Desire

Papa Aroha, Coromandel, New Zealand

What percentage of our thoughts are made up of regret?  What percentage of our thoughts consist of wishing things will occur in the future?  What percentage of our thoughts consist of dreading a future event?  Thoughts such as these make up the majority of our thoughts.  Do any of these thoughts enhance our lives in any way?  Of course not.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Our thoughts are toxic and prevent us from living a healthful, happy, fulfilling life. Yet we continue to waste our time, energy, health and well being on thoughts which do not serve us.

The Buddha said that: Life is suffering.  Suffering is caused by desire.  In order to find peace, we must surrender our desire.

By bringing the light of awareness to our thoughts, they begin to lose their power over us.

Once we are aware of the thoughts which serve no positive purpose whatsoever, we can let them go.

Let's acknowledge and surrender our thoughts.

Love

Venice

Can we love someone who is trying to hurt us emotionally or physically?

If we are angry at someone who cuts us off in traffic, would we feel differently if we found out they were rushing an ill person to the emergency room?  If someone slaps us, would we still be angry if we found out that the person was developmentally disabled?  If someone is trying to hurt us, and there is no obvious reason for their cruelty, how can we feel love for that person?  Does our anger soften when we realize that the cruel person is acting out of a deep self hatred and feeling of hopelessness?

We can change how we react to cruelty.   The anger and hatred we feel to those who have harmed us does nothing to help our situation.  By not reacting, we can more effectively deal with it.  That does not mean that we have to allow people to hurt us or condone their behavior.  We can defend ourselves and others as necessary.  We can and should tell others in a loving way when they have crossed the line. We can even kill with love.

Let's love even those who try to harm us.

Power

Venice Beach This Morning

Studies show that placebos work as well or better than many drugs.  They work even if we know that we are taking a placebo.  More expensive placebos work better than cheaper ones.  We fool ourselves into getting healthy.

We are literally more powerful than we can possibly imagine. 

The only thing preventing us from accessing this power is that we get in our own way.  How do we get out of our way and access the infinite power that is available?  By surrendering our thoughts, which emanate from ancient belief structures which no longer serve us.  Like a snake shedding its skin, we can step away from our belief systems, awaken to who we really are, and experience harmony, peace, love, joy and freedom.

Our power is in the present moment, between our thoughts.  When we surrender our thoughts and allow things to be just as they are without the filter of our many belief systems, we are free.  We see the beauty and grace which lay hidden behind our unconscious beliefs.  We allow miracles to occur and laugh at our past foolish obsessions and pettiness.  Everything that occurs to us is a Divine gift specifically designed for us to enable our awakening.  Once we open our eyes without judgment, we understand what has been there all along, waiting for us to discover it.  

Let's surrender to the Miracle.

An Experiment

Hakone, Japan

Why should we believe that there is such a thing as enlightenment?  Why shouldn't we believe that material existence is all there is?  It certainly has much to offer.  The Earth has great beauty, and we have the opportunity to accomplish magnificent things, to love and be loved, to pursue happiness and attain beautiful objects.  We have so much to be grateful for on this Earth.  Why should we leave the comfort and safety of our belief systems?

And yet, we are often dysfunctional and unsatisfied.  Our relationships are strained, our health is deteriorating, our possessions do not give us satisfaction, we cover our feelings of inadequacy and insecurity with alcohol, sex, drugs and everything else which allows us not to feel our emotions.

Let's try an experiment.

Unlike religion, no faith or belief is necessary.  If there is a spiritual world, if enlightenment does exist, if there is an Infinite Energy Source which binds us and with which we can access wisdom, joy, peace, love and freedom, how can we prove it to be true?

If everything is going great in all aspects of our lives, there is no need to do anything.  If our relationships are loving, our career is satisfying and we are happy and grateful to be alive, no change is required.  Our lives are blessed.

If, on the other hand, we are unsatisfied, afraid, and feel something is missing from our lives, we can test the hypothesis that we can awaken to our "true" selves by trying it out and seeing what results.

How do we test it?  We test it by surrendering our thoughts and beliefs.  We "pretend" our thoughts and beliefs are untrue and we acknowledge and surrender them.  We do not avoid them.  We do not push them away.  We look them squarely in the face and let them go.  If they are untrue, they do not serve us.

When we surrender our thoughts, we live more and more in the present.  We are in harmony with the Infinite Energy Source, which will respond to us and help us in our experiment.

As we turn towards it, it turns towards us.  Our lives will begin to experience the peace, love, joy and grace which are our very essence.  We will know who we really are. Things will start to go our way.  Things that used to bother us will seem so unimportant.  We will be filled with gratitude because our lives are filled with peace and grace.

The more we surrender, the more we awaken, and the more evidence we will have that everything that the spiritual masters having been saying for thousands of years is true.

Let's try it.  We have nothing to lose but our misery.

Courage

Dylan

In any and every given moment, we have a choice.  We can choose love or fear, peace or frustration, joy or unhappiness, freedom or mental imprisonment.

Why would we ever choose fear over love?  Because we have been brainwashed by every person we have met since the day we were born.  We have been programmed by everyone in our lives and all of the groups that they belong to: gender groups, religious groups, academic groups, geographic groups, social groups, etc.  Our programming has created a dense belief system that we have tied our identity to.

These groups exact a very high price for non-conforming beliefs and actions:  criticism, anger and, ultimately, ostracism.  Is it worth the sacrifice?  That is up to us.

The belief structures are embedded deep inside our subconscious minds.  It takes great courage to make choices that are different than the ones made by the many groups we belong to.  Once we do, although certain people will begin to fall away from our lives, others, who are more similar to our vibration, will enter.

How do we choose love over fear.  By making a conscious choice to acknowledge and surrender our thoughts in every moment.  We surrender thought and choose presence.

Let's have the courage to choose peace.

Emotions

Bay of Islands, New Zealand

Emotions are thoughts which manifest within the body.

Thoughts are ephemeral, non physical, imaginings.  They have no power until they take hold in the physical body. Anger, passion, fear, and frustration are caused by thoughts which arise from our conditioned belief systems.

Thoughts on their own have no power.  When thoughts combine with painful memories (thoughts of the past), they begin to gather strength.  In short order the body begins to react.  Adrenaline levels rise.  Blood rushes to our face and head.  No matter how hard we try to keep our composure, we are soon out of control.

We can break the hold that our thoughts and emotions have over us by bringing our awareness (i.e., our attention without judgment) to them.  When we bring awareness to our emotions without reacting to them, they begin to dissipate, like the air slowly going out of a balloon.  The more we bring our awareness to our emotions, the less of a hold they have over our lives.

If we try to stifle or ignore our emotions, they will often cause disease or gain in strength within our subconscious, ready to explode at the next opportunity.

Let's bring awareness to our thoughts and emotions.

Being

Roberton Island, Bay of Islands, New Zealand

Our journey is over.  We can stop searching, striving, learning, struggling, and seeking.  There is nothing to find, nothing to learn.  It is the effort that is keeping us from our goals.

All that we have to do is surrender to the peace, love and joy that is already within us.  We do not have to follow a religion, a spiritual master, or a guru.  We do not need to read books.

The peace that we seek is already present.  It is what we are.  All the anxiety, desire, frustration, and anger that we feel has been layered on top of who we really are through a lifetime of conditioning.

Although there is nothing that we have to add to ourselves in order to feel peace, there are things we need to shed.  We need to surrender our conditioned beliefs, judgments, expectations, and desires.

When we shed our thoughts about the past and future, and other garbage that we are thinking, we are left with our true selves.  We will be at peace.  Our relationships will be effortless.  The answers to all our problems will be apparent.  Miracles will occur.

Let's acknowledge our thoughts and surrender them to the Void.