Several years ago I attended a five-day retreat focused on Sophia, an aspect of Divine Feminine expressing Wisdom. This was an intense workshop, with sessions sometimes going late into the night. I was fortunate to be able to stay and sleep at the retreat center itself, so the late hours were not a problem for me. However, one of the men attending was camping out at the state park, which was located a few miles away, mostly up, on a hill atop the river bluff. He would ride his bike up there at the end of the day, sleep in his tent, and glide down in the morning.

One night we completed our discussion and prayers quite late, near midnight. I thought he couldn’t possibly get a good night’s sleep and be back at 8 a.m. So I offered to drive him and his bike up to the park. It was a stunningly beautiful July night. I dropped him off at the campground, and walked along the road away from the lights to see the sky, feel the cool breeze and smell the clean air. I’ve never seen the stars so close and so big, almost like I could reach skyward, touching them at the end of my finger. As I looked at the stars, I felt an energy come down into me. It was a sudden shift in my solar plexus and gut, a new feeling that I couldn’t put into words. It was a profound feeling. I sought to hold that feeling while I went directly to my car, returned to the center, and crawled into bed.

I lay awake in bed holding and focusing upon that feeling. I wanted to be able to find a symbol or key to help me return to it, or be able to put its meaning into words so that I wouldn’t lose this profound experience. It took three hours of focused attention before I found words to describe the meaning of the feeling: “You are the fulfillment of my evolving perfection.”

The next morning in our group meditation, I told the story, and relayed the message that I had received, presumably from Sophia. It was clear to me that the message was for me, and applying as well to every human. The minister leading the meditation honored the story by leaving a long silence at its completion.

I’ve wrestled with the meaning across the years. What does it mean to have perfection evolve? How can a midpoint in a time-line that leads to perfection be a fulfillment, a perfection itself? And how can a limited male human like myself be a fulfillment of an evolving feminine Divinity?

Yet, that feeling is within me, available occasionally through the access provided by those words, incomplete though they are to express the mystery behind it. It is clear that I, we, exist beyond the limits of our constraining time and space. Each moment in our lives, maybe in a holographic way, encompasses or touches into our Divinity within: a point in time that accesses eternity, a point in space connected integrally into infinity, a point in development that contains the perfection implicit in its original creation.

How valuable, then, is each moment, each event, each person! Such thoughts, feelings and realizations move me to continuing wonder and appreciation.

I have always been interested, fascinated and intrigued by things of the spirit — near-death experiences, out-of-body adventures, ESP, psychics, spirit communication — for I found them all totally fascinating. But I had no personal experience with any of them. Little did I know what an integral role some would play in my life and how they would make my life so meaningful and help me to feel so valued.

The fact that my daughter had to die before I would have the knowingness to tap into these spiritual gifts makes me more than a little angry. But yet, I know that if she had not left this world for the next, I would not be in the place that I find myself today. I owe her so much.

Now, I suspect that there are many people who find these subjects to be fascinating…but it ends there – with just a fascination. It was that way with me for the first 49 years of my life. However, everything changed on September 20, 2003.

That was the day that my beautiful daughter died very tragically, very suddenly and very unexpectedly. But that was also the day that a new world opened its door for me and I walked through. One of my children, whom I loved more than anything else in this world, was gone. What did I have to lose?

There is a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. That was certainly true for me. Within four months of my daughter’s death I found myself in a reading with Kathryn Harwig. My connection with Kathryn not only forged a new connection with my daughter, but it also opened up a whole new world of psychic development for me.

In short, Kathryn was instrumental in helping me to find my joy again. I now write and speak and share my incredible grief journey with anyone who will listen. My perception and view of the world has completely expanded and nothing will ever be the same again…and that is cause for celebration and joy!

While standing on the sidewalk near my front yard on a muggy, steamy July day, I noticed a woman approaching from the street. Her rotund body was encased in a long multi-colored skirt and baggy light green top, with a white flower placed neatly on the left side of her brown hair. She was carrying a small zipped case with a University of Minnesota logo on it. She appeared headed for a transitional group home for mentally ill adults next door to our house. We exchanged greetings, then she came closer to continue the conversation.

“Do you know the secret of life?” she asked nonchalantly.

“Oh do you know what it is?’ I responded, taken aback by the bold introductory question.

“Do you want me to tell you?”

For some reason, I didn’t pursue the answer then. “Do you live in the group home?” I asked instead.

She nodded and a slight smile of relief creased her round face. “I am getting out of here tomorrow,” she said, after three months. “I will be so glad to be free from addicts and alcoholics. Society doesn’t treat mentally people very well. I’ve been in the hospital. I’ve been in jail. I just want to be free.”

The key to peace

As she talked, I noticed a tattoo on her left arm, and, in particular, a small key with a peace sign on it that hung around her neck. I asked her about it.

“This is the key to peace,” she said, pulling it forward to give a better view. In response to my question, she named the shop in St. Paul where she got it – a small New Age place called Gypsy Moon.

I complimented her on the key, noting that I might want to get one like it.

She showed me another small item dangling from her dress. “Do you know what this is? It’s a dream catcher.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Do you know what it means?”

“I know it has Native American origin.”

“It catches the nightmares and traps them and lets out the good dreams for positive energy.”

“I wrote a poem about peace,” she said, lifting up the bottom of her dress on her left leg to show me the engraved words on her thigh. “Do you want to hear it.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I need a smoke,” she remarked, starting to walk towards the group home. “If you want to continue talking you can sit with me.”

Despite the stifling heat that tried to drive me away, I followed her to the front step of the group home next to a smoking pole. She lit up a cigarette as mosquitos began to buzz around her.

She began to tell more about her recent past. She wrote the poem after breaking up with a long-time boyfriend who had abused her. “He hit me. Once were driving and he started speeding and said he was going to drive off a cliff. I mean wouldn’t you be bothered by someone who called you names and abused you? I finally had to break up with him just a few days ago. I wrote a poem about that”

“Is that the one on your leg?”

“Yeah. I have it written down.” She reached in her purse and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper and read the poem. I don’t recall all of the words but I remember her making an analogy to a pine tree and broken love, and that it had a poetic syntax that resonated with me. I complimented her on it telling her she had a talent for poetry.

Taking another drag on her cigarette, she gazed straight ahead with a somber expression, referring to her ex-boyfriend. “He is an alcoholic and a drug addict and a drug dealer. But lately, I saw a sadness in his face.”

A chance to meet
“It’s been great to talk to you,” I offered. “We have lived here a long time and have seen lots of residents from here come and go but have not had a chance to meet many of them. We’ve been here since about 1993.”

“I was 13 years old then,” she said. “I’m thirty one now. ”

“Do you have a place to go when you leave here?” I asked.

“Yeah. I found a place in Prospect Park (the neighborhood next to mine). My mother helped me. She is an alcoholic, but is trying to reform.

“Do you know what you want to do with your life?” I asked.

“I want to help bring world peace,” she said.

I nodded in agreement, acknowledging that was one of my life goals, as well.

“The mosquitos are eating me up,” she said. “I need to go in.” She got up and walked to the door then paused and repeated the question we began with.

“Do you know the secret of life?”

“What is it?” I asked.

She stopped for a minute undoubtedly reflecting on the lessons learned from her hardscrabble past. “The secret of life” she said emphatically, “is ‘living.’ ”

I thought about that for a minute as I waved good-bye to her.

“Best wishes on your journey,” I called out. “I’m a peace activist myself,” you know,” wanting to establish that connection before she left.

“Peace be with you,” she answered, opening the door.

“And you,” I said as parting words.

The flower children
As I reflected on our meeting, a strange sense of déjà vu came over me. Here was a woman born long after the 1960s. Yet, she reminded me so much of the flower children of that generation in appearance and in the way she was living her life. She had found a way to turn her adversity into caring about something much larger than herself — peace in the world, which bonded us in cause and spirit. (I resolved to find one of those key chains.)

The week I met her had been a reflective one for me emotionally and I had thought often about the meaning and purpose of life but hadn’t resolved the question. Then I met a flower child and I had my answer.

I’ve had five near-death experiences now. Five times I have been in the same room near the side of loved ones as they have passed from this world. Each of these deaths, in their own way, was perfect for the person whose life we were honoring as they passed into the next world. Perfect in the sense that each mirrored the person involved, seemingly made for them as if their life had molded their death just for them.

It was the first two of these near-death experiences that were to play a role in my personal awakening process. Not that I realized it at the time, of course, but by looking back on it now, I see how pivotal these experiences were in my life. I’d had my share of troubles by then, and I was just beginning to make a life for myself and figure out who I was.

When I got word that grandpa was dying early in 1993, I drove up to Minnesota from Texas to be with the family as he died.

My grandfather had lived a full life and had been the one person I knew I could count on if needed. He dedicated his life to his family, and all that he did revolved around doing things for others. I’d always thought of him as a dinosaur, in a way, a relic to by-gone days when people were more community oriented. His entire family, including my grandmother, his children and grandchildren, were gathered around his bed telling him how much we loved him as he passed. I left Minnesota feeling quite at peace with Grandpa’s death, knowing that he certainly had earned such a loving send off.

In 1994, I received word that my father was in the hospital with small chance of recovery. Once again I made the trek up to Minnesota for my last chance to see him.

Dad also had his entire family with him as he passed. I vividly recall us standing around his hospital bed, somberly watching him as he left. A few hours before he died, the nurse had called my Dad’s name, and for a brief moment his eyes flared open. There was anger in those eyes, and fear, which in an eerie way mirrored the life dad had led: a life filled with anger, resentment, fear and loathing. Things had never seemed to go right for Dad, and his death had become another example of how unfair life is. He was only 54 years old.

Once I got back to Texas, I spent a lot of time alone contemplating my father’s death — Grandpa’s, too — because the inevitable comparison between the two was prominent in my mind. I remember thinking about those eyes of dad’s, and their impact on me. I made an inner vow to myself that no matter what, when my time comes, I was not going to go out like he did, with anger in my eyes and fear in my heart. I swore that when my time came, I would go out like Grandpa did, peacefully and at ease with my role in the world.

My promise to myself was heartfelt — yet I had no clue how to accomplish it. But this I knew: Based on how my life — and feelings towards this life — had gone up until the point when dad died, I knew I had the very same potential in me to go out just like he did. I also felt a great deal of anger and pent-up emotional baggage, which had the potential to dominate my actions.

After I made this inner vow to myself, I can now say that my life actually DID begin to change. I began experiencing some amazing shifts in my views of the world. But it was that inner vow I made that inspired these changes. It is like the “universe” recognized my true desire for change, and thus responded accordingly by putting things in my life to help these changes occur.

My personal awakening has been a process; there is no single moment in my life in which I can point and say, “This is when I woke up.” I remain convinced, however, that my inner vow to somehow find peace with who I am that gave the universe permission to then begin showing me how to find this peace. And all it took was a couple of near-death experiences.

I have always been the picture of health, so when I started having distressing symptoms that sounded like possible ovarian cancer, I finally went to see my doctor. After all the lab tests and even a CT scan, everything pointed once more to the clean bill of health I have always had. But I felt like crap! There were days at work when I wondered if I would make it through my shift. What was going on with me?

In addition to the physical symptoms, there were the “other” symptoms — emotional and spiritual ones — that started to show themselves. I heard a message – inside my head, not from anyone outside of me – to start journaling. I had always scoffed at people who journalled, but for some reason I found a lovely journal with a moon on it, so at least it looked nice! I found once I started writing, the words would not stop coming.

Quite a few years ago I left the Lutheran church, finding that I had too many questions that they could not answer. I worked with a woman who was Wiccan, and she opened me up to many things in the metaphysical world. I have always believed in things considered outside the realm of believable. After my mom passed away, I felt her presence around me for many years. I have been on a spiritual quest for some time, but until the health issues arose, it was a quiet journey.

Now I found myself reading any and all books that I could on any and all metaphysical subjects. I watched John Edwards’ show, “Crossing Over,” and felt myself just saying, “Yes, yes, that’s it!” My emotions and my heart were also opening up. I found myself hating the constant gossiping at work that up until that time I had fully participated in. The tears would flow and flow; many times I didn’t even know why.

Then one day a comment made by my now ex-husband shook me to the core and I finally said, “Enough!” I moved my things to the downstairs bedroom, wrote him a note asking for a divorce, and placed my wedding ring on top of it. I stayed in that bedroom for four months while I got my life together, along with enough money to move to my own place. But I still did not know what was going on with me – all the changes.

Soon after, I found a psychic expo and had a reading. The medium told me I was having an awakening. At last! I had found someone who could put a name to my upside-down life. When I looked up “spiritual awakening” and read the list of symptoms, I cried with relief. I was not going crazy! At another expo, I found a wonderful energy healer who helped me with the almost fifty years of hurt and pain that was now coming out in the form of those physical symptoms. It was not a physical illness; it was an illness of my soul.

I realized how numb I had become to life, just sleepwalking through it all, nodding and smiling and saying yes to anyone and everything. Now I have found my voice and learned all over again how to connect with people and how to see the light that is inside of all of us.

I went on a journey of early retirement, went back to school for a time, traveled to Chicago all on my own, and am living on my own – all without the constant fear. Life is an adventure! It is so much of an adventure that I finally heeded the pull of my soul to move 1,600 miles away to Oregon, where I knew no one but felt that it was my true home – and it sure feels like it!

In the end, I really was dying, but it was just the death of my old fear-based self. And I welcomed the birth of my true self, my sweet soul.

Life is so fascinating. A few months ago I was fired from a bizarrely stressful job. I had been putting money aside the whole time I was there, not having any clue that this would happen. The hilarious synchronicity is that I was fired on the very day Mercury went retrograde. When I realized that timing I couldn’t stop laughing. Mercury retrograde symbolizes a time to stop, reconsider and contemplate.

Another irony is the timing of getting fired. It happened when my savings were at their maximum benefit. The most significant and hilarious irony is I’m making more money retired than I was when I was working.

Another irony and synchronicity was a few days before I was fired, I had made a re-commitment to formally join our chaplain team. At the time of saying, “Yes,” I thought, “My God, girl, you must be crazy adding this to your schedule.” Then I got fired. Again, I couldn’t stop laughing. Yet again, I saw how the deck is cleared when it’s time to do something else. Being a member of our chaplain team is certainly one of the absolute joys of my life.

I always appreciate the way events unfold. No matter what is happening, if I leave room for generosity to unfold, it always does. I have been helped every step of the way during this process. The lady who helped me file for social security was so gracious. We had a blast laughing our way through a very detailed process.

There are so many awakenings in this whole process. I am by no means retired. I am in the planning and doing stages of what is unfolding for me to do next. I just finished teaching a class in my church community titled, “2012: What’s in it for you?” Teaching is such a natural thing for me to do. I am simply sharing my intuitive and embodied wisdom that I so greatly love. I continue to see and experience how faith, confidence and generosity open the way for the greatest joys imaginable.

Lately, I have been giving away bags of gently used clothing that I do not need to others who don’t have enough of what they need. I have been giving away the clothing to an organization where a high school classmate works. The joy I feel by giving away the clothing is hard to describe. It brings me such great joy to give to this place, as they are doing great work.

In this faith-filled clearing process, I know that I am circulating energy and enthusiasm so that more blessings can be made visible for me and for others. I am making so many new contacts and so greatly enjoying the expanded time and energy I have. I’m having a blast. Thank you, universe, for your enormous love and generosity.

An excerpt from Enlightenment Ain’t What it Is Cracked Up To Be: A Journey of Discovery, Snow and Jazz in the Soul.

It all began January 4, 1972, at about 4:00 in the afternoon, in a hotel on the beach in Mallorca, Spain, on a nine-month meditation retreat with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I couldn’t miss the change.

What I noticed immediately was that almost all of the background noise in my mind had disappeared. All those inarticulate mutterings, the endless half-thoughts beneath my thinking, just disappeared. It was as if behind the movie of my mind had been scrims behind scrims of thought, dimmer, movies I could barely make out. But that afternoon it was as if the light had suddenly shifted so that the front scrim became opaque and suddenly I was watching just one movie. I was thinking only one thought at a time.

A second effect became obvious as that last tube zipped itself off. This one is harder to describe. If you had asked me before that afternoon who or what I, Robert Forman, was, I probably would have pointed to somewhere on my mid chest and said, “I’m here, me, Robert!” I’d be trying to get at some vaguely localized sense of a self that I suspect we all have. I, me, Robert, was in there — somewhere.

But once that last strand fell into silent openness, my sense of who or what I was instantly changed with it. I was now the new bottomlessness. Or rather, it — the vast openness — was now me.

A third effect I discovered some two days later. I was standing on the triangular porch off my hotel room, looking through the mist at the white caps dotting the Mediterranean. Something about the scene was somehow different. The sea seemed particularly vibrant, the fog vivid. The drizzle against my bare arms felt unusually cool and crisp.

Then it occurred to me: what was different wasn’t the scene. It was me. The Mediterranean was so alive, the mist so cool because I was now more alive to them!

Standing on that porch, feeling the chilly January air on my cheeks, unlike where I used to be, I was no longer in the scene. Rather I was holding it, conscious of it, attending to it.

Maharishi had talked endlessly about an enigmatic aspect of enlightenment: sak_in or witnessing. In it,

“When the mind is experiencing objects through the senses, he is awake in the awareness of his self as separate from the field of experience and action. … He is awake in the world and awake in himself.”

I had always imagined this sak_in, “witnessing,” to be some sort of doubled-up consciousness, as if you’d stand back, arms folded, and make yourself watch yourself. The few times something like this had happened before, I was both looking at something and trying to watch myself look. While I was reading, for example, I’d also imagine myself as if from a few feet away, sensing myself sitting in the chair reading. It sounds, and was, pretty grueling.

But leaning against that cool porch railing, feeling the drizzle on my forearms, was just the opposite. There was no extra work in this experience; witnessing was utterly effortless. Looking over the misty dunes and the white caps, I was simply conscious that I was looking, feeling, thinking. I was at once a seeing and a separate, silent awakeness. It was that awakeness that was conscious of all this. And being so terribly conscious at that moment, witnessing myself seeing, was astonishingly fresh! I was simply and richly conscious of being there, both looking at the sea and conscious of doing so. How utterly normal! How utterly new!

I was not trying to witness, not even a little. I just was watching it all. And doing so took as little additional effort as it takes to have a right hand. I was just present to the white caps, present to the cool of the porch rail, present to the mist. I was conscious and conscious of being conscious, that’s all.

I became aware of one final effect about a week after that cumulous walk. I woke up one morning certain that, although I’d clearly been asleep, all of me actually hadn’t been. Some odd bit of awareness had persisted through the night, awake. I had been fully asleep, for sure, but not quite, not all of me.

Maharishi often told us that one of the marks of enlightenment would be what he called “wakefulness in sleep.” Even though you’re asleep, something inside remains conscious.

“The transcendent state continues to maintain itself at all times, in a natural manner, irrespective of the different states of waking, dreaming or sleeping.”

You or “it” remains aware of your own consciousness even while sleeping: “Even when it is night for all others,” as the Gita put it, “you remain wakeful.”

Frankly, wakefulness in sleep had always sounded pretty awful. Sometimes I had lain half awake all night, worrying about how tired I was going to feel the next day, wondering what I had eaten that had caused such insomnia and thinking maybe I should get up and open the window and…. But then I’d get up and feel surprisingly refreshed. The idea that I’d have to go through this every night for the rest of my life sounded positively grueling!

But witnesseing sleep that night, and every night since, actually seemed quite natural. I was awake inside, sure, but the wakeful part was so understated, so unobtrusive and natural that there was nothing at all traumatic about it. Even today, I hardly bother to notice whether I was awake inside, unless like last night (when I was writing this section) I have some reason to notice. But it’s there, it was and is how I sleep.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if I’ve actually slept. Here is another peculiar side effect of all this. Since waking and sleeping are so continuous, to know if I’ve been asleep I have to check the clock to see how long I’ve “not been asleep.” Weird, but you get used to it.

Despite all these changes, big and small, and with all the perspective of an impatient 25 year old, all I felt back then was disappointment. My mind hadn’t become totally silent, the world hadn’t been transformed. I still got nervous before I went downstairs to dinner. I was still afraid I’d never make a decent TM teacher and I was still often lonely. Those tubes and sleep changes were interesting and all, but compared to the end of all suffering for which I was waiting, this was pretty much squat.

Ah, the impatience of the young! For ever since that January afternoon, behind everything I do now is this bottomless emptiness, so open as to be without end. I have grown accustomed to the fact that this is now me. Not the me of doing dishes, not the me that is worried or writing a paper, not the me that feels alone or scared or happy. But it is the me that watches and lives and holds it all. I am, strange to say, infinite. And astonishingly, miraculously, the old me is here as well.

And I am grateful.

This year, The Edge has invited you, the reader, to share your personal experience with us, and this month, we asked you to write on, “My Unexpected Awakening.” We received submissions that we are proud to share with you.

Experiential writing is a style that simply shares an experience you had. It’s ripe with detail and emotion. It describes how something felt, to you. It inspires people not by suggesting what is, or what might be, but by sharing what was, for you, and the magic or inspiration or illumination that resulted from it.

Experiential writing is a surprisingly powerful way for readers to open and illuminate their own, personal inner wisdom. There’s something magical that happens when we read about the experiences of others like us, and then find tremendous resonance with the story. Not only do we feel authentic inspiration, but more importantly, the fact that we perceive the author to be more like ourselves removes the self-defeating barrier we tend to keep that says, “I’ll never be like her,” or “I’ll never be as wise as he is.”

In February, we invite you to share on the topic, “Love, Revealed.” Submit your article online here or email to editor@edgemagazine.net.

Featured submissions on “My Unexpected Awakening”:

• Fulfillment of Evolving Perfection, by Jerry Buchmeier
• When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Appears, by Kimberly Wencl
• The Flower Child (A True Story), by Burt Berlowe
• I Thought I was Dying, by Kathy Parkin
• Near-Death Experiences…, by Doug Crandall
• My Unexpected Awakening, by Cathy Combs
• Witnessing, by Dr. Robert K.C. Forman

December marks the beginning of whale season in Hawaii. Around this time majestic humpback whales appear in Hawaiian waters, having traversed 3,000 miles of deep blue sea from offshore Alaska. The whales stay through the winter, mating and bearing their young. To watch them cavort is a spectacle for the senses and the heart.

Last Valentine’s Day, Michael Fishbach and Gershon Cohen were fishing off the coast of Baja when they encountered a humpback whale tangled in a myriad of fishing nets. The animal’s fins were encumbered to the point that she could not swim and, if she remained fettered, would soon die. Armed with but a pen knife, Fishbach and Cohen worked diligently for over three hours, cutting away one small section of netting at a time, until “Valentina” was free. As soon as she gained a distance from the small boat, Valentina put on a freedom show to bring tears to any eye. [Check out the YouTube video here.)

I was amazed that such a huge creature — as large as 40,000 pounds — could be imprisoned by relatively fragile nets. In a way that’s what happens to human beings. Spiritually we are huge, free and unlimited — literally children of God, with all the powers of the divine imbued within us. Yet we become encumbered by the nets of earth and we experience being imprisoned. Our nets are not physical, like Valentina’s, but mental and emotional. We have been conditioned to believe we are small, frail, lost, and limited, and those thoughts are enough to keep us so.

One of my favorite “Star Trek” television episodes, Menagerie portrays Captain Christopher Pike (Captain Kirk’s predecessor) imprisoned on a planet supervised by mentally powerful aliens. At one point Captain Pike begins to sense that his jail is not physical, but an illusion created by his captors. The next time one of the aliens comes to feed the crew, Pike grabs the alien by the throat and tells him that he believes the jail is just a trick of the mind, and he demands to be free. At that moment the appearance of the jail disappears and the crew is liberated.

The symbology of this scene goes far beyond fiction. Human beings have been subjugated to what Ernest Holmes called “race thought” — the cloud of fear, separateness and limitation that hangs over the world because people subscribe to beliefs of lack, loss and divisiveness. This sense of alienation from love is not real, but a mind-net we strengthen by believing in it. Indeed, there have been many noble individuals who have transcended their sense of limits and served as models of freedom. We call them saints, gurus, healers, free spirits, and sometimes lunatics. Yet, they are no freer than we are. They have simply recognized the freedom we all own, claimed it, and lived it.

Jesus told his fishermen disciples, “leave your nets.” This advice was a double entendre. On one level he was telling them to let go of their profession as fisherman and come with him. On another level he was telling them — and all of us — to let go of the mental and emotional nets that have encumbered our fins, so that we can swim in the great ocean granted to us as our divine domain.

I am very interested in the phenomenon of hypnosis. When hypnotized, subjects can be burned with a lit cigarette and develop no blister because they have been told that they were being touched by a finger. Others can be touched by a finger and develop a blister because they were told it is a cigarette. The power of the mind is phenomenal, creating very real physical results. A normal person can lift a car leaning on someone stuck under the car, when under less dire circumstances the weight would be unbearable. These examples are insignificant compared to the entire world we have created because we believe in it. A Course in Miracles tells us, “Illusions are as strong in their effects as the truth,” and that there are no idle thoughts, because “that which gives rise to an entire world can hardly be called idle.”

For this reason we must constantly examine our thoughts to discern between thoughts that imprison us and thoughts that liberate us. Every thought is taking us either deeper into illusion or toward greater freedom. If you monitor your thoughts you will be amazed at how many nets you have wrapped around your massive fins. While this realization may be startling and even feel daunting, there is a gift in it: If you have the power to net yourself, you have the power to release yourself. Herein lies the method and path to freedom.

We are living during a time of great awakening. The ills that seem to plague our world must be undone from inside out. Each of us must find our way to freedom so that we may show others the way. You may feel netted but you have also been given a knife. The freedom available at the end of the knife is one that will give rise to a most glorious show.

While we are focused on spirituality, ascension, awakening, deepening, enlightenment and higher consciousness, well, sometimes life gets in the way, doesn’t it? It would be nice if we could just be in a constant state of Nirvana or Samadhi and never have to come down to Earth and do anything mundane, right? It would be nice if we didn’t have schedules to meet and physical tasks to do.

No such luck being a human, though! This is still a hands-on reality, and things don’t get done by themselves. Maybe someday we can clean our bathrooms with a flick of the pony tail or a wiggle of the nose, but that day in human evolution is not here yet.

After all, you still have to earn a living while you’re attaining spiritual knowledge. You still have to take care of the kids while you’re discovering the mysteries of the universe. You still have to clean the cat litter box while you’re awakening to your true nature as eternal being in human form. You still have to fix the bed even while you are becoming Christ Consciousness. Right?

In fact, it can get downright ugly to be a human! Sometimes you have to get in the trenches and battle it out with somewhat non-evolved specimens of the human race. You might even have to get “dirty” doing it, use the law, or rock the boat. Being a spiritual person does not mean that you must let everyone walk all over you, and sometimes you have to defend your rights, your space, your family, your friends, and your very way of life, or act quite human in order to get your needs met. All sorts of things come up that challenge your zen. Being human is no small matter.

So how do you find meaning in all this? How do you make being human a divine experience?

My spiritual path
For decades during my spiritual path, I did quite mundane tasks for a living. I cleaned toilets in bars for a living in the mornings and waited tables at night. I painted houses and cleaned offices. I did yard work, office work, driving, sweating it out on a farm, all kinds of things for a living. Needless to say, none of these jobs were spiritually fulfilling to me. I felt destined for something more meaningful, but it seemed ever elusive. I thought I would never get to the point where I was doing something important in life. In fact, I became really discouraged at times, wondering if I would ever amount to anything more than a maid, a painter or a waitress.

There came a day when I realized that this was exactly what was needed in my spiritual training, or I wouldn’t be in this situation. Somehow, I had to make peace with being just an ordinary person doing ordinary things for a living. I realized I had to find meaning, or let go of the need for meaning, in everything that I did in life. Some things seemed to have meaning, like my meditations, study and self introspection, while others seemed to completely lack meaning, like the mundane tasks of life.

How could my whole life have meaning, not just part of it? That became my spiritual quest at the time, to find meaning in absolutely everything, or transcend the need for any of it to have meaning whatsoever. Since at the time I was cleaning barroom toilets and floors for a living, this was an extra challenge! I felt it was the perfect opportunity to explore this part of my growth, and in fact, cleaning toilets for a living became one of the most enlightening, humbling, and eye opening experiences of my whole spiritual journey.

Have a good time
As I wiped throw up off toilets and floors in Key West, FL, a vacation spot for many people and where getting drunk to the point of throwing up was something a lot of people did there, I thought about how this affected those people. We all like to go out and have a good time, right? It’s therapeutic after a long week of work, or good for a short vacation, which all of us have so few of. My idea of a good time isn’t getting so drunk to the point that I have to throw up, but for some people it is. So how was I contributing to their good time, their therapy, their time with loved ones and friends? How was I helping them? What was the meaning of my work?

I was creating a clean place for them to use the bathroom, and even to throw up in. I created a venue where they could have a memorable moment that they would always look back on with fondness. I was setting up a situation where they could have an event in consciousness that was meaningful to them. Without me, none of this would be possible. I was in service. I had always wanted to be of service to others, and this is just one form of many kinds of service. My idea of being in service at the time was being of spiritual service, but that’s not the only kind of service people need. At this time in my life, this was the kind of service I was providing to humanity.

To be in service
The physical world is what it is. Things need to be cleaned, built, assembled, disassembled, reassembled, maintained, and everything in between. At the office, emails must be answered, phone calls must be returned, and bank books need to be balanced. At this time, physical reality is a hands-on kind of reality. Bathrooms don’t just clean themselves. Maybe someday we can “think” things clean or build them with our minds, but at this time, we just have to roll up the shirt sleeves and get it done! So who is going to be doing the cleaning if everyone is too “lofty” to be in service this way? How will we have a clean place to meditate and explore the mysteries of the universe if no one is willing to clean the rooms and the toilets?

I saw the situation clearly, that we all have to do our fair share of the mundane work, and at different points in our lives we might be in service in ways we do not prefer, and we might have to do more than our share of the mundane work while we build our businesses and right livelihood. For instance, it’s pretty normal that younger people have to do more of the mundane tasks while they get their education, build their businesses, and later get to a point where they are successful enough financially to pay other people to do the mundane tasks, possibly new young people who are hopeful upstarts looking for their life purpose and work. It’s what’s called “paying your dues.” Most of us have to start in the mailroom in the basement while we’re young before we get to be chief editor of the newspaper once we’re older.

I knew I wouldn’t be in that situation forever, having to make a living cleaning toilets, but I knew that it was in my life for this moment to learn something from it. I stopped resisting it, and decided to face the suffering I was creating in my mind because of it. It was not a pleasant task. Believe me, they party hard down there in Key West and make quite a mess!

Self-importance issues
I suffered because I felt it was just so degrading to be doing this work. I was too good for this. How could it have turned out like this, with all my education, all my spiritual knowledge, all my evolution? How did I end up being a maid? In my mind, I was supposed to be a spiritual teacher, helping people in their quest for spiritual knowledge. I was supposed to be something else entirely. Or was I? My self-importance issues were truly being challenged.

To find peace in this mundane life I was leading, I had to let go of everything I hoped to be in the future. I had to just be in the moment, cleaning toilets, with peace in my heart and mind, accepting where I was in life. I pretended I was God, or an angel sometimes, washing the toilets, which is the truth, actually, since God is our consciousness. It’s all one being living all these lives. I asked myself, “How would God or an angel approach cleaning bar-room toilets? What would be God’s mindset? What would be in God’s heart? How would an angel clean toilets? How can cleaning toilets be a divine experience?”

Just asking those questions changed the whole experience. Most people looked at me as just the unimportant cleaning girl who comes in the mornings to wipe up the mess from the night before, and some people couldn’t even give me the time of the day. However, once I had my epiphany, it didn’t bother me anymore. It also didn’t bother me that I hadn’t amounted to anything in life yet either, and I wasn’t attached to whether I would amount to anything or not. Who determines what “amounting to something” is, anyway? Is not a person who lives an ordinary life just as important to God’s experience of self as a famous person who leads nations?

Just realizing that you are divinity in the flesh, that is enough. That is all that is important. While people looked at me as “just the cleaning girl,” I was secretly grinning inside because I had just discovered one of the most powerful and important spiritual truths that can be discovered, all while cleaning throw up off a bar-room toilet. Divine truth was revealed to me. It did not matter what I was doing, I was still divinity no matter what, whether cleaning toilets or speaking to people in a spiritual seminar. It didn’t matter.

Under my nose
It was a humbling, and exhilarating, at the same time. From then on, I did not look at people the same. I did not judge people’s spiritual levels anymore by their success or lack of success, or what kind of work they were doing. I immediately realized that there could be a Buddha hiding under the disguise of “janitor” anywhere, right there under my nose, just like I was a “janitor” Buddha. Suddenly, out of the woodwork, I started discovering many very enlightened people doing quite mundane tasks that you would not assume a person of those spiritual “levels” would be doing.

I was pretty young, in my early 20s when I discovered this, and I would have missed out on meeting so many amazing people if I had continued through life just judging everyone’s spiritual level by their physical manifestations. Like many people do, I judged whether someone was truly enlightened by what they had going on at the physical plane level. Little did I realize at the time that that has nothing to do with spiritual enlightenment.

You see, it’s all the same. Nothing really changes on the outside. It only changes on the inside. A single mom with three kids holding two jobs can be just as enlightened, possibly even more enlightened, than a fancy dressed guru sitting on a throne dispersing spiritual teachings to multitudes of people. A janitor might have more insight into the mysteries of the universe than a best-selling, self-help author who makes gobs of money with followers everywhere. In fact, some of the most enlightened people I have ever met are living very simple lives and don’t have a lot of money. I experienced more wisdom coming from a common lawn mower guy living peacefully in a shack than I ever have from a lofty famous spiritual teacher. That lawn mower man really knew how to be present in the ever unfolding eternal now, more than all the spiritual teachers who talk about it.

Sure, maybe some day you will be a spiritual teacher recognized for your work if that is something you aspire to, maybe not. However, that does not change the fact that you are a spiritual teacher, if that is what you are, right now! Even as I cleaned toilets for the rest of that year, being fully at peace with the mundane-ness of my life, I was a spiritual teacher to those around me. There were a few people who noticed I was unusual for a cleaning girl, that I went about it without hating it like most people do. Sometimes during the 15-minute breaks we would get into deep conversations about spirituality, or even talk while we were working. Sometimes I had the opportunities to share what I had to share. Other times there weren’t the openings.

A budding Buddha
Either way, I was happy. Secretly I knew that I was a budding Buddha disguised as a toilet cleaner, learning one of the most important spiritual lessons of my life, which would change how I approach mundane tasks in life forever. Mundane tasks cannot be escaped by most of us, no matter how awakened we get. Sure, maybe there’s the guru here and there who everyone serves and doesn’t have to do anything mundane, but that’s not the norm — and might even be an abuse of power.

Gandhi even cleaned toilets. Did you know that? At his compound, everyone had assigned tasks, rotating through the most unpleasant ones so no one person had to do the unpleasant tasks all the time, like cleaning the latrine. Gandhi’s wife got very upset when he put himself and her on the rotating list for cleaning the latrines. She said, “But you are the leader! You are the one everyone is looking up to! Why should you be cleaning latrines? This is ridiculous!” He explained to her that no one man’s time is more valuable than another’s, not even his.

I have to say, that was one seriously enlightened chap! Gandhi is possibly the one I respect the most out of all the spiritual leaders I have ever heard of, just for that statement alone. I have to admit that I get really disgusted by the multitudes of spiritual leaders and teachers around these days who everyone is serving hand and foot, and they wouldn’t even THINK of cleaning a toilet, since there are so many devotees who will do it for them. I consider that an abuse of power, and a self-importance trap.

There is a saying in Buddhist teachings: “Before I was enlightened, I chopped wood and carried water. After I was enlightened, I chopped wood and carried water.” There is nothing that says it in a nutshell quite like that. Before you were spiritually awakened, life had mundane tasks in it, and after you are spiritually awakened, life still has mundane tasks in it. It’s all in how you approach them that changes. That is all. Enlightenment is nothing more.

The suffering stopped
Once I retrieved the pearl of wisdom from the experience and started to do my task with joy and non-attachment to anything else being my reality, accepting fully that I was just a “lowly” toilet cleaner and I was still divinity anyway, no matter what I was doing, then the suffering stopped.

Budding Buddhas are everywhere. Humanity is awakening in leaps and bounds, and a snowball effect is happening, gathering speed. Who knows how many Buddhas are walking around in the local supermarket or pumping gas at the local gas station? How many Buddhas clean toilets? Is that a Buddha who is waiting on your table at the restaurant? Is that a Buddha who just drove by in a road cleaning machine? Is that a Buddha fixing your banister on your house? What is enlightenment supposed to really look like? Does anything really change?

It is ALL divine, not just some of it. All of life is a meditation for the soul. All of life is God dreaming, through you. Next time you wash the dishes, see how it feels to wash them if you are Eternal Being, Godself or Buddha washing them. What would it be like? How would the experience be different? Put yourself fully in the now. Forget what you want to become, what you’re “supposed” to be, or who you wish you were. Be here fully in this mundane task, and be in service to humanity, just as you are, cleaning the toilet! Even enlightened people still have to clean a toilet now and then, or at least some kind of mundane task.

Nothing matters
Now, the real awakening came when I realized that none of it had meaning at all! Not even something as lofty as being a spiritual teacher has meaning. It’s just something you’re doing, an experience you are having, adding to the mass consciousness memory bank in God’s mind. Godself wants to experience it all, from being the toilet cleaner to being the lofty, well-respected spiritual leader, and everything in between. When you die and start passing into the other dimensions, nothing you were doing on the Earth matters. Nothing.

When you leave the Earth, your whole life becomes but a memory in the mind of God, a wisp of a dream that passed quite quickly in the perception of Eternal Self, an entry in the akashic library of God’s experiences. It doesn’t matter who you were mad at, who you were in love with, what you were doing, what you experienced, what your plans were, not even your family is important anymore. None of it is important when you suddenly find yourself in the vastness of self that you really are. All it becomes is an entry in the memory banks.

Experience of the game
I have crossed over and had a near-death experience, twice in this lifetime, and both times, whatever was going on in Earth reality was completely unimportant. It was like an interrupted video game that you could just start over whenever you wanted, and the video game was just for fun, since you knew it wasn’t real, and it didn’t matter if you even won, since it’s more about the experience of the game than winning.

The real enlightenment happens when you stop looking for meaning in everything, and just find the experience alone as being meaningful enough. After all, why is consciousness doing all this? Because it can. That’s all. There is no particular goal or outcome. There is no finish line to reach. It is all about having the experience of this or that. That is what the meaning of life is, to experience fully. That is what God is trying to do, explore Self fully. God is trying to experience absolutely everything it can from every possible perspective, and discover itself through this activity within its consciousness. All of this is but a journey of self-discovery for God, and you are part of that self-discovery process God is experiencing.

So, if you are cleaning toilets for a living right now, well, for some reason God is experiencing that, along with the frustration of it, through you. You are part of God’s self-exploration journey, and through you, God is discovering Self. See what you can contribute to Godself’s journey with your experience, no matter how lofty or mundane it might be. You are God dreaming, so if you are God dreaming and you are cleaning toilets, do it with full lucidity! Be awake in the dream.

OK, well, I’m writing this article on a day full of really boring administrative stuff I have to do, and also when I am about to do the task of the weekly house cleaning. That includes cleaning toilets! So off I go to clean a couple toilets! I know it’s politically incorrect to say one is enlightened, so that’s not exactly what I’m saying since it’s an ever-unfolding process. One never truly reaches enlightenment, because real enlightenment is a deepening in self discovery that never ends, but I’m going to say this anyway, since it’s so fitting to this conversation! Forgive me!

Before I was enlightened, I cleaned toilets. After I was enlightened, I cleaned toilets!

My own journey, like so many others, was forged through a myriad of obstacles, the largest of which was dealing with a mental illness. I was diagnosed 20 years ago with Bipolar Disorder. I am not unique with a mental disorder, as current statistics by the National Institute of Mental Health state that in any given year, one in four adults are stricken. One in 17 adults suffers from serious mental illness. In addition, mental illness is the leading cause of disability in the United States and Canada, with many patients having more than one diagnosis. Ninety percent of suicides are committed by someone with a mental disorder.

You may ask, “What is missing in our current society that would account for such staggering numbers?” Coming from a place of darkness and now seeing the light, I can attest to what I believe and what has saved me. When one is in the grips of a mental disorder, the most common feeling is fear. Fear that no one understands me. Fear that no one else in the world feels the way I feel. Fear that I will always feel this way. All of these fears amount to one word — isolation.

The prison system enforces one of the most hated punishments, solitary confinement. Movies and books have been written about prisoners suffering day after day in a dark cell, slowly going mad. I readily identified with this visualization of being separate and trapped, and I thought longingly about the day my life would end and the suffering would be over. I climbed the rope of unworthiness, hand over hand through darkness, until one day a light appeared. That light has just continued to get brighter and brighter. I no longer feel isolated. I feel in harmony and I am aware of our inner relatedness that we are each part of the whole.

We never know what will transform our lives. My journey to light and choice to live came to me very quickly one day while I was on a cruise ship with 3,000 other people. While the experience was isolating to say the least, a morning stress seminar gave me my first experience with a guided meditation — and probably my first instance getting a glimpse of my true spirit.

The guided meditation led me through a path to a door that had a dozen steps that led me to a garden. With each step, I allowed myself to go deeper into a relaxed state. As I stepped off the last step, with my eyes closed, a sphere of intense purple light revealed itself to me. As the color grew more deeply, I felt my breath move in tandem with the vibrations of color. Any fear that was in my body left at that moment. I could only feel love and gratitude for being a part of this world and knew to my core that this is what life is — energy and pure potential.

From that moment, I have continued to get to know my unique energy and learn how this energy can move through me to the highest good. There are so many energy healers just waiting to guide us and I am grateful for all of them, because they raise the Earth’s vibration.

The greatest joy in life, I have found, is getting to know myself and connect with my soul’s energy. Through quiet stillness, I ground myself and clear my energy system of things that I don’t want. Fears or regrets are removed and all I feel is pure potential with what this physical body can do on this Earth. I now have come to understand that the purple is my 7th chakra, my soul energy, coming through.

Each of us will find this energy manifest in our own unique way. But to find it, you must first find the courage to start on the journey and become aware of the inner stillness that is here waiting to come forth.

As Earth moves through these shifting times and we accelerate towards the year 2012, our lives are changing in many ways – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It’s important that we consciously find ways to clear, energize and raise our vibration so we can align with the new energies heading our way. At the OASIS Center for Conscious Living, our core teachings are found in the acronym used for the word OASIS representing: Oneness Awakening from Stillness, Inspiring Simplicity.

We also adhere to several practices to assist our ability to live fully, consciously and intentionally during this time of great transformation. The Seven Practices for Conscious Living as outlined on our website are community, self-care, spiritual devotion, energetic body, balance through nature, service and celebration (see more at www.oasisexperience.org).

The first practice for conscious living is to become part of community. It is becoming increasingly important to gather and align with like-minded people. We will be needing all the more support from our spiritual family to truly assist with our awakening and free us from our ego and tribal-mind limited conditioning. We learn from the wisdom of others and begin to share our own. We begin to feel comfortable with our knowings instead of feeling like we are going crazy!

The second practice, self-care, is about maintaining our physical body. As our body’s health, light and radiance increases, we realize its holiness in serving as a channel for the creative energetic principle of the universe. Self-care involves consciously eating, cleansing, exercising and tending to any other practice that physically nourishes and strengthens our holy human vessel.

The third practice is spiritual devotion. Many spiritual teachers emphasize a devotion to cultivating stillness, such as through yoga and meditation. In stillness, we learn to easily flow through the storms of transformation and hear the voice of our inner self. We more easily connect to the channel that wants to manifest through us, as us.

The central practice, number four, is the energetic body. Your energetic body can be measured with a vibrational frequency that emanates from and within your body. It is your vital essence, your life force energy and eternal radiance. As we ascend through these times of transformation and old forms fall away, this energetic body “presence” within you becomes all the more vital.

This presence, or your energetic body, is the being that was an innocent child before the ego, with all of its cultural conditioning, conformity and control, masked this essence from your awareness. It has always been within you, and many experience this core Self as a result of some trauma that strips away the egoic structure. This could be from a near-death experience, a powerful “altered state” induced by breathwork, or even from a great loss that leads to a journey through your “dark night of the soul.” Since all thoughts are energy, healing and strengthening the energy body is becoming very significant.

The fifth practice for conscious living is to seek balance through nature. When we become one with nature, we see the perfection in all things. We see the abundance of life, the ebb and flow cycles of the seasons, and the perfect communion between the elements, plants and animals. Earth provides all the nutrition and medicine we need. When we connect with nature, the central principles of Oneness, Stillness and Simplicity are cultivated within us.

The last two practices, service and celebration, are the natural outcome of the first five practices. As we come together in community, care for our body, devote to enhancing our inner divinity and energy bodies, and balance through nature, we are then ready to shine our beautiful light in service to the world. With the rebirth of our spiritual mindset, we freely become the channel to creatively express and embark on a mission of service that enlightens our world. With the overwhelming joy and gratitude we feel, we find ways to celebrate and honor our journey.

This is the spiritual inheritance we claim, bringing acceptance, appreciation and enthusiasm that we might celebrate our own rebirth and the birthing of a new earth!

Through the process, there was a deeper, more extraordinary dissolution of the egoic self than I had previously experienced. It wasn’t a dissolving like when you sit in meditation and your sense of self dissolves into a wonderful state of presence. It was more like someone was ripping layers off me, one by one. It was very unceremonious. It wasn’t nice, it wasn’t kind, and it wasn’t easy. It was existence shoving a mirror in front of my face and literally holding me there so I could not look away for even a second… I saw that what happens in the body and mind ultimately can’t be avoided. Everything has to be dealt with – everything. Everything has to be seen through….

I tell this story because everybody has a story.

We all have our own ways in which life is attempting to hold up a mirror, to squeeze the conditioned self out of us, to squeeze out of us the holding and grasping, to squeeze out all of our beliefs and ideas and concepts and self-images. If we are willing to look, we will see that life is always in the process of waking us up. If we are not in harmony with life, if we are working in opposition to it, then it is a rough ride indeed….

When we are not willing to see what life is trying to show us, it will keep ramping up the intensity until we are willing to see what we need to see. In this way, life itself is our greatest ally. To think that enlightenment only comes through wonderful experiences is to delude yourself. For most of us, the path to enlightenment is not rosy. We need to acknowledge this, because otherwise we’re only going to let ourselves travel toward that which feels good, that which supports our image of what the path of awakening should be. For most people, the path of awakening does have wonderful, profound moments and realizations. But it is also a gritty thing. It’s not what most people sign up for when they say they want to be enlightened.

The truth of the matter is that most people who say they want awakening don’t actually want to awaken. They want their version of awakening. What they actually want is to be really happy in their dream state. And that’s okay, if that’s as far as they’ve evolved. But the real, sincere impulse toward enlightenment is something that goes far beyond the desire to make our dream state better. It is an impulse that is willing to subject itself to whatever is needed in order to wake up. The authentic impulse toward enlightenment is that internal prayer asking for whatever it is that will bring us to a full awakening, regardless of whether it turns out to be wonderful or terrible. it is an impulse that puts no conditions on what we have to go through. This authentic impulse can be a bit frightening, because when you feel it, you know it is real.

When you have let go of all conditions – when you have let go of how you want your own awakening to be and what you want the journey to be like – you have let go of your illusion of control. In fact, we have to be willing to lose our whole world.

That may sound romantic when you first hear it – “Oh yes, let me sign up! I’m willing to lose my whole world.” But when your whole world starts to crumble, and you start to emerge from unimaginably deep states of denial, it is something altogether different. It is something altogether more real and gritty. It’s something that some people sign up for and some people don’t. This isn’t a journey about becoming something. This is about unbecoming who we are not, about undeceiving ourselves.

In the end, it’s ironic. We don’t end up anywhere other than where we have always been, except that we perceive where we have always been completely differently. We realize that the heaven everyone is seeking is where we have always been. Once again, what is required is a certain sense of honesty.

Question: What must I do to awaken and be free? Where is the moment from asleep to awake?
Answer: To awaken requires a deep intention on your part to be present. Every moment you have a choice. Will you be present with what is actually here now, or will you allow yourself to be absorbed into the world of the thinking mind, which is an illusory world of thought, memory and imagination. The present moment is always available, but you have to choose it.

The more you choose Presence, the more grounded you will become in the truth and reality of the present moment and the more you will experience the sacred and the divine. If your commitment is to being present, there will come a time when being present becomes your home – and even though you will have occasional or even frequent excursions into the world of the mind, you never go so far into the mind that you get lost there.

You ask where is the moment from asleep to awake. You cannot awaken in the future. You can only awaken now. And when you awaken, you will find yourself here, in this moment, utterly present with what is here in the moment with you.

In truth, there is nothing but the present moment. In truth, you can never be anywhere else. The experience of being somewhere other than in the present moment is an illusion which is created when you enter the world of the mind, and become identified with the story that is unfolding there. If you believe in your thoughts, memories, imaginings, ideas, concepts and beliefs as being somehow true, you will find yourself imprisoned within the mind and disconnected from the present moment.

An explorer at heart, Vorwerk’s new book, The Bartholomew Effect: Awakening to Oneness, is a testament to a soul who continues to reach beyond physical dimension for insight on the unseen. What if we were more aware of the power of our intentions? he asks. What if we became conscious, multidimensional spiritual beings? And what if we all spontaneously experience timelessness, weightlessness and the ability to move with a single thought – as if in a dream, just as Larry experienced on a number of occasions? And what if you learn that you are intimately connected – perhaps on the soul level – with someone who walked with Jesus (the apostle Bartholomew) but were uneasy about sharing that information but could not contain the love that the experience contains?

In this concluding part of his interview with The Edge, Larry shares with us his sense of where we are now as humanity, and where we are going.

Is awakening into a greater awareness of oneness a purpose for us living our lives?
Larry Vorwerk: Yes, for a number of reasons. One thing I learned through this whole process is that going into oneness is a simple and a quick way to help put your ego to the side. When you feel oneness and see yourself as part of everything else, then the ego has to step aside, because it thrives on separation, being different from somebody else. If there is nothing outside yourself, then there is nothing for the ego to feed on. That’s just one avenue that I have found to be helpful for experiencing oneness.

The other aspect that I mention in different ways in the book is that when we come to that awareness that we are all one, that everything we do affects everyone else, and everything that everyone else does affects us, then we will come to that point where we will work for the good of the whole. If all of our energy is spent helping others and being of service to others and helping progress things for everyone, just think of the difference it would create on this Earth compared to now, when people are in competition and in conflict with each other and all this energy is being wasted.

I read the part of your book where Source, in February 2006, gave you the message, “Right now there is only one game on earth, it’s the awakening of the Whole.” And I thought about the oil spill going on right now in the Gulf of Mexico and how we don’t have a solution from any one individual, but if we came together as one we would know how to solve any crisis.
Vorwerk: Right. Part of the oil crisis that is going on there is unfortunate, because of the harm it does to wildlife and people’s jobs and on and on. But at the same time it might awaken enough people that we need to come to a better solution for energy. In the long haul it may be the catalyst that we need to make some of the changes that we need to do concerning alternate fuel.

What is your sense of where we are now as humanity, with trials and tribulations seemingly escalating every day?
Vorwerk: I think we are right in the middle of the birthing process. I actually find it very exciting, because humanity is coming awake right now. A lot is happening underneath the consciousness or the physical manifestation right now that most people don’t see, especially the media. They only announce the negative things happening in the world. But realize that there are many spiritual groups out there, many good meetings of the minds, so to speak, finding solutions for things, creating love and service. It’s just a matter of time before it all pops out into manifestation.

With Dec. 21, 2012, there is nothing special about that exact day or time, but the whole time period that everything is going on is very important. I would say within the next three years or so, we are going to see more changes on this earth than we have ever seen in past history – and it will be good. Unfortunately, you have to do away with the old before the new can come in. All the things that had been kept secret or hidden – everything from the sexual abuse by priests to the corruption of the banking industry and the stock market – have to be brought out to the open to be cleansed.

It’s all part of the birthing process.
Vorwerk: Yes, just like giving birth to an animal or a human, the birthing process can be quite painful for those involved, but the outcome is a very joyful occasion. The information I’m receiving from many sources is that we will see this new earth in a joyful, loving, peaceful way in the near future.

Tell me about your Bartholomew Effect group, what it’s purpose is and what experiences you have had with it.
Vorwerk: It started back in 2004, around the time when I become aware of the Bartholomew relationship that I have. I wanted a group where people could speak their mind in a free and respectful way, where anything goes and nothing is too far out, regardless if you are talking about communication with ETs, or you’re talking about out-of-body experiences, or near death experiences, or anything else like that. It’s where you come together with like-minded people to share your experiences and journey. It’s also where we can grow from each other and support each other.

We meet twice a month here in the Northfield area; one gathering is more about learning and sharing, and we also have a time where we also spend time for healing the earth and healing each other as a service to humanity and service to the Mother Earth. Sometimes we might have a DVD that we would watch and discuss afterward. We might discuss things from a book. It varies. I do have a meditation at the beginning of each meeting, and then at the end we circle up and I take everyone into kind of an altered meditative state of oneness.

As a spiritual Johnny Appleseed, you’re throwing out a lot of seeds in this book, but above all what do you hope your readers will gain from it?
Vorwerk: What I hope everyone will gain from it is that everybody is okay. It doesn’t matter where you are at on this journey of awakening. There is nobody better than another or worse than another, that there is hope for the future, and that we are the hope. In the book, I have a collection called the “What If” series, where I mention, what would life be like if it was this way or that way. My hope is that it will give people the seed to start their own growth and awakening so they can participate in the way that they are here to do. We all have a part to play. No one person is better than the other. We all have a part to play, and the more people who wake up and do their part then the quicker and the easier it becomes to truly create this world of oneness that is coming about.

What is your sense that souls who are acting out in fear and anger and violence really want?
Vorwerk: Everyone plays a part, and there are those who play the devil’s advocate role. They might be the catalyst to get people to come together to resolve certain issues. Even though nobody’s better than the other person, there are people who are at different levels of awakening.

Somebody told me there was a whole bunch of people sleeping on the beach. The sun starts to rise and at first, a few people wake up and the other people keep sleeping. Slowly a few more people wake up, and eventually everyone wakes up. But it doesn’t mean that those who are still sleeping are any worse or any better than the people who wake up first. It’s just that different people have different roles to play at different levels of their own spiritual journey.

You’ve heard the term Lightworkers? There are those who are here to be the ones to light the fire or start the awakening process. People who play that role usually are aware of it in some way, and do it in many different ways. You can write a book, like I did, or you can host a meeting. Even those who are in traditional religion can awaken other people in their own way. There are many different paths to wake up. You don’t have to follow any given path. It’s whatever works for that individual.

For more information on Larry Vorwerk and The Bartholomew Effect, please visit www.awakeningtooneness.com.

Scientist, zookeeper, distance runner and gardener Larry Vorwerk balances his love of nature and science with his awakened heart, one that beats in harmony with a sense of oneness with all of creation.

An explorer at heart, Vorwerk’s new book, The Bartholomew Effect: Awakening to Oneness, is a testament to a soul who continues to reach beyond physical dimension for insight on the unseen. What if we were more aware of the power of our intentions? he asks. What if we became conscious, multidimensional spiritual beings? And what if we all spontaneously experience timelessness, weightlessness and the ability to move with a single thought – as if in a dream, just as Larry experienced on a number of occasions? And what if you learn that you are intimately connected – perhaps on the soul level – with someone who walked with Jesus (the apostle Bartholomew) but were uneasy about sharing that information but could not contain the love that the experience contains?

The Iowa native, who now lives with his wife, Nita Wolf, on ten acres of land near Northfield, MN, explores consciousness in the present moment, be it at work at the Minnesota Zoo, tending his fifty varieties of fruits and vegetables or running the byways of the rural countryside. His current incarnation is all about testing the boundaries of reality and the gifts of spiritual transformation.

In this interview with The Edge, Larry tells us that the Earth is undergoing the pains of birth, and we all can feel it deep in our souls. His message, however, is filled with hope as he promotes unconditional love, peace and oneness among us all.

You begin your book by writing, “By keeping an open mind toward everything, listening to our intuition and then acting on it, we begin to live life to the fullest.” What is your perspective on belief systems and the role they play in our lives?
Larry Vorwerk: I was raised Catholic and, as such, I guess that is a blessing and a curse at the same time. It was a very structured life. My parents were very traditional, but as I went to college, I really found it to be beneficial to have a spiritual background, as well as a scientific background. I used that to my advantage in trying to find answers to reality and life from looking at it from both perspectives.

Since I have had some multi-dimensional experiences, it gave me strength as far as having a stronger belief system and knowing that there is more out there than just what science can prove. Being the type of person who always is questioning life, I continue to explore my sense of reality. I never limited myself to what is possible. I explored different belief systems, everything from Native American philosophy to out-of-body experiences and dream states.

I found that in time they all started intersecting and supporting each other. As the puzzle pieces start to fit together, the puzzle border keeps expanding, and so there is really no end to understanding reality or life. But at the same time, as we do grow and become more aware, we do get a bigger and fuller picture of what is life and reality.

In the picture that we think we see, we think we know where the edges of life are, but it is constantly expanding on us.
Vorwerk: Yes, it’s constantly expanding. To give you an idea where science does help, look at modern physics which believes that there are 11 dimensions to reality, and yet we live in a third-dimensional world. A lot of the literature says we are moving into a fifth-dimensional experience. At the same time, I’ve had experiences that I believe were sixth dimensional, and these are the experiences of oneness. And yet, from what science says there are even higher dimensions that are incomprehensible while we are in the physical form.

As you mention in your book, you wrote about numerous experiences of being conscious in the higher dimensions, experiences that you describe as life altering. Why do some people have these and others do not?
Vorwerk: By being open to it. A person can close themselves down and be fearful about anything that is unexplained. That probably keeps a person from having those type of experiences. For myself, being curious and being open-minded, and actually putting out the intention to have higher dimensional experiences, has allowed me to have some of these. In the earlier years, a lot of these experiences came without any control or any way of knowing why they happened, but as the years have gone by I have had more control over some type of oneness experiences, which has been helpful.

What was the purpose for you having them?
Vorwerk: The purpose was to remember Home, meaning the afterlife; also to fulfill my purpose or mission in life and to be of service and to help other people on their awakening process.

You shared that your next incarnation will be as part of a group consciousness overseeing an evolving new planet and that many of your experiences outside of the realm of waking consciousness have been like training exercises for that incarnation. Can you elaborate on what you know about what that incarnation will be and what your role will be?
Vorwerk: There’s not too much I can say about it because it is beyond physical words. But another angle or way to approach that would be an outline view of a book on reality that I include toward the end of my book. I mention that everything converges as everything rises to a higher vibration, and I believe that is true in all aspects of life. The higher the vibration, the more inclusive everything is, including angels, archangels and even souls.

An individual of a species of animal comprises the soul of that species, and yet in humans each individual has a soul. As you get even into the higher dimensions and higher evolution, individual souls merge together to create a higher reality or a higher being, so to speak. From that experience that I mention in the book, post-human graduates merge together to become the consciousness of an evolving planet. Even though it was an experience like my other oneness experience, in the sense that energetically it was so expansive that it is hard to put into words, I did get an understanding of what that meant.

In the book I like to use analogies or parables to try to describe something that is hard to put into words, and another way of putting that experience of being the consciousness of a planet compared to being a human would be like the cells in your body compared with the known universe. A blood cell, for example, has no consciousness of what the whole body is doing, that I’m talking to you on the phone and you are in a different city and all of that. As we evolve and merge into a higher vibration, our reality becomes so much more expansive, so much more loving, so much more joyful, and yet at the same time incomprehensible as we are in a physical body at this time.

What role has emotional healing played in your spiritual journey?
Vorwerk: It helped me to come alive. To give you a little background, I was in an unhealthy marriage before and was not really happy in a lot of ways. My former wife had some mental health issues, and since it was emotionally painful in a lot of ways, I tried to stay out of feelings and be more intellectualized. But as I moved out of that relationship, moved into a healthy relationship, which I have now with Nita, I started to feel more and use my feelings as part of living and part of life. The more that you have feelings, the more you can experience life – the joys as well as the pain. Part of the reason to be on this earth in the physical body is to have those feelings and have those emotions that create your life experiences.

What is the Bartholomew Effect?
Vorwerk: At first when I started writing the book, I wasn’t even going to bring up the Bartholomew connection, but Spirit told me that the title of the book should be called The Bartholomew Effect. To do that, I then had to explain yourself. Once I started to write some of it, it was like, well, if you go this far you might as well go the whole way.

The interesting thing is that I asked myself, too, “Why is it called The Bartholomew Effect? Why wasn’t it called The Jesus Effect or something else?” I asked Jesus about that question. It is only called The Bartholomew Effect because it is my experiences, it’s my journey, it’s my awakening to oneness. If you were to write a book about your experiences, then it would be about your effect. So it doesn’t mean that mine is any better than somebody else’s. The point is that my experiences may be helpful to another person and might trigger some of their own growth. It might trigger some of their own awarenesses as they open up to this oneness experience.

The other aspect of why it’s called The Bartholomew Effect is because of different experiences I’ve had, which I explain in the book fully. There is a reason for me to believe that I am the apostle Bartholomew as a walk-in, but I really leave that open to the reader to come to their own conclusion. I leave it open that I could be a walk-in, I could be just overshadowed, or I’m just tapping into the collective unconscious, because it really doesn’t matter if I am or I’m not, because we are all one anyway. It’s just where my focus is at this point, and so I really didn’t want to make who I am the focus of the book.

It’s more about the message of where are we going, who are we as a whole, and what is the outcome. The main emphasis is how can we change our reality, and the biggest reality change that we can make is when we come to the awareness that we are all one, that we are all interconnected.

Once we come to that awareness, how does that change our reality?

What have you learned about Bartholomew and his role as an apostle?
Vorwerk: I have done a number of past life regressions. In fact, I did one a couple months ago since the book came out. I figured some people will start asking some questions about that. As I went through this session, I realized that a lot of the things that were said about Jesus in that time period did not fully answer who Jesus was in the message. I tried to explain it in some ways in the book, that the real message is that we are unconditional love and that Jesus was the way-shower. What was different between Jesus and most of us is he retained that awareness of Home that most of us have forgotten, for many reasons.

Since I started writing the book, I have a closer relationship with Jesus. When I finally made my commitment to write the book, Jesus came to me and said that He would always be present inside of me from that point forward, and I do feel that energy. I guess that’s the best way of putting it.

Everything is energy. I do feel that unconditional love energy that I would call Jesus, and yet there are many other avatars out there that carry that same energy of unconditional love. I bring up Jesus a lot in the book because that is the relationship I had, but if someone else had a relationship with Mohammed or Buddha or whomever, they could have that same type of experience of oneness and love. This isn’t just a Christian book. The message is the same no matter what avenue you come from.

What you have learned about Jesus that has changed your relationship with Him during this whole process?
Vorwerk: That is that He is very approachable. As I have said, I was raised Catholic, and if you know anything about the Catholic faith or a lot of the other traditional faiths, there is a lot of fear and guilt and shaming put around people because of what they do or don’t do. There is nothing like that from my experience that I had with Jesus, from the Bartholomew Effect.

I am totally acceptable, unconditionally the way I am, and I have my own faults and make my own mistakes like everyone else. And yet what that allows me to do is totally merge with Jesus because of that unconditional love, which is open to everyone. I don’t think traditional religious practice and teachings make that available for people. People see Jesus as something special, something above them, something that they could never attain themselves, and so they never have that true relationship with Him as a true brother that I see and experience at this point. So, from that point of view, my life has changed as far as my viewpoint of Jesus and His message.

The tagline of your book is “Awakening to Oneness.” Understanding oneness and knowing oneness are two different experiences. How does a person truly experience oneness?
Vorwerk: There are different levels of oneness. The one big experience of oneness that I had, where other souls merged with me, was at such a high energy level that if I were to retain that level of energy of oneness, I could not stay on this physical Earth. It is impossible for me to go to that level on a regular basis.

At the same time, I have learned in different ways how to get glimpses of bliss, of oneness, and a lot of that has to do with some of my spiritual insights that I include at the beginning of each chapter. One is to use your imagination. Just imagine yourself being at one with other things. What I have found is that you could be in love with your wife, and yet at the same time you could really feel at one with your pet dog. But try to do feel at one with all of them at one time instead of just one-on-one. I’ve had some experiences that have helped me to do that. There are now six other souls who have moved onto the other side that I can merge with at will now, and then I can do it with all six or seven of them at once. With each one it adds, it exponentially increases that feeling of oneness.

There are many ways to strive for that oneness, but unfortunately I can’t make it happen for someone else. In my book, I just share my experiences, things that have helped me. Some things were out of my control; I do some things now that I do have control of. One exercise that I do is visualize being at one with other souls. Just to let you know, everyone who reads my book is someone I have already merged with, and they have merged with everyone else that has read that book. It is my intention and visualization that as we all merge together at some level of awareness, we will start to feel it more and more. The more we experience oneness, the easier it becomes for others to also experience it. I know there are many other people out there who are doing their own thing on oneness. They may call it different names, but it still has the same effect.

Another thing I mention in the book is that by intention I open up my high self for other people to tap into to help with their awakening and awareness. Why reinvent the wheel? Why not share what we have learned from life experiences with others who are open to it or wanting to gain from it? Your intention and imagination, two of the insights that I mention, are very powerful.

CLICK HERE to continue to Part 2 of the interview.

For more information on Larry Vorwerk and The Bartholomew Effect, please visit www.awakeningtooneness.com.

Ancient traditions of our planet almost universally looked upon the four geographical directions as sacred. Since the beginning of time, they have played a role in the ongoing creation of our planet and its evolution of consciousness. Naturally then, many peoples all over the world have performed ceremonies to honor these four directions.

The four directions were thought to be associated with different spiritual qualities. Often each was symbolized by a guardian angel as described, for instance, in the Book of Revelation. From many traditions, such as the Mayan, it is also clear that the four (and sometimes six, if “above” and “below” is included) directions emanate from the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is the most widespread of all ancient myths, and it was seen as the center of the four directions. For examples of how the energies of the four directions were organized around a center, look at medicine wheels in the West or the mandalas of the East.

In the modern era, knowledge about the Tree of Life and the four sacred directions has essentially disappeared, only to be replaced by a purely quantitative GPS system. While modern people typically acknowledge cultural differences between the East and the West, it is rare that they would see those as related to the Tree of Life. The result has been that many have become insensitive to the shifting energies of time and how these affect the evolution of humanity.

Only some indigenous cultures have retained the tradition of the spiritual qualities of the four directions. Yet, in the Book of Revelation it is described how the new world emerging at the end of time will at its center have a Tree of Life that will nurture the inhabitants. Maybe we are now, in fact, beginning to see a return of this Tree of Life, such as what has appeared in such movies as Avatar.

Beyond myth
What then is the Tree of Life? It is hard to believe that a phenomenon that has been worshiped all over the world by almost all traditions would not be more than a myth or a symbol. It would seem that there has to be a reality behind it. This, I believe is an etheric three-dimensional scaffold from which all the energies that create the universe emanate. Yet, there is not just one Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is more like a nested hierarchy of holograms, and exists at several different, connected levels of the universe that are in resonance with one another ultimately according to the principle “As Above, So Below.”

The highest level is the cosmos, referred to as the Heart of the Heavens by the Maya. The second lower level is the galaxy, the third is the solar system, the fourth the Earth, the fifth the human beings (and all other organisms) themselves and then down to the level of the elementary particles. Each of these levels has a central axis, a Tree of Life, which is at the center of all of its energy grid systems (branches).

On the level of our Earth, the Tree of Life is the polar axis, and since we ourselves are affected by the energies of the Mayan calendar through our resonance with the polarities that the Tree of Life generates, it is now crucial to prepare for the onset of the Ninth Wave. To be able to do so, however, I believe it will help if we are able to ceremonially recreate the Tree of Life after centuries of oblivion.

Polarities of energies
Our planet and its human cultures have thus emerged through the effects of the polarities of energies originating from the Tree of Life. The same can be said about the imbalance between male and female that has dominated for about 5,000 years. It is no accident that in the Judeo-Christian creation story of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and the ensuing separation of the genders, the Tree of Life plays a crucial role.

According to the Mayan calendar, which is based on the shifting polarities of the Tree of Life, we know, however, that these imbalances are now being rebalanced and will ultimately result in unity consciousness if our resonance with the Tree of Life is strong enough.

These polarities are introduced along different perpendicular planes. One such plane is equatorial and separates the northern and southern hemispheres, another goes through Berlin, Rome and Cape Town and separates the Western and Eastern hemispheres of the planet, and a third plane goes through Washington, D.C., and separates the front (Pacific) from the back (Europe/Africa) hemisphere of the planet. Through the influence of the Yin/Yang-polarities emanating from the Tree of Life, the planet has thus evolved into a global brain, where the Western hemisphere corresponds to the left brain half and the Eastern to the right brain half.

Ceremonies
Ideally, to recreate the Tree of Life of the planet, groups gathered during the Conscious Convergence of July 17-18, performing ceremonies at both the north and south, represented by gatherings in Scandinavia and South Africa, respectively. To recreate the global Tree of Life, these gatherings were complemented with gatherings on the equatorial plane in the West in Guatemala and in Singapore/Bali in the East. In each of these directions, representatives of cultural traditions to whom the sacredness of the four directions have remained a living reality were in participation (Sami in the North, Chinese/Hindu in the East, Bushmen in the South and Maya in the West).

People everywhere connected with the gatherings in these node points for the four directions in a globally synchronized ceremony. Part of the ceremony was about recreating the global Tree of Life and strengthening the relationship of the participants with this creative source. A second part was about unifying the energies and peoples of the four directions.

The Conscious Convergence was like setting up a base camp for the climb to the Ninth Wave. Part of what you do in a base camp is to make sure that you are prepared. This was true also for the ceremony of the Sacred Directions.

The Ninth wave of the Mayan calendar will be activated on March 9, 2011, and a new frequency of vibration and a new polarity of consciousness emanating from the Tree of Life will be introduced, which we need to be prepared for.

The Conscious Convergence of July 17-18 launched co-creators with the divine plan. It was nothing but a starting point of a path directed towards unity consciousness – and for this, the recreation of our planetary Tree of Life plays a vital role.

Question: What are dreams and why do we dream?
Answer: Dreams falls into three categories. The first category is a meaningless dream. Just like many of your thoughts during the day are random and meaningless, it is the same with this kind of dream. The more silent your mind during the day, the less this kind of dream will occur during sleep.

The second category of dream is more meaningful. Dreaming often gives us the opportunity to experience and release feelings like fear, anger, hurt and sometimes sexual feelings that have arisen during the day, but for some reason, we were unwilling to experience these feelings fully and consciously. Instead, they are worked out and experienced and completed within the dream. It is a kind of emotional release, which is an important part of our rest and rejuvenation during sleep. The more we are willing to experience our feelings and emotions consciously during the day, the less this kind of dream will arise. The deepest level of rest and rejuvenation occurs when we go beyond the dreaming stage of sleep and our mind becomes fully silent as we sleep.

There is another kind of dream that occurs much less frequently. These are dreams that have a profound spiritual significance. They often convey a message, which will lead you into higher consciousness, or they can sometimes be a signpost announcing major transition. At these times, your normal ego structure is sufficiently relaxed to allow a higher and more awakened dimension of you to penetrate through the veils of illusion and deliver a significant soul message in the form of a dream.

Are you ready to fully awake from the dream? As we quickly approach the year 2012, there has been a notable shift in how we view our world, our future, and ourselves.

Imagine, in this very moment, your life without any self-doubt. What would you do? How would you do it? Are you able to ask this question without doubt? What is the answer you receive when you ask yourself: Why am I here?

As you fully embrace the notable shift in our world that gives rise to these questions, (and others), the recognition that we are all being called to a new level of perception comes forward with great recognition. This shift has tangible components as well as those that are not so tangible.

For example, do any of the following apply to you?

• Experiencing changes in your sleep patterns?
• Feeling a sense of time speeding up and/or a “lack of time”?
• Have your relationships shifted, often without good reason?
• Do you feel a strong sense that “something” big is about to happen in our world and you are not quite sure what it is?

These, and other energetic experiences, are calling you to awaken your greater clairvoyant capability with presence, responsibility and spiritual maturity. As our world continues to evolve in extraordinary ways, the simple truth is that you are evolving, too!

With each moment that we breathe, we are integrating the Quantum expansion of our universe on all levels. This rapid adjustment to never before experienced energy usually results in the feeling of chaos or lack of clarity. For many, this has blossomed into full blown self-doubt or unusually heightened states of awareness that can be easily misinterpreted.

Claiming our spiritual maturity empowers us to release the doubt that causes us to seek answers from outside ourselves. By fully embracing our authentic potential and accepting that it is the birthright of every individual to clearly understand their life, we can become profoundly abundant in all ways, and in record time.

As we claim our spiritual maturity, we begin to unfold our Quantum Clairvoyance. Yet, what is this quantum gift? It is the connection gained through the experience of our expanded consciousness without self-doubt. This applies everything without limits. Through the empowerment of our Quantum Clairvoyance we discover and fully trust that all answers are within us!

Many have been exposed to the concept of the 10 percent brain. That is, we are only fully utilizing or drawing upon 10 percent of our total abilities. While this statistic is now being challenged, the more important distinction is that with the advent of greater understandings of Quantum physics and the universe, we can more easily accept that we are capable of amazing clairvoyant communication.

Have you ever heard of a mother’s intuition? Most likely you have also heard the stories of those who knew a loved one was in trouble even when they were hundreds or thousands of miles away. Or, the phone rings and you just “know” who it is before you pick it up? (And we are not referring to Caller ID!) Each of these so-called coincidences are actually moments when you have consciously or subconsciously connected to your quantum clairvoyant stream of energy.

For those of you who already know this as true and have already developed this awareness, it is an important time for you to become responsible with how you share this energy so that your mere presence will free others to do the same. Not your words…your presence…an important distinction.

As our world enters the era of empowered Spiritual responsibility, it is up to each “individ-u-will” to be fully aware that clairvoyant gifts, once developed, carry with them the responsibility to be shared with discernment, thereby not disempowering another.

For example, we were recently guests at a weekend gathering hosted by “enlightened” individuals. We watched as one of the guests who regularly gives readings would casually disclose with great authority what he saw as near future outcomes and events for others at the gathering. Then he would just walk out of the room. After leaving, those who received the information would begin reacting and formulating their lives based around these off-handed remarks taken as absolute truth.

This is a typical example of non-quantum clairvoyance. In this example we see the old model of Seer/Receiver at play. When we choose quantum clairvoyance we no longer impose our clarity on others, even when asked. Instead, we recognize that we are at the moment in our amazing history to empower each other to find their clarity without doubt. We do this by encouraging self-inquiry, empowering self-trust and offering reassurance.

We have collectively called forth a world of quantum shift. As we begin to adapt to this world we become the gift of presence and lovingly discover that each is having their perfect experience at every moment. We release all doubt, and fully empower our spiritual maturity with abundance, joy and ease!

Third of a seven-part series

In installment three of this seven-part series, as a way of uncovering the veiled truths and obtain answers to questions like – Is there something wrong with the way in which current Earth existence is designed? – I work with the film, The Matrix, written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski as a modern myth. In the film, as part of an invitation to extract Neo from his enslaved existence, Morpheus offers Neo two options: the “red pill” or the “blue pill,” with the choice of pills illustrating our right to choose between truth and illusion, or ignorance. The red pill will answer the question, “What is the matrix?” – a question that can be answered only by removing Neo from it. On the contrary, the blue pill will ensure that his life or illusion of life will go on as before.

I proceed from the vantage point of having taken the “red pill,” and I explore the design and framework of our current Earth existence with an emphasis on how many of us experience this matrix in the undercurrent of our lives. As we make our way through this exploration in part three, be assured that after addressing the risky consequences of the “unexamined life” in part four and examining the creators and keepers of the matrix in part five, part six of this series will contain suggestions about how to dispel the matrix and live a life of self-sovereignty, spiritual freedom and glory.

What is being proposed in this series might seem like heresy. However, it’s important to note that according to the etymology dictionary, heresy is derived from the Greek word haeresis, meaning choice or personal opinion, and a heretic is someone often described as a renegade or rebel. And etymologically, a renegade, from the Spanish renegado, means someone who disagrees; an apostate. Apostate, from the Latin, apostata, is the act of departing from or discarding one’s current beliefs. The word apostle is a derivative of apostate. Etymologically, apostle, from the Latin apostolus, means messenger, a person sent forth to deliver an epistle, the chief advocate of a new principle or system. Therefore, a heretic is an apostle, a messenger and advocate of a new principle, a renegade who dares to ask questions, an intrepid explorer and independent thinker who honors the experience of being challenged by opportunities for freedom, who welcomes being stretched outside their comfort zones and who bravely detaches from external source authority to uncover and disseminate uncommon knowledge.

With this in mind, let’s explore the concept of the matrix. The matrix is a force that operates at the level of both our individual minds and the collective consciousness of humanity (referred to as the “world mind” by Meir Schneider), and it is at work everywhere. It governs the design and framework of Earth’s political and social systems, economic, educational and cultural constructs, nearly all religious structures and most New Age spiritual systems. Each of us has our own degree of internal resistance to fully acknowledging the existence of the matrix, particularly because aspects of our existence here on planet Earth include experiences of comfort, success, belonging, gratitude, love, synchronicity, grace, natural beauty, etc. These experiences make taking the “red pill” extremely challenging, and consequently, the motivation for discovering deeper levels of larger truths must be unwaveringly strong.

Design and framework
There are many authors who have researched, intuited and mystically discerned truths related to the design and framework of the matrix. I am not the first, nor will I be the last. Their revelatory discoveries are documented in works such as: Lynn Grabhorn’s Dear God! What’s Happening to Us? Halting Eons of Manipulation; Jim Marrs’ Rule By Secrecy; Adriene Wentworth’s Divine Intervention; Michael Berg’s Becoming Like God; Stuart Wilde’s God’s Gladiators; and the films of Ben Stewart – Esoteric Agenda and Kymatica. I stand with them in choosing the “red pill.”

And as part of this exploration, I invite you to invoke a strong motivating strength and go with me beneath your experiences of either fleeting change or quotients of change that almost satisfy; beneath your experiences of temporary satiation garnered from the voluminous quantities of information this spiritual renaissance constantly delivers; below your excitement and hope accompanying the history of sixty years of paranormal experiences; under the waves of repeated opportunities for rapid spiritual awakening that you’ve been riding in expectant seeking.

In this undercurrent, I bid all of us to acknowledge that our hunger for answers to the larger questions, for unadorned and unambiguous seeds of unequivocal new beginnings, has driven us to the place of willingness to take the “red pill” – the place where we heed the words of Morpheus in the modern mythical film, The Matrix, when he describes the hunger to uncover whatever has been shrouded in a conspiratorial mystery as “a splinter in your mind, driving you mad” – the place where, like Neo, we allow our restless, but perhaps well-concealed melancholy, to lead us to acknowledge that “there is something wrong with the world.”

What is wrong with the world is that in our current Earth reality, the matrix that governs us feeds us data in the form of information and ideas. We take in the information and concepts, digest and assimilate them and then adopt the data as fact. These facts become beliefs, and our beliefs take up residence within us as truth. Our truths become convictions that we defend and protect as irrefutable dogma. This is one of the primary ways in which the matrix assures its own survival. When Neo asks Morpheus, “What is the matrix?” he responds “control.” And why is our attachment to our beliefs so unwavering? Perhaps because we do not yet sufficiently abhor the experience of being deceived and controlled.

The ego aspect
Because the matrix is a force that operates at the level of both our individual minds and the collective consciousness, it uses the ego aspect of our minds to hypnotize us. It swindles us into serving our egos, guaranteeing us that this is in our best interest. In the film, the species or machines have the capacity to shape shift, inhabiting physical form as sinister agents. After agent Smith captures and subdues Morpheus, he dialogues with him about how he “marvels at the matrix…its beauty…its genius…billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious.” The matrix banks on us remaining oblivious and forgetful.

Remember the fables passed down that speak of the time in our mother’s wombs when the veil doesn’t exist, during which time we remember all the wisdom of the universe. Remember how many of these tales end by narrating that, at birth, our Guardian Angel gives us a sharp blow that causes us to forget everything we’ve learned so that we arrive in an incarnational experience unable to remember the truth about our celestial origins and clueless about what we came here to do. In short, we are programmed to forget. After eons of forgetting, we believe it is our nature to forget. We forget to the extent that we forget that we’ve forgotten. The ego-based mental matrix thrives not only on us forgetting but also on engendering doubt, confusion, annoyance and suspicion. Even now, it wants us to deny that anything we are reading here resonates as truth. It wants us to succumb to our doubt, to validate that uncovering shrouded truths is annoying.

It is vital that we feel empowered and equipped to recognize and reclaim truth, whether it emerges from within us or is presented by another. But how do we know whether what we’re reading or hearing is truth?

For one thing, it is an experience of “this feels right,” “this makes sense to me,” “this is something I’ve thought of or had an inkling about and it feels good to hear it being presented,” balanced with, “Okay, this is challenging, even confronting, but nonetheless feels like something that would benefit me to explore” – the sense of relief that accompanies being stretched outside a comfort zone.

However, we cannot get there with our minds.

Our cosmic hearts
It is by connecting with our cosmic hearts that we can get there. Deep in the core of our being, there is a sacred center I refer to as the cosmic heart communion chamber. Our hearts are the guardians of our intuition – our profound inner knowing, and our intuition is a permanent plug into truth, understanding, knowledge and wisdom that is hardwired from our heart through our soul to our Macrocosmic Self (aka/ Higher Self, Oversoul, Essence Self or Spirit Self). This sacred center of communion does not recognize wounds of unworthiness and is untouched by maladies of untruth. Remember, our hearts – not our minds – are the guardians of our intuition, our profound inner knowing.

Our minds are important participants. Surely our minds have a higher region or aspect (cosmic mind) that resonates with our heart knowledge. However, because the ego aspect of our minds is where the matrix plugs into and operates from, and because our egos function in survival mode, from a place of fear, all aspects of our mind must serve the heart. Our hearts have the authority – and as guardians of our intuition, our hearts will always lead us in the direction of choices that are for our highest good.

In the film, The Matrix, in exchange for the energy supplied by the slumbering humans, the machines take the human’s “residual self-image” and insert it into what Morpheus describes as “a computer generated dream world.” The matrix capitalizes on the remnants of who we really are, our “residual self-image,” by programmatically installing into our psyches images of what to crave, what is vogue, what ails us and how to behave while it intoxicates us with reality television that has us watching ourselves, with imbalanced focus on material acquisitions, with distorted versions of power and success through the grip and grid of religious traditions and cultural norms. All of this fosters self-obsession and turns us into commodities.

Just like in the film, where human beings supply the energy for machines that control their experiences, our compliance supplies energy for the preservation of Earth’s corrupt systems. These systems, with their murky ethics, exploit scandals to divert us from self-awareness and tragedies to comparatively promote our good fortune. They use crimes to assure us that the law is being upheld, and they feign protection through crises.

Things like terrorism and the nuclear arms race permits those who maintain the matrix to implement universal surveillance structures, which pose as security systems, designed to monitor all aspects of our lives. Corporations then use this information to design campaigns to manipulate our consumption, while politicians make the most of whatever platforms or special interests they deem will dupe us. We watch video images on the news as if it is the reality of what happened in any particular case. Even when catastrophes of nature or acts of terrorism cross the screen, often the calamity or violence being experienced or the loss of life only minimally affects us. Or we feel inept – after all, what can we do? The matrix profits from the reservoir of apathy it engenders.

In addition, the matrix anesthetizes us with illusions that we are transforming by permitting just enough change and relief to keep us hopeful and hooked. It permits temporary satiation and incessant expectant seeking. It endorses experiences of comfort, success, belonging, gratitude, love, synchronicity, grace and natural beauty, but only enough to keep us participating in the circuitous maze. It makes us crave mediocrity.

Desert of the real
In the film when Morpheus is revealing an aspect of the matrix to Neo, he says, “Welcome to the desert of the real.” He is verifying that the world we live in is not real. It is a world where content is replicated over and over again until there is barely a trace of anything original. Even worse, it is a world where originality is often belittled.

Like in our reality in 3-D Earth, the desert referenced in the film is a metaphor for a functional reality that is devoid of genuine nourishment. To connect with this makes us uneasy. And the matrix prompts us to seek any and all ways to avoid uneasiness and discomfort. Avoiding uneasiness and discomfort is part of an inbred survival strategy that applauds us for arguing for our limitations and proclaiming either that we are comfortable enough or that it really isn’t that bad. In the meantime, this force harvests an experience of life whose main ingredients are fear, control, domination, bewilderment, depression, endurance, grief, loss, suffering and death.

I understand the argument that although these experiences or conditions exist in the undercurrent, there are so many things to celebrate, to be grateful for. I have heard it from others; I hear it inside myself. However, when I really listen, what reverberates from deep within, in that undercurrent, is a cry: the cry to be liberated from this force, to live a life beyond fear, control, domination, bewilderment, depression, endurance, grief, loss, suffering and death. That cry is for freedom and transcendence.

The matrix does afford us one freedom: the freedom to choose what is on its menu. Inside the matrix, we are not free to create the menu, however. That’s because those maintaining the matrix – the secret government, the overt governments, religions, corporations, the media, educational and cultural systems – create the menu on our behalf.

The film hauntingly affirms that “as long as the matrix exists, the human race will never be free” and that in a prison that robs us of our freedom, meaning and significance, most participants are “not ready to be unplugged.” However, the renegades comprehend that the purpose of the matrix is to block them from accessing their true nature. They understand that the mental matrix fears and detests their power. This is why it seeks to undermine their significance. But they take a stand. They embrace their power, right and responsibility to be proactive rather than reactive.

As we perceive the truth of this, we arise from our slumber. Let’s arise together as radical thinkers and renegades, messengers and advocates of truth willing to detach from any and all imprisoning forces, eager to live a life beyond fear, control, domination, bewilderment, depression, endurance, grief, loss, suffering and death. A life infused with glory!

Question: I have been a spiritual seeker almost all my life. I have had many wonderful experiences and feel I have grown and evolved immensely. However, there is still one area which I feel has not changed much and that is my fear of dying. How can I overcome this fear of death?

Leonard’s answer: If you are not present, and you are functioning mostly from within the mind, then death is always approaching, and it creates fear in two ways. The first is that we are afraid of the unknown, and generally what happens after death is unknown, and so we are afraid of it. To the extent that you are afraid of death, you will miss life, simply because the fear of death keeps you in the future, and life is only truly experienced in the present.

Fear of death also arises because of our attachments. The more attached we are to people or things, the more we will fear losing those things and so the more we will fear death.

To overcome the fear of death, you will have to become more present.

When you are present, you are in the unknown in the sense that the remembered past or the imagined future is not with you. All you know is this moment, not because you understand it or know it with your mind, but because you are experiencing it, moment to moment. It is very peaceful, and the more present you are, the more you will trust the unknown and the more relaxed and accepting you will be.

If you are truly present, there is no such thing as death.

One moment, you are here, alive. The next moment you are here, alive. If you remain present, then at the point of passing all you will experience is a moment of transition as you leave the body. Prior to that moment of transition, if you are present, you will experience peace, love, gratitude, acceptance and compassion. During that moment of passing, if you are present, you will experience peace, love, gratitude, acceptance and compassion. After that moment of passing, you will experience peace, love, gratitude, acceptance and compassion.

You will also experience a lot of light as you are returned to the dimension of the soul. Before this incarnation, you existed as a soul within the soul dimension. After leaving the body, you will be returned to that dimension, but your experience there will be radically transformed by the level of Presence and Oneness realized in this lifetime. Future incarnations will be radically affected by the level of Presence and Oneness realized in this lifetime.

To be fully present, you will also have to surrender your attachments. You accomplish this by bringing everything that you are attached to into consciousness. Own your attachments. Acknowledge them and confess them. Your attachments keep you imprisoned in the past or future. Your attachments keep you out of Oneness and in separation. Realize that you came into this world alone, and you will leave this world alone. You cannot take anything or anyone with you, but you can take your sense of attachment with you. This will create fear and it will contribute to the soul’s sense of separateness and loss.

In truth, you are the champion of the soul and it is through your awakening into Oneness through Presence in this lifetime that your soul will be restored to immortality. The more present you are in your day-to-day life, the more present you will be in that moment of transition. If you are present, it is truly a moment of great inspiration for those who love you. It is a moment worthy not of grief, but of great celebration.

Relationship and Oneness – are these experiences connected? I believe they are. Let’s begin with the concept – “There is no one out there” – and explore how that statement relates to oneness and the mirror of relating.

From my perspective, the concept of Oneness, often expressed as “we are all one,” lacks the depth of a true experience. Oneness holds such great promise and seems to be so important in the evolution of our species as we move into the New Earth paradigm. But what does oneness mean in simple terms? I will attempt an explanation using examples from my own personal experience.

The ego self perceives itself to be separate from all that is, even separate from God. Even if there is no God, we are still separate from each other. Ultimately, all of our waking moments are lived outside of our own skin, perceived by what we see, feel, hear, touch, taste and smell. The world of the five senses is the world of the three-dimensional existence.

But what if there truly is no “out there” and everything we perceive with our senses is actually a world of illusion, a world of pretend, a world of actors and actresses who have agreed on a soul level to play certain roles in the “game” called life?

What if those players in your life agreed on a soul level to play certain roles with and for and through each other? And what if the people who love us most agreed, before incarnating on planet Earth, to play the toughest and seemingly most darkest roles in our lives? Those who have been giving us the most pain and suffering and turmoil and despicable behavior may truly be the ones who love us the most and who agreed to play these tough roles for us so we could gain the most from spiritual growth.

A reflection of self
Oneness is a concrete experience when everything we perceive outside of ourselves is really a reflection of self, when everything we perceive in another is actually us. I will give you an example of this in relationship to what happened to me this past week through the reflection of my good friend Jewels.

Jewels and I have been working in Sedona, AZ, for the past seven years or so in a business that originally offered Sedona vortex tours, intuitive readings and massage. Jewels and many others were trained to guide clients in a unique journey created by our boss, Suz. Suz had created a tour of Sedona and the powers of the vortexes through intuition and guided information, incorporating her experience with the native elders. Suz has since passed away, and Jewels and I continued – along with many other original practitioners and guides – to offer these experiences to our clients.

The business named has changed over the years, with its last incarnation as The Sedona Spiritual Center. A few months after the closing of the center, Jewels was offered an opportunity to make a good sum of money teaching our competition the original Suz vortex tour. When she told me she was going to train the competition, I reacted by developing a knot in my stomach and judging her decision to be selfish. After all, a small core group from the business planned to reopen the original center under another umbrella. I felt hurt, confused and upset by her decision, and I wondered if this decision was reflecting her ego self. The decision to teach the signature Suz tour to our competition seemed based on fear and personal gain.

Inner searching
After a few hours of inner searching and talking with another close friend from our cooperative group, I came to the stark realization that because there is no one “out there,” Jewels was in her perfection reflecting back to me something very deep and unconscious within my self, and this situation was giving me the opportunity to release from my unconscious or shadow self, that part of us which is wounded and still feels unloved and unheard.

After being very honest with myself, I heard the still, small voice within me crying out, “What about me?” I felt left out and scared and alone, and I was truly concerned with the “me me me” inside of myself, but I was projecting onto Jewels that she was being self-absorbed.

When I came to this realization, I felt terrible because I had revealed a part of my self which I was ashamed of and judged – the shadow self, which had hidden any reflection of self-centeredness. I also felt bad because I had risked my relationship with a friend and dumped onto her that which did not even belong to her. A deep heart-felt apology and hug quickly solved the dilemma.

Unveiling myself
This whole experience with Jewels led me to a new level of unveiling my ego self, that part us which truly believes it is separate from everything and everybody. The next night, when Jewels and I attended the second class in a series of four about True Abundance at the local Unity Church, I experienced more “less than love” behavior within myself. After an hour of listening to the moderator spew forth truth after truth, he guided us in a meditation based on forgiveness. Prior to getting into the meditation, we were directed to write the names of four people we felt needed our forgiveness on a pink piece of paper (pink denoting the color of compassion). I wrote: my father, my mother, my grandfather and God.

Why God? I did not know until the meditation began. Somewhere in the middle of the meditation, in my mind’s eye, I saw Jesus on the cross. It felt very real and very present, and I felt myself there watching him hanging from the cross.

In my inner voice, I heard Jesus say, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” It felt as if those words were coming from my own mouth, “Father, why have you forsaken me?”

I began to cry to myself as the tears ran down my face, and I felt a very deep belief in forsakenness. Father. Mother. Grandfather. All relationships I have experienced with men in this life, probably many lives before, came up in me as pain and suffering. I felt, “Why have you forsaken me?” All the disappointments emerged as tears that dripped out of my heart.

I then began to experience how my own beliefs and feelings of forsakenness had created all my disappointments in love. I had believed in the forsakenness of my own being, and those feelings had actually caused me to create the very scenario I so feared.

Set myself free
Now that this has been revealed as a part of my still, small self within, I can set myself free. Forgive them for they know not what they do. Forgive me for I know not what I do. The unconsciousness within is so beautifully reflected in the images, words, actions and reactions of those who cross our paths – most profoundly by those who are the closest to us, who reflect that which is inside of us, that which we have yet to discover or reveal.

I do want to add that everything beautiful and wonderful and loving and magnificent that we see, feel and know about another is also a reflection of ourselves, as there is truly only one of us here. The presence of the all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God/Goddess residing within each of us is called, among other things, the Soul or the Self.

Traversing this path of awakening to our true, authentic self begins with letting go of all that we are not and allowing the Self that we truly are to become the experiencer of the experience of life itself in its most awesome expression of unity and oneness.

Question: Is it possible to think and be present?
Leonard’s Answer: It is important to know that there are levels of Presence. It is as if Presence exists on a vertical scale or axis. As you deepen into Presence, you cross a point on the vertical axis where time disappears. Now you are in the Eternal realm. There is no time. Life does not exist outside of the moment, and you do not exist outside of the moment. You are completely absorbed into the Oneness. You are completely absorbed into the moment of Now. All sense of separation has dissolved. It is a highly exalted state.

At this level of Presence, thinking is impossible. At this level, there is no one here as an individualized Being to think. Any thought would take you out of the moment. Of course, revelations can arise out of the silence, but this is radically different from thinking. A sense of knowing arises out of the silence, but this is radically different from understanding that occurs within the mind. To experience this level, even for a few moments will transform every aspect of your life, including your sense of yourself.

But you don’t have to be at this deep level of timeless Presence all the time. As you ascend on the vertical axis of Presence, time becomes once again available. You can use your mind to think, and you can participate in the world of time, but you no longer get lost there. It is more than enough if you are fundamentally present. This means that you are more grounded in Presence than you are lost in the mind. Now you can think, without becoming reabsorbed into the mind. You think consciously, and when you are done thinking, you naturally return to Presence. You are no longer a victim of those endless thoughts that keep dragging you to somewhere in your past or somewhere in your future.

Of course, as a present and conscious being, you are free to think, remember, imagine and enjoy the world of time in any way that you like. The beautiful thing, however, is that you can move up and down the scale of Presence at will. One moment you might be choosing to consciously think. The next moment, you are at the deepest levels of eternal Presence and silence. You are no longer imprisoned within the mind. You can move freely between the world of the mind and the eternal world of Now. Your memories, beliefs, ideas and opinions still exist within the mind, but you are no longer identified with any of it. You know that only this moment is the truth, and you are relaxed in that simple truth.

You can also speak from Presence. When you speak from Presence, there is no agenda that originates from within the mind. You are not speaking from within the mind. You are speaking and expressing from the source, which is at the center of your Being. You are present as you speak. You can also create music or art from Presence. Even Einstein’s most brilliant inspirations arose from the source and not from his mind. In these creative and inspired moments, the mind is simply a clear instrument of expression.

As I walk my dog, Ghandi, through the nearby park, I feel alive. I witness the vast spectrum of color as the sun shines on a field of snow. We stop walking and just listen…first stillness…then birds sing a happy song. And, just as we begin walking again, Ghandi freezes, gazing intently in front of us at nothing I can see, and I wonder if he is seeing beings without bodies tracking our every move.

I see nothing, and Ghandi will not budge. I ask him what he sees, and he doesn’t look up at me. He stares ahead, motionless. We wait for minutes, and in my impatience, I pick him up, carry him down the path and then put him down. Whatever it was is gone, and Ghandi walks on as if nothing happened, and proceeds to sniff a nearby ribbon of yellow snow.

Our shared experience in the park each day is worth more to me than I can put into words. It’s more than just being outside stretching our bones and breathing fresh air. It’s about being present.

On this Tuesday evening at Lake Harriet Spiritual Community, during a discussion about awakening into now, I hear that every species of being on the planet is naturally awake, present to this now moment, except humankind. I think about my walks with Ghandi and then I compare that with the rest of my day, so entrenched in my mind as I put this magazine together and simultaneously worry about paying the bills this month.

I hear the speaker, Leonard Jacobson (author of Journey into Now), say that 99.27 percent of all humans spend their lives in a state of unconsciousness, lost in the mind, “in a world of the remembered past and the imagined future,” a world of thought, opinion, ideas, imagination and belief. He says waking up is as simple as looking at a flower, or a tree – that everything is inviting us to to awaken from our minds, inviting us to presence.

My mind returns to that “remembered past,” reflecting on when I feel most alive, walking with Ghandi in the park, with a silent mind and an open heart. And then, with a subtle shift of perspective, I look at the flower on the end table next to Leonard, and I return to presence.

This teaching – helping us to become aware of when we are not present, and to become aware of what takes us out of presence – is a true gift, but it is a far cry from the way we were taught to live our lives, in the world of the mind, filled with judgment and a sense that I am right so you must be wrong.

What I find most inspiring is that this teaching of presence is done with a gentle hand. There is no “have to” or “must.” It is about relaxing into what is. And I think relaxing is truly a message for these times. We perceive stress everywhere, don’t we? In response, we are pushing and forcing and collapsing under the weight of all of that effort. It’s time to be present.

Question: Humans can be very abusive in their unconsciousness. How can we overcome abuse in our world?
Leonard’s Answer: This is an extremely important question. Humanity is caught in a never-ending cycle of abuse. One lifetime we play the role of abuser, and the next lifetime, we are the abused. The same thing manifests in this lifetime. We are either the abuser or the abused, and sometimes we are both.

We are lost in false power, which is the cause of all the abuse throughout history and all the abuse in the world today. As an inherent part of our awakening, we must discover the true nature of power.

At a deep and sometimes unconscious level, we feel powerless. This usually stems from childhood, when we were not allowed to truly be ourselves, and we had to comply with the will of our parents. In a sense, our innate sense of power was taken from us. It is not our parent’s fault. The same thing happened to them and it is simply handed down, generation to generation.

We seek to escape this feeling of powerlessness by feeling powerful, but if the power we feel is in relationship to others, then it is false power.

If I need to feel better, stronger or more successful, then I am pursuing false power, and it will always be at someone’s expense. For every winner, there is a loser. Whenever the power we feel is in relationship to others, it is false power, and sooner or later it will lead to abuse. Humanity has been lost in false power, almost from the beginning of time, and our history is overflowing with examples of abuse. Our society is built upon a foundation of false power. False power plays into our relationships in so many ways. False power leads to war, famine, exploitation and the abuse of our environment, children, women, animals and so much more.

For humanity to survive, we must awaken to true power. True power has no relationship with another. It arises from the center of your Being. It arises from an inner source, an inner font of infinite love, wisdom, strength and power. It is your very life force. When true power arises within you, the feeling of powerlessness from your past will simply dissolve. You will feel free. You will feel empowered to be yourself and express yourself freely and without limitations, and it has nothing to do with anyone else. There is no sense of being stronger or better than anyone else. There is no need to be stronger or better than anyone else, because you feel empowered from within.

With true power there is no possibility of abuse of others.

True power can only arise when we are fully and fundamentally established in Presence. When we are present, we open into that inner source of true power. As long as we remain lost in the mind, functioning as egos, we will continue in false power and the abuse will remain.

At a more personal level, there is another reason for the abuse.

We have been conditioned to avoid painful feelings. This conditioning began in early childhood. We learned to repress feelings like hurt, pain and anger. One of the strategies we have developed to avoid feeling the pain repressed within us is to inflict the pain on others. It is a strategy of avoidance that is widespread and appears in our lives in so many ways. It is another primary cause of abuse in our world. This can often occur in the relationship between parent and child, where the parent passes on the pain from their own childhood to their children, and it all occurs at an unconscious level as a part of this strategy of avoidance. In other words, parents do to their children what was done to them.

Most abusers were abused. It has been revealed that almost all serial killers experienced terrible abuse in their childhood, and all the pain, anger and rage remained repressed within them.

If we are to overcome abuse, there will have to be a revolution in how we deal with our feelings and emotions. We can no longer afford to repress our feelings. We must feel and experience our feelings fully, but always responsibly, and this revolution must permeate every aspect of our lives and reach our children from the day of birth, if not from the day of conception.

We must come into right relationship with our feelings. We must awaken into true power.

Only then will we end this never-ending cycle of abuse.

Submit questions to author and teacher Leonard Jacobson for guidance on the path of presence by email to info@leonardjacobson.com, or mail your questions to: The Edge, Ask Leonard, P.O. Box 25543, Woodbury, MN 55125. Include your name and mailing address. If your letter is selected for publication, you will receive a copy of the author’s latest book, Journey Into Now.

Question: My mind is never still and silent. Thoughts never stop for more than a few moments. How can I stop the thoughts? How can I be present if my mind is so active?
Leonard’s answer: First of all, you cannot stop the mind. The very effort to stop the mind is arising from within the mind. It is just another thought. But there is a hidden key that I share which will bring you instantly out of the mind into the world of Now. And when you become present in this way, thoughts will stop all by themselves, without any effort or intention on your part to stop them.

Here is the key. Gently remember to bring yourself present with something that is here in the moment with you. If you can see it, hear it, feel it, taste it or smell it, you can be present with it. And it is immediate. It is not a practice. It is a gentle remembering. The moment you remember to bring yourself present, thoughts stop and your mind falls silent. When you are in the mind, you are somewhere in the remembered past or imagined future. The one place you are not is here now. If you bring yourself fully present with something that is actually of this moment, you must come out of the mind to do so.

Close your eyes. Your body is breathing in the moment of Now. It cannot breathe outside of the present moment. Bring yourself fully present with the body as it breathes.

Bring yourself fully present with the sounds you hear moment to moment. Bring yourself present with the feeling of air upon your face. Even if you feel pain or discomfort in your body, be present with it and you will deepen into Presence. It is only when you are unwilling to be present with what is present that you begin to leave the present moment and re-enter the world of the mind.

When you open your eyes, a whole new dimension is available for you to be present with. Open your eyes, and bring yourself fully present with something that you can see in this moment. It does not matter what it is. When you bring yourself present in this way, you are liberated from the world of the mind and ego. You are liberated from the traumas of the past and anxiety about the future. You are liberated from all those limiting beliefs about yourself, others and life that you have accumulated from childhood. Thoughts stop. You are experiencing the truth and reality of life in this moment. You are awake in the moment of Now.

This can continue throughout the day, as much or as little as you like. You do not have to be present all the time, but you must be present enough so that the dimension of Presence awakens within you. The more you choose to be present, the easier it is to be present. If thoughts arise, just notice that you are thinking and very gently disengage from the thought and bring yourself present again. If you bring yourself present in the way I am describing, eventually you will become grounded in Presence and your life and relationships will be transformed.

Do not believe in the story that your feelings are presenting. The story is always from the past. The present moment is free of the past. Whatever it is that you are angry or hurt about is not happening now, so it would not make any sense to believe in it. It is just a memory that you are caught in at some unconscious level.

Let the feelings up. Allow them conscious expression within you. One of the keys to awakening is to come into right relationship with your feelings. Everything that arises within you is seeking unconditional love and acceptance, even your feelings and emotions.

It is only when you repress your feelings that you create an inner disharmony, which eventually leads to disease.

Leonard Jacobson teaches that the fully awakened state of consciousness is available now. It is not something that occurs in the future. It is not something that we can arrive at through spiritual practice. It is already here, waiting to be revealed. As you awaken into the present moment, your thoughts will stop, your mind will fall silent, and you will awaken to an inner silence and peace that is beyond understanding. You will begin to encounter what the mystics and masters have been speaking of for centuries.

One of the most significant aspects of Leonard’s teaching is his unique insight into the nature of the mind and ego. Leonard teaches us how to come into right relationship with the ego in a way that helps the ego to relax, and he teaches us how to integrate awakened consciousness into everyday life and relationships. He is the author of four books, Words from Silence, Embracing the Present, Bridging Heaven & Earth and his latest book, Journey into Now.

Leonard, a native of Australia, arrived in America 14 years ago, and he’s lived his life responding to invitations. The latest came from a group of Minnesotans anxious to learn as much as they can from him about mastering the art of spiritual awakening. Thus, he is relocating from Santa Cruz, CA, where he has been rooted for the past nine years, and settling in to the Twin Cities. He will base his teachings from Lake Harriet Spiritual Community in South Minneapolis.

“We had a wonderful invitation from the Lake Harriet Spiritual Community,” he said, “offering us the opportunity to base ourselves in their premises and present my teachings there. There seems to be a genuine hunger not only for a very clear teaching on awakening, but also for a conscious community where people on a path of awakening can come together.”

In Part One of this interview, Leonard Jacobson spoke with The Edge about his plans for teaching in the Twin Cities. He concludes his interview by speaking more specifically about the awakening process.

What are the most common misconceptions about this journey?
The most common misconception is that you can meditate and just bypass whatever is repressed within you from your past. For some people, that might be the case, but my experience is that for the majority of people, the past has them too firmly in its grip. And so a more comprehensive approach to awakening is necessary. Another significant obstacle to awakening is the resistance of the ego. The ego is very skilled at keeping us in the past and future world of the mind, where it is in control, and it is very unwilling to release us. I explain why this is so in my teachings, and I also reveal a very effective way to free ourselves from the ego’s dominance.

The process that you teach seems especially vital now. Many people in the holistic movement have read so much about awakening and spirituality that it has become an intellectual exercise. What you are teaching seems to take them beyond intellectual understanding into the direct experience of the awakened state.
That’s true. There are also many people reading about Presence, but that too can become a concept which the mind embraces and the ego desires. It is so important to have a direct experience of the awakened state. Even though it is a valuable first step, intellectual understanding will not lead to awakening. It is very important that we take the next step and move beyond the past and future world of the mind and intellectual understanding into the actual experience of being present. The step that follows that is to become fundamentally established in Presence. It is essential if we are to survive as a species.

Do you get a sense that you are part of a movement that is helping to move us away from the brink of disaster?
There is absolutely no question about that, but just as there is a movement towards more consciousness, there is an equal and opposite movement towards more unconsciousness, and these two forces are at play within each one of us. This is also manifesting at the collective level. It is important that the movement towards higher consciousness prevails.

Because of the extraordinary advances in technology, our capacity for destruction is much greater now than it was a hundred years ago. There needs to be an awakening in consciousness to match the advancement in technology and move us beyond the destructive ways of the ego. Otherwise we will take ourselves to the brink of disaster. Our best hope is that enough of us awaken to the point that it impacts at the collective level, and more and more people find it easier to awaken. It has been referred to as the hundredth monkey syndrome.

Are children naturally more present, and will there come a time when they will not leave that state as they mature into adulthood?
Yes, but only if their state of Presence is affirmed by the people around them, and it can only be affirmed by those who are present. If they come into a world where no one is present, it is very difficult for them to remain present. Sooner or later they will have to leave the present moment and become absorbed into the past and future world of the mind like everyone else. Otherwise, the pain of isolation is too great.

In a strange way, we enter the world of the mind, hoping to find someone there, but it doesn’t work. The only way to overcome feelings of isolation and separation as an adult is to find your way back to the present moment. And then you will be able to affirm your children in Presence when they come into this world.

In this day and age, it seems like there are a number of teachers, different programs, retreats. How do you determine what is an authentic teaching and who is an authentic teacher?
I’ve met many people who have been with gurus or teachers who have turned out to be manipulative, exploitive and ego driven. It leads to great disappointment and disillusionment. But sometimes, we have to go down the wrong path to find our way to a more authentic path and a more authentic teacher.

An authentic teacher is someone who has actually experienced what he or she is teaching. An authentic teacher does not allow projections onto the teacher. Most people are all too willing to elevate the teacher to a level beyond themselves which then places awakening beyond their reach. This is a very common mistake. It’s an old paradigm.

An authentic teacher will say, “If you love me, it is because you are love. If you see me as awakened, you can only see that from the awakened dimension within you. If you experience God in my Presence, it is because God is with you.” An authentic teacher will affirm your own divinity rather than encourage the projection of divinity onto him or her. If you are to awaken, you will have to stop projecting onto the teacher.

The catch is that you can’t reclaim only the positive projections. You have to reclaim all projections, including those negative traits that we tend to project onto others. Most people are reluctant to do that. The final thing I would say about an authentic teaching is that it delivers. It is not authentic unless it delivers you into a greater degree of Presence and a greater degree of mastery of the mind and ego. This, in turn, leads to more love, peace, and freedom in your life.

This question relates just to semantics. What is the difference between awakening and enlightenment? I think the common belief is that if you are enlightened, then somehow you know everything. You don’t make mistakes, and you no longer live a normal life. Would you say that is a misperception of what the awakening journey is all about?
Essentially, enlightenment and awakening mean the same thing. But people are much more likely to turn enlightenment into a concept which they have heard of or read about.

The ego is very involved in the pursuit of enlightenment. It sees enlightenment either as the ultimate escape or the ultimate accomplishment. Awakening is much more concrete. We can all relate to the word, awakening. We all know what it means to wake up in the morning. We all know what it means to be asleep and dreaming and we all know what it feels like to awaken out of the dream. Just because we open our eyes in the morning does not mean that we are fully awake. If we are lost in thought, or lost in the past or future, or lost in the mind, then without realizing it, we are still dreaming. We are not yet fully awake.

My teaching is to bring you so fully and fundamentally present that you awaken out of the dream. Only then can you experience all that life has to offer you. It is only when you awaken that you realize that you have been asleep, dreaming that you are awake.

As to whether you can live a normal life with awakening, I can only say that you will live a healthy, balanced, empowered life. Your relationships will improve. Your mind will be silent, unless you are consciously choosing to think. You will experience more love, gratitude and abundance. What we regard as a normal life is for the most part a highly dysfunctional life, but because we are all living that way, it seems normal.

Does awakening lead to total awareness of self?
It just means that you are a fully present and conscious Being. You are no longer limited by the past or anxious about the future. There is nothing unresolved with you. You are in right relationship with your feelings and your ego. You are no longer defined by your past. You are no longer judgmental of yourself or others. You have opened up at the center of your Being, and there, at the very center of your Being, is infinite knowing, infinite power, and infinite love.

For a schedule of Leonard Jacobson’s upcoming events, including ongoing courses, one-day intensives and longer retreats, call 612.920.3730 or visit www.leonardjacobson.com

RETURN TO PART 1 OF THIS INTERVIEW

A moment is a speck in time. Why precious? Because it is fleeting and cannot be recovered.

What is time? Time is a measure of experience, as all experience is the result of change. All experience is based on a moment-to-moment transition or change. We can choose to be aware of these changes, or not, as our attention dictates. It is all too often easier to ignore the passing of the “speck in time.”

Our consciousness can be aware in only this present moment. Every other thought is either in the past, as memory; or in the future, as projected plan, as an expectation or as a fantasy.

We do well to remember that there are only a certain number of moments in a given lifetime. And if, as some of us believe, life is a time of learning and experiencing the wonder, the mystery and the excitement found in the treasures the natural world has to offer, why waste any time on mind-sedating trivial entertainment?

Our present civilization, worldwide, makes distraction — the opposite of focus — the overriding temptation to waste many hundreds of moments throughout the day.

The first step to awakening to the moment is recognition of the challenge to become mindfully aware of each conscious moment.

Having become aware, and accepting of this challenge, we stumble over our uncertainty to be able to maintain focus on the moment. Here is where the conscious, truly conscientious, decision comes into play. Whether we are young or “old,” we can determine the focus of our attention.

Let’s make an observation: A child at play. He or she, completely absorbed in play or, frequently, a video game, loses all sense of time passing. That, for better or sometimes worse, is the hallmark of true focus. When we mentally focus, and whole-mindedly attend the immediate moment, we lose sense of time. We follow the change of events without considering time passing. So does the adult, active in an all-absorbing activity, lose sense of time. On the other hand, in a time-sensitive activity, the child or adult is acutely aware of the rate or speed of change, and therefore urges her or his attention to focus intensely on the project at hand. Students’ tests, surgeons’ operations, the sequential discipline of building a bridge, or sending a missile into space — all are instances of vital focus.

How do we achieve such focus in everyday life?

• Determine that each moment is valuable, no matter what the activity.
• We choose that activity which is valuable to us. Often, the activity chooses us, as in a job that is not always to our liking or matched to our expectations. But whatever it is, from the most menial to the most exacting research, the challenge of the moment is the same: To do the absolute best.
• We have accepted the challenge of focusing on each moment. Next is our choice of focus. And this, dear reader, is a choice made by each of us on a daily basis. It requires our consideration of personal short-term, and long-term goals. These are derived only by assessing the importance of each.

Therefore, we return to the initial challenge of recognizing that life consists of a finite number of moments. It is up to each of us to determine how precious each moment is in reaching our goals. It is moments embraced and cherished for their contribution to manifesting all dreams. Hence, may the realization of your dreams, your destiny, come true!

Second of a three-part series

The information referenced in these articles is based on what I’ve gleaned from print and radio sources and personal interviews regarding the events of the Sedona Sweat Lodge tragedy facilitated by James Arthur Ray on October 8. I leave it to homicide investigators to discover more of the full truth and levy appropriate consequences and to civil attorneys to obtain fair compensation for damages.

I am taking this opportunity to address important issues that resonate for me personally and are, in my opinion, “on line” for us as members of the human family. In this pivotal and auspicious time, we are presented with repeated opportunities for rapid spiritual awakening. Part of that awakening includes having hearts to feel and the courage to speak up about disturbing and objectionable things appearing on the societal stage. My intent is to apply the inquiries and lessons arising from the events surrounding Mr. Ray to the larger arena of the entire spiritual movement. Consequently, it would be irresponsible of me not to acknowledge Mr. Ray as a catalyst for the concerns and inquiries addressed in this part of the opinion article series.

I believe that our philosophy of life is or ought to be synonymous with our way of life, and that it includes our viewpoints, standards, ethical practices and beliefs about inherent decency. Part one of this three-part opinion article series was an invitation to Mr. Ray to reflect upon his own standards, ethical practices and sense of decency and measure them against his motives and behavior so that he might come to a deeper understanding and ownership of the fuel and flint of what has transpired in his practices in the past, and in particular as part of his Spiritual Warrior Retreat in Sedona on October 8.

As someone in the same service field as Mr. Ray, I am distressed by how many sources are issuing edicts that label New Age spiritual facilitators as irresponsible impostors and greedy swindlers, as well as edicts that imply that most participants in new age spiritual practices warrant being categorized as foolish lemmings. I am equally disturbed by how the October 8 incident taints the prayerful, purifying, restorative sacred purpose of appropriately facilitated sweat lodge ceremonies and related rituals, as well as the pure heart of spiritual warrior practices.

Like many colleagues in my field of service, I am also concerned about those who are, as Stephen J. Johnson, Ph.D., executive director of the Men’s Center of Los Angeles and Sacred Path Productions, put it, “unable to discern the difference between those that are truly committed to an honorable path with integrity from those that are essentially self-servicing narcissists taking advantage of trusting souls.”

My Concerns
My concern about James Arthur Ray’s teachings and practices are fourfold. Firstly, I cannot comprehend the logic of designing the “hottest sweat lodge” on the planet and then ushering sleep-deprived participants, who had been strongly encouraged to engage in self-introspective exercises late into the night for at least two nights at the retreat’s beginning and who had recently broken a 36-hour fast, into a sauna-like enclosed environment. How could someone seemingly as knowledgeable as Mr. Ray not fathom that the sweat lodge activity would not only further drain the body of fluids and compromise oxygen availability, but also possibly put people at risk of heat stroke, scorched lungs, heart, liver and kidney damage, unconsciousness and death? I cannot fathom why temperature-monitoring devices weren’t installed inside the sweat lodge? Why wasn’t hired medical staff available in case? The bottom line is that there seems to be a disturbing incongruence between the lavish fees charged for this event and the care extended to the participants.

Secondly, I understand that in some spiritual systems, physical endurance exercises are associated with self-expansion, self-esteem, self-empowerment, and maybe even purification. However, it must be remembered that our physical body is an extremely reliable feedback system, as well as the temple housing our soul. We violate the sanctity of it when we override its feedback or make dangerous demands upon it in the name of adages such as “you are not your body.” Furthermore, if a person has been deprived of sleep, water and nutrition, their faculties may not be sufficiently intact for them to discern between challenge and hazard.

The reason for a facilitator’s putting participants in a state in which an important feedback system may have been overridden haunts me. I understand that Mr. Ray values activities that engender altered states of consciousness as an avenue to dissolving self-limitations. However, an altered state of consciousness can also seriously inhibit one’s ability to discern the difference between what is beneficially challenging and what is detrimentally harmful.

Thirdly, according to what I’ve heard and read, as well as my intuitive assessment of both the overt and subliminal messages on Mr. Ray’s website (describing his services and products), it seems that a thread running through many of his processes and programs entails an ideology primed not only to motivate and challenge, but to confront, push and goad. One could argue that I’m splitting semantic hairs by even mentioning this. However, I cannot ignore that tragically, Mr. Ray’s “playing full on” axiom seemed to have blinded him to the point where he either did not empower, or possibly much worse, did not allow participants experiencing discomfort to leave the sweat lodge.

Lastly, and most regrettably, it seems quite clear that the loss of life and the injuries sustained were completely preventable.

Deceit and propaganda is being perpetuated in many secular and spiritual systems, and this clearly includes the New Age spiritual movement. I’m not pronouncing that the work of James Arthur Ray falls hook, line and sinker into the category of deceit and propaganda. I am simply stating that because deceit and propaganda exists and because it is possible that there are elements of both underlying at least some of Mr. Ray’s programs and services, it is vital that all of us, and particularly those pursuing a spiritual path, embrace this tragedy as a call for greater awareness and discernment.

Guidelines to select a facilitator
In alignment with taking the inquiries and lessons arising from the events surrounding Mr. Ray into the larger spiritual arena, what follows are suggestions about the questions to ask and guidelines to consult when selecting a spiritual system and/or individual spiritual facilitator:

1. Does the organization and/or facilitator’s programs, practices and products promote personal freedom and authenticity?
2. As a participant, why might you need to be pushed, challenged or goaded in order to become more spiritual?
3. Why might you need to engage in “spiritual” activities that require more from you than is reasonable and safe?
4. As a participant, are you empowered to think for yourself, to trust your own intuitive knowing/inner guidance?
5. How would you define the facilitator’s charisma? Charisma, from the Greek charis, or grace, means gift and has to do with divine influence on the heart of the one who receives the blessing of charis. Charis is a spiritual power gifted to an individual who genuinely admires and empowers those they serve. If misused, it can become a trait whereby a person relishes having influence and/or control over others. There’s a difference between an individual who uses their charisma to interface with others in an authentic, effective and empowering way and one who uses their magnetism and/or attractiveness to persuade or dominate others.
6. Do the activities and practices of the organization or individual facilitator suggest that deprivation is beneficial?
7. Is the facilitator dismissive of or light hearted about vomiting, dizziness, disorientation, intense fear and/or loss of consciousness as a reaction to certain activities and practices?
8. Has the organization or facilitator demonstrated neglect?
9. Does the facilitator function as a parental figurehead? As a participant, do you ever feel inferior, even infantilized?
10. Does the facilitator project the image that he/she knows best? Do you sense an underlying lure of co-dependence with the facilitator for a certain connection to spirit, energy, or power?
11. Does the facilitator or organization’s principles state or imply that by being involved you will be getting the “real thing,” that which you can’t get anywhere else?
12. Does the facilitator or organization state or imply that your spiritual progress is dependent upon repeated attendance at events or remaining connected with him/her/it?
13. Does the facilitator or organization’s principles state or imply that you need to live in close proximity to a Center or be regularly involved in certain activities in order to advance to the next level?
14. Do you feel pressured to sign up for events or purchase products?
15. Do you have a sense of having betrayed or disappointed him/her/them if you don’t sign up for certain events or purchase products?
16. Do the principles of the facilitator or organization state or imply that if you don’t enroll you must not be committed to whatever spiritual advancement is being offered? It is vital that all participants partaking of any service, program or product feel not only comfortable not participating or purchasing, but also honored for making a decision that is congruent with their intuitive knowing/inner guidance.
17. Are the organization or facilitator’s fees excessive?
18. Does your involvement require ongoing fees (investments) that either uncomfortably diminish and/or deplete your resources?
19. Does the organization target mostly upper middle to high-income individuals?
20. Does the organization have scholarships that afford a certain number of participants the ability to participate at a reduced fee?
21. Does the organization authentically outreach to those in need?
22. Are those assisting the facilitator compensated for their services?

There are trustworthy spiritual organizations available and many facilitators are sincere and responsible custodians of their gifts and abilities, and genuinely respect, admire and empower those they serve. Therefore, I prayerfully intend that regardless of the edicts being issued and deceit being perpetuated, individuals will continue seeking and finding — participating in spiritual programs, partaking of spiritual services and acquiring products that promote personal authenticity, self-trust, freedom of expression, self-empowerment and co-creative collaboration.

Participants and facilitators alike seek spiritual development because we genuinely yearn: to uncover and reclaim hidden truths about our authentic selves; to explore uncommon knowledge about the mystical aspects of our origins; to re-examine reality as we know it; and to become liberated broadcasters of empowering truth, and conduits for infusions of energy that illuminate and transform.

And that is something to be honored and proud of.

Experiences, dreams and intuitive moments that are spiritual in nature have given me validations of the link between this human existence and spirit. I have always felt that God had a purpose for me being here — and not just purpose, but a very important, powerful purpose. I had a thought/feeling that I was going to die somewhere around my mid-thirties. I later realized that I wasn’t going to actually physically die, but I was going to have a spiritual death and awakening. God’s purpose for me would take shape.

Acceptance and surrender would be a major factor in my awakening. The signs were always put before me, but I didn’t listen. The synchronicities that played out before me — even a dream on an Easter Sunday of my son telling me, “Dad, you need to let Jesus back into your life” — had little effect on my eagerness or acceptance of an awakening. I was too caught up in the circumstances of everyday life, that the moments of those in spirit crying out to me were given little regard.

Understanding is the groundwork, the knowledge, the daily practice, that helps us, as individuals, come to a point of acceptance. In my heart I thought I was ready to accept the gifts God has given me, yet there was fear — a fear of not understanding why and how I could see and hear those in spirit. I began to have more questions than I did an understanding, which left me farther from acceptance than I was in the beginning.

Surrendering shed the fear and unfamiliarity. It didn’t come easy, because surrendering required me to relinquish myself to the unknown. The surrender was in understanding that those in spirit were waiting for me to surrender to my higher purpose and connect with them.

What leads us to acceptance? How can a person accept another if they don’t understand them, don’t develop a relationship with them, don’t look at the core of who they are? When I teach, and when I manage people at work, I have always tried to explain “why” I want people to do something, and it’s importance. Through their own struggle, and by asking their own questions, they came to an understanding and acceptance of my intention for a specific outcome or process.

I later realized that all of the things that were taking place in my house were signs, they were signaling for me to wake up, to start paying attention — now, not later. People would tell me time and time again, “Accept these gifts, accept what is happening to you because it’s a very special gift you possess.” No matter how much I heard this, I couldn’t accept the awakening until I surrendered and understood it.

My own spiritual awakening could not have happened without a self-reflecting comprehension, and a surrendering acceptance to “The Gift from Heaven.”

Leonard Jacobson will be opening a center focusing on presence and awakening in January, based at Lake Harriet Spiritual Community, 4401 Upton Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55410, just west of Lake Harriet in South Minneapolis.

Upcoming Events:

• Introduction to the Awakening Journey: Thursday, Jan. 14, 7 p.m. Free! You are invited to meet Leonard and discover how awakening in consciousness can transform every aspect of your life. Also meet Mary and others involved in establishing this center. Become a part of a vibrant conscious living community.
• Tuesday evening meetings, beginning January 19 at 7 p.m. Leonard teaches a two-step path of awakening that is simple, clear and profound. Each evening is unique as Leonard responds to those in attendance. In each session, participants open into the deepest level of Presence and Oneness.

For a schedule of upcoming events, including ongoing courses, one-day intensives and longer retreats, call 612.920.3730 or visit www.leonardjacobson.com

Leonard Jacobson moves in accord with the flow of life, with the movement of energy in relation to the work he does. By profession, he is a teacher, and an author. For the past 25 years, he has been helping others break through to the joyous experience of living in the now. He teaches how to become fundamentally present and how to arise in mastery of your mind and ego, so that you are no longer involuntarily pulled out of Presence.

Leonard teaches that the fully awakened state of consciousness is available now. It is not something that occurs in the future. It is not something that we can arrive at through spiritual practice. It is already here, waiting to be revealed. As you awaken into the present moment, your thoughts will stop, your mind will fall silent, and you will awaken to an inner silence and peace that is beyond understanding. You will begin to encounter what the mystics and masters have been speaking of for centuries.

One of the most significant aspects of Leonard’s teaching is his unique insight into the nature of the mind and ego. Leonard teaches us how to come into right relationship with the ego in a way that helps the ego to relax, and he teaches us how to integrate awakened consciousness into everyday life and relationships. He is the author of four books, Words from Silence, Embracing the Present, Bridging Heaven & Earth and his latest book, Journey into Now.

Leonard, a native of Australia, arrived in America 14 years ago, and he’s lived his life responding to invitations. The latest came from a group of Minnesotans anxious to learn as much as they can from him about mastering the art of spiritual awakening. Thus, he is relocating from Santa Cruz, CA, where he has been rooted for the past nine years, and settling in to the Twin Cities. He will base his teachings from Lake Harriet Spiritual Community in South Minneapolis.

“I was first invited to New York to run a workshop,” he said in a phone interview with The Edge. “It was my first event in the United States and it was so successful that I began to receive invitations from all over the country. I moved from New York to Massachusetts, then to Maine, Michigan and Sedona, AZ. I stayed in each place for several months, and eventually settled in Santa Cruz. My teaching was very well received there and I attracted a large number of students who I have grown very fond of. It has been a very rewarding time as I have watched so many heal and grow and awaken.

“Of course, I love California and the weather. However we recently presented a number of events in Minneapolis and there was such a positive response that it became apparent to me that many people in the Twin Cities are interested in awakening. I then received a strong invitation from a number of people who had attended the events. Pursuant to my tendency to accept invitations, I decided to make the move. Not only that, we had a wonderful invitation from the Lake Harriet Spiritual Community offering us the opportunity to base ourselves in their premises and present my teachings there. There seems to be a genuine hunger not only for a very clear teaching on awakening, but also for a conscious community where people on a path of awakening can come together.”

Leonard Jacobson spoke with The Edge about his plans for teaching in the Twin Cities, as well as about the journey to awakening.

What type of events will you be offering in the Twin Cities?
We will be beginning sometime in mid-January with teaching sessions on Tuesday evenings. These sessions focus primarily on being present. The whole point of the evening is for those in attendance to have a really deep experience of the awakened state. It is really a communion in Presence, where we come together in silence, peace and a sense of Oneness. Each session is unique, as people ask questions or share of themselves in a way that leads them into deeper levels of awakened Presence.

We are also planning events for Thursday evenings. These will be four- or six-week courses, focusing on specific topics like Deepening into Presence, Overcoming the Resistance of the Ego, Healing the Past, The Soul’s Journey, Creating the Future You Want, Conscious Relationships, and Conscious Communication. The advantage of these ongoing courses is that participants will receive more intensive guidance from me and they will get to know each other, which develops a sense of community. In addition to the Tuesday and Thursday events, we will be offering day-long Presence Intensives one Saturday each month. Of course, all of this will evolve as we go.

I’ve heard that you are interested in creating a community among the people who share this focus and interest. Is that one of your goals in coming here?
Absolutely. Community is important. Awakening brings with it significant change, and family and friends don’t always understand what you are going through. We want to provide a place for people who sincerely want to awaken to come together. This can obviously occur in the context of the various events we are offering, but we would also like it to be a place to meet socially.

Towards this end, we will be sponsoring film nights, music and other events and we invite creative people who are interested in awakening to contact us with their ideas. We are a non-profit organization and would greatly appreciate anyone who would like to volunteer their services.

What changes have you noticed in communities where you have presented your teachings?
Primarily, it has an effect on those individuals who are involved in the teaching. Becoming more present enables people to free themselves from limiting beliefs that have developed in their childhood. They heal and release emotional traumas from the past. They are more emotionally balanced, and they are free from feelings like blame, guilt, and resentment. They are more empowered, less anxious, and less judgmental. They don’t lose themselves by seeking acceptance and approval from others. They are more spontaneous, more open, more loving. Presence makes all of this possible for the individual involved in this teaching.

Now, from a broader perspective, if enough of us awaken in the way that I am describing, it will impact at the collective level. From a community perspective, I am hoping to have the opportunity to introduce the Presence Teachings to schools, parenting groups and other institutions which would benefit from becoming more present. I would like to teach in prisons also. We will see how it all unfolds.

I imagine that when you move to a new location, there are things that you want to do that you haven’t done before?
Yes, that’s true. The outreach aspect of the work is new for us. So too is presenting the work as a four- or six-week course based on specific topics. I would love to run a course on the Teachings of Buddha, or The true Meaning of the Words of Jesus. I am sure people would be very interested. Nevertheless, my focus is always on being present and arising in mastery of the mind and ego. I know from working very closely with people for 25 years that being present is the key to transforming our lives, and that Presence and Mastery of the mind and ego is the key to true spiritual awakening.

What does the awakening journey entail? Are there stages to the process?
The first step in awakening is learning the art of being present and there is no process in that. Being present is always instant. It is immediate, and I share with people a very simple key that enables them to free themselves from the mind and the world of thought and become present in the simplest way. That does not mean that they are able to remain present as they live their lives, go to work and participate in their relationships.

Most people attending one of my events will easily experience deep levels of Presence and silence, but when they leave it is not long before they are caught back into the mind with its never-ending thoughts, and limiting beliefs. That is why I teach a two step “dance of awakening.” The first step is all about being present, and deepening into Presence. The second step involves bringing to consciousness all the ways that we are involuntarily pulled out of the present moment, all the ways we are caught in unconscious emotional reactions, all the ways we lose ourselves in others, and all the ways we are limited by our own egos.

What role do emotions play in this process?
Most of us have emotions repressed within us from our childhood, and those repressed emotions are constantly being triggered by people and events in our lives. When those repressed emotions are triggered, we project a painful and limited past onto the present moment and distort our experience of life. If in childhood, you felt unloved or unappreciated, you are very likely to project those feelings onto others no matter how loving or appreciative they are. To become more present is literally to free your self from all of that. As a part of the awakening process, we must come into right relationship with our feelings and learn how to experience and express our feelings responsibly. A painful and unhealed past will continually project onto the present moment, distorting it.

Having viewed your DVD, it appears that you work with individuals where they are right now in their lives and help them to move into the present.
That is exactly right. A key to healing and awakening is acceptance. We have to learn how to accept who we have become on this long and sometimes difficult journey called life. Who have you become? Are you critical, controlling and judgmental? Are you limited, afraid, a victim? Are you angry, blaming, and resentful? Do you feel unloved or unworthy? We all feel these things to varying degrees. Many people are in judgment of themselves. They are trying to escape their feelings or fix themselves, or they are in denial, and that is not an approach that leads to true healing.

To awaken, we must be willing to encounter every aspect of ourselves, without judgment. My teaching provides an environment of Presence where there is no judgment, and it becomes easy to overcome these limitations that we have lived with since childhood.

Does that mean that somebody who will come and attend one of your events needs to be brave enough to accept where they are at this moment?
At some level, that is true. I describe the path of awakening as a path for champions. To awaken you have to be willing to encounter every aspect of yourself. As Jesus said, “Everything that is hidden shall be revealed.” From my perspective, what he is saying is that everything hidden within us, and everything that is unconscious within us, must be brought to consciousness.

Now, the good news is that my teaching regarding all of this is very gentle. Nothing ever arises that you are not ready for. But, I don’t want to give the impression that this is a kind of therapy. It is not. For the most part, it is simply about being present and deepening into Presence. That is what transforms our lives. It opens us up into a level of peace that we have rarely experienced. It makes life and relationships much easier and more joyful. It gives you an entirely different perspective from which to view yourself and your life.

But to truly awaken, you have to heal and release the past, so that you are more available to the present. My guidance in accomplishing this is very simple, direct and effective.

When people think about awakening into the Now moment, into Presence, Eckhart Tolle immediately comes to mind. For those familiar with him, how does your approach to teaching about Presence compare with what he is doing in a more visible way in the media?
At the recent weekend event here in Minneapolis, someone described me as an Australian version of Eckhart Tolle. Now the irony is that I have never read his books or listened to his audio or viewed his videos. And yet, I know enough about him to know that our teaching is very similar.

I’ve been teaching people how to be present since 1981 when I first had my awakening. When I first started teaching people how to be present, very few were interested, but now it is entering the mainstream and this is very encouraging. Being present is becoming a priority for more and more people, and this is due largely to the popularity of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings, and of course, Oprah, who shared his teachings with millions of people on the webcast with Eckhart. Of course, I have my own way of guiding people into Presence and working with emotions and the ego that is unique to my teaching, but essentially the outcome is the same. The outcome for anyone on a path of Presence is liberation from a painful and limited past, and an anxious future, into a joyful, peaceful and unlimited present.

So, when you are in the present moment, do you somehow transcend the past and future and the dominance of the ego?
To awaken into Presence is to be free of the ego’s control and all the limitations, pain and trauma of the past. It also frees you from anxiety about the future. When you are truly present, your mind is silent and so there is no past or future, at least not in those moments of Presence. This does not mean that you are present all the time. It does not mean that your past and future disappear. It does not mean that you cannot use your mind to think. It simply means that you reach a point on this path of awakening where you are no longer living in the past or future. You are no longer caught in the mind and lost in thought. You are fundamentally present. When you need to think, you think, but you do so consciously. When there is no need to be thinking, you are present and your mind is silent.

It is very peaceful and relaxing when you live this way, and you tend to think much more clearly and creatively. All true creative expression comes from silence, not from thinking.

CONTINUE TO PART 2 OF THIS INTERVIEW

Shortly after I had completed the choreography and worship service of the cantata “The Seven Last Words of Christ,” I was asked to choreograph and work with the choir to present another cantata for the same church. “A Shaker Service” was the new cantata and, since I knew very little about the Shakers, I began to do some research.

I discovered that dance was part of their worship and that they also used meditation. I had always been curious about meditation, so I read several books about it and found out that that “strange stuff” was something I already did! My choreography was always done in that state — I just didn’t have a name for it. I also tended to enter a similar kind of state to read philosophy.

Close to the same time that I was reading about meditation, I happened to attend a women’s luncheon and was seated at a table with a woman I didn’t know well. She talked about meditation and about a group that met to meditate, as well as discuss spiritual ideas. I learned that the group met at her house and was actually meeting that night. I said if I could find a babysitter, I would be there. I did and was.

I continued going there for a number of years; however, the two “messages” that made me a “believer” were ones I received when I was just beginning to meditate on a regular basis, as well as participate in the guided meditations there.

Spirit Speaking
The woman who led the group was a Spiritualist minister. In addition to learning to meditate, those of us in the group also learned to give each other “messages” and to become more aware of Spirit speaking to us in a variety of different ways, sometimes as “messages” from someone, sometimes as gut feelings, sometimes as “warnings,” and sometimes as “knowing.”

By the time I received one of the “messages” making me a “believer,” I had received a few and heard others receive messages that clearly made sense. The one Marie gave to me that night didn’t! She said she could see me and my family for the next year crisscrossing the country. At the time I received that “message,” I was sure she had made a mistake. She had either misunderstood the message or it was for someone else! There is no way that what she “saw” was going to happen as we had no extra money and no plans to do any traveling whatsoever. Well, I was wrong. The universe had something else in mind and proved it in amazing ways!

The second “message” was of a totally different kind. Marie had offered to take me to her Spiritualist church service on Sunday, and I had accepted. Having been there once or twice before, I knew messages were part of the service. On that Sunday, we had just received word that my husband’s sister had died suddenly. After many phone calls, we were waiting for family to arrive from Georgia to Wisconsin, and then the four of us were leaving the following day for Minnesota for the funeral.

My husband’s family was very religious and worshipped through different denominations — and they definitely were not into Spiritual Church messages. I had plenty to time to attend the service and get back and get ready for everything else. The message I received was that this trip was going to give me an opportunity to assist my husband’s family to become more open to a different concept of death. I can’t tell you how excited I was to carry that out! That same night, I took a very hot bath. While relaxing, I was aware of my newly dead sister-in-law, someone I hadn’t been that close to in life, telling me that she wanted me to tell her family that she was “fine.” I was still a little overwhelmed by what seemed to be my “assignment” as I was still very new at this “stuff.” I declared “Divine Order” for everyone’s highest good.

My brother-in law and sister-in-law arrived in the middle of the night, and after a little sleep the four of us left early the next morning.

My brother-in-law and I both liked to discuss ideas, sometimes into the wee hours, so while I was still able to breathe with three chain-smokers in the car that November day, we did a little talking about the passing of their sister. The death had been unexpected, and she was also the first of the five siblings to die. There was a lot of emotion.

The Exact Time
When we arrived at their mother’s, I found another sister and brother-in-law who wanted to share with me that he had been awakened at the exact time of his sister-in-law’s death and had found the paper open an article by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross! That kind of thing just continued to happen. I looked for a florist to buy the flowers I had promised from my children, who were being watched by a friend at home. I chose two long-stemmed red roses, the only flowers allowed to be on the casket. To the best of my ability and with a lot of assistance from “Divine Order” and the universe, I carried out my “assignment” and by the time we returned there was a lot more openness about death as a veil and not as something final.

Interestingly, the first of the crisscrossing stated in the other “message” was that funeral trip to Minnesota in late fall. Then during the drive to and from Minnesota, the four of us discussed a totally new idea, the possibility of using my brother and sister-in-law’s restaurant and of the four of us working together to do summer dinner theatre in Georgia! That discussion set up another cross-country trip later to Georgia.

My mother sent her Christmas present in the form of airline tickets to the four of us, so we flew to and from California for the holidays. I was thrilled at the opportunity to share a California Christmas with family and friends. Another trip to Minnesota, a totally different kind of one, came when my husband received a National Endowment for the Arts award to attend a Lessac workshop for five weeks during the summer in Duluth. We joined him for much of the time and our family enjoyed staying in the Duluth area and sharing time together.

Thanks to meditation and other spiritual/philosophical insights, I was able to see a lot of what Arthur Lessac was using and teaching, and I loved meeting the “Jewish leprechaun,” as he called himself! By the time the year was over I was definitely a “believer”!

The question that has been uppermost in my heart and mind lately is, “How does it happen that I knew as a 9 year old that I am innately good?” The almost indescribable difference this awareness has made in my life is most definitely palpable.

I came into this life with an indomitable will. My understanding that nothing is in my way is a huge spiritual gift. My understanding is that, “All things work together for good. All things work together to bless me.”

My understanding lately is that the work I do is the highest, holiest call to compassion and gratitude that I have ever received. I recently understood that the work I’ve done all my life is an expression of holding the paradox that I am so keenly aware of in this lifetime. My work is the paradox of being a crisis counselor and an educator in the very same moment.

I’m an empath. It is often so exceedingly painful to wonder, “How in the world did I get to be who I am and you are who you are?” The difference in how we respond to the world and how we see ourselves is agonizing.

It is agonizing to see people so immobilized by fear, guilt and self-hatred. I knew as a college student that my lifework was to understand myself and to help others understand themselves so we could all live the highest, holiest lives of joy, compassion and gratitude that I know we are called to live…because it is our very nature.

When I moved to California the first time “to find my dream,” I found the spiritual perspective that is the very living embodiment of my childhood understanding that I am innately good. I cried and cried for weeks — I was so overjoyed.

The spiritual awakening that continues to fuel my passionate devotion to this precious life experience is the power of our thoughts, feelings and actions. I know so clearly that what I focus on immeasurably colors and creates my life experience. I have no illusion about that Truth whatsoever.

My spiritual awakening came into irrevocable focus earlier this year as I finished my first book due to be released before Christmas. The culmination of this process is certainly the greatest Christmas present I’ve ever received. It is also the expression of a Truth that irrevocably colors and expresses my life Truth: Life is an inside-out process. I irrefutably know I am powerful. I am Power Itself. I want to share that awareness with everyone. I know with all my heart it is our spiritual heritage. It is our very nature.

Thank you, Universe, for an immeasurably empowered life. I recognize myself in you, as you! I am exceedingly grateful.

It was early on the morning of July 4 when I answered my phone. It was my mother, crying, and I knew it was about Lynn, my younger sister and closest friend. She had hung herself, and as my mother shared the details, a voice whispered in my other ear, “Pay Attention.”

As I was beginning to awaken in my own earnest process of healing and spiritual study, my teacher suggested that this experience was going to bring home in a powerful way all that I had been studying. I was going to be shown the illusion and meaning behind the teaching, “There is no death.”

The first opportunity I had to “pay attention” was when my middle sister, Jody, a professor in Seattle, asked me not to come home right away. She explained that she had always felt “left out” of the family, and if I traveled home my mother would lean on me. I agreed to stay in Minnesota.

While the rest of the family sat in vigil with Lynn’s tortured body, now in a coma, I spent my days writing, hiking and riding my bicycle. Tears of grief whipped off my face as I called out to God for relief, not so much for me but for my dear younger sister. I knew that Lynn’s pain was mine, as well as our whole family’s.

In the still of the night, about a week into this process, I was awakened by this voice for God, guided to write Lynn a letter. In this letter, taken in dictation by Spirit, I was sharing with Lynn my knowing that it was time for her to make a choice, and become free. She could stay in her body or not; either way it made no difference. The point was that she no longer needed to carry this burden for our family.

I mailed the letter home, and it was read two days later by my eldest sister, Sandy, with Jody and my mother looking on. The angry scowl on Lynn’s face relaxed, and her hands unclenched, revealing stigmata-like wounds where her fingernails had dug into her palms. A slight smile came across her face, and a few hours later she took her last breath in this world.

As my mother is recounting this story to me the next morning, again clear guidance comes to me in the form of a knowing that I was to give the eulogy at Lynn’s memorial service. Now the full scope of “pay attention” was coming into focus.

The day of the funeral, I approached the altar of our family church. The sanctuary was packed full of a crowd representing all of my past neighbors, teachers, school chums, family friends…they were all here. I had made some foolish attempts to write notes for the eulogy, impossible, as this was Spirit’s moment to use me for a higher purpose. This was the teaching for me, as beautiful words of celebration came through my mouth on that perfect summer morning.

Some people have miraculous experiences where illusion is suddenly and dramatically stripped away; they see the light of truth and are forever changed. Like Saul in the Bible who is brought to his knees by the Light and Sound of God, becomes Paul, and finishes out his life in service to others.

My spiritual awakenings have always been, and continue to be, more ordinary and subtle. They happen in daily life when truth emerges in a new way I hadn’t considered before. When I’m shown a new way to look at something I thought I had all figured out.

I notice this happening most frequently in my relationship with my husband, Dale. Recently, I felt upset in response to something he said which pushed a button in me. I knew enough to keep my mouth shut and not speak from that worked-up state. I simply closed my eyes and brought my attention to that quiet place inside myself.

At first it made sense that it was my job to educate Dale about the button he had pushed so he could avoid doing it again. I saw him as the cause of my upset, even though I knew it was unintentional on his part. The obvious answer appeared to be Dale changing to better accommodate me. I know he loves me and wants me to be happy so I assumed he would be willing to be more careful of my feelings.

But after I quieted my inner dialogue and simply listened, I received my new truth: Dale has zero responsibility for my buttons. The responsibility is 100 percent mine. It’s not about Dale learning where and how to step carefully around me. It’s about me evolving to a point where every place he steps brings nothing but compassion and love from me.

Not the answer I expected or hoped for, but it resonated as a new truth for me. That’s how my awakenings occur.

On another occasion, Dale innocently pushed my “I’m not special” button and I felt furious. We were on our way to attend a spiritual conference and, in that moment, I just wanted to get as far away from him as possible. Fortunately, the bigger part of me, Soul, wanted to be able to re-open my heart to love. Once again, I did the only thing that ever works for me in these situations; I closed my eyes and went inside to connect with Spirit.

I invited my team of spiritual masters to a meeting where, after whining and complaining, I told them I wanted to surrender my feelings of hurt and anger. Ten minutes later, when I opened my eyes, it truly felt like a miracle had occurred. The huge cloud of negativity was completely lifted off of me. I was able to open my heart again.

I’m beginning to understand that Truth isn’t something I can grab onto and feel proud to have finally obtained. Rather, it’s something that looks different every time I peel away another layer of illusion, every time I evolve in consciousness.

Right now I’m considering a question that is troubling me. Regardless of age, class or race, there is a growing body of us who are in the process of becoming deeply awake, yet our numbers are still extremely small. Why doesn’t everyone wake up? What is standing in the way?

I usually assume the problem is that we’re just not ready to wake up. But maybe there’s more to it than that? Perhaps the problem also lies with the state of modern spirituality? Spirituality has the role of waking us up, but is it up to the job?

There’s a gullibility that pervades modern spirituality. As a philosopher, this disturbs me because without rational doubt, we easily become lost in fantasy, rather than waking up to reality. Modern spirituality needs to consider what philosophers call “epistemology.” Before we can say “what we know,” we need to think about “how we know it.”

Do we take channeled wisdom from the ascended masters residing in the Pleiades at face value? Or do we stop and ask ourselves, “How can I check if this is for real?” We need to keep an open mind and listen to our intuition, for life is strange and anything is possible. But we also need to be savvy and judicious.

Many people today, however, are consuming large amounts of spiritual junk food without chewing – so there’s an epidemic of philosophical indigestion. We’ve become so transfixed with the mysteries of the crop circles and the crystal skulls that we’re ignoring the real mystery…which is that we exist and don’t know what to do about it!

And here’s another thing that bothers me. I hate all the sanctimonious seriousness and saccharine niceness so often associated with being “spiritual.” It gets in the way of our being authentic with each other. Some of the new “gurus” are so safely bland that it’s like listening to elevator music. That’s not going to enliven us. It’s going to put us to sleep in a comfortable spiritual cocoon.

For me, the real heroes of the new edge of evolution are radically real people like the late Bill Hicks…a comic genius who took us to big love via his own unique brand of taboo-breaking, consciousness-raising, misanthropic humor. Even though Bill Hicks is dead now, if I had the choice of hanging out with him or Swami Blandananda, it would be no contest.

Damn it! I think I’m beginning to become a channel myself. I can hear Bill’s manic Texan drawl raving in my ears:

“Listen up! I’ve got some really good news! Everything is okay!

“Being alive is weird and scary and never really makes sense, but that’s all right because life is like a dream…so there’s nothing to be alarmed about…it all turns out all right in the end…because when you die in a dream, you wake up.

“But before you bow out, why not enjoy the show…because it’s a thrilling roller coaster of a ride…and when you stop worrying about falling off, you can just throw your hands up in the air and yell ‘Bring it on!’…as you career through the highs and lows of the ever-changing moment…toward the sign marked ‘exit.’

“Heh! I know what I’m talking about because I’m dead! The way to enjoy the trip is to lighten up, not tighten up!

“If you take things too seriously, you’ll be popping Prozac just to cope with the anxiety…and when ‘numb’ becomes ‘normal,’ every day will be a monotonous cycle of drudgery. Then you’ll remember all the things you’ve got to get done…but forget the most important thing about life.”

There’s a great story about Milton Erickson, the most famous medical hypnotist of all time, in the book The Power of the Mind to Heal, by Joan and Miroslav Borysenko. As an adolescent, polio left Milton paralyzed. “One day Erickson’s parents left him alone, strapped into a chair. Bored and wishing that he could get to the window, he began to fantasize about walking over to it. As he used his imagination, muscles that had been paralyzed began to twitch. Before long, Erickson had learned to use his imagination to coordinate groups of muscles and rehabilitate himself!”

The Borysenkos go on to say that “all of us are under hypnosis all the time…because of our beliefs.”

“The art of using the power of our minds to heal,” they say, “comes through the ability to notice when we are stuck in an unproductive mindset – to become aware of the mental movies that are limiting our creativity – and to make new choices. The two keys to inner healing are awareness and choice. With these keys, we can learn to awaken from the unconscious trance of life into a much more creative reality.”

Decades ago I was addicted to cigarettes, smoking 1-1/2 packs on a good day. Like most smokers, I had a love-hate relationship with cigarettes. I knew they were bad for my health, but I loved that I could count on them to be there for me at any moment no matter what. They were much more reliable than people.

A friend of mine quit smoking by going to a hypnotist. I decided to give it a try. Previously I had quit on my own for six months but deluded myself into thinking I could have “just one.” From that experience, I knew with certainty that smoking in moderation was not an option for me.

Because of my extreme anxiety, I arrived at my appointment 30 minutes early, sat in the car, and chain-smoked. I was so worked up that I felt there was no way hypnosis could help me.

In the office, I lay back in a recliner chair wearing a pair of headsets. The hypnotist talked into a microphone that made it sound like he was talking inside my head. He spoke of the hazards of smoking, which I knew. He spoke of the benefits of quitting, which I knew. He went through this sequence twice. He said that with each passing day it would get easier and more comfortable being a non-smoker. He sent me home with an audio tape of his words. I left his office and have never had a cigarette since. That was almost 30 years ago.

People have reservations about being hypnotized, because they fear being made to do something they don’t really want to do. Although I was in a deeply relaxed and receptive state, I was fully aware of everything that was going on around me. If something hadn’t felt right, I could have easily sat up and walked out. Nothing could have happened to me against my will or without me knowing.

I wish I could say that hypnosis made it easy, like coming to with amnesia and forgetting that I’d ever been a smoker. But it wasn’t like that. It did give me greater confidence in my ability to do what I already wanted to do. And it did get easier with each passing day. But the choice was always mine: Will I give in to an old negative habit or will I remain committed to my value of leading a healthy life?

I’m grateful I had developed enough self-love to stay the course.

To be awake in the truth of life is to be fully present in the moment of now. It is profoundly peaceful and blissful. You are so fully present with everything around you that separation largely dissolves and you experience Oneness. A deep inner knowing arises and yet you are in silence. You come to know yourself as love. You are accepting, compassionate. You are empowered from within. Profound insights and revelations sometimes emerge out of the silence. Spontaneous healings can occur. At the deepest levels of Presence, you can feel and sense the Presence of God or the Divine within you and within everything around you.

This awakened state is the natural state of your Being. It is the truth of who you are. It is ever present within you. It is just that most of the time, we are so involved in the world of the thinking mind and the past and future that we are largely unaware of it.

The goal of the spiritual path is simple. It is to awaken out of the illusory world of the thinking human mind into the truth and reality of life lived in the present moment. The world of the mind is a world of the remembered past and imagined future. It is a world of illusion and yet almost everyone on this planet believes this illusory world to be the truth of life. The simple truth is that there is no life outside of the present moment. It is impossible to live life outside of the present moment. We must come to terms with this simple truth.

I do not mean to imply that life at the level of mind should cease. That is not possible, nor desirable. What is possible however is that we become so awake and deeply grounded in the present moment and the awakened state of Being that we never lose our connection with the present moment, even when we do venture into the world of the mind. In other words, we no longer believe in our thoughts, memories, ideas, beliefs and opinions as the truth. We know that only this moment is the truth and everything else is a kind of play within time.

To be present is as simple as being present with whatever is before you, moment to moment. It does not matter what you are present with. Just notice when you are day dreaming or drifting off into thought and then come back to the present moment. Bring yourself very present with something that is here in the moment with you. If you can see it, hear it, feel it, taste it, touch it or smell it, in this moment, then you can be present with it. And the moment you are truly present with something that is here in the moment with you, thoughts will stop. You will emerge out of the past and future world of the mind. Now you are awake in the truth of life, revealed through the present moment. As you deepen into Presence, you will begin to feel the Oneness.

There are so many ways to be present and so much to be present with. As you have a shower, be present with the warmth of the water and the fragrance of the soap. As you eat your breakfast, be present with the taste and smell of the food. Be present as you raise the fork to your mouth. Be present as you chew your food.

Be present as you wash the dishes. If you are truly present as you wash the dishes, it will be a sacred and loving experience. Be present as you walk in the garden. Be present with what you see and hear, moment to moment. Be present with your body breathing.

Be present whenever it is easy to be present. Be present whenever there is no need to think. The more you remember to be present, the more that dimension of Presence will awaken within you.

Of course, there are many times during the day when thinking is appropriate, particularly within the context of work or when you have to plan for something in your future. At such times, do not be concerned with being present. Think when you need to think, but be sure to return to Presence when you no longer need to think. And do not go so far into the world of thought that you get lost there.

Eventually, you become so grounded in Presence that it is very easy to remain present, and there is an easy flow between Presence and silence and the movement in and out of thought. It becomes effortless and you spontaneously return to Presence as soon as the thinking process is completed.

“To be present is to awaken into that dimension of your self and that dimension of life which is transcendent of the thinking mind. You are silent and you are fully present with what is actually here now. If you are fully present, there is no moment other than this moment. That is what it means to be awake in the truth of life. You are so fully present that you exist in this moment, and only in this moment. You are awake in the eternal now.” – Leonard Jacobson

Leonard Jacobson will speak at Old Arizona in Minneapolis on July 31.

Leonard Jacobson, founder of The Conscious Living Foundation, has been guiding people on the path of conscious awakening for more than 20 years. He is author of Bridging Heaven & Earth, Embracing the Present, Words from Silence, and Journey Into Now. The native Australian is a modern mystic who holds the energy of Presence for all those who attend his seminars and teachings.

Leonard will appear in Minneapolis for the first time on Friday, July 31, speaking at 7:30 p.m. at Old Arizona.

Eighteen months ago, The Edge spoke with the author and speaker about his book, Journey Into Now, and he revealed much about the soul’s journey. He emphasized that every human on the planet is “awake,” that each of us has an awakened dimension within us, but the challenge is liberating ourselves from control by the mind and ego. He cautioned that no one can understand awakening with the mind, by using words to describe a specific way to enlightenment.

“To be awake,” he said, “is as simple as being fully present in the moment of now. If you’re fully present with something that’s actually here in the moment with you, your mind will fall silent, thoughts will stop, and you’ll be awake in the truth of life. You’ll be fully here, now. And that is always instant and immediate. There’s no practice, there’s no delay, there’s no gap.”

Jacobson, on a speaking tour through Europe, was interviewed by email while in Copenhagen about his forthcoming visit to Minnesota, sponsored by the creators of the first Twin Cities Awakening Conference, an event that was considered a success for organizers in late May.

We hear of living in the present moment a lot today. How is simply being present in the moment different than awakening?
Leonard Jacobson: If you are fully present in this moment, you are an awakened being, but it does not last beyond this moment. When we speak of awakening, it refers to that state of consciousness where you are fundamentally established in the present moment. A shift has occurred so that prior to awakening you experienced life from within the mind, whereas after awakening you experience life primarily from presence.

How does one become grounded in the reality of the present moment?
Leonard: To become grounded in the reality of the present moment requires two steps. First you learn the art of being present, and then you bring consciousness to all of the ways you are involuntarily pulled out of presence. What are the obstacles to Presence? This second step leads to mastery of the mind and ego. When you arise in mastery of the mind and ego, you can remain grounded in Presence even when you are using your mind and participating in the world of time.

It seems so many people want the formula or steps or system that will awaken them. Does the answer relate more to personal intent and attention, as opposed to “doing” something? For those who seek a more conscious way of being, can you recommend the first steps?
Leonard: We are all so deeply habituated to thinking that it is very difficult to find our way to silence. Thinking is a deep addiction within human existence. Because it is such an addiction, it requires a strong commitment and intention to be present if you are to free yourself from the habit of thinking.

I teach a way of freeing yourself from the mind in a way that brings you instantly into presence. It is as simple as bringing yourself present with something that is already here in the moment with you. If you can see it, hear it, feel it, taste it, touch it, or smell it, in this moment, then you can be present with it. And the moment you are truly present with something that is here in the moment with you, your thoughts will stop and your mind will fall silent. This is not a practice or something you do. It is not even meditation. It is a gentle remembering to be here rather than not here, and you are not here when you are lost in the past and future world of the mind. The gentle remembering that I am speaking of needs to be supported by a deep intention to be present, moment to moment.

What is the greatest hurdle for people who are seeking to awaken and live a more present and conscious life?
Leonard: The greatest hurdle that we must overcome is the resistance of the ego. The ego is more than happy for you to pursue enlightenment and engage in all sorts of spiritual practice. But if you suddenly find yourself at the doorway to true awakening, which is the present moment, the ego will immediately resist.

The reason for this is that when you are present, thoughts stop and your mind falls silent. But the ego exists within a framework of thought. It exists within the past and future world of the mind. When thoughts stop, it feels to the ego like it is dying or disappearing, and so it resists any movement into presence. It wants you to continue seeking. It wants you in the past or future, where it is in control and it is extremely skilled at pulling you out of the present moment.

If you are to awaken, you will have to recognize what the ego is, what is its role and purpose, how it functions, and how to overcome its resistance.

During the process of awakening, many people end up making the mind their enemy. What relationship do you have with the mind, and how does one garner that relationship?
Leonard: If you make the mind your enemy, you will never awaken. If you try to stop thoughts, thoughts will continue. If you try to defeat the ego, the ego will triumph. The only kind of relationship with your mind and ego that will lead to awakening is a relationship of love, acceptance, compassion and allowing. And this kind of relationship is only possible from Presence.

Another trend today is an emphasis on emotional intelligence. How do you suggest that people get in touch with their feelings, and how does this relate to the awakening process?
Leonard: The remarkable thing about Presence is that as you become more present, it tends to bring up all that is unhealed and unresolved within you. Most people have feelings from the past repressed within them including the feelings of anger, hurt, sadness, unmet needs and fear. To the extent that these feelings are repressed within you, you cannot be fundamentally present, for the simple reason that these feelings are constantly being triggered by people and events in your life. When the feelings are triggered, you are no longer present. You are caught in a painful past and projecting that past onto the present moment.

As a part of the awakening process, it is essential to allow these repressed feelings to surface into conscious and responsible expression. Whenever feelings are triggered, just be present and pay attention. Allow the feelings full and conscious and responsible expression. Gradually you will empty out those reservoirs of repressed emotion. You will release the past from you and you from the past, which will make you much more available to the present moment.

What is your perception of public interest now in what you have to share?
Leonard: There is a growing interest and awareness in the value of being present. Many have become aware of this through the widespread popularity of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings. To become interested in being present is an essential first step in awakening, but to complete this journey of awakening, you must encounter yourself at every level. You must learn the art of being present. But you are not completely free until you arise in mastery of your mind and ego.

Being present is always instant. You cannot practice your way into Presence. You can only be present now. But arising in mastery of the mind and ego is a process that unfolds over time.

What are the most common questions you get and how do you answer them?
Leonard: The most common questions have to do with how to be present and how to overcome the obstacles to remaining present as you live your life.

I teach a simple two-step approach to awakening. The first step leads to Presence, the second to mastery of the mind and ego. These two steps are interdependent. As you become more present, it enables you to bring consciousness to all of the ways that you are pulled out of presence. This leads to mastery. As you arise in mastery, you deepen into presence, until one day you are completely free. You are fundamentally present, and you are no longer involuntarily pulled out of the present moment. You are no longer a prisoner within your mind.

I also receive questions about the true purpose of our existence. My response is always the same. The true purpose in being here is to be here. I also speak about the origins of our existence and how we become lost and how to find our way home.

When you come to the Twin Cities at the end of July, what will you present? What would you like participants to do in preparation for the event?
Leonard: Anyone attending this event will have a direct experience of the awakened state of Presence. I will also offer clear guidance – not only on how to be present, but also on how to remain present as we live our lives, go to work and participate in our relationships. Many people have the experience of “coming home” when attending one of my events.

By way of preparation, I suggest that people begin to pay attention to the emotional patterns and reactions that have been with them since childhood and the limiting beliefs that have adversely affected their enjoyment of life. Start paying attention to how the mind works and how thoughts lead them out of the present moment.

What is your feeling about “working on yourself” through self-inquiry versus a more extreme spectrum of Advaita Vedanta. For example, a participant at the recent Twin Cities Awakening Conference mentioned that she was very much into Advaita and was just waiting for the 100th monkey syndrome to kick in so that she would wake up. Conference leaders suggested that the idea that there’s no self to awaken becomes an “excuse” for people to keep their inertia and conditioning in place, and they don’t ever seem to move towards awakening. They don’t get the sense that there is actually something they can commit themselves to or look at to wake themselves up. Your response?
Leonard: If we are to awaken collectively, we must first awaken individually, and to awaken individually is to encounter your self at every level. To dismiss everything as illusory in nature is unhelpful, even though ultimately it might prove to be true.

If you are to free yourself from illusion you must bring the illusion into full consciousness. You must reveal it, own it, acknowledge it and confess it with love, acceptance and compassion. You must accept responsibility for every aspect of the illusion that you are lost in. Only then will it dissolve and reveal your true nature and the true nature of existence.

You use the term “God” often in your book. Can you speak to your definition of “God” and how “God” is relevant to the awakening process?
Leonard: When I speak of God, I am speaking as a mystic. For me, God is the silent Presence at the very heart of all things present. God exists at the very heart of silence within each one of us. God is eternal silent presence. God is eternal Is-ness. God is the present moment revealed. God is real. God is here now, but we are not. We have separated ourselves from God and truth and love by going too far into the past and future world of the mind. We have disconnected from the present moment.

If we want to experience the living presence of God, we will have to come to where God is. We will have to become fully present. To know God with the mind is to believe in God and to believe in God is to create God in our image. It is all an illusion. If we surrender our belief in God, and become fully present, we will begin to feel the living Presence of God in all things present. That is what is meant by “Omnipresence!”

How do you truly know if you have awakened?
Leonard: You know that you have awakened when you are able to be present at will. The true test of awakening is very simple. You are present and your mind is utterly silent. There are no thoughts and you experience a subtle sense of oneness with whatever is here with you. Sometimes it is extraordinary and sometimes it is ordinary. There is an overwhelming sense of peace and well-being and a deep sense of acceptance of the moment as it is.

Leonard Jacobson will present “Embracing the Present: Living an Awakened Life” at 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 31, at Old Arizona Studio, 2821 Nicollet Ave. S., Minneapolis. Donation is $15. For more information, call 651.330.5658.