticing. Embrace all your former selves and all your future ones. Breathe them in and allow them to take stronger presence within your present self body. Trust that all these selves hold for you the information you most need to know right now. You may or may not ever be consciously aware of this information, yet it is yours at this moment. Breathe in again and let out that breathe, letting go of any expectation of what any of these selves bring you. You feel it leaving your body. Place your hands over your heart, and seal in that awareness to hold within you forever.

By regularly exposing yourself to the Void, you increase your conscious awareness of your own trueness and all the potential that lies within you at all times. In other words, by learning to surrender you become a more complete and whole person.

It is often implied that the fear of death is the basis for all fears, and that it is by experiencing a form of death that true transformation can occur. How does the Void relate to this fear of death and the transformation referred to?

The concept of death is indeed a frightening one to most people. We would say that it is no accident that there are parallels between the concepts of death and the Void of which we speak. In each case, that spark within you that is You is always maintained despite outer transformations that are taking place. In the case of what you refer to as death, it is simply the physical body that transforms. Everything else about you â???? your hopes, desires, dreams, and memories â???? are still retained, and always are a part of the You that you are in this life. There is an aspect of death to the transformation that occurs when one surrenders completely to the Void, but again, that inner spark of You-ness is always retained despite external transformation. The transformation that occurs when one surrenders to the void is not one that is necessarily physically apparent. Yet it is one that allows the fullness and completeness of you to emerge as if to play.

It is the fear of transformation itself, then, that is the root of the fears of death and the fear of surrendering to the Void. It is natural to attempt to hold on to what one has been, for that is all one knows. However, if you alter your perception so that you can embrace all that you will be, your fears of transformation, whether from death or from surrender to the Void will be eased.

If you have questions you think would be good to get channeled answers for, please leave a comment!? Thank you!