What do we seek in life if not a heaven that the world cannot destroy? We have, at times, known momentary escape and shelter. Yet, even within its supposed comfort we remain tortured by our own minds. We have fought hard and defended what we think will bring us peace, yet we have also felt seeming perfection slip away every time. There is only one heaven that the world cannot destroy. Seek elsewhere and it cannot be found.

To offer peace is to offer perfect love. No longer is there any confusion because it is perfectly understood that perfect love is the whole truth. Within this truth, there is never a time for attack. Never a time to cut ourselves off. Never a time to judge, to prosecute, to punish, or even to defend ourselves. Only love offers total strength and complete wisdom.

Offering peace to everyone means to never respond in any way that isn’t loving. This doesn’t mean you are manipulated, that you sacrifice, or that you ever do anything other than what you want. It only means that the only response to anyone, anytime, is peaceful and loving (even yourself). To understand love, to awaken to the dimension of heaven, is to stop wanting anything other than this.

This is what our spiritual practice is for. It is a simple choice to enter a heaven the world cannot destroy. We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

The world has taught you through an endless series of rewards and punishments. You have been domesticated, indoctrinated, trained by those who would attempt to control you for their own agendas. The promise of reward and threat of punishment has taught to pretend and to lie. Now you feel guilty, shameful, and inadequate for even having fun. You tell yourself that you don’t deserve to feel good; that first you should get something done or accomplish something great.

The world has taught its lessons well. That voice in your head sounds like your voice, but its words are only echoes of what you have been taught. See how the rewards promised haven’t made you happy. See how the threats and punishments have scared you, but they have never meant anything. Today you lose faith in fear.

You were born as perfect love, limitless joy, endless peace. Nothing can change this. For a long time, you believed it was lost somewhere in your past. Now you are awakening and rediscovering who you are. The right path is to follow that place inside that wants to feel good and wants to have fun. This is the energy of life guiding you. Trust it.

Your first priority today and every day is to feel good. If you’re tired, go lie down or meditate. If you feel stuck in a routine, do something different. Go for a walk in the woods. Meet someone new. Create something. Play, experiment, tell the truth, sing, dance, have sex, do whatever excites you with anyone who you want to do it with.

We all have work and we all have responsibilities, but the priority is to have fun and feel good. Live from that place and everything you do will be effortless and effective. You may even find the power to inspire others, lead others, and stand out from the crowd.

Today you can let go of the guilt, the shame, the to-do list of things that don’t matter. Forgive yourself and don’t take seriously the opinions of others. You know who you are and you don’t need permission to be it. We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

Seeking love, joy and peace outside of yourself leads one to experience a roller-coaster of up and down emotions. One day, your lover may bring you flowers and do everything right. You feel happy and “in love”. The next day, you find him chatting online with an attractive woman. Now you feel heartbroken, as though your love has never existed. You tell yourself it was all a lie. You begin to distrust and resent your partner. You demand that he does something to restore your love. This is not love.

That which is real is unchanging. True love is therefore unconditional because it would be impossible for any situation or event to threaten it.

To find this kind of love, you must begin with self-love. Real love can only be found within your being. By allowing your inner-stillness to emerge, you discover your true identity. You recognize that love is not something you seek; rather something you are. You then begin to experience love, joy and peace from the center of the wheel. There are no more good days and bad days. Love emerges as your state of being. It emanates out from you without concern for conditions. You feel good essentially all the time.

Even after you have found this state, your ego may occasionally try to take over. When this happens, you simply return to your meditation and your daily spiritual practice. We continue tomorrow and the day after that.

Real love doesn’t make you suffer. How could it? It doesn’t suddenly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn to pain.

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle

Paper art by Zuzana Jurekova.

Perception is seeing only that which you want to be true. It is to first adopt an opinion or mental position, and then to interpret the world through it.  

Vision, on the other hand, is seeing only what is real. In vision, there are no mental positions or opinions. There is no labeling of good and bad, no judgment, no guilt, no naming, no debating.

Perception is identification with the mind. Vision is awakening to consciousness.

The thought system of perception is built upon separation, observing differences, determining who is right and wrong, who is guilty and innocent. The perceiver attempts to establish truth by convincing others through indoctrination, debate, or punishment and reward. The real result of perception is never of much concern. Suffering and destruction is tolerated as long as the perception is upheld.

Vision rests on logic beyond thought. It cannot be possessed, cannot be grasped, cannot be debated or proven. It is the knowing of the universe which manifests itself in the balance of all things. It is beyond time, beyond form, utterly beyond our control. It was true before the world exists and it needs nothing from us to remain true. In comparison, perceptions are of no concern one way or the other.

In human perception is struggle, chaos, endless war. In vision is the peace of God. We let go of perception and release our troubled mind to vision. We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

If you have a strong need to change someone, it can only be that you don’t fit. Rather than trying to make a person fit who doesn’t, wouldn’t it be better to be with someone who does?

All relationship problems are caused by one person trying to change the other. From this flows the ugliness of judgment, argument and debate, withholding love or even violence. Push hard enough for change and your partner will become afraid of you, will lie, and even begin seeking more perfect love in the arms of another.

If you can’t accept someone unconditionally, then set that person free to find someone who does. You might love each other, but if you are trying to change or control one another then you are only causing harm and you should not be together exclusively.

When two people fit, they can fully be who they are and can share everything without any negative reactions or problems. No matter how good your intentions or how hard you try other ways and strategies, there is only one simple path toward lasting happiness in a relationship.

Start by agreeing on unconditional acceptance, freedom, and total honesty that goes both ways. Now, after practicing this for some time, if you are both being yourselves and there is no desire to change one another, then you belong together and you will be happy.

It is important that you now set no rules and simply continue forever in this way. You will experience deep fulfillment and a passion that will never fade. A romantic relationship can be a perfect friendship that is also a holy relationship. It takes time to find the right person, but it isn’t that complicated. We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

Thoughts will arise, as they continuously do. That’s fine, but now they no longer control you.

What is it about this thought that is more important than this moment? Nothing.

So why chase a thought? Why let it affect our emotions? Why let it divert our attention from…from what?

Where might our attention be if not focused on our constant stream of thoughts? Our attention–our conscious presence–can instead be directed toward that which is. How does the inner body feel? How do you feel? What do you hear? What do you see? How are the colors and textures? How does the movement flow? Notice the stillness and harmony behind it all.

Don’t name any of it or try to hold onto it. Just allow it to be. Let go of what changes as it changes. Recognize how it is always now and always has been now. Thought becomes secondary.

If you are with a person, perhaps talking, be present and focus on the person without any interpretation. Allow the person space to be. Accept what is happening, what is being said, what the person is feeling, and what she wants. Together, there is no past or future; only your beautiful choice to be together now.

Answers to questions are unimportant. Each answer only brings a new question, and so on. Mental positions only shift your focus away from life itself. Be here now and allow the mind to respond fully to the fullness of reality.

The beautiful feeling of now is the feeling of love. Love is the only reality-based thought system. In the service of perfect love, the mind becomes a gentle guide rather than a source of fear and its range of negative emotions.

How gently magnificent is this awakening, this end of suffering, this knowledge of who you are, this full embrace of perfect love, this coming alive to all the universe. We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

People who have not yet transcended ego find it very difficult to forgive. Even after a heartfelt apology, the response is often, “I’m working on forgiving you” or worse yet “you still haven’t apologized properly for what you’ve done.” Other times, they simply consider a person unforgivable. What exactly does this person mean by “forgiveness”?

The unobserved, egoic mind uses forgiveness as a means for domination and control. What this person wants in an apology is that the “guilty party” give up all personal freedom and concede everything. Anything short of this is considered an unacceptable and inappropriate apology.

To the ego, everything anyone does is only reduced to a question of “what about me?” or “what do I get?”. The ego has no ability to empathize with, respect or accept someone else’s life journey. Instead, everything must be controlled and manipulated.

Of course, it is impossible for anyone to completely concede control over their life to such a confused person. What ends up happening instead is a fearful concession, then more deception.

But a person who has awakened to the dimension beyond the ego forgives instantly. We see no sin; rather, only error to be corrected in love. We offer unconditional acceptance and respond in love. We are also free to love and will not concede to being controlled or dominated by other people’s egos.

This is one of the reasons why it is so impossible for a spiritually awakened person to coexist alongside a person who has not yet awakened. If you refuse to be completely controlled by an ego, you will be considered unforgivable and immediately discarded. Sadly, you never meant any harm. You only wanted your freedom to be love and to give love on your terms.

We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

Humans have become very good at the game of spreading our emotional poison. Each time our perfect love and beautiful innocence is attacked, we feel a deep sense of injustice, hurt and grief. We are so wronged so often that we carry very deep wounds.

The weight of this poison becomes so unbearable that we seek ways to release it. We release it on the people who we have some form of power over; our subordinates or people who are less privileged in society (racism) – even our romantic partners and children who depend upon us for love and support. In this way, we teach fear and suffering – creating poison in them that is spread further in the same way.

This tragic game is taught to young children by their parents, by schools, by friends, by work and by all of society. We become very bitter, damaged – afraid to trust and open our hearts to one another because we are so afraid of their poison. It isn’t our fault. This game has been going on for a few thousand years; long before we were born.

I don’t like this game and I don’t play it. When someone tries to give me their poison, I recognize that he or she is suffering. There is an uncontrollable need within them to get rid of their poison, and only my love can release it. How do I know this is true? By looking within myself.

We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

“Hell is a place of suffering, a place of fear, a place of war and violence, a place of judgment and no justice, a place of punishment that never ends. There are humans versus humans in a jungle of predators; humans full of judgment, full of blame, full of guilt, full of emotional poison – envy, anger, hate, sadness, suffering. We create all these little demons in our mind because we have learned to dream hell in our own life.” -Don Miguel Ruiz

For the past few thousand years, human beings have been lost in the dream of hell. We’ve even learned to call it normal and to believe that there is no other alternative.

We accept prison-like conditions in our schools and slave-like conditions at work. We enter relationships and marriages rooted in principles of abuse. We consider it all normal and inevitable. By surrendering to this hell, we even call ourselves “practical” and “grown-up”. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have been fools and it is time that we exercise our power to awaken from this terrible dream.

It is we who have the power to create the dream of our own lives! There is an alternative to this hell – a heaven which is available now to everyone. This heaven is only accessible to those who would choose freedom over slavery, love over abuse, acceptance over fear, openness over lies, acceptance over judgment, peace over attack, and healing over violence.

Choose a different thought system and experience life as heaven, not hell. Today’s is a short lesson that only scratches the surface. These previous 417 daily posts take you further, and the future teachings deeper still. There are countless books about love and spirituality. There are teachers of God. There are practices to quiet the mind. Life changes when we begin to take these practices as seriously as we have been taking the lessons which taught us this dream of hell. What dream will it be?

We continue tomorrow and each day after that.  

Forgiving ourselves for what our partners would hold us guilty for. You can listen to the full podcast here:

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