Define Yourself

Don't buy into any one else's vision of who you are or what your possibilities are. Other people live in their own worlds and their visions define them; they do not define you. You are defined by your own visualization of your unique being and your special opportunities.

Problem free

You are already completely free of problems. Instead of wasting time wishing for problems to go away, realize that they cannot affect you in the essence of your being. This will allow you to deal with material concerns on a practical level without feeling threatened by them or obsessing over them.

The Name of God

Why are some people disturbed by references to God? Of course you can substitute whatever synonym you like in place of the word "God." The meaning will be the same whether you say "Spirit", "the Universe", or "All That Is." The reference is to the Source of all things, of which each being is a part. It is to you and me, and what we are in essence when our separate identities are stripped away. You cannot deny the existence of God without denying your own existence, because there is no difference between yourself and God. If you have a negative reaction to the very word, it may be you do not understand its meaning, or have had bad experiences with people who do not. Or it may be that your mind is doing its mind thing, and resisting awareness of a greater and truer reality.

Troubles are Transitory

We are so often reminded that things are temporary. This is true when people and things we love pass out of our lives, and we have no difficulty comprehending this fact of life. Why do we not regard troubles as equally transitory?

Why?

There are times in everyone's life when he or she feels compelled to ask, "Why?" At such times some turn to Spirit for an answer. It is probably true that the great majority of us who engage in spiritual practices first embarked on the Path in search of an answer to some question that ultimately resolves into "why?" Those questions include "Why am I here", "Why do I have these feelings," and the granddaddy of all, "Why did this happen to me?"

Eventually we realize that the question "why" belongs to our human side, to the mind and the small self. It is the mind that sees events happening in the world and needs to understand their causes. Only the mind is attached to concepts of causation and its implicit corollary, fairness. It is the mind that asks, "How can God/Spirit/the Universe do this to me," and that believes "goodness" should be rewarded, or that the Universe is an orderly place in which individual circumstances can or should be correlated with individual behavior.

The mind, which is supposedly the rational part of us, maintains these beliefs in the face of all experiential evidence to the contrary. We see "bad" things happening to "good" people, and vice versa, every day. We all do our very best to be "good" people yet sometimes "bad" things happen to us. We even think these "bad" things are punishment for us not being "good" enough. All this is due to the mind's need to connect every event with a cause that can be understood by the narrow logic the mind has developed, and with its corresponding need to judge persons and events as "good" and "bad".

When united with Spirit in meditation, it is possible to realize that separateness, good and bad, causation, and even time itself are artifacts of the mind and the physical universe. What we perceive as our individual selves and our lives are no more separate from Spirit than waves are separate from the ocean. There can be no good and bad souls where all souls are merged in Spirit. From the perspective of Spirit as the unified field of loving energy spanning all dimensions, individual events in the physical universe lose their significance and lines of causality fade. The foreground loses focus and eventually is seen as unreal against the background of Spirit. Nothing but isness remains. Then all questions meet their answers and are annihilated in the joy of unification with All That Is.

And so it is.

Namaste!

Living Without Ego

In the preface to "The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi", Arthur Osborne says of the Maharshi's teaching that "those who asked whether they should renounce the life of the world were always discouraged from doing so. Instead they were enjoined to perform their duties in life without self-interest."

What would it be like to go about your daily activities without self-interest? Ultimately the goal must be freedom from the ego. How would life be different without ego? By ego is meant not just egotism, selfishness and the like, but all manifestations of the small self, eventually even the awareness of separateness. Would it really be possible to perform one's duties in life as a pure manifestation of the greater Self that is the Universal manifestation of All That Is?

A beginning would be to simply practice awareness of the presence of ego and its influence on your actions.

All Healing is Self Healing

The Teacher said,

All healing is self healing. You may use whatever modalities you like; they may have effect in accordance with your intention. But complete healing is not a matter of manipulating local energies, but of cleansing the spirit of the illusions that the subject and the healer are separate beings and that either is separate from God. If you practice Pranic Healing to remove unhealthy energies, on an esoteric level you should actually be seeking to peel back the individual personality and lay bare the Spirit behind the mask. If you focus your attention exclusively on particular ailments or particular parts of the body, you may produce temporary relief from symptoms, but you may actually do long-term harm by reinforcing the illusions of identity and separateness. Therefore, your principal focus should be on greater awareness of the unity of your energies with those of your subject, and the unity of both in God. Do not visualize a perfectly functioning limb or organ, but rather a soul in perfect union with the Universe. The soul I speak of is yours and it is your subject's; it is the soul of all beings. You cannot treat your subject fully without also treating yourself, because you and your subject are one at the level of ultimate reality.

You will know the degree of your success in achieving proper focus by the effects you observe in yourself and your subject. True healing is complete healing. Your subject may have sought you out because of a particular symptom or condition. But you should observe changes not only in that condition, but in your subject's overall wellness, and your own. If you feel your energy has been drained from you after a treatment, it is because you have focused on transferring energy from your illusory self to the equally illusory self of your subject. Rather focus on the awareness that you are both manifestations of an infinite field of energy that provides you with limitless vital resources. You both should feel energized, lighter, and more fully alive after a treatment. You may find that any pains you may have been feeling in your own body are no longer present. You or your subject may also experience the relief of painful emotions, or the release of buried emotional pain that initially manifests as tears. It is this sense of wholeness that is the sign of a successful treatment.