“The ego’s whole thought system blocks extension, and thus blocks your only function. It therefore blocks your joy, so that you perceive yourself as unfulfilled.”

Unfulfilled, now you are incorrectly instructed by the world that getting will fulfill you. You believe that happiness can be found in consumption. Buy. Have. Take.

This thought system requires a great deal of sacrifice: long hours at work or worse—borrow, beg or steal. Now you no longer have the time, energy, or inspiration to create. The sacrifices you have been told will save you become the cause of deep, persistent unfulfillment which is only relieved temporarily by meaningless distractions.

From the ego, we cannot create. Instead, we merely make from a place that is ambitious but uninspired, manipulative, calculative, and incapable of delivering much value.

Everything of worth flows from the dimension of spirit. In spirit, you can easily create and extend truth, beauty and love. A total escape from ego is required to reach your creative potential, to fulfill your life purpose, and to experience lasting peace and happiness.

Today’s lesson may seem unexciting to the mind, but to your state of being it is everything. To remain conscious of the inner body is to remain spiritually rooted. Like a strong tree with deep roots, “no matter what happens on the outside, nothing can shake you anymore.” To use another common metaphor; you remain at the center of the wheel. The spokes go around and around, but right at the center you are still.

With attention on the inner body, your consciousness no longer gets lost to the drama of the mind and to the chaos of the external world. You remain in peace, calm, content. You feel good even if waiting in line, or sitting in traffic, or dealing with a challenging situation.

Eckhart Tolle explains, “Do not give all your attention away to the mind or to the outer world.” If you can keep some attention on the inner body, you will experience “permanent connectedness with being.”

Furthermore, “There is infinitely more intelligence in being than in the mind.” The body is where you access the realm of inspiration and intuition. Go within to experience the energy of love. Here, you are guided by a higher intelligence. Here, you are fully-present and anchored in the now—in being.

Negative emotions only arise when your attention leaves the inner body. All negative emotions are rooted in fear. Perhaps this fear, this agony and discontent, is your soul screaming out for attention—calling you away from the thought-dominated state and back to inner body awareness. Go within—to where you can enjoy life right now and always.

Men have been convinced to hide our truths about our wants, needs, and desires. We withhold honesty all the time because we are told that our truths are somehow wrong.

This makes it impossible for us to enjoy life. Rather than openly being who we are, we choose to suppress it. When this fails, we lie, we cheat, we do whatever it takes to be who we truly are and to fulfill our real needs in secret.

To place focus on the energy field within your body is to practice present moment awareness. Take a moment to feel the subtle energies and emotions deep within your body. Close your eyes and just feel it.

Perhaps after some time, you may become overwhelmed by the power of the energy you feel. With complete focus on the way your inner body feels, you were probably not thinking about the past or future. You were here, now.

The body is our learning device. Through it, we sense the world around us, we feel love, experience pleasure, we sense our state of health, our positive and negative emotions, and our energy levels. Our inner body is probably our greatest spiritual teacher.

Today, make peace with the body. Go into it. Become aware of it. Enjoy it. Have faith in what it is telling you. Keep moving toward an experience of inner peace, of perfect energy, and of perfect love.

By following your intuition and acting according to your inspiration, you will naturally align with truth—which is experienced as a state of continually feeling good and enjoying life all the time.

“The fact is that no one has ever become enlightened through denying or fighting the body, or through an out-of-the-body experience.”

Those who enjoy life most value truth and beauty, not self-preservation.

When two people decide to get married or live together, a common problem often emerges. By assigning the title of partner, wife, or husband to a person—we begin to see our beloved not as the person; rather, as the title or role.

Looking at each other from the perspective of a role, peace and harmony in the relationship now depends upon how well the role is played. This is not love and it is also no fun. Now you both fake a role at work, then come home and fake another one. Life has now become a chore.

Human beings have needs beyond our roles. It is for this reason that we lie and deceive—which is only a desperate attempt to create a little space to be real. But dishonesty never brings lasting happiness nor enjoyment of life.

When two people come together to form a family and run a household together, it is best to ignore the roles completely—just agree to love and accept each other unconditionally. Why agree to a lifetime with a person who won't agree to this?

The problem with roles also arises in parenting. When our children are young, we love them unconditionally and accept them for who they are. Then, when they go to school, many parents become primarily concerned with school performance and other forms of achievement. This is how parents break the relationship with their kids—turning on them by teaching that doing and achieving is all that matters rather than love.

Taking the side of the external world over a loved one breaks the trust and destroys the relationship. The world will beat up on your loved ones enough, you don’t need to join in.

We fail our kids, our beloved, and everyone in our lives when we care more about the role than the person. This is conditional love, which of course isn’t love at all. Offer unconditional love to enjoy life right now and always.

In early childhood, you probably felt good, you were happy, friendship was easy, love was everywhere, and there was nothing to be afraid of. Then you were taught to sacrifice all this so that you can work toward getting it back at some distant point in the future.

We have been conditioned into believing that we can get what we want someday by sacrificing what we want now—that we aren’t smart unless we get good grades, that we are not worthy of love unless we first become something or achieve something, that we are not beautiful unless we buy something we can’t afford.

It goes like this: just do what you are told, question nothing, strive not for freedom and keep telling yourself that happiness is just around the corner. Not there yet? Make a bigger sacrifice. Listen to some fast-talking guru. Have enough faith and it will come. Just work harder. Just a bit longer. You’ll be there soon. Still not there? Must be because you aren’t good enough.

Enough! At some point, when you realize that there is no reward for all this sacrifice, you have a choice. You can either blame yourself for not achieving the impossible, or you can correct the error by honestly looking at the lies that you have been convinced to believe.

Absent of the world’s sick illusions, you remember that everything you most deeply want is already yours because it comes from within. You know this is true because you already had everything when you were a very small child—before you sacrificed anything. It was never gone or out of reach, only forgotten. But now, you have the power to undo dishonest conditioning so that you can actually enjoy life.

Challenges come all the time and cannot be avoided. What we do have control over is our reaction. When people react to problems in frustration or anger, they create stress for themselves and others.

What purpose does this reaction serve? Has anything ever been taught or learned, or has any problem ever been solved through stress?

Even when nothing happens, we imagine a terrible thing that might happen. When we believe every thought is real, we worry all day and night. The heart starts beating in panic, we get exhausted, lose sleep, and ultimately develop illness—and all because of this thing called stress.

What is stress but another word for madness?

I used to believe that stress fired me up and gave me energy to get things done. Then I began meditating each day. I found out that you can get a lot more done in a calm, relaxed state. The peace, calm, and restfulness I feel after a 15-minute mediation puts me in a state where I can be very productive and effective for hours. Now I meditate to reset whenever I want to do something well, or even when I want to enjoy myself.

In a relaxed state, the quality of your work improves, you make better decisions without emotion, your relationships are more solid, and you don’t get tired as fast. Time efficiency isn’t the most critical success factor; your state of being is.

Stress serves no positive purpose. It is an insane reaction to belief in fear. It is also the cause of accidents, conflict, disease, exhaustion and failure. Let’s stop believing that stress is okay and then learn to overcome it so that we can enjoy life right now and always.

Lyrics to "I'll Die Smiling" by Abscondo

Abscondo - I'll Die Smiling

Out of place
Some street in London's left me out of place
Looked right at you, did you see my face?
Seems all of London's going separate ways
I'll go mine

To New York
No sky above me as I walk its floor
Bright lights attack me but I just ignore
Seems like New York's becoming such a bore
A waste of time

But time is still the question
What are you gonna do?
From infinite directions
You've got to choose a few

So I've searched some sad, sad cities
I've seen some semblance of the truth
I've walked so many journeys
That I've worn these scuffed-up shoes

So I'll die smiling
And I'll die trying

Deep in love
A heart that's beating should be deep in love
She looks right at me as we float above
Seems so sudden we face questions of
These two lives

Like before
A heart that's beating looks for something more
We can't stop walking through that open door
So, yes, you've got me but like I said before
This is mine

So time is still the question
What are you gonna do?
From infinite directions
You've got to choose a few

I've sought some sense of newness
And I've heard never-ending calls of youth
Yeah I've known what it means to do this
because I've shattered each excuse

And I'll die smiling
Because I'll die trying

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People say they are afraid of love because they might get hurt. All fear of love is identification with ego and allegiance to it. It is only the ego that fears love, and only to protect itself.

A person afraid of love does want someone nearby—a partner to control, manipulate, and use for practical purposes. This person wants to be able to argue, attack, correct, punish, blame, shame and make wrong. Apologies and occasional acts of kindness are offered as a last resort—used only so that you stay around for the cycle of more drama, more attack, more diminishment and more misery.

This is what the world calls love. When someone claims to be afraid to love you, the fear is only that you won’t forever play your assigned role in their tragic drama. This, the normal state of marriage, is the ego’s playground. Here, true love is resisted and not desired because it would be the destruction of ego. This is known as "resentment".

To know love is to know that it gives you everything. When you have everything, then something different would be less. Identified with love, ego becomes unnecessary and wholly undesirable. True love is the total undoing of ego.

Only after ego has been undone are you able to love. As they say, love yourself first—which is only possible after the escape from ego. Now you can connect with other beautiful spirits in love. Now there is nothing to be afraid of because, through love, you are already perfect and complete. Now you can actually enjoy life right now and always.