When the forces of nature use water, water serves its purpose.

Like water, I surrender to the balance of things so that I may be used.

I need not understand any of it to accept my function completely.

Yet I know that my purpose is realized.

Centralization is the idea that an officially-sanctioned person or organization has legitimate authority and responsibility to lead people.

Rather than simply doing what excites or inspires us, we've agreed to a society that allows schools to shape and limit our learning. We stare blindly at the phone or TV rather than bringing our own experiences to life. We attend formally organized events rather than relating with others freely. We respond to promotions as if the ideas presented were legitimate or the information were true.

Because of this entrenched worldview, our so-called freedom is little more than a choice of how we choose to associate between external affiliations and allegiances. To accept the very idea of centralization means that we must learn to doubt ourselves and to see ourselves as having no authority over ourselves.

This domestication of humans has been going on for a few thousand years, but it isn’t freedom and it isn’t the experience of being fully alive. We no longer have to see the world in this way. We no longer have to agree with it.

If something excites you, then upon your authority over yourself, you can do it. The feeling of excitement or inspiration is nature nudging you in the right direction. If you feel lousy, that's nature telling you to stop doing it. This message is so obvious it sounds silly, yet we don't live this way because of our belief in external authority. 

The truth is that external authority cannot be trusted and, therefore, centralization never works. When enough of us look to the truth within for guidance, decentralization emerges and the experience of true freedom in this world arises. Decentralization sets you free to think what you want, to accept what you feel, and to connect with other people as you desire in loving honesty and openness. Decentralization is your birthright, and is unstoppable if we have faith and courage.

Look at this fearful, confused world and see that those external voices of control have no authority; nor does the confused, egoic mind. Only the love within has any authority lead you. To live fully, let your goodness within light the way.

If there is a good to be pursued or held onto, then there must also be a bad which should be resisted or fought against. To judge at all is to create a negative where there otherwise was none.

Any notion of beauty and ugliness or good and bad are evaluations of the external. By judging the external, we attempt to give supremacy to form. The underlying assumption is, then, that beautiful weather is required for happiness while stormy weather causes suffering. But external reality is such that we cannot only accept the parts we would keep and fight against the parts we would reject. This is to wish for the entire universe to be different from how it is. Here, we have found the sure cause of suffering.

Attempt to make reality different from how it is and live painfully out of alignment with the truth. Wish for that which isn’t and weaken yourself by losing access to what is. Of course, some experiences in life are more enjoyable than others. We can continue to enjoy whatever we do enjoy. But a spiritually awakened being, absent of judgment, also finds aliveness in places where others don’t look. We transcend the ups and downs by remaining rooted in the calm stillness of being.

By simply observing the leafless tree in the grayness of winter without labels or judgments, the mind can be still and negative emotion can be undone. By responding to people or situations through intuition rather than mental judgment, we allow love and energy to flow continuously from within.

Observe the mind’s judgments and practice letting those thoughts go. Don’t follow them. Notice any stress or tension or inner resistance to what is and let it go as well. Your salvation is not found in any evaluation of good and bad; rather, in presence and being. Observe the mind, and all of reality, as the silent observer—consciousness itself. I am. 

The idea of selling your soul means attempting to decide against what you know, deep down, is right—against what you would do or who you would be if you were free—for the purpose of worldly gains. The question is: are those gains of riches, status or power truly profits at all?

To deny or sacrifice your own reality for the world’s version of reality may at first seem to offer real benefits. But what benefit can be found in wealth, power or status when you are causing misery to yourself and others?

Misery to yourself comes in the utter sacrifice of your freedom and truth. You become an actor who is imprisoned within an unoriginal and unending role for life. Misery to others is caused by impoverishing them for your own benefit while teaching the false lessons of the world through your false image, words, and behavior.

There is no profit in this and, as A Course in Miracles states, “To invest without profit is surely to impoverish yourself.” The profit you do want is already yours as your birthright and requires no sacrifice of anything that is real about you. To the contrary, to sacrifice your truth, your love, your intuition, and your freedom for any purpose is to lose awareness of everything.

While all this is true, of course you still do want to enjoy the pleasures of this world. You do need money to more comfortably live within this violent system designed only to enslave us by teaching the false lessons of fear. The good news is that there is a way to thrive without selling your soul and it is to humbly serve others, to create real value in love, and to sell it in truth. Do this each day without losing awareness of the inner reality of your soul.

“You cannot sell your soul, but you can sell your awareness of it.” -A Course in Miracles

To fall in love is to believe that one special relationship can be your primary source of happiness—that the other person will be enough to complete you and to fulfil your every need as a man or woman. Even while almost everyone believes this, in practice it never quite works.

When two people fall in love, often the relationship starts to become a job. Your job is now to follow all the normal rules, to play a role, to do whatever it takes to make the other person happy, and to act as though any of this even works. Often, in a normal relationship, the price you must pay is the sacrifice of personal freedom, openness, and authenticity. You are expected to hide a huge dimension of your curiosity and deny the possibility of new experiences or growth beyond the relationship.

As wonderful as it is to spend your days together with that one special person, the price of falling is too high and the returns are too little. Better to walk in love than to fall.

By walking in love, I mean be who you are while practicing unconditional acceptance, total honesty and openness. It means loving yourself completely, telling the truth about everything, and then letting your perfect love flow to whoever reflects that love back to you most beautifully and purely. When another person also loves in this way and feels the same way about you, you have found a true treasure—a conscious, spiritually-alive love relationship. Such a relationship may or may not involve romance or sex and, whatever form this holy relationship may take, is never considered exclusive.

There is a different way to do relationships. This is the ongoing experience of love and passion that never fades, the uninterrupted flow of positive energy, the endless safety of mutual understanding and forgiveness, and the experience of transcending this world to awaken fully in perfect union. Relationship bliss isn’t found by falling; but, by walking together in love.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness—darkness within darkness—the gateway to all understanding.
-Tao Te Ching

The absence of desire is the acceptance of reality as it is. Rather than wanting people or situations to be different, the desireless look upon the truth of what is with a sense of wonder and mystery which transcends rational thought. This way of seeing brings the instant and lasting experience of indescribable beauty and peace.

To desire is to look upon the world with the belief that situations or people ought to be different from how they are; and that salvation can only be found when these imagined manifestations of physical form occur. Furthermore, to desire is to believe you know what is good or bad and you have the power to make it so. Rather than noticing reality, you ignore it. You long for the future moment. Fight for it. Manipulate. Work harder. Sacrifice more. One day it will all come together and you will be happy. This is what Eckhart Tolle calls being here but wanting to be there.

Because mystery and manifestations are from the same source, the master has learned to live and to do without ever losing the sense of mystery. When we stop believing that happiness is found in an external situation, all of life becomes play. Absent of the desire to manipulate any particular outcome, our relationships are loving and free and our doing is pure, honest, gentle and beautiful.

All things arise from and ultimately return to the source, the darkness, is the nothingness—the eternal empty space that surrounds and pervades all the physical matter in the universe. This is the unmanifested, the one reality, God, the Tao.

Do not attempt to end desire by suppressing it; rather, by realizing that the entire concept is absurd. Look upon what is without judgment, enjoy all work and doing, accept whatever outcome while keeping the mystery alive.

“Do you want to improve the world? I don’t think it can be done.” -Lao Tzu

Despite conventional wisdom and all the world’s misguided lessons; alone, we don’t really have the power to “do something about” anything. Interference is the mind’s attempt to assert supremacy while, in truth, it has none. The separate “self” is an illusion of the mind that is utterly impotent because it just isn’t so. There is a greater wisdom beyond the mind.

When a situation calls for your response, then respond according to your intuition. But if something is beyond your ability to change, then simply state your truth and let it be. Allow freedom for others to experience life and to grow. Allow challenges to teach lessons that need to be taught. Allow consciousness to learn through situations and events. Let things go their own way.

We don’t know what’s good or bad. These are judgments of the mind and reality is far too complex. Let every situation unfold, accept it as it is—grateful for the knowledge that it must happen for the simple reason that it is happening. If it shouldn’t be happening, then it wouldn’t be happening. This is true mastery, which is your strongest position for success and the only way to experience the peace of God.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” -The Serenity Prayer

The miracle is love because only love can heal. Whenever our state of being becomes anything other than perfect health and perfect love, it is because our minds have been distracted and have forgotten what is real. Then comes fear, then stress, then insanity.

To look upon the truth is to see yourself as part of the wholeness of spirit and as part of the harmless perfection that is pure love. All else is a nightmare of illusion.

“Little child, you are hiding your head under the cover of the heavy blankets you have laid upon yourself. You are hiding your nightmares in the darkness of your own false certainty and refusing to open your eyes and look at them.”

“Take off the covers and look at what you are afraid of. Only the anticipation will frighten you; for the reality of nothingness cannot be frightening. Let us not delay this, for your dream of hatred will not leave you without help—and help is here.” -A Course in Miracles

Look upon yourself after first walking through that inner doorway to freedom. See the nature of life, the eternity and vastness of the universe, marvel about the perfect balance of things, notice yourself as a ray of consciousness that has never parted from the one consciousness. You are here in this form only so that consciousness can play and learn. Here fear is forgotten, as is hatred, as is sickness, stress and all the other illusions you wish to leave behind.

Watch the trailer for this excellent short film by French filmmaker Marie Vandelannoote. The film, which features the song Forbidden Curiosities by Abscondo, has also won 19 other awards at various film festivals. 

FUNERAL | Official HD Trailer (2019) | DRAMA, SHORT from Marie Vandelannoote on Vimeo.

"Do not turn your attention elsewhere in your search for the truth; for it is nowhere else to be found but within your body."

Yesterday, I said that the doorway to freedom is within. This idea is expressed similarly by Eckhart Tolle, who says that the inner body is the doorway into being. Freedom and being are, of course, different words pointing to the same thing.

A fundamental error in our search for spiritual salvation is the denial of the body. Not only spiritual seekers, but the vast majority of people in this mind-dominated world constantly attempt to ignore or to in some way escape from the body. At work we are only a mind, detached from the body. In conversation we are a mind filled with a constant stream of thought—always pushing forward without a pause to feel our inner state of being.

Though we try to ignore it, the truth is we feel tired and lousy all the time. We eat food that makes us feel sick, then we attempt to escape from this lousy, uneasy state of being through drugs and alcohol. It is no wonder that people are grumpy, insane at times, and so far away from all those positive feelings we seek. “A little longer, just get through this, work harder, sacrifice more,” says the mind. But that beautiful state of being we are working toward is never found. The mind has no solution because the answer is not within the mind and it is not in the future. Salvation is now and it is within the inner body.

Daily meditation—even a simple practice of guided meditation—puts us back in touch with the inner body. We learn to pay some attention to the vast energy field—the spaciousness within. Through a more complete daily spiritual practice, we then learn to go through our days without ever losing awareness of the inner body and how we feel. Even at work or in conversations, we learn to remain rooted in the truth about our state of being. Now we prefer different kinds of experiences and different kinds of relationships which honor truth, beauty and positive vibes as primary.

Get in touch with the inner body. If it doesn’t feel great, try exercise, intermittent fasting, sleeping, accept all those emotions even if it is uncomfortable. Feel your love for yourself emerging. Feel the energy. Feel how this vast energy field within is entirely safe from threat. Here is freedom. Here is happiness and enjoyment. Intuition flows from here and its guidance is far superior to that of the mind. This is transformation. You’ve found it. Keep going.