Peace

Venice Beach

Peace is what we all crave, yet we don't know how to find it.  We seek it out through relationships, money, career, etc.  If we only had X, our lives would be at peace.  But even if we achieve X, we do not find peace.

What is peace but the absence of thought?  Isn't it our thoughts which cause us to be agitated?

We cannot find peace.  It is what we are.  How simple is it to know that what we crave is what we are.

We just need to choose it in any given moment.  What about this moment?  We will never find it in the future.  The future does not exist.  We can only choose peace in this present moment.

By moving away from thought and bringing our attention to the present moment, we are one with our peaceful eternal selves.

Let's choose peace.  Right now and forever.

Loneliness

Paris

Sometimes it seems like we are utterly alone, even when we are surrounded by friends and family members who love us.  We are not alone.  We are a divine portion of Universal Intelligence.

How do we become connected when we do not feel that way?

We connect with the Divine Energy by surrendering our will to Universal Intelligence.  We do not have to do this alone.  When we towards towards the Divine, It turns towards us.  God will never insist, but only suggest.

It is identification with thought which makes us feel lonely.  When we are connected to All That Is, we can never feel alone.  In fact, we embrace our solitude because it assists with our connection to Universal Energy.

Let's surrender our thoughts and choose Presence.

Reality

Blue Thunder

We do not see reality for what it is because we see it through the filter of our conditioned beliefs.

When we look at someone or something, we see it through the prism of our gender identity, our social status, our ethnicity, our political leaning, our educational background and so on and so on. We see a stranger and we think about their color, age, looks, clothes.  We instantaneously make many judgments about each person we encounter.  We put them in a box, which is generally far from what is true.

We can never have true understanding when we don't see things as they are.  We can never experience the peace, love, joy and freedom that comes when we are in harmony with All That Is.

How do we remove the filter and see things as they are?  By seeing without judgment or belief.  By looking without labelling what we see.  By seeing without thought.  

When we look at the world without thought (i.e., through presence), we see things as they really are.  All the barriers that divide us from others fall away.  When we look at the world without judgment, we also see ourselves clearly for the first time.

We experience the peace, love and joy which is our natural state.  We realize that all of the labels and judgments we have been believing are not true.  They are merely reflections of society's conditioning. We stop behaving like programmed robots.  Our lives unfold with passion and excitement.

Everything is new.  Old habits fall away and new patterns emerge.  We vibrate at a higher level and attract people who have similar energy.  We are awake.

Let's see reality just as it is.

Self love

Venice Beach

It is a constant refrain that "we don't love ourselves." We have all heard that we can't love another until we learn to love ourselves.  But I could never figure out how to do this.  It made sense to me, but I didn't have the slightest idea how to go about it.  You can't just do it, if you don't feel it.

I now realize that self love is not something we can find, do, or achieve.  We do not need to figure out how to love ourselves.

We are already loved in a much larger way than we can ever imagine.  Love is what we are.  We just need to surrender to it.  When we turn our attention away from judgement, thought, and beliefs and towards the present moment, we are aligning ourselves with the Infinite Energy Source.  The Source is pure non-judgmental love.  When we surrender to it, we experience waves of Infinite Love.

We don't need to worry about self love and how we find it.  That just causes more stress and more self loathing when we are unsuccessful.  We need to peel away the layers of conditioned beliefs and judgements and experience our natural Selves.  Whenever we are in presence, we are bathed in Love. We feel it.  Others see it in us.  Our neuroses and anger fall away.

How do we stay in presence?  A daily practice of meditation is the best tool for breaking our addiction to compulsive thinking.

Let's surrender to Love.

Decisions

Notre Dame

Wouldn't it be incredibly relaxing if we never had to make another decision for the rest of our lives? Wouldn't it be terriic if we could sit in the back of the limo and be driven safely and comfortably to our destination?

When we have an important decision to make, we can weigh the pros and cons of each alternative. We can write the positives and negatives on a piece of paper and add them up and choose the one with the most positives and least negatives.  We can ponder the decision endlessly, stressing over whether we are indeed making the right decision with the information we have.

There is a better way to make decisions than through thought.

We do not have enough information to determine which decision is the best for us.  The road which seems the best may be the road where we are run over by an out of control car.  Since we have no idea what will happen to us tomorrow or even in the next moment, how can we make a rational decision?

We can make the best decisions by surrendering our decision making to Universal Intelligence. How do we do this?  By allowing decisions to be made by our intuition, our knowingness. Instead of weighing the pros and cons, we choose the alternative which makes us feel peaceful.  It can be difficult to differentiate between intuition and impulse.  An addict will always be compelled to choose the substance that he is addicted to.

Intuition is a tiny voice which requires stillness to be heard. If we are lost in compulsive thought, we will never hear that voice.  We can slow down our thoughts so that we can hear and feel the messages.  We can become still through meditation.

Lets stop making decisions and instead allow decisions to be made.

Stillness

For the first time in history, all of the information and knowledge on the planet is available to most of the people on Earth.  This power makes us God-like.  However, we do not have the emotional maturity to handle this much power.

Forty years ago, we had seven television channels.  Motion pictures, print, television and radio were the only media available.  The messages were very controlled and the rules for living were well defined and easy to follow.

Now, with infinite access to different cultures, lifestyles and ways of being, we do not know what to think or believe, or how to act.

It used to be that finding a Playboy Magazine was a titillating secret. Now any child has easy access  to every type of pornography.  The access to information is overwhelming.  Isis is very effectively using social media to recruit and train.  The rest of society does not know how to respond to this new and unique threat.

Facebook and other social media has connected us with our friends and other groups in powerful ways which would have seemed inconceivable just a few years ago.  Yet at the same time we feel disconnected, disaffected and isolated.

There is only one solution to this crisis.  Spiritual awakening.

There is too much information to process and too many variables and possibilities to handle.  We cannot figure out the way to live by thinking our way through it.

The only way to handle the ocean of information without becoming neurotic or psychotic is by choosing to turn our attention away from thought and towards presence.

Technology is changing so fast that there is no way to keep up with it.  However we can handle all of these changes by adopting stillness.  When we live in presence, we are in harmony with Universal Intelligence.  Life unfolds exactly as it is supposed to for the highest good of all concerned.  We are able to fulfill our life's purpose.  We experience peace, love, joy and freedom.

Let's be still.

Peace

Asakusa Festival, Japan

With all the turmoil, war, terrorism, ignorance, cruelty, degradation of the planet, chaos, etc, how is it possible to find peace?  

We find peace by turning away from compulsive thinking and towards presence (turning off the news once in awhile doesn't hurt either!).  The more we turn our attention towards being present, the more peaceful we will become.

We choose to bring our awareness (i.e., our attention without judgment) away from frustration, anger and fear towards love, joy, freedom and peace.

How do we become peaceful?  By reacting differently to whatever occurs.  We choose peace.  How can we choose peace?  We choose peace by slowing down our thoughts in order to realize that we have a choice.  We slow down our thoughts by having a daily meditation practice.  It's as simple as that.

Let's choose freedom.  Let's choose love.  Let's choose joy.  Let's choose peace.