Yes, I could have given you a little bit of money, but I promise you that this letter is far more valuable. The path you are on is not your way. If you can humble yourself to this message, which you were destined to receive, your problems will be gone.

Lack of money is not your real problem. Lack of love is. What you may have never realized is that love is not something that you get from another person. Love is found inside you. It is felt inside when you forgive yourself and remember that you are not guilty of anything.

Deep down, I know that no matter what you’ve done in the past, right now you are good. On the level of the soul—within that mysterious realm of life itself—we are all perfect and innocent.

At this point you may be asking what this has to do with your need for money. To this, I will ask a few questions. Is there anyone in your life who you cut off for any reason? Have you unconditionally accepted all the people you have known? What would happen in your life if, right now, you went back to each of them with love in your heart and made it right?

What does it mean to make relationships right? It means forgiving, accepting, and offering your best to them. You haven’t offered your best because you have been drowning in fear and guilt. Panicking and not knowing your value, you have been desperately taking rather than giving. Receiving is impossible without giving.

But what is the source of real wealth and abundance? You are its source. Nothing is more valuable than your ability to create, to serve, to do something valuable for other people. The more you do this, the more money they give you in return. To give is to receive. It is a cycle of abundance which you have broken by an unwillingness to give.

What if, rather than asking strangers for money, you asked them only if there is anything you can do for them. Explain that you are having a hard time right now, but don’t want to beg. You want to earn it. How long do you think you would remain poor if you did only this and meant it?

Your life journey is no different from mine. This hellish world has been cruel to us and unfair. We have failed, suffered, and faced crisis. Was this to teach us that we are victims? No. Your suffering was only to teach you this lesson. If you had not reached this low, you would not have received this message of truth and healing.

I’ve made all the mistakes that you have. But I eventually learned that life is a simple choice we didn’t know we had. You can either choose a life of fear or love. If one is real for you, the other cannot simultaneously exist. Is the past and future real, or is this moment real? Are you not perfectly good and lovable in this moment? Choose this truth, fearlessly live your love, and if you keep going in this direction you will have no problems.

You, my friend, will fix everything when you find the love inside you. Love is all that is real, and it is eternal. Learn what perfect love is, let everything else go, and learn to extend this love. There are many spiritual teachings that reinforce this message. Seek them out. Study and practice them daily. This is your awakening, a sacrifice of only what you do not want.

With unconditional love,

Abscondo

Doesn’t everyone want to be free of pain? If so, why do we make choices that hurt us? We avoid being close to others. We make ourselves sick through poor diet and other bad habits. We beat up on ourselves and others. Why?

This is not a rhetorical question. There is a clear answer: guilt. We suffer when we believe we are guilty and have not learned to exchange guilt for innocence.

When people believe in their own guilt, you can see it in their eyes. They feel unworthy of love, freedom, health, and abundance. Believing that they have nothing good to offer, they withdraw and attack others to break relationships and create more separation.

Those who believe they are guilty also behave in ways that cause themselves to be attacked. Most people believe that attack can teach a lesson and can correct behavior. Imagine how misguided it is to attack the guilty, when teaching the exchange of guilt for innocence is what heals.

I know that every brother and sister is inherently good. Our love, our goodness, our light is the only thing real about any of us. As the force of life, itself, we are not only equal we are one. It is only our belief in guilt that drives all the thoughts, perceptions, and behaviors that ultimately cause pain and cloud our goodness.

The truth about you, about everyone, is the truth of perfect innocence. Forgive all guilt by simply recognizing it is as unreal. It is not what we are and nothing we need to carry. Whatever errors have been made, we can effortlessly correct them in the embrace of our innocent, good selves. Whatever we’ve done, whatever we want, whatever we need, we can correct it and obtain it by applying the thought system of unconditional love, total honesty, and freedom. This is the exchange of guilt for innocence, the end of pain, the beginning of ongoing joy.  

To hide anything—however seemingly small or inconsequential it may seem—is to lay one more brick upon that castle in the sand. One lie demands others, and those others still, until we are trapped in a web of confusion with no way out other than crisis. The only way to avoid this sad reality is to always be honest.

The choice for perfect honesty starts by being honest with yourself. What do you really need? What excites you and inspires you? Who are you and what do you want to become? What do you want to experience? If you can be honest with yourself about everything, without consideration of what others may think, then you have awakened within to honesty. Most people never get this far.

Even being honest with yourself is not enough. If you repress or hide your honesty, you suffer from low energy and depression. Under the constant labor to create the image of a life that isn’t true, life becomes a job. Furthermore, to the extent that you withhold honesty, you are limited by others, controlled, repressed, and unfree.

It is very normal in this world to avoid all that is true and real because of fear. In a world of lies, the honest person feels like a total misfit. To fit in, we create a pretend version of reality while hiding what is real about ourselves. How many of us are there hiding, believing we are misfits? Probably the majority.

If we could learn to accept the truth about ourselves and one another, and if we could see that the judgments of others mean nothing, we could break the barriers of fear. We would step our from our isolation, come together, and live blissfully.

The world teaches us that guilt is real and that we are all guilty. Yes, in the past, we all have made mistakes. But is the past here right now? Here, right now, in this moment, are we not perfectly innocent?

To believe that guilt is real, one would have to believe that each moment of your life you are supposed to carry the full burden of your past. You are meant to do the hard work of constantly being ashamed of yourself for what is not here. Ignoring present reality, you are meant to pay a price for memories. For this, you punish yourself and allow yourself to be punished. In truth, your guilt is only a story—a collection of thoughts, no longer true right now, that you choose to make real.

But if you can be still. If for one instant, you can let go of the past. If you look around you, noticing the colors, the textures, the sounds, the silence, and stillness behind it all. Can you clearly recognize that you are not guilty in this moment? That you are perfectly lovable? Right now, you are perfectly innocent and perfectly lovable. This is forgiveness. This is also reality.

In an instant you can heal from guilt. Then, you can love yourself. You can even extend that love at every opportunity. You can allow yourself to feel good. You can smile. You can let that burden of your past drift away. You can fix anything in your situation that needs fixing—not from a position of guilt and shame; rather, from the certainty of your perfect innocence.

If there is ever any insane behavior in the present moment, you can correct it. But to hold guilt over yourself or anyone is to condemn to death by creating an insanity in the mind that overshadows the beauty and perfection of the present moment. You cannot awaken, you cannot heal, you cannot love if you decide that guilt is real. I assure you it is not. You are perfectly innocent.

You have probably learned the world’s lesson that there is no truth, only shades of gray. Or you may think there are different kinds of truth—that there is universal truth, plain truth, and perhaps ugly truth. Some truths are considered good, appropriate, or acceptable; while others are meant to be hidden in shame. You may believe that you have your truths and I have mine; or that you would have to convince everyone of your truth for it to be considered true at all. So, you remain stuck in the mental game of argument and debate.

Truth can only be honesty. There are no orders of reality to honesty. There are no levels or different types. The truth about an error is no less truthful than the truth of love. Therefore, there is no need to judge or sort out the significance or importance of various truths. The truth about your life, your feelings, your desires, your needs, your experiences, or your fantasies are no less honest than the truths spoken by the Buddha, Lao Tzu or Jesus Christ.

All honesty is truth and can be honored equally. The philosophy of truth is simple: if you are telling the truth and you want only truth, then you are on the right path. You are allowing reality to reveal itself to you as it is.

Nobody can judge your path. There is nothing to argue or debate. There is no superior form of honesty; only honesty or dishonesty. You don’t need to discover the ultimate secrets of the universe right now, though you probably will. For now, you only need to be honest. So how do you choose honesty? By always being honest and calmly accepting the honesty of others.

–From my free eBook, The Switch.

We attack because we believe it works and because we feel justified. We use words or actions meant to be harsh or hurtful to teach a lesson or change someone’s behavior.

Does attack ever work? In the short term, it can sometimes appear to. You may get the desired behavior from a friend, loved one, or subordinate. A child may comply. But, beneath the surface, you have only taught that you are violent. You have created fear and, because you are now feared, have ended trust and closeness in the relationship. You will lose influence over the situation because the real lesson will not be understood and, going forward, you will be avoided.

If you feel the need to try to correct someone, why not calmly, lovingly, honestly discuss your concern? Help a child understand their errors and likely consequences. Share your feelings with a friend or loved one. Help a subordinate understand the expectations of the relationship. If you are right about something, the loving and honest approach is the way to actually correct error.

Correction isn’t about causing someone to be afraid of you or the painful consequences you will impose. True change is only possible through a mutual understanding of reality. Speak truthfully to help others see the truth of the situation. Listen openly and with acceptance of others. In doing so, you both dissolve problems without conflict and teach that the loving response is always the correct response to any challenge.

The truth of any situation is found only in love and honesty. Attack wields literally no lasting power. Attack does not fix the problem; it is the problem. The loving response is always the correct response, and I assure you that, aligned with love, relationships are extremely easy.

You are not guilty, nor is anyone. We have errored at times; but error is never anything but acting without love.

The correction for lack of love is unconditional love. Only light undoes darkness and only love undoes sin. To love unconditionally is to forgive.

There is, therefore, no reason to ever withhold unconditional love. While the world would convince you otherwise, this love-starved world is clearly not heaven and does not understand the lesson.

People are afraid of perfect honesty because we are afraid of getting hurt. This is shortsighted because, in the end, only perfect love can be the truth.

Honesty, however, is a process—an ongoing process, a thought system, a radically different way of life. Whenever two people begin to practice perfect honesty, at first it can hurt. But the only thing getting hurt is the ego.

The ego—with its faith in guilt, attack, specialness, superiority, and brutal selfishness—hurts like hell when it is exposed because looking at your own nastiness and ugliness is painful. When two people allow the ego to be fully exposed—when they accept it and look at it honestly—what they will ultimately see is something they do not want. Facing the truth is the undoing of ego.

All the things we are afraid to confront, the hidden thoughts and secrets we are slaves to—these are only unreal illusions. In the ultimate reality, everything the ego makes is nothing and, therefore, should not be valued or respected as something.

When two people keep going more deeply into honesty, what is ultimately revealed is perfect truth: which is and can only be unconditional love.

The path to salvation, awakening, enlightenment, unconditional love—whatever you want to call it—is and can only be the path of honesty. Honesty is the undoing of all the errors which block love.

If you want perfect honesty, you will need to learn unconditional acceptance. Of course, no matter which path you choose (rules or acceptance), the truth will remain true regardless. Seen in this light, the choice for acceptance is quite clear.

Truth cannot be changed by your attempts to deny it or desire to change it. If there are rules or taboos—and particularly if there are threats of punishment along with it—truth has been forced into hiding and dishonesty is likely to emerge in any relationship.

Agreeing to any rule is, in effect, agreeing that you might eventually have to lie. Setting a rule or making anything taboo is asking the other person to lie. Do you value knowing or not knowing? If you value knowing, then don’t make knowing impossible by setting limits on truth.