The misuse of the word God gives rise to absurd Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness.

beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but
consciousness does not need thought.
Being is your very essence.
No-mind is consciousness without thought.
It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a
shadow of fear and suffering. All true artists, whether they know it or not,
create from a place of no mind, from inner
The compulsive thinker, which means almost stillness.
everyone, lives in a state of apparent
separateness, in an insanely complex world of Emotion is the body’s reaction to your mind.
continuous problems and conflict, a world that
reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of Make it a habit to ask yourself: What’s going on
mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of inside me at this moment?
being ‘at one’ and therefore at peace.
Don’t analyze, just watch.
We are suffering because we are thinking.
A vicious cycle builds up between your thinking
Your mind uses you. and emotion: they feed each other.

You believe that you are your mind. The harder the mind struggles to get rid of the
pain, the greater the pain.
There is vast realm of intelligence beyond
thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of
intelligence. deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs
in the stream of thought.
All the things that truly matter—beauty, love,
creativity, joy, inner peace—arise from beyond Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you
the mind. You begin to awaken. have freed yourself from mind dominance.

Many people live with a tormentor in their head Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being, or
that continuously attacks and punishes them and rather three aspects of the state of inner
drains them of vital energy. connectedness with Being.

Watching the thinker – listen to the voice in your The very thing that gives you pleasure today will
head, be there as the witnessing presence. give you pain tomorrow, or it will leave you, so
its absence will give you pain.
You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy
arising from deep within: the joy of Being. Real love doesn’t make you suffer.

Direct the focus of your attention into the Now. Even when the sky is heavily overcast, the sun
hasn’t disappeared. It’s still there on the other
You are highly alert but not thinking. side of the clouds.

There is one certain criterion by which you can The Buddha says that pain or suffering arises
measure your success in this practice: the degree through desire or craving and that to be free of
of peace you feel within. pain we need to cut the bonds of desire.

One day you may catch yourself smiling at the Be there as the observer of the mind.
voice in your head, as you would smile at the
antics of a child. Be the Buddha, be ‘the awakened one.’

It causes a serious leakage of vital energy. They started to perceive themselves as

meaningless fragments in an alien universe,
In the ego mode, the mind is so dysfunctional. unconnected to Source and to each other.

Even when the ego seems to be concerned with Emotional pain is the main cause of physical pain
the present, it is not the present that it sees: it and physical disease.
misperceives it completely because it looks
through the eyes of the past.
Every pleasure or emotional high contains within The reason why you don’t put your hand in the
itself the seed of pain. Its inseparable opposite, fire is not because of fear, it’s because you know
which will manifest in time. that you’ll get burned. You don’t need fear to
avoid unnecessary danger—just a minimum of
The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. intelligence and common sense.

The more you are able to honor and accept the You can always cope with the present moment
Now, the more you are free of pain, of but you cannot cope with something that is only
suffering—and free of the egoic mind. a mind projection—you cannot cope with the
future.
Time and mind are in fact inseparable.
All fear is the ego’s fear of death, of annihilation.
Don’t create any more time, or at least no more
than necessary to deal with the practical aspects To be wrong is to die.
of your life.
Power over others is weakness disguised as
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you strength. True power is within, and it is available
ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of to you now.
your life.
Ego needs to be both defended and fed
Have your dwelling place in the Now and pay constantly.
brief visits to past and future when required to
deal with the practical aspects of your life Death is stripping away of all that is not you. The
situation. secret of life is to ‘die before you die’—and find
that there is no death.
Say ‘yes’ to life—and see how life suddenly starts
working for you rather than against you. The study of madness isn’t enough to create
sanity.
Accept—then act. Whatever the present moment
contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. End the delusion of time. Time and mind are
inseparable remove time from the mind and it
To want more pain is insanity. stops—unless you choose to use it.

All pain is ultimately an illusion. To be identified with your mind is to be trapped

in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively
A mere belief doesn’t make it true.
through memory anticipation.
Unconsciousness creates it; consciousness
The past gives you an identity and the future
transmutes it into itself.
holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in
whatever form. Both are illusions.
Everything is shown up by being exposed to the
light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself
Time isn’t precious at all because it is an illusion.
becomes light.—St. Paul
What you perceive as precious is not time but the
one point that is out of time: Now.
Watching it is enough. Watching it implies
accepting it as part of what is at that moment.
The more you are focused on time—past and the
future—the more you miss the Now, the most
When there is anger, there is always pain
precious thing there is.
underneath.
There was never a time when your life was not
This is the esoteric meaning of the ancient art of
now, nor will there ever be.
alchemy: the transmutation of suffering into
consciousness.
Nothing happened in the past; it happened in the
Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it
Unconscious fear of losing your identity will
will happen in the Now.
create strong resistance to any disidentification.
The future is the imagined Now, a projection of
You would rather be in pain—be the pain-body—
the mind.
than take a leap into the unknown and risk losing
the familiar unhappy self.
Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the
Now.
What, at this moment, is lacking? If you create no more pain for yourself, then you
create no more pain for others.
If not now, when?
If you have been in a life-or-death emergency
Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. situation, you will know that it wasn’t a problem.
There is no greater obstacle to God than time.—
Meister Eckhart They have unconsciously defined their whole
identity in terms of their problems or their
My mind cannot know you, only labels, suffering. Who would they be without it?
judgments, facts, and opinions about you.
The awakening of consciousness from a dream of
The moment you realize you are not present, you matter, form, and separation.
are present.
Is there joy, ease, and lightness in what I am
Continue to use clock time but are free of doing? If there isn’t, then time is covering up the
psychological time. present moment, and life is perceived as a
burden or a struggle.
Nonforgiveness necessarily implies a heavy
burden of psychological time. So do not be concerned with the fruit of your
action—just give attention to the action itself.
You no longer see or smell the flowers by the
wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty Karma Yoga—the path of consecrated action.
and the miracle of life that unfolds all around
you when you are present in the Now. Yet on a deeper level you are already complete,
and when you realize that. There is a playful,
Belief in the future heaven creates a present hell. joyous energy behind what you do.

The mind then creates an obsession with the Nothing real can be threatened.
future as an escape from the unsatisfactory
present. Physical violence would be impossible without
deep unconsciousness.
The quality of your consciousness at this moment
is what shapes the future—which, of course, can Through those challenges, an already
only be experienced as the Now. unconscious person tends to become more
deeply unconscious, and a conscious person
It is the promise of salvation, not in an illusory more intensely conscious.
future but right here and now.
You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you
Presence is the key to freedom, so you can only can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep.
be free now. The dream of ordinary unconsciousness then
turns into a nightmare.
Hope is what keeps you going, but hope keeps
you focused on the future, and this continued No unconsciousness, no negativity, no discord or
focus perpetuates your denial of the Now and violence can enter that field and survive, just as
therefore your unhappiness. darkness cannot survive in the presence of light.

Your life situation exists in time. Your life is now. Make it a habit to monitor your mental-
Your life situation is mind-stuff. Your life is real. emotional state through self-observation.

Ultimately, this is not about solving your The pollution of the planet is only an outward
problems. It’s about realizing that there are no reflection of an inner psychic pollution: millions
problems. of unconscious individuals not taking
responsibility for their inner space.
Problems are mind-made and need time to
survive. Negativity is never the optimum way of dealing
with any situation. In fact, in most cases it keeps
The mind unconsciously loves problems because
you stuck in it, blocking real change.
they give you an identity of sorts.
Unless they are immune—that is, highly
When you create a problem, you create pain.
conscious.
By dropping it. How do you drop a piece of hot Your life’s journey has an outer purpose and an
coal that you are holding in your hand? inner purpose.

Once you have realized that you have a choice, It has nothing to do in the future but everything
that you are not just a bundle of conditional to do with the quality of your consciousness at
reflexes. this moment.

Humans are a dangerously insane and very sick It will matter to you as long as you haven’t
species. realized your inner purpose. After that, the outer
purpose is just a game that you may continue to
Once you realize that a certain kind of food play simply because you enjoy it.
makes you sick, would you carry on eating that
food and keep asserting that it is okay to be sick? Outer riches and inner poverty: to ‘gain the world
and lose your soul.’—Jesus
To complain is always nonacceptance of what is.
Kept his loin girded and his lamp burning.
If you find you’re here and now intolerable and it
makes you unhappy, you have three options: Be like servant waiting for the return of his
remove yourself from the situation, change it, or master.—Jesus
accept it totally.
Even the men who wrote the Gospels did not
If you want to take responsibility for your life, understand the meaning of these parables, so
you must choose one of those three options, and the first misinterpretations and distortions crept
you must choose now. Then accept the in as they were written down.
consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No
psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear. These are parables not about the end of the
world but about the end of psychological time.
Any action often better than no action, especially
if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation Satori – a flash of insight, a moment of no-mind
for a long time. and total presence.

Surrender is not weakness. Presence is needed to become aware of the

beauty, the majesty, the sacredness of nature.
Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be
‘there,’ or being in the present but wanting to be You have to put down for a moment your
in the future. personal baggage of problems, of past and
future, as well as all your knowledge; otherwise,
Wanting is a state of mind. Basically, it means you will see but not see, hear but not hear.
that you want the future; you don’t want the
present. Could it be that this nameless essence and your
essence are one and the same? Would it be there
You can improve your life situation but you without your presence? Go deeply into it. Find
cannot improve your life. out for yourself.

Your life situation consists of your circumstances The truth is, however, that the moment thought
and your experiences. came in, all you had was a memory of it.

You are then like an architect who pays no The wider the time gap between perception and
attention to the foundation of a building but thought, the more depth there is to you as a
spends a lot of time working on the human being, which is to say the more conscious
superstructure. you are.

It cannot come in the future. When you become conscious of Being, what I
really happening is that Being becomes conscious
That’s all right, I wasn’t waiting, I was just of itself.
standing here enjoying myself—in joy in my self.
Everything is alive.—all are expressions of
The only thing that is ultimately real about your consciousness in varying degrees, consciousness
journey is the step that you are taking at his manifesting as form.
moment. That’s all there ever is.
The world arises when consciousness takes on Transformation is through the body, not away
shapes and forms, thought forms and material from it.
forms.
All spiritual teachings originate from the same
But it’s only tragic because you projected a Source.
separate self where there was none. You got hold
of a fraction of a dynamic process, a molecular All such teachings are signposts pointing the way
dance, and made a separate entity out of it. back to the Source.

It only knows itself as a form and therefore lives Do not fight against the body, for in doing so you
in fear of the annihilation of its physical or are fighting against your own reality. You are
psychological form. your body.

Consciousness is awakening out of its dream of Through the inner body, you are forever one with
identification with form and withdrawing from God.
form.
Thoughts and emotions, fears and desires, may
The teacher and the thought together creates still be there to some extent, but they won’t take
the teaching.—Eastern saying you over.

Before Abraham was, I am.—Christ Whenever you are waiting, wherever it may be,
use the time to feel the inner body.
Eternity, of course, does not mean endless time,
but no time. thus, the man Jesus became Christ, Directly, you feel it as the radiance and power of
a vehicle for pure consciousness. your conscious presence—no content, just
presence. Indirectly, you are aware of the
I am that I am. Unmanifested in and through the sensory realm.

Never personalize Christ. Don’t make Christ into All that is, is holy.
a form identity.
Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift a stone, and
Darkness cannot recognize light. Only light can you will find me there.
recognize light.
Inner resistance cuts you off from other people,
Presence is one. from yourself, from the world around you.

Water? What do you mean by that? I don’t Love isn’t a portal; it’s what comes through the
understand it.? This is what a fish would say if it portal into this world.
had a human mind.
If you know where to look, you’ll find it
And free from sin, which is the suffering you everywhere. A portal opens up every moment.
unconsciously inflict on yourself and others as
long as this illusory sense of self governs what Pay more attention to the silence than to the
you think, say, and do. sounds.

You can study and talk about honey for as long Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into
as you like, but you won’t really know it until you silence, and during its life span is surrounded by
taste it. silence.

Similarly, you can talk or think about God Every physical object or body has come out of
continuously for the rest of your life, but does nothing, is surrounded by nothing, and will
that mean you know or have even glimpsed the eventually return to nothing.
reality to which the word points? It really is no
Solidity of matter is an illusion.
more than an obsessive attachment to a
signpost, a mental idol.
Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
Underneath your outer form, you are connected
The essence of all things is emptiness.
with something so vast, so immeasurable and
sacred, that it cannot be conceived or spoken Everybody pays attention to the things in space,
of—yet I am speaking of it now. but who pays attention to space itself?
The moment you make it into something, you Salvation is not elsewhere in place or time. it is
have missed it. here and now.

There is nothing to understand. In theistic language, it is to ‘know God’—not as

something outside you but as your own
Pay attention to ‘nothing.’ innermost essence.

Space and silence are two aspects of the same True salvation is a state of freedom—from fear,
thing, the same no-thing. from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and
insufficiency and therefore from all the wanting,
They know the world, or think they do, but they
needing, grasping, and clinging.
don’t know God.
You ‘get’ there by realizing that you are there
Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal
already. You find God the moment you realize
exists. Herein lies the peace of God.
that you don’t need to seek God.
You also know that every form is destined to
You do it now or not at all.
dissolve again and that ultimately nothing out
here matters all that much. True love has no opposite.

Space comes into being the moment the One Every addiction arises form an unconscious
becomes two, and as ‘two’ become the ‘ten refusal to face and move through your own pain.
thousand things.’
If they only knew how close they are to their own
Nothing could be without space, yet space is reality, how close to God.
nothing.
What is God? The eternal one Life underneath all
It is the ‘body’ of God. the forms of life. What is love? To feel the
presence of that One Life deep within yourself
That stillness and vastness that enables the
and within all creatures. To be it. Therefore, all
universe to be is not just out there in space—it is
love is the love of God.
also within you.
As humans have become increasingly identified
Whereas space is the still, infinitely deep realm
with their mind, most relationships are not
of no mind, the inner equivalent of time is
rooted in being and so turn into a source of pain
presence, awareness of the eternal Now.
and become dominated by problems and conflict.
Just a you would not be conscious of space if
When you know you are not at peace, your
there were no objects in space the world is
knowing creates a still space that surrounds your
needed for the Unmanifested to be realized.
nonpeace in a loving and tender embrace and
then transmutes your nonpeace into peace.
If there were no illusion, there would be no
enlightenment.—Buddhist
If you react at all to your partner’s
unconsciousness, you become unconscious
It is through the world and ultimately through
yourself. But if you then remember to know your
you that the Unmanifested knows itself. You are
reaction, nothing is lost.
here to enable the divine purpose of the universe
unfold. That is how important you are!
Judgment is either to confuse someone’s
unconscious behavior with who they are or to
The luminous splendor of the colorless light of
project your own unconsciousness onto another
Emptiness.
person and mistake that for who they are.
Nothing that is of value, nothing that is real, is
Learn to give expression to what you feel without
ever lost.
blaming.
Approaching death and death itself, the
It is not easy to live with an enlightened person,
dissolution of the physical form, is always great
or rather it is so easy that the ego finds it
opportunity for spiritual realization.
extremely threatening.
Every portal is a portal of death, the death of the
It accepts everything and transforms everything.
false self.
The light is too painful for someone who wants Even your happiness is dukkha—a Pali word
to remain in darkness. meaning ‘suffering’ or ‘unsatifactoriness.’

This is why the traditional God is a patriarchal, Your happiness and unhappiness are in fact one.
controlling authority figure, an often angry man Only the illusion of time separates them.
who should live in fear of, as the Old Testament
suggests. This God is a projection of the human Nothing can give you joy.
mind.
You may not be happy, but you will be at peace.
If you are trapped in a nightmare you will
Once you have identified with some form of
probably be more strongly motivated to awaken
negativity, you do not want to let go, and on a
than someone who is just caught in the ups and
deeply unconscious level, you do not want
downs of an ordinary dream.
positive change.
You are responsible for your inner space now—
The only animals that may occasionally
nobody else is—and that the past cannot prevail
experience something akin to negativity or show
against the power of the Now.
signs of neurotic behavior are those that live in
The stronger the ego, the more distant you are close contact with humans and so link into the
from your true nature. human mind and its insanity.

If you cannot be at ease with yourself when you But as long as negativity is there, use it. Use it as
are not alone, you will seek a relationship to a kind of signal that reminds you to be more
cover up your unease. present.

You are yourself—‘you’ and ‘yourself’ merge into Attention. Here and Now. Wake up.
one. You do not judge yourself, you do not feel
Now allow the noise, or whatever causes a
sorry to yourself, you are not proud of yourself,
negative reaction, to pass right through you.
you do not love yourself, you do not hate
yourself, and so on.
The moment you completely accept your non-
peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted to
There is no ‘self’ that you need to protect,
peace.
defend, or feed anymore.
Turn the other cheek.
Once you have given that up, all your other
relationships will be love relationships.
Miracles of healing sometimes occur through this
realization, by awakening Being consciousness in
Do what you have to do.
others—if they are ready.
When you feel sorry for yourself, that’s drama.
In compassion, the seemingly opposite feelings of
When you feel guilty or anxious, that’s drama.
sadness and joy merge into one and become
Their story is their identity. transmuted into a deep inner peace.

No one who is at one with himself can even The body exists, or seems to be, because you
conceive of conflict. believe in death.

One cannot exist without the other. Your perception of the world is a reflection of
your state of consciousness.
All conditions are highly unstable and in constant
flux, or, as he put it, impermanence is a But whatever you perceive is only a kind of
characteristic of every condition, every situation symbol, like an image in a dream.
you will ever encounter in your life.
All worlds are ultimately one.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,
The lion shall lie down with the lam.
where moth and rust consume and where thieves
break in and steal. . . .
Up to the present. . . the whole created universe
in all its parts groans as if in the pangs of
The most essential kind of knowledge is not yet
childbirth.
widely accessible.
You can still enjoy the passing pleasures of the Don’t resist the opponent’s force. Yield to
world, but there is no fear of loss anymore, so overcome.
you don’t need to cling to them.
Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal to
In a way, you then don’t need the world gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into
anymore. You don’t even need it to be different enlightenment.
from the way it is.
If you cannot accept what is outside, then accept
Animals, trees, flowers will feel your peace and what is inside.
respond to it.
When you deny emotional pain, everything you
All evils are the effect of unconsciousness. do or think as well as your relationships become
contaminated with it.
Just as you cannot fight darkness, so you cannot
fight unconsciousness. When there is no way out, there is still always a
way through. So don’t turn away from pain. Face
Love your enemies. it. Feel it fully. Feel it—don’t think about it!
Express it if necessary, but don’t create a script in
Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of
your mind around it.
unyielding to rather than opposing the flow of
life. They found God through surrender, through total
acceptance of what is, into which they were
It is not the overall situation that you need to
forced by their intense suffering.
accept when you surrender but just the tiny
segment called the Now. Choice implies consciousness—a high degree of
consciousness.
Resignation is not surrender.
Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
You recognize fully that you want to get out of it.
The mind always adheres to the known.
In the state of surrender, you see very clearly
what needs to be done, and you take action, How will I know if I surrendered? When you no
doing one thing at a time. Learn from nature. See longer need to ask the question.
how everything gets accomplished and how the
miracle of life unfolds without dissatisfaction or
unhappiness.

Make sure you don’t start to run ‘mental

movies.’

Do not confuse surrender with an attitude of ‘I

can’t be bothered anymore’ or ‘I just don’t care
anymore.’

Blessed are the gentle; they shall have the earth

for their possessions.

They are cut from the Being,, so they

unconsciously attempt to get energy and power
from you.

When you say no to a person or a situation, let it

come not from the reaction but from insight,
from a clear realization of what is right or not
right for you at that moment.

If you cannot surrender, take action immediately:

speak up or do something to bring about a
change in the situation—or remove yourself form
it.