The whole world is you. Yet you keep thinking there is something else.

- Hsueh-Feng

I know that truth is not the answer. Nor can it be. Truth is like an exercise machine – it just sits in the corner; useless until you get on and ride it. When anyone tells me “It’s the truth”, I immediately discount everything that comes after that. If it’s the truth, there’s no need to tell me it is. If it isn’t true, telling me it is won’t make it any truer. Therefore the truth I want to share with you, the truth I know is true, is for information only (FYI). Yes, truth works. Yes, they’re useful. Maybe even fundamental to inner satisfaction. Since you already know the truth, there is no reason for me to tell you. And you know the truth, because when you hear it, it fits. It feels right and it passes every test. Still, if you want to read them once and let them get dusty, that’s all right with me.

Chapter One: What’s All This?

Everyone you know is one and the same thing. Everything you see is one and same thing. Everything that has ever been, is now, or will ever be is one and same thing. There’s only one thing that makes up everything we see, hear, think and feel. What we do with this knowledge or don’t do is up to each of us.

That’s it. End of story.

Still, some people seem to require a little more detail.

There is only one kind of thing that makes up us and everyone else. The test is to see is true is if this explanation of the world we know helps us in dealing with whatever happens to, through and around us.

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.

- Kahlil Gibran

When we’re in the zone; that is when we feel FULL of the energy that must always be available in endless supply, we know the truth of our connection to everything that is. It can appear that senses are heightened, we have confidence is whatever faces us and have endless certainty of right action.

When we’re “small”, feeling oppressed inside our own skin, everything and everyone feels strange to us. Hurtful, fearful. When I’ve chosen to be like this, I’ve felt a person’s touch to be numbing. It’s at this level where people claim to feel no connection at all. The one thing that IS, feels distant at best and more likely – a fable that can’t be believed. At the worst, we decide there IS NO connection and we are a separate being. I felt a sense of separation today from People who are so sure they should attach negative emotions to the most innocuous activities; Data entry, Report Update, phone call reminder. Yet, and I know these same people have real feelings. I know …not surprising… and YET…. they may sound upset over preceived injustice at work…but somewhere inside. They know The Universe. I saw their faces today. They looked at me from places I’d been, from thoughts I know, from beings I am. I wanted to show them my soul – to show them that they could feel about the important things. Like their own Lives, their connection to us, their true selves. All I needed to do was look and see them as they really are and listen and hear only the voice of God.

What if One could choose The Quiet Feeling of Acceptance and therefore Peace. Really. Actually just decide “I choose peace”.

The truth is just a thought away – release the pressure we imposed to keep ourselves so small – admit with love whatever comes in our hearts, our minds, our souls and poof – we “log in” to the Universal net.

This is an offer to the very next person you talk to, to focus entirely on them for a piece of time. Most especially, for someone that one would dare claim to “care about” instead of noting that same feeling of Love for the Entire World. If one is taking the awesome responsbility of believing that any certain person is special, then that person who authorizes him or herself to have that wondrous feeling of special love, that person has an awesome Opportunity and Responsibility to Accept that other one and therefore live in peace with that person as long as one can sustain it. That person could live quietly with that other person without definition or destination, giving space both physical and emotional, while pledging to be available. I acknowledge the apparent Work required to make any of this happen.

Alternately, you can attack. Being faced with ourselves and seeing us, understanding that features of that declared relationship will be precisely what what we deny in Others, in the words of The Course, a Special Relationship that though coincidence, location, Pursuit or Fate, in any case, WE have decided to create. Or that person represents for us an experience we have chosen. Given all that and even with our DECLARED enjoyment, our decision for peace, We can still slide If we claim a Special Relationship and then proceed to fear. Blame. Doubt. Anger. Possession. Control.

Which we then intrude onto that person, seeking to eradicate the feelings of our equality and challenging the legitimacy of the feelings we have chosen to have for that person. “How Dare you let me love you?” . Most of my feelings of fear begin when I get the hungry feeling that I need you around. That at the hint of your absence, I could choose loss and bewilderment.

It’s at that moment when I have the grand opportunity, a real chance for self-blessing, to accept you fully with whatever you will offer me or not offer me and whatever I can bring to you and to agree, inside myself to love you as you are. Whatever we’re able to do together, without regard for what we do “together” in that especially peaceful place when I have grown for knowing you and you have taught me and whatever feelings YOU are exhibiting I can still see the Love of Knowing. THEN, I have found myself within a Clear Moment. I have come home.

Energy is what is happening inside each one of us. Everybody has access to the same energy. No one is restricted; no one is “given” more or less. Yet to live in Energy is to know that those people, places and things that surround us can APPEAR to affect our energy. We feel large when we hang around those beings that represent abundance. We feel small when we live among those beings that offer scarcity. Of course, this is OUR illusion; no one makes us feel less or more of the every present endless energy. That we choose to match the beings around us is a matter for our hearts, our minds, and our souls. We can choose to feel the most endless energy among those spirits with the smallest acceptance. It might be easier to believe that if you accept we can remain low when surrounded by the most energetic people we know. That’s a choice as well. Choose to be filled.

What a wonder to know we can think and feel as we choose. The choice then is to identify the basic attitudes that will form the foundation of the choices we claim to desire.

Again, each and everyone, each and everything is made up of the same one thing; the only thing there has ever been, is now or ever will be. We, – are it. It is when we claim the separation of ourselves or choose to withdraw from that one thing, that we feel disconnected, isolated; small.

If we learn to believe that we are all part of the only thing there is, then each of us can choose to grow inside. We can choose to do, be, believe, function, operate, and EXIST as whatever way we want. In fact, we choose each and every minute every day. Some argue that we choose when we’re asleep. Love is the first basis for right choice. Love is when we are completely open, accepting, and conscious – of what we are seeing, doing, and believing.

What if – wherever we are in the universe right now – this instant – is directly attributable to our willingness to love, to be large, to include ourselves in the only one?

It is possible to see this as an impossible test. Perhaps then, what if we measure ourselves by the peace we feel inside from this second to the next? No limits, no time table? No one is left out. Some choose, for a span of their experience, to be left alone. Whenever we choose connection we are always welcome. It is our true ancestral home.

We can choose to love ourselves wherever we are; whatever we’re doing or thinking. Imagine! Loving every thought in our heads! Loving every word spoken to us, around us. Loving every action we have ever taken – yes the bad ones too. Choosing to love our own consciousness; today; right now.

Loving ourselves the way we are. Before all the New Thought – before any affirmation or thought pattern change; before any behavior modification, loving ourselves, As Is.

Accepting that each one of us contains the same thing as everybody else.

Accepting the goodness we see in others as belonging to us. Accepting the bad we feel as belonging to all of us. Not justifying; accepting. Believing that we, along with each person we meet or see or read about or hear about, contain the same substance.

Taken word for word with complete permission in it’s entirety
from Peter McWilliams “Life 101”

Acceptance

And that’s the way it is.

- Walter Cronkite

Acceptance is such an important commodity; some have called it “the first law of personal growth.”

Acceptance is simply seeing something the way it is and saying, “That’s the way it is.”

Acceptance is not approval, consent, permission, authorization, sanction, concurrence, agreement, compliance, sympathy, endorsement, confirmation, support, ratification, assistance, advocating, backing, maintaining, authenticating, reinforcing, cultivating, encouraging, furthering, promoting, aiding, abetting, or even liking what is.

Acceptance is saying, “It is what it is, and what is is what is.” Philosophers from Gertrude Stein (”A rose is a rose is a rose”) to Popeye (”I am what I am”) have understood acceptance.

Until we truly accept everything, we can not see clearly. We will always be looking through the filters of “must’s,” “should’s,” “ought-to’s,” “have-to’s,” and prejudices.

When reality confronts our notion of what reality shouldbe, reality always wins. (Drop something while believing gravity shouldn’tmake it fall. It falls anyway.) We don’t like this (that is, we have trouble acceptingthis), so we either struggle with reality and become upset, or turn away from it and become unconscious. If you find yourself upset or unconscious–or alternating between the two–about something, you might ask yourself, “What am I not accepting?”

Education is the ability
to listen to almost anything
without losing your temper
or your self-confidence.

- Robert Frost

Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am not saying you can’t change the world, right wrongs, or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don’t fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. Moreover, if you don’t fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed.

When you accept, you relax; you let go; you become patient. This is an enjoyable (and effective) place for either participation or departure. To stay and struggle (even for fun things: how many times have you tried really hard to have a good time?), or to run away in disgust and/or fear is not the most fulfilling way to live. One or the other, however, is the inevitable result of nonacceptance.

Take a few moments and consider a situation you are not happy with–not your greatest burden in life, just a simple event about which you feel peeved. Now accept everything about the situation. Let it be the way it is. Because, after all, it is that way, is it not? Also, if you accept it, you will feel better about it.

After accepting it, and everything about it, you probably still won’t likeit, but you may stop hating and/or fearing it. At least you will hate it or fear it a little less.

That’s the true value of acceptance: you feel better about life, and about yourself. Everything I’ve said about acceptance also applies to things you have done (or failed to do). In fact, everything I’ve said about acceptance applies especially to your judgments of you.

All the things you think you should have done, and all the things you think you shouldn’t have done, accept them. You did (or didn’t) do them. That’s reality. That’s what happened. No changing the past. You can struggle with the past or pretend it didn’t happen or you can accept it. I suggest the latter.

Even a prime-time disciplinarian such as Paul admitted,

For what I do is not the good I want to do; no,the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing. (Romans7:19)

And that was a man who knew his should’s. The next time you find yourself doing something you “shouldn’t,” or not doing something you “should,” you might as well accept it. “If it was good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for me.”

When you make a mistake,
admit it.
If you don’t,
you only
make matters worse.

- Ward Cleaver

While you’re at it, you might as well accept all your future transgressions against the “should’s,” “must’s,” and “have-to’s.” You will transgress. Not that I necessarily endorse transgression–I simply accept the fact that human beings do do such things. Accept your humanity–with all the magnificence and folly inherent in it.

When you’re in a state of nonacceptance, it’s difficult to learn. A clenched fist cannot receive a gift, and a clenched psyche–grasped tightly against the reality of what must not be accepted–cannot easily receive a lesson.

Relax. Accept what’s already taken place–whether done by you or something outside of you. Then look for the lesson. You might not enjoy everything that happens in life, but you can enjoy the fact that no matter what happens, “there’s a lesson in here someplace.”

Taken word for word with complete permission in it’s entirety
from Peter McWilliams “Life 101”

Everything we know, everything we’ve thought, felt, experienced – will always be within us, be with us, is us. And we can choose to act in the MOST loving way possible. No exclusion of baggage, no transformation of personality – instead growing large in the knowledge we are as much the one as everyone else.

We have the answers to each question we ask. We know how to get where we claim we want to go. We know what it means to be us. We knew it before the first book, person or conscious thought. We know the right feeling, the right action before we have felt it or done it.

Why would we choose to feel, experience, so much pain when we are presented with an equal opportunity to love? Why do many of us choose this fear path? Perhaps we don’t want to know how easy it is. We may wish to stay joined to those who have chosen that path. After all – we may rationalize – if my mother, brother or lover is small, I must stay small to be with them.

However our growth, our getting larger will eventually attract those we wish to be with to grow larger too. Until they do, it will appear that they are pulling us back down, they aren’t – they are living in the level they’ve chosen. It may take some time but they will move. Either that or they will naturally not share space with you. This may sound harsh, but in fact it is a wonderful goal to be a shining light. Live large and shine.

On the fear path, we are attracted by the very horror that we reel from. The tragedy of the place we choose to live in is like a show that we watch between our fingers. When we learn to love it, we learn to lose it. The only thing we can ever change is our loving attention to whatever we watch.

There is nothing that needs to be fixed before we can love it. There is nothing we can do to change any person’s decisions about his or her own piece of being. We can trust all beings are living the path they choose even if we could offer them another plan. Whatever is happening around us is where our consciousness has chosen us to be. Some of you may claim that rightness and goodness will be with you all the days of your lives because of your deep abiding faith that there is more than this. And then I stop and I wonder, just for a minute, if that might not just be true.

What is our relationship to each other? Our relationship to every other piece of the one? Whatever we decide that relationship is, we can discover our piece of the universe by choosing to love wherever we are, whoever we meet and whatever we think and feel. No one has any greater power, or ability or brain, energy, enlightenment or grace than any other. We can all chose each day to love it just as it is, to love ourselves just as we are, to love those who come into our lives just as they choose to be.

Remember, if Love, God, Life, or whatever you call it, is for you, then shouldn’t you be for yourself too? And, if you are the one and so is everybody else, who can be against you?
There is some truth in the sayings that the beloved is God, and that when we love God we are loving ourselves. I and thou are one. The other is the self.

- Todd Murphy

 

Chapter Two: How do we know its working? What does a life committed to the one look like?

It looks exactly like you and me.And him and her.

We have everything; We are everything we need to be. It is always available; was always available, will always be available whenever we choose.

You can choose any path you accept. You are what you wished for, though that may sound absurd. How about – you are what you’ve accepted.

Chapter Three

“Joy is the feeling of grinning inside.” – Melba Colgrove

You can Feel Good

It’s all right to have peace. It’s okay to be contented. To feel pleasure and joy.

Everywhere we look, everyone we meet offers us the chance to perceive the face of God, the perfection of ourselves projected through our eyes and ears.

There are no tests of our will to joy, no barriers to us not being “ready” created by anyone or anything. WE may feel as if some person or event is presented for us to challenge our right to happiness but WE are the ones defining the moments. We choose the test, write the questions, establish the answers and grade ourselves. We may well feel we are not ready for some leap of faith or another. We are, naturally, as ready as we’ll ever be. But there is always time. There is no need to be this or that today. All that we are, all that we can be, we have inside. Whenever we look with love, we’ll see it.

Chapter Four

“To livefully is to let go and die with each passing moment,and to be reborn in each new one.”

          – Jack Kornfield

Live!

To repeat, there is no one other than us. We can choose to love or hate ourselves as we will. And so it shall be. When we choose to see the world as cold, lifeless and evil, we can stop; remind ourselves “perhaps I’ve made the wrong choice”.
I can make a better choice” or “that’s what I need to love”

This does not mean you are a doormat. You operate from Love. Love with your strength of being. You are free. Protect your physical manifestation, walk away from toxic energy, take a stand, be true to your beliefs. But do it with no resistance to whatever circumstances appear to you. The Law is, what you resist draws you closer. What you love frees you.

Chapter Five

“The thirst forequality can express itself either as a desire to draw everyone down to one’s level,or to raise oneself and everyone else up.”

          – Friedrich Nietzsche

How We Got Here

We have invented a plethora of ideas, explanations and excuses for all the kinds of human behavior. First, we need to acknowledge all of these labels come from within ourselves. What we perceive, we categorize, and as we’ve learned, we perceive what we believe.