When the ego attempts to embrace religion or spirituality, it does so without examining itself. The unobserved mind picks and chooses pieces of the belief system that it finds compatible with its preferences. The false identity is then strengthened by judging and condemning others who believe differently.

To the ego, a spiritual teaching is not necessarily taken as wisdom to be lived by; rather, as a strange magic. The rituals, the words, the crystals—whatever it may be—are believed to summon mysterious, divine powers to solve problems and deliver us to heaven. So much is asked in prayer, yet all the answers (which are already contained within the spiritually alive teachings) are misunderstood or ignored.

To awaken is to lose faith in magic…to become willing to live in truth. But the ego will not allow your salvation to occur. To do so would be to look at itself honestly. That would be its death and no entity would choose its own demise. Hence, for you to be saved, the ego must be allowed to die.

The true power of any spiritual faith only flows into your life when you live according to God’s reality, universal law—when you align with nature itself. The end of suffering, the New Earth, and eternal life is only possible for those willing to turn away from the devil—which is only another word for ego.

Look not at the words and rituals, but to what they teach…to where they point. Live the lesson literally to dissolve problems and to end suffering. The lesson is unconditional love, forgiveness, fearlessness, humility, honesty. Be present. Be love.

Did Jesus not already give us the answers to all our prayers when he spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, unconditional love, forgiveness, and eternal life? By applying exactly what he taught, God ensures lasting joy, perfect health, and total safety in this life and into eternity.

Did Lao Tzu not provide the answers to all our prayers in the Tao Te Ching? To practice Taoism is to arrive at the same destination by ending the problems of the mind. The same can be said about the teachings of The Buddha and so many other ancient sources of eternal wisdom. They have provided the correct answers to all our prayers.

But religious texts like the Bible can be confusing, and organized religions are confused institutions bound to muddy the original message. Thankfully, the answers to your prayers can be found outside organized religions. If you decide to, for example, become a student of A Course in Miracles, and practice the teachings literally, then you will find perfect health and the end to all your problems. Study Eckhart Tolle, practice what he teaches, and you will also reach the awakened state of consciousness, where problems do not exist.

Countless human beings have become awakened / saved / enlightened / spiritually conscious / found God. We have found the answers to all prayer and, by putting eternal truth and wisdom into practice, we have allowed God to end our problems. Ask any of us and, I assure you, we want nothing more than to help show you the way to stop suffering unnecessarily.

If it seems that your prayers have not been answered, it might be because you have unsure where to look, or have been afraid of walking a new path, or have been unwilling to apply the lessons. Still, the answers to your prayers are there.

Love cannot exist anywhere in our lives if we do not love the present moment—this ongoing, uninterrupted, eternal holy instant.

If I am here but want to be there, or if I am longing for the past or hoping for the future, I am withdrawing my attention from the field where all of life exists—the only place it ever has or ever will, now.

Right now, so many people are suffering because of a thought system that is having them resist or reject life now. They are withdrawing into the dreams and fears about the future. They are living to keep the regrets and obligations of the past real. Their minds are scattered everywhere but here.

What does exist is now. Can you love yourself now, and then extend that love to everything and everyone in your field of awareness? Stay there. Keep going. Thoughts that pull you away from now—loveless, fearful thoughts—are thoughts about non-reality. Only this moment is real, and it is always this moment. Only love is real, all else is error.

To bring love and awareness into the present moment is to pay attention to how you feel. It is to do the things that need doing, but absent of desperation or panic.

See the present moment with love. Bring unconditional love to who you see, what you find, and to what goes on here. This is how problems are solved, progress is made, love is honored, and life becomes increasingly abundant.  

Is it not yet already perfectly clear that all the fighting, resisting, arguing, debating, attacking, doing something about, and getting outraged has no impact at all?

With each new news cycle, each new election, each movement to change the world comes a swell of hope that ultimately fades or implodes. For how many more thousands of years will humans continue to believe in these illusions when reality is perfectly clear? I think we have reached the end of this fiction.

Is it not obvious that, however forcefully you might splash your hand into the ocean, you cannot change the natural balance, the very equilibrium of the ocean? You will create a wave, believe it is real for a brief moment, then the wave will fall in the exact opposite direction just as far, and finally, in calm weather, it will rest near its natural balancing point where it all began. Such is all of life. 

What you can do is to accept reality; which means always tell the truth, which means want only truth, which means greet everything that is and everything that happens with nothing other than complete acceptance. It is as it is. Align with the natural balance of reality and let it carry you. To resist reality, truth itself, is the ultimate act of foolishness.

There will be challenges, there will be errors of all sorts by all kinds of people. None of it is ultimately real because, in the end, every pendulum returns to its natural resting position. Rest there eternally, starting now. Remain there in the eternal now. This is wisdom and it is yours.

These aren't just words. They are meant literally and are meant to be lived (if you want joy, peace, the end of suffering for yourself and others).

To keep the past real is to carry a heavy load. As we go through life, we experience many challenges, we see unimaginable injustice, and we blame others for our suffering just as we hold ourselves guilty for so much.

To hold a grievance is to cling to painful memories. The more they accumulate, the more challenging it becomes for your mind to carry. At some point, non-forgiveness becomes the mind’s full-time job, robbing you of joy because endless attention and energy is diverted toward the telling of so many painful and inter-connected stories.

The mind convinces us that replaying grievances, understanding them, dissecting them, and making them real or fighting back is the way out from this hell. You feel as though you cannot just let it go; otherwise nothing will be resolved, and everyone will be let off the hook. In truth, the only one on the hook here is the one doing the carrying.

Error brings its own punishment, or it wouldn’t be error. The punishment always comes in the form of ongoing suffering and ultimately crisis. Isn’t it also an error to hold guilt over someone who has fixed the problem or is no longer causing it? By doing so, isn’t the non-forgiveness causing the problem now rather than the errors of the past?

If someone attacks or makes us suffer in some way, it is enough to respond naturally. We can point it out or even explain the problem lovingly. We can express ourselves fully, going into the emotions if needed, then we can let it go completely. We can forgive immediately and move on.

The past is not real because it is not here. To hold onto the past is to pull ourselves away from all that is here: life itself, in this eternal present moment. What problem is there here, now? Now we can move through life as guiltless as children because the baggage has been put aside.    

Who would accept a way of thinking in which love is feared, guilt is real, suffering is unavoidable, and joy is postponed? Why would anyone choose darkness after having been shown the light?
The underlying belief which makes the postponement of joy possible is this: sacrifice is necessary now because lasting happiness will be yours someday. This, the world celebrates as hope. Let us look at hope.

If you are already spiritually awakened, then hope is a meaningless concept. What is hope for when salvation has already arrived? But continue to rely upon the ego and all you have is hope because, surely, what you want has yet to arrive.

Most people spend their whole life waiting, seeking, hoping but never reaching the destination of perfect and lasting joy. Years can go by in sacrifice, still decades more, and yet the reward for all this sacrifice never quite arrives. You can place the blame on yourself for not working hard enough, or you can blame the world for its unfairness, but the truth is elsewhere: you are seeking salvation in false idols—where it cannot be found.

Rather than looking honestly at this, you may continue to sacrifice feeling good now for a fantasy of the future. You may avoid love now for the purpose of finding true love. You may ignore spiritual teachings, meditation, and a healthy way of living because you are too busy becoming sick at the altar of the future. You may live dishonestly to preserve a relationship that is making you both miserable. You may read the news each day waiting for the world to be declared safe. You may put off doing what inspires you because it is impractical at the moment. Still, you keep hoping that someday, somehow, all your dreams will come true and your life will be wonderful. How so?

A better future doesn’t exist, but a better present does. Patience isn’t a state of waiting; rather a superior way of being and doing. Love isn’t something you are working toward; it is there each moment you decide for it. Rest isn’t found in sleeping; rather, from waking. Joy is detached from external circumstance and is found in freedom.

What you have been hoping for can only be yours now and requires only a real decision for it.

It is a type of mental illness so common it seems normal. It is a thought system that tells you to do everything you do not want to do now, so that someday you will be able to live the way you want.

While your thoughts might tell you otherwise, the way you live now is the way that you live. How you are now is how you are. Your relationships now? Your skills and talents? How you feel? Who and how you love now? This is all that is real about your life, and it is all here now.

Then there are those thoughts of sacrifice telling you to ignore how you feel. Pay no attention to your intuition. Your inner world—the real you—it isn’t real, right? What matters is what the world can offer if you meet its demands. Who planted these thoughts in you? What was the intention if not to control? Are those promises even true?

What about those fearful thoughts to never trust anyone? To fight for what is yours or you will have nothing. Be careful. Be normal. Don’t try anything new or crazy. Is fear not paralysis, and does paralysis not hold you back from a more abundant, better reality now?

So many people are stuck in these thought patterns—waiting for and expecting a better future that doesn’t come. But here—in the present moment—there is so little enjoyment, little adventure, shallow connections, no real or happy learning, poor health, poor understanding of reality, no real values. Tragically, dreams of future abundance and the associated thought patterns cause a lack of abundance now.

Do not sacrifice being alive to achieve a perfect future. Love who you love now, even if you don’t know about your future with the person. Have kids when you feel the desire, even if you don’t have the perfect house or financial situation. Start your dream company now, even if you don’t feel ready. Go on that trip now, even if it makes you nervous. Say how you feel now, even if you don’t know how people will respond. Follow your intuition and pay attention to how you feel—the external world will adjust.

When you stop living for the future, you begin to realize that you don’t have to sacrifice the present moment to be successful, to earn a living, or to be a great partner or parent. In the present moment, you enjoy engaging in your responsibilities—responsibilities that you choose to take on for reasons you understand—and you are better at everything. You are focused, open, creative, friendly, and unafraid to take the healthy risks others shy away from.

The irony is this: when you learn to stop living for the future, your life becomes even better than whatever future you imagined. Everything becomes clear. Everything about your life seems designed perfectly for you—the real you. But this is only accessible for those willing to humble the mind and spiritually awaken. There are many books and guides who can show you the way and it is all real.

The reason that the ego wants to want is that it cannot be happy. Why not? Because the mind cannot feel, only think. To realize and accept this would be to look at the ego honestly. If you do that, you will no longer want this parasite and you will leave it behind.

Like any creature, however, the ego does not want to die. Therefore, it must trick you into tolerating it by convincing you to seek happiness in the future. The voice in the head tells you that salvation is found in the future—after you achieve this, have that, if you are with a specific person, or if you have a particular experience. But if you do achieve or experience what the ego seeks, your happiness will not last for more than a moment and you will be left still wanting and chasing the next illusion.

Thoughts regularly cause us suffering, but joy is never found in thoughts. Joy, rather, is the natural experience of life when thoughts subside for a moment or when thoughts are aligned with the reality of life.

Thoughts directed at present moment awareness bring you an appreciation of beauty and a feeling of alertness and vibrance. The joy you experience here comes not from the thoughts; rather, from the experience of true reality beyond them.

Loving thoughts also bring joy because they are aligned with the source of joy and no longer block it. Honest thinking and expressing, unconditional acceptance of what is, thoughts of openness, creative thoughts, pursuit of creative endeavors—this is correct mind activity because your attention is placed upon the source of joy.   

You will never “figure things out” in the mind; but if you can align the mind with divine truth, then there will be nothing to figure out or to want because joy is yours eternally.

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. The world becomes blocked. Nothing works 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?