The concept of selfishness can only make sense to the ego. The spiritually awakened, those who have transcended ego, understand that the self is the divine essence, the soul, the spirit—formless consciousness itself. If conscious presence—awareness itself—is our true identity (our true self) beyond physical form, then our only wish is for everyone to perfectly align with the self.

To know thyself is to know that what is true in me is exactly the same as what is true in you. We all want to feel good, to be understood, to be free to express ourselves, to experience ongoing joy, beauty, safety, inspiration, to give of ourselves and to receive, and to exist in a way that is absent of negative emotions. To align with this true self is to effortlessly come together in perfect unity, in oneness, where we exist harmoniously. This is only attained when we know the nature of the true self and align with it.

The self is love, and our self-interests are what love feels like, what love is, and what love does. For love to flourish, what is required is an open heart and an open mind. The ability to love ourselves, and to extend that love to others, is true freedom. Therefore, anything that restricts this freedom is an error because it is against truth, beauty, and love.

But the sickness called ego seeks salvation through a battle to get more, to take from, to be better than others or more right. When the ego perceives someone else as winning this game (a game that it is also playing), it attempts to project “selfishness” onto the other; thus, making the other wrong through shame and guilt and its false sense of self, therefore, right and superior.

The result of projecting the ego’s concept of selfishness onto others is really only a strengthening of the ego’s false sense of self. If successful, the ego makes the other guilty and then attempts to claim the authority to manipulate, control, or punish. Therefore, the projection of so-called selfishness is, in itself, the ultimate act of selfishness because it is a manipulation that fails to honor and respect everyone’s dignity, free will, and ability for each of us to do what we came to this world to do.

It is said that we reap what we sow. If we are metaphorically planting seeds each day, maintaining the proper conditions, and waiting patiently for the harvest; then abundance will materialize seemingly on its own.

While everyone’s intentions are good, many cannot tell the good seed from the bad. They plant seeds of attack, negativity and oppression. Their harvest will surely come, but it will bear no fruit.

Others are in possession of good seed, but they may lazily scatter it on the path—which can only happen when little attention is paid to the task at hand. For them, there will also be no fruit.

Still others plant seeds in shallow soil. Here is lacking patience; rather, only a desire to get the fastest possible result. The planting and nurturing is not enjoyed as an end, detached from the outcome. At first, sprouts do shoot up and the results seem promising. However, because there is no root, the plants cannot survive and the fruits never materialize.

To plant seeds on good soil is to do the right thing while also paying attention to your inner state of being. Your joy, your love, your positive state is the richest of soils. As you go about your planting, pay attention to how you feel. Do not dwell on the goal or the outcome; rather, enjoy the ongoing present moment fully and notice the beauty in everything.

Your harvest does not require you to sacrifice feeling good; rather, it demands the opposite. Take your time, resting in the peace of God, absent of fear, aligned with the feeling and energy of unconditional love. When all your planting is of good seeds in fertile soul, your fruit will grow on its own and your abundance is inevitable. 

The deal with consumerism was this: sacrifice doing what you want and being who you are in your real life and, in return, you get to enjoy countless forms of escape. Life was hard, but then there were the restaurants, the bars and clubs, the sporting events, the movie theaters, the theme parks, the travel to luxurious hotels, exotic beaches and so many other exciting escapes.

In truth, our so-called “real lives”—consisting of endless work, school, chores and responsibilities—were not exactly real; rather, only society’s creation. Of course, the escapes were not real either. Everything about consumer culture was an illusion and the only thing real about it is that we believed in it. There is a such thing as true reality, and it has not and cannot be threatened by anyone or anything.

Now that the external forms of escape are gone, sacrificing our true reality is no longer appealing. I have already found—after many years absconding normalcy and doing only what I want to—that when your real life is lived in truth, there is nothing to escape from. Even when all that fake stuff was available, I have enjoyed my existence each day even without it.

Your full truth, your ultimate fantasies, your loftiest dreams can become your reality even now—especially now—because now sacrifice is pointless, and the distractions of escape are unavailable. Everything about consumer culture was a silly distraction. All that faking was always pointless and never brought anyone to the fulfillment of what they were seeking.

So now you can give yourself permission to feel good all the time, to love fully and freely, to seek and celebrate true beauty, to do what excites you and to make your real life a beautiful dream, a legend, an experience of ongoing joy and bliss.

“The spiritual journey does not consist of arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one's own ignorance concerning oneself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to oneself.”
- Aldous Huxley

The path isn’t hard, but it is very different—different from the ways of the world, different from religion, different from joining a cause, and different from adhering to a set of rules or a moral code.

True salvation is not to be found in ritual nor in tradition. Happening silently within, it would seem utterly uneventful and unexciting. There is nothing to hold up and nothing to point to. No battles need to be won because no enemy needs to be defeated.

This finding of God might begin with a mere shift in perspective whereby you recognize your identity not as your thoughts; rather, as awareness of your thoughts. Or your salvation might be a change of heart whereby you recognize love as the light of truth and are no longer lost in lovelessness. You can also spiritually awaken by simply establishing an ongoing practice of present-moment awareness; thereby existing in such a way that the ego cannot survive. Yet another portal into enlightenment is a firm commitment to always tell the truth and want only truth. There are probably still more paths to enlightenment. None of them are difficult for you, but they are impossible to the ego.

Whichever the course, the result of awakening is freedom from suffering, an ongoing joy that does not depend upon circumstance, a total absence of fear (even of death), the experience of unconditional love as your ongoing reality, perfect union, acceptance and forgiveness in relationships, and an endless appreciation of beauty all around.

If this is not yet your current state of being, it can be. Nothing need be sacrificed to achieve this ultimate success. When you find yourself, everything you do not want will effortlessly fall away. Millions of us around the world can testify that this state of being is very real, and yours if you but only want it.

However noble our intentions may be or how true our opinions may seem, the line is crossed the instant we try to impose our will upon another. Everyone already has limitless power, and it rests in our ability to think, to feel, to express ourselves fully and do as we please. If we happen to speak and live the truth, others will follow willingly and enthusiastically.

Oftentimes, however, we get frustrated when others fail to share our intentions or agree with our opinions. Rather than respecting those differences and honoring free will, we may then wish to impose our will and to control others. We may even adopt political ideologies which restrict personal liberty. So sure of our fixed plans and concepts, we may even justify or applaud heavy-handed politicians who brutally impose severe limits on freedom.

But harmony and balance is impossible so long as anyone is attempting to control anyone else. Now the world is blocked. Nothing is working quite right, and the reason is that so many fixed plans and concepts are being imposed upon people despite our God-given, inalienable right to exercise free will.

Everything that makes life worth living flows from truth, beauty and freedom. The argument against freedom is the opposite of wisdom. What we need, want and desire on the deepest level arises from the basic freedom to be who we are, unrestricted. Can we not allow one another the right to speak our truths and to live as we choose?

They say a perfect relationship does not exist. This is true for people who would choose ego over love. A perfect relationship is, very simply, one made between two people who have decided against ego and in favor of love.

The ego does not know what love is and possesses no qualities capable of responding to it. The ego response to perfect love is either to run from it or to distort it by turning it into what it understands. To greet love with a set of rules, expectations, judgments and conditions is to decide against mutual bliss in favor of mutual suffering. This is what the world calls a normal, successful relationship. To justify this insanity, we are asked to believe that there is no alternative.

They say that perfect love cannot last, but I assure you that it can and does—not only as a lifelong commitment of partnership, but as an ongoing feeling of perfect bliss. This, the holy relationship, demands of you what the ego cannot do. It is, therefore, only the ego that must be sacrificed…and this is no sacrifice at all because it is only the letting go of everything you do not want.

When you have purified yourself from ego, and the holy relationship is established, then you are accepted unconditionally, you are entirely free, and always open and honest about everything. Can you accept everything about who your partner is and even might do? Everything? If not, you are putting your faith somewhere other than in your love. Unconditional acceptance and total openness is the requirement for love, and is precisely what the ego cannot do.

When I speak of this type of relationship; people always respond, “That isn’t for me.” What this response means is, “I value my false identity as ego more than my true identity as love.” But nobody is going to take away your right to reject love and choose suffering. It is your choice.

Make the need for control real, make attack real, make any rules and conditions real and you instantly banish love at the sad altar of ego. This is the recipe for failure in love because…well…because the ego cannot love. 

We have become little by accepting mental conditioning designed to create abundance for the few by domesticating the many. The real result is a system that has created suffering for all—even those who are supposed to be the beneficiaries.

To enforce this colossal error, what is imposed upon us is a heartless economic, legal, educational, and healthcare system doing deals and making policies that rob us of joy and cause us great stress and suffering.

We agree to systems that ruin lives, deplete resources and destroy the environment only so that the would-be beneficiaries must silently deal with the overwhelming burden of their own wrongdoing. These so-called elites are human beings, with real needs like the rest of us, but they have gone even further off course than we can imagine. Now their highly dysfunctional systems are only a reflection of their countless errors and overall insanity.

Absent of love, unfree to speak the truth or live it, conforming to the thoughtless normal of a shallow, uninspired society—the elite are the truly poor. In addition, they are no longer qualified to lead us. Now we must find ways to heal them.

This littleness we have known and our allegiance to this system is shed the moment we recognize the beautiful truth about who we are. None of this ever respected our worth. We messed up.

Now people of all economic classes, all races and nationalities, and all faiths are freeing ourselves from bondage so that we may invent alternate systems—systems of love and healing. This is happening now, and the new life starts here.

The world teaches that attack is the way to get what we want. We have been taught to use attack, and many other forms of nastiness, to teach lessons and to correct the behaviors of others. So we attack with good intentions, though it is never perceived this way by the one being attacked.

To acknowledge this is to clearly see that attack does not work because the true meaning and intention of the communicator is not communicated. Instead, attack creates an emotional, negative escalation of counterattack, insult, anger, resentment and even rebellion—all making it nearly impossible to achieve the objective behind the attack.

The fact that anyone in this world still believes in attack, after a lifetime of personal experience which testifies to its utter ineffectiveness, is insane. Because we have not been taught another way, attack in this world remains the dominant method of communication. 


A Course in Miracles teaches us to see attack as a cry for help. Attack originates from an unmet need. We can, therefore, ignore the attack—for there is something more real behind it. We can ignore attack entirely and then communicate in a way that addresses the unmet need. Of course, the unmet need is always love. There is no real need within us that is not fulfilled in perfect love.

To end attack, to coexist with others in joy and harmony, simply learn to communicate in honesty, on the level of the unmet need. Extend this to your brothers and sisters and you will teach them to do the same with you. Love dissolves conflict by satisfying the unmet needs so that fear and attack no longer arise.

To learn the required skills, I recommend watching Marshall Rosenberg's lessons on non-violent communication on YouTube. 

Whenever anyone speaks or acts in a way that is absent of perfect love, an error is made. On the contrary, when a thought or action is loving, then error is impossible.

This philosophy of obvious truth makes error easy to spot; but when you do, just recognize it and hold back from further interpretation. To interpret any error is to believe that it has power. But that which is absent of love is also absent of power because it lacks the authority of truth and reality. If the error is always lack of love, then only perfect love can be its correction. The error, therefore, need not be dissected and understood in any depth.

A loveless act will not have power over you if you refuse to let it pull you away from perfect love. By choosing not to allow error to pull you off course, you honor the truth fully just as the loveless illusions of ego are easily exposed as unreal and impotent.

“Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes. Can anybody be justified in responding with anger to a brother’s plea for help?”

Love is the correct response to every situation, the solution to every challenge, the only thought system and energy capable of healing.

Some may ask why God allows suffering and injustice. In truth, it is only our lovelessness that is to blame. God is love; but how can love work when you decide against it and are pulled away from it? Choose love and allow God to heal and make perfect.