Chapter 1 Introduction In this book, we will focus on enlightenment, personal peace and conscious creation. Or to put it another way: 1) Recognizing intuitively that you exist fundamentally as pure awareness, as the open capacity for experience. 2) Developing the ability to unselfishly flow in harmony with all that life brings forth. 3) Removing any unnecessary limiting beliefs that you might have about yourself, the world, and how you fit into it.
Conscious Creation Seth, as channeled by Jane Roberts, adamantly proclaims, “You make your own reality. There is no other rule.” In a general sense, you (as a soul) can incarnate in every way imaginable yet you have chosen a certain theme to explore in this life. It is important to note that all themes offer joy, significant soul growth and greater wisdom. So don’t worry about being trapped in a life full of suffering. Also note that the popular claim that you can “be, do and have anything you want” (in this lifetime) is simply not true. The universe is not your personal mail order catalog simply waiting for you to clearly make up your mind and place your order, as you may have heard. But you can be happy without getting everything you want, right?
Let’s start by thinking of a Hollywood actor. Here it’s easy to see that the actor is the source of the character. Surely it’s not the other way around. The character is not the source of the actor. Furthermore, the character cannot go on the stage without the actor. And yet, the actor can drop the role of the character at any time. Because of this, it is wise to make a distinction between the transcendent source (the actor) and the dependent construction (the character).
And yet when the actor comes forward as the character, they are one. If you are standing in front of the character and you want to find the actor, you do not need to dig into a deeper and deeper layer. No. When you look into the eyes of the character, you are looking directly into the eyes of the actor. They are one.
What appears to be the will and power of the character are really the will and power of the actor. The character is not the source of anything and has no substance of its own. Of course you see what this metaphor is pointing to. God is the one invisible Actor who is coming forward as each and every visible character, as each and every visible person. All of creation is a spontaneous emanation that comes about when formless Source-Awareness (God) miraculously and paradoxically appears as the form that makes up not only our own physical world, but also all of our spiritual worlds. Ice doesn’t just come from the water, it is the water, and so it is with God and creation. God is not only infinitely intimate with all of creation, God is creation.
Now, let’s suppose that I take you out in a spaceship to a vantage point where you can clearly see the sun and the spinning earth. You would learn the true nature of the situation from personal experience. And yet, when you got back to earth, the illusion would persist. You would still see the sun apparently traveling across the sky! At noon, it would be high in the sky and about six hours later, it would be setting low in the west. And no matter how hard you tried, you would not be able to feel the spinning of the earth. Even though there really is something happening to you, you cannot feel it directly with your body.
If there is a cluster of “negative” beliefs, it is important to deal with the core belief at the center of the cluster. If we dissolve that belief by recognizing that it only appears to be true and we just drop it, the entire cluster will fall apart.
And then it happens. The block of ice falls into the hot pool of water and right before your very eyes, it melts in a matter of minutes. Now you clearly see that it is made out of the same thing that the hot water is made out of. There’s no denying this now. But a few minutes ago it was very different. It was in a different form, a different state, which gave it a completely different set of properties, a completely different set of qualities. Could this be similar to God and creation? Let’s expand the water analogy by including water vapor, which is an invisible gas. That invisible gas might be like God the Source. We cannot see God the Source since the Source has no form. And yet, if the Source wanted to create a spiritual world, a world of angels, for example, the Source could choose to lower its temperature, its vibration, and “part” of the Source would change from an invisible gas into liquid water that now has a tangible form to it. This spiritual world could include beings with a sense of self and freewill. They would not appear to be the same as the Creator and yet they would be made out of the same divine essence.
This Divine Awareness is the buried treasure hidden within the personal self; it is the kingdom of heaven within you. Your “personal self” appears to be your body, mind, and soul, but your True Self – your fundamental, unconstructed self – is this Divine Awareness that perceives everything that you experience. This is why I like to repeat an old saying:
You are not the sentient being you have considered yourself to be all your life. You are sentience itself!
You are lucidly aware that you are witnessing an illusion and that nothing in the dream can harm you. You know that you will soon wake up and the dream will simply disappear. You may or may not remember it but nonetheless, the dream itself will be gone. Now you see why I like to say that you can wake up from the dream or to the dream.
Notice what happens in an ordinary dream when you become lucid and all your fears fall away. Remarkably, this fear is replaced with joy. It is not replaced with a flat, dull attitude such as “Oh, none of this matters since this is just a dream.” Instead, a delightful exuberance spontaneously arises because you recognize that you are vibrantly alive and that you are always safe since who you truly are transcends all of the circumstances of the dream. The dream has no power over your emotional state of being and cannot damage the well-being of your True Self. So you can relax into your natural emotional state of being of peace and joy. Well, the same thing happens when you wake up to the “dream” of our ordinary reality. This is “the great awakening” that brings unconditional peace and joy.
The real you is always safe even though the dream figure might seem to be in danger. The dream figure that seems to be you in a fundamental way is really just providing a point of view for you to witness the dream. The belief that the dream can actually be dangerous is simply a false belief. While it is true that dreams are harmless illusions, we don’t discredit them since we don’t discredit any of our experiences or any of our emotions.
In fact, mystics know that they cannot capture any human experience in its entirety yet their passion to help others is so strong that they joyously point to the deepest mysteries of life and encourage everyone to dive in and explore it for themselves. Mystics do not try to explain these mysteries because they know they can never be fully explained. But they can be pointed to and described to some extent.
You cannot fail at this. Something is happening to you that is well beyond the control of your personal self. Your spiritual growth – your entire life – is in the hands of God, yet this is handled in a way that makes it seem as if you are in control in a limited way at the personal level. So on a practical level, engage in your life as best you can while holding the intuitive wisdom that the divine is doing everything. This is what will remove all the worry from your life. One of India’s great holy men, Meher Baba (1894-1969), said, “First, do your best, then, don’t worry, be happy.”
With humility, ask yourself, “Who am I fundamentally?” By this I mean stripped of everything that is not essential to who or what you truly are. This approach will take you beyond the confines of what society tries to hold you to.
By the way, this clarifies why the Buddha gave us the wonderfully paradoxical Vajracchedika (Diamond Cutter) Sutra: “One must awaken all sentient beings” [and] “there are no sentient beings.” Of course there are beings, and these beings do appear to be sentient. But they are not really sentient. Only the One Awareness is sentient.
Note that drugs and alcohol affect the body and the brain but not the Awareness. If someone is drunk, this window becomes unclear or distorted but the Awareness still has perfect 20/20 vision, so to speak. So while this Awareness is not affected at all, the overall experience is much different.
When you add to this the One Awareness looking out through the combined viewpoint of the body and soul, you get the extremely vivid experience that tricks you into falsely believing that you are a separate, mortal, sentient, physical being. You certainly do not appear to be divine in any way.
Well, it feels like you move your arm because you, as the True Self, do move it. The True Self moves everything while your personal self (on its own) moves nothing. But since you cannot see the formless True Self and you can only see your body, it seems like you are the body-mind and that your body-mind is autonomous.
Ah, but in reality, you are the puppet master and you have mistaken the puppet as you. The puppet master and the puppet are blended together so closely that the puppet master is looking right through the eyes of the puppet.
Again, recognizing that you are not fundamentally the person does not stop the sense or experience that makes it seem like you are, just like the recognition that the sun does not go around the earth does not stop the experience that makes it seem like it does. The sense that you are the person may lessen in its intensity, and it may seem more like you are witnessing the events of “your” life rather than having them happen to “you” the person. But this sense of being the person is really there to provide some functionality, so it won’t disappear completely except in deep dreamless sleep and in the formless trance state of samadhi.
Similarly, what appears to be your “personal mind,” your “personal will” and your “personal power” are truly the One Mind, the One Will and the One Power working through the apparent self, the person.
The bigger framework transcends the smaller one. Within the context of our ordinary world, the play is real as a play, even though the story it tells is nonhistorical. It exists as a fictional construction. So in a funny way you can say that the play is real as a fictional story. Everyone sees that the characters and events of the play are only valid and meaningful within the context of the play, and that within the context of our ordinary reality, they exist only as fiction.
The One Invisible Actor is playing all the roles yet “overlooking” its formless nature. In this way, it is hiding from itself and pretending to forget what is really going on. But you cannot really hide yourself from yourself and you will not pretend to forget forever.
Source-Awareness is unchanging since there are no qualities or aspects that could change.
Source-Awareness cannot become happy or sad in a fundamental way yet it can animate an inert puppet in a way that exhibits the characteristics of happiness and sadness.
You are one-hundred percent Divine and simultaneously, you arise as a person that is one-hundred percent human. Through the mystery of creation, the One…
Absolute Awareness, Universal Consciousness and Personal Consciousness Now is a good time to talk about universal consciousness, which is sometimes called the primordial seed-vibration or the creative manifesting principle. This is the first vibration through which all other vibrations come. It is distinct from Absolute…
Timothy offers us this: The most ancient Upanishad wisdom texts speak of “Brahman” (Absolute Reality) and the “pranava” (AUM/OM, the primordial seed-vibration for the multi-level cosmos). This is also referred to as Brahman and Maya, the illusory play of the Absolute, which is “relatively real, experientially vivid, but ultimately dreamlike.” This is why the sages of ancient India differentiated the unchanging, formless, silent Absolute Awareness (the “Noumenon”) from the “universal consciousness,”…
In later Hindu tradition, the eminent sage Shankara (who codified in his commentaries and treatises so much of the wisdom of the Upanishads) distinguished this as “Nirguna Brahman” (formless, “qualityless” Reality) and “Saguna Brahman” (Reality with form, qualities, and dynamism). The Hindu…
The Buddhists and Daoists have their own way of distinguishing the formless, unchanging, unborn Absolute from the…
So do the Christians: God (or the “Godhead”) and the Logos/“Word,” the primordial Divine vibration by which the One Divine God…
In Islam and Sufism, this is “Allah” and “Allah’s…
In Daoism, this is the “Dao” and its power, “De.” An old formulation runs: “From the Dao (the Absolute) comes the ‘one’ (the principle of manifestation), from the one comes the ‘two’ (yin and yang), from the two come the five (the Chinese 5-…
The reason why it is so important to have this distinction between Absolute Awareness and universal consciousness (the creative manifesting principle) is that the products or cosmic manifestations of the universal consciousness experientially disappear [from the experience of a person] in deep dreamless sleep and the formless trance state of nirvikalpa samadhi, hence they cannot be the Absolute. The deeper…
The great sages knew by pure, Divine intuition that underlying all that is changeable is THIS CHANGELESS CONTINUITY OF IDENTITY, the true “I AM,” unconditional BEING. Whereas by contrast everything else is changeable, passing, coming in and out of existence. This includes the sense of a…
Again, through the mystery of creation, Source-Awareness arises as all objects. When I asked Timothy if there really was an objective outside world, he just replied that this question did not lead to liberation. And with that simple clarification, I finally let go of my desire to find a definitive answer to that burning question.
The ancient texts call this wisdom “knowing by being.”
Timothy offers this about why there is this vividness: It’s because you are Awareness playing as the power of consciousness that everything feels so vivid. […] It’s because of consciousness, not because of atoms, or molecules, or cells, or clusters of cells, organs and tissues. That’s not why there’s a vividness […]. It’s because you, the personal consciousness [jiva], through the power of primordial consciousness [Shakti], rooted in Absolute Awareness [Shiva], animate all of this, enliven it, spark it up, fire it with the living flame of love.
Our ancient texts tell us that all of creation is inert (“jada”) and that only Absolute Awareness is alive under its own power. But since Source-Awareness (Aliveness) fully permeates all of creation, we can also say that everything is alive while keeping in mind that creation is not the source of its own aliveness.
can be said to have a vibrational pattern. Because of this, we can talk about higher consciousness, lower consciousness and the refinement of consciousness. Your personal consciousness (your soul) holds beliefs about your personal self, the world, and how you fit into the world. As this understanding is purified, the vibrational pattern shifts upward. This purification comes about through the removal of false ideas, the integration of true ideas, and the release of fear and any selfish or self-centered tendencies. God is purifying the personal consciousness and using it as an instrument in order to bring forth divine virtues. So don’t worry about making a mistake. Just let go and let God purify and polish your soul.
In Form, We Are Many; In Essence, We Are One
Don’t think that only the essence is divine. Remember, ice doesn’t just come from the water; it is the water. God arises as creation without dropping God’s divine nature.
Everyone knows that they are aware but most people make the “mistake” of carrying this too far and they incorrectly conclude that they are a being that is aware rather than simply pure awareness itself.
Yet the truth is that there is seeing but there is no object-like being that sees and this is why it is sometimes said that there is no seer, although I prefer the way this is presented in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad. It states that this One Awareness is “the unseen seer of seeing, the unheard hearer of hearing, the unfelt feeler of feelings” and it goes on. This Awareness is the unsensed sensor of all phenomena and to this I like to add that this Source-Awareness is also the undreamt dreamer of dreams.
What Is Enlightenment? Although there is no universally accepted definition of enlightenment, here are the two key criteria that I use: 1) Being fully awake to the intuitive understanding of your True Self as this One Divine Source-Awareness, the One Self that arises as all apparent selves and 2) Being completely free from all selfish or self-centered desires and tendencies, which are sometimes called egocentric binding likes and dislikes. These two aspects work together to automatically produce the unhindered flow of all the divine virtues such as loving kindness, compassion, joy, peaceful equanimity, humility, generosity, and patience. This is the fruit of enlightenment, which is treasure you hold on the inside. Unlike the treasure you hold on the outside, you can take this with you.
During this time, these concepts are transformed from mere ideas into a living truth that shines within your soul.
This Awareness has both the capacity to perceive and the capacity to create what it perceives. This process of creation is best described as an emanation – a spontaneous emanation – and this Awareness is the source of this emanation. Because of this, Timothy and I refer to this Awareness as “Source-Awareness.” This Source-Awareness emanates as the totality of created reality and this Source-Awareness is what you truly are fundamental. And, as you have heard me say before, this Source-Awareness is looking out of your eyes right now! Not a piece of it. Not a branch of it. The wholeness of this Source-Awareness is looking out of your eyes right now!
More About Enlightenment Earlier I said that there is no such thing as an enlightenment factory where you put regular people in one end and get enlightened people out of the other end. But in a way, there is. All of creation is this enlightenment factory since everything is unfolding via the will of God and in this way, God is revealing God to God.
All your spiritual revelations will happen for you at the exact right time and therefore you do not have to concern yourself with this in any special way. Just live your life and follow your bliss in a wholesome, unselfish way with unconditional love for everyone and without fear of what will unfold.
We have all heard it said that before enlightenment, we have to chop wood and carry water, and that after enlightenment, we still have to chop wood and carry water. I’m not sure that a modern marketing department would want to stress this point since it makes it sound like there’s no practical benefit to enlightenment. But there really are profoundly practical benefits which grow daily as this understanding becomes clearer.
Although the ability to enter the formless trance state of nirvikalpa samadhi does not mean that this person is enlightened, an enlightened person does have this ability. So this is necessary but not sufficient.
When the personal consciousness is asleep, it holds the idea that the personal self is an autonomous being. When it is awake, it holds the idea that the personal self is an inert collection of phenomena that is dynamically animated by the True Self.
You are both the totality of created reality and you are the transcendent Source of all of this created reality. As you take your time to ponder what I offer, perhaps you will begin to see why I like to say: You are the mountains, you are the rivers, you are the sea. You are the sky, you are the sun, you are the moon. You are all of created reality and yet you are none of that fundamentally. Fundamentally, you are pure Awareness, Source-Awareness, the Divine Source of everything. You are the dream and you are the Dreamer. Enlightenment is the highest and purest set of conditions available for the personal consciousness, but it is not a quality of formless Awareness. This unconstructed Awareness is “unimprovable, cannot regress, need not be purified, cannot be liberated, and need not be awakened,” as Timothy often reminds us. And this is what you are. This is what enlightens all personal consciousnesses even though Awareness itself cannot be or become enlightened.
The Mind and the Ego Are Not the Enemy
There is no battle where your heart must triumph over your mind. Instead of a battle, think of it as the pursuit of truth, love and peace. Work towards tuning your mind into the truth and your heart into love and peace.
But there is no such part of you. Selfishness is an attitude held by the personal consciousness, that’s all. But no matter how you understand the ego, you can be sure that you do not need to be selfish or self-centered to function in the world.
Other Potential Misunderstandings Some teachers emphasize the common misunderstanding that there is no self at all or that “there is no one here.” But there most certainly is “someOne” here, God is here! The One Self of all apparent selves is arising as you, me and “everyOne.” When this is overlooked, the most profound stimulus for genuine loving kindness will be missing.
Yet anatta was later incorrectly translated as “no self” rather than “not self” and then used outside of its original context of the process of disidentification.
You also hear that there is no person, or no soul, or that you are not your body. The truth is that you are your body, but not in a fundamental way. The mistranslation of anatta as “no self” plays a big part in how all of this confusion started and why it continues today. Here’s what I like to say: Your fundamental identity is the One Actor, this uncreated, formless Source-Awareness. Your nonfundamental identity is the totality of created reality: the stage, the props and all the characters. This is what you are through the process of creation. And your functional identity is the combination of the One Actor and the single character (this person) you appear to be. So first, you disidentify from the person while clearly identifying as Source-Awareness. And then you reidentify in a profound and yet nonfundamental way as everyOne, including the person you appear to be. So you disidentify from the small and reidentify as the All.
is God who is arising as everyOne and it is God who is doing everything. How wondrous! Some people say that God is impersonal yet Timothy likes to say instead that Source-Awareness is “supra-personal.” This word “supra-personal” emphasizes that God lives as every person while also transcending all persons. The divine essence of all persons is why there is so much richness in our personal relationships. Your beloved is truly divine!
“Brahman is real. The world is unreal.” And then he finished with this puzzling statement: “Brahman is the world.”
something that does not exist at all, well, we have a serious misunderstanding.
Nothing matters in an absolute sense since all of creation is a temporary construction, yet everything matters since creation is experientially real and all of creation is fully divine. How could that which is divine not be precious? How could God not matter? So we see that the full truth opens the heart while an incomplete teaching can lead to a closed heart.
Now consider this. When Source-Awareness arises as a doctor, the acting is so good that we really do have a doctor who can actually help you. Pretty good acting, eh? And since this Actor is completely imperceptible in every way, the actor is well hidden and the illusion is very convincing. And here is a very subtle but important point. God is not merely pretending to be each and every person, God is each and every person just like the actor is not pretending to be the character, the actor is the character.
God and Creation The One … and … The many Source-Awareness … and … The objects of awareness Transcendent Source … and … Dependent creation Vibrationless Witness … and … All vibrations Infinite Openness … and … Finite form Formlessness … and … Formfulness Invisible Sentience … and … Ever-changing sensations Pure Aliveness … and … Inert objects Pure Sentience … and … Blind objects Absolute Reality … and … Relative reality Fundamental Reality … and … Nonfundamental reality Shiva … and … Shakti Brahman … and … Maya Nirguna Brahman … and … Saguna Brahman Reality without qualities … and … Reality with qualities Always Awake Dreamer … and … The dream The Unchanging One … and … The always changing many The One Invisible Actor … and … The many characters The One True Self … and … The many apparent selves The Unconstructed … and … The constructed The Story Teller … and … The story The Animator … and … The animated The Lover … and … The beloved
Notice that both “The Void” and “emptiness” do not point to the two capacities of Source-Awareness. This is such an important flaw that I don’t think these words are very helpful for anyone and this is why I don’t use them.
But the deep truth is better expressed by saying that the table has no substance of its own.
The metaphor of the actor and the character clears this up very quickly since we easily see that the character has no substance of its own, and instead, the substance of the actor is presented to us as if it were the substance of the character.
And this brings us to a quotation from the Buddhist Heart Sutra: “Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.” Personally, I don’t think that this is as clear as it could be. In my opinion, it is trying to say that Source-Awareness (Openness rather than Emptiness) miraculously arises as everything (all form) without stripping this form of its inherent divine nature. In this way, formless Openness and form are One. But that point is not easy to understand from that short quotation. I personally think
By the way, I don’t even call myself a nondual teacher. Yes, when you get right down to the core of what I teach, it really is nondual wisdom but that phrase is being used by a large group of people on the Internet who just don’t teach what I teach and I don’t want to be thought of as part of that group. So instead, I just call myself a spiritual teacher who likes to talk about spiritual awakening and enlightenment in simple, clear English. I hope many people will find this helpful.
The question of who is best qualified to teach deep spiritual principles reminds me of the Bible verses found in 1 Corinthians 13: If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Chapter 10 Mystical Optimism: How to Glow with the Flow
Of course I whole-heartily encourage a positive, cheerful attitude since it immediately creates a more enjoyable experience of the moment, and yet in this chapter, I’ll talk about an attitude that goes even deeper than just ordinary optimism. I call it “mystical optimism.” Let’s see what I mean by that.
A Positive Attitude Is Instantly Rewarding
‘greet the unknown with a cheer.’” Ah yes, of course, it’s far better to greet the unknown with a cheer and once you get the hang of it, you, too, will see how well this works.
Pollyanna’s kindness, compassion and wisdom are the main reasons why I strongly recommend this book, which you can read for free on the Internet. Pollyanna’s attitude has tremendous power and it is available to everyone at every moment. It is a delight to watch Pollyanna’s love shine brightly on everyone she meets, and you may even shed tears of joy when you see people release their stubborn grip on their unhappiness and move into their natural state of joy and kindness.
You are not saying that everything is perfect or that you love everything. You are just flowing along in your life without any hatred; that’s all.
So always ask yourself “Am I pushing away with a harsh, judgmental attitude, or am I pulling in with needy desperation?” When you gently hold all that life offers without any urgent pushing or pulling, your life will be completely transformed.
yourself or others with a detached retort such as, “So what? It doesn’t matter! I don’t care!” When you hear Buddhists talk about detachment, that’s not what they are talking about.
Just as it is wise to let go of demands about the present, it is also wise to let go of demands about the past and the future. An attitude of acceptance coupled with kindness and compassion allows us to fully participate in the world in a meaningful way while being free from the emotional suffering that comes about when we demand that things be a certain way. Of course you will still have preferences but they won’t be in control of you or your emotional state. You won’t be self-absorbed in attachments and aversions, and this is the second aspect of enlightenment that I mentioned in the last chapter. This purification is a long, gradual process so just relax and let it deepen one day at a time.
With this mystical understanding, you can joyously embrace an optimistic attitude like never before! You can glow with the flow and dance with the divine in a way that fills your life with a deep richness no matter what shows up!
For people who are stuck in their unhappiness, the next step is to try Pollyanna’s glad game and start finding things to be happy about.
the goal is not to be happy all the time. The “goal,” so to speak, is to be completely natural and recognize that even when there is sadness, there is also a deeper Divine Bliss that holds all human emotions. You do not create this Bliss yet it is always available for you to dwell in.
Everything just is. This is a huge point. Nothing is intrinsically good or bad; everything is neutral. You bring your own interpretation to everything and this is what determines your experience. You step back from the roller coaster ride of life when you drop the idea that things are good or bad and simply choose to joyfully engage in life unselfishly, with kindness and compassion for everyone.
Flawlessly Aerodynamic
When people ask me how I am, I often tell them that I am “flawlessly aerodynamic.” This means that I can flow along with life in a comfortable way without getting my feathers ruffled – that I “glow with the flow” most of the time, (a phrase I heard way back in 1987). While I have not mastered this completely, I am always willing to try my best.
In your dance with the Divine, you never know what is coming next. Will you be spun around, held close or tossed through the air? The aliveness that comes from not knowing cannot be matched, especially if you feel safe, if you don’t think of life as dangerous. And when you recognize that everything is in the hands of God and that everything really is for your benefit, this feeling will be automatic. Of course I realize that this belief is indeed very bold but perhaps I can inspire you to try it on for size. You might surprise yourself with what you discover.
Chapter 11 Seth: You create your own reality!
So your “total being” is indeed free to explore whatever it desires though many lives. Yet it has chosen a specific theme to explore in this life and this will come with certain limits and challenges. What attitude will you choose when you face those challenges?
The claim that you can be, do and have anything you want is like a triple scoop ice cream cone. Yes, “The Be, Do, Have Triple Scoop!” One scoop vanilla, one scoop chocolate, and one scoop strawberry. Who doesn’t want that? Marketing this is easy because it promises to quickly end everyone’s suffering. It plays right into the hands of the world’s simplest and most common philosophy: I will be happy when I get what I want, and this is how I get what I want – no matter what! The goal, of course, is to continually create things that match your endless desires, a tall order indeed.
So the universe is not your personal mail order catalog simply waiting for you to clearly make up your mind and place your order as some people have claimed.
False Beliefs, Limiting Beliefs, and Negative Beliefs
When we drop a ball, it falls at a certain rate. If someone believes that it will fall at a different rate, that false belief will not change what really happens. If you believe that you can be forever young in your human body, holding
I usually call these beliefs “unnecessary limiting beliefs” in order to distinguish them from the necessary limiting beliefs that are required to create our basic human existence in the first place.
Since you knew about the limitations of physical reality before you made your choice to be here, you consciously chose these limitations. Next, you chose the initial circumstances of your life. Then you chose to forget that you made those choices. Sometimes we choose difficult circumstances because they help our souls grow. These choices are made by your “higher self” which is what Seth calls your “inner self” and what Bashar calls your “higher consciousness.” We have all freely chosen to experience life on the physical plane with the laws of physics just exactly as they are. It’s a package deal. Our fundamental limiting beliefs about being human and living on earth include these laws and we chose to embrace them precisely because they allow us to create our human adventures in limitation.
This is why I sometimes say, “You create your own surprises.” But of course, Seth’s message is more completely and clearly expressed as “You create your own reality.”
Some Limiting Beliefs
Here are some possible examples: Life isn’t fair Life is a constant struggle It’s hard for me to be happy The world is a dangerous place At any moment, I can become the victim of either unkind people or unfortunate circumstances No one loves me; it is hard to find true love I don’t fit into the world; there just isn’t a job for me There isn’t enough for everyone Money is bad and most rich people are selfish Evil, powerful people control the politics and economics of the world and they are preventing everyone else from having a better life I’ve done some bad things and now I won’t receive very many good things And the list goes on and on. Notice that in all these beliefs, you see yourself as the victim. But you are not the victim of your beliefs, you are the chooser of your beliefs.
In this way, you become joyfully open to the unknown, to the mystery of the future. Don’t be afraid of God or what God will bring you. It all serves you. Remember, things don’t just happen to you; they happen for you. Absolutely everything happens for you. Everything polishes up the personal consciousness and brings it ever-closer to full enlightenment.
I want to point out something I heard thirty years ago: “There is only one prayer and that is the prayer for liberation. To pray for anything else will only bind you further.” When the personal consciousness relaxes its focus on its own life, it becomes more easily used as an instrument by the Self of all selves in ways that are more helpful to everyone. Of course there will still be a healthy concern for the personal self but it will be free from any harmful “me first” tendencies and paradoxically this will automatically bring you anything that is required for you to continue to blossom in ways that are ever more beautiful.
Seth’s Prime Belief and Some Affirmations First let’s consider Seth’s suggested prime belief: I am a worthy and deserving person.
The shift from thinking “I am not good enough to be loved” or “I don’t fit into the world” to an open, receptive posture for the love and support from the ever-present divine power without any specific expectation is the most important shift in core beliefs that most people can make.
So here’s the exercise. It comes from Chapter 16 of Seth’s book, The Nature of Personal Reality. For no more than ten minutes a day, concentrate your attention as vividly as possible on one simple statement that captures the essence of your new belief. With your eyes closed, repeat this statement aloud or silently while feeling the depth of its meaning. You might be able to feel this in various parts of your body, including your brain. Try to avoid any distractions, but if your mind wanders, calmly bring it back to the essence of your new belief. Seth says that repetition is necessary to establish the new corresponding biological patterns in your body and Bashar also supports this view, particularly with regards to your brain, its structure, and its connection to your higher mind.
This is an unnecessary limiting belief and Seth advises us to simply do the exercise for only five or ten minutes.
When you recognize that you create your own reality, you can consciously put this fundamental principle into practice. But notice that this recognition is simply created within your personal consciousness by God as a thought, which later becomes a belief. So you (as a person) do not really do anything on your own to gain this understanding.
Entering the Stream The Buddha said that in order to enter the stream that takes you (as your personal consciousness) to enlightenment, you must give up three things:
- You must give up the belief that you are an eternal, autonomous entity that will go to heaven, achieve some final goal, attain a supreme state or condition such as enlightenment or receive some ultimate reward. While the personal consciousness will become enlightened, it is not an autonomous self. It is not what you really are in the most fundamental way. 2) You must give up the unhealthy doubt that your personal consciousness can indeed wake up from the false sense of “me” and recognize the True Self. 3) You must give up the idea that your personal consciousness is in control and acknowledge that the Divine Will is in control, both as it works through your higher mind and as it expresses itself in the world all around you. You will stop trying to draw attention to yourself for your good deeds since the One Supreme Will does everything. You will drop all superstitious rituals that try to directly manipulate the world. And you will stop trying to please or bargain with a favor-granting “god” or “universe.”
Pursuing Specific Desires So what about pursuing specific desires? Is that “pushing the river,” as they say in Zen, rather than glowing with the flow? Some people joke that Buddhists desire to be desireless. But a better way to put it is that they have a healthy desire to be free from selfish desires. Without desire, there would be no motivation to do anything, including breathing and eating, so obviously it is good to pursue wholesome desires.
Abundance is about what you really need, not what you want.
A Few More of Bashar’s Ideas Bashar often tells us, “What you put out is what you get back.” (Your beliefs are reflected back to you.) He loudly proclaims, “This is not philosophy; this is physics!”
Your core beliefs are the DNA for the nature of your own reality, but not for any particular set of outer circumstances.
War Someone once asked Bashar (paraphrased), “So these wars, we are choosing these wars? This is what we want?” Bashar basically responds by saying that no, war is not specifically what we want and we are not choosing war per se. Instead, we are choosing core beliefs that lead to war without understanding the connection between the two.
One of the Seth books that I recommend is titled The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events and
So there is no need for any fighting at all. You do not need to overpower or outvote anyone or even convince anyone of anything. At the deepest level, you have never been a victim of anyone or anything. Your experience is your own personal responsibility. Just pick your core beliefs and let things flow naturally from there.
Highly Skilled Conscious Creation of Specific Circumstances Is Not a Path to Enlightenment
He clarifies it this way: “This idea of ‘conscious creation’ usually presumes a separate ‘me’ who can create something, but this ‘me’ is neither real in itself [standing apart from God on its own] nor does this ‘me’-sense have any actual power to create – only the One Divine Self manifests anything and everything.”
Let’s look at a few key economic ideas from the last chapter of the excellent 1988 book Whatever Happened to Divine Grace by Ramón Stevens, who channels Alexander. There we read about the two layers of our economic system: the premise of capitalism and the execution of capitalism. The premise of capitalism is that everyone must be free to follow their own inclinations and talents, and that everyone must be free to receive all the fruit of their own labor. This is in harmony with the natural order.
The first is “Nirguna Brahman,” which means “Reality without qualities” – Source-Awareness, completely formless, completely imperceptible. And the second phrase is “Saguna Brahman,” which means “Reality with qualities” – all of creation, and yet, still the same Reality. God and creation are One Reality, not two. This is why we use the word “nondual.” This is the deepest core idea pointed to by our ancient nondual wisdom.
So here’s the takeaway: Your fundamental identity is the One Actor, this uncreated, formless Divine Essence, Source-Awareness. Your nonfundamental identity is the totality of created reality: the stage, the props and all the characters. This is what you are through the process of creation. And your functional identity is the combination of the One Actor and the single character (this person) you appear to be. All of this is thoroughly divine since God is not merely infinitely intimate with all of creation, God is creation. It is God who is arising as everyOne and it is God who is doing everything. How wondrous!