I'm So Tired, I Can't Sleep

During late nights such as this one, I long to stay awake just another minute if only to wait to see what more I can discover about You in that next moment. I am the newborn kangaroo slowly making its necessary and inspiring journey up the body of its mother, searching for the peace, comfort, warmth, and security that comes only when it reaches its home in mommy's pouch.

I cannot be
Without me in You
And You in me.

You and I are coming together again at last! I know it has only been I who has delayed our reunion - although I now begin to understand that we have never been apart except in my mind, which has caused me to experience a separation that has never been, and never will be, real. I never want to leave You or the Love You breathe into me even for a few hours of physical rest. And, of course, I even realize (with my mind only at this point) that You do not leave me even then. Yet, what is it that I am trying to say:

Can it be that I am nothing when I do not know You as Me? This certainly strikes right at the heart of the matter. I could fall into You for an eternity and never grow tired of the wonders I would behold as I continued floating and circulating through the veins of Your Life. I sit here tonight typing these feeble words to express my gratitude to You - to All of You - for Being You and Being Me. I am in awe of this Power found in the unbound Soul. Your Soul. My Soul. Our Soul.

I know not what else can be said.

A Love Note

I Love You. All of You. There is nothing of You that I do not Love.
You Love Me. All of Me. There is nothing of Me that You do not Love.
All is Well. All is Joy. All is Love.

I Love You.

Love,

Paul

Looking Out a Black Window

Looking out a black window
I can know only me
As me.

There's something in the way
Of what the Soul seeks
To see.

Wind blows; light breaks through.
My image fades; I soar
With You.

The All and The Everything

I am coming to know myself now as I truly am. I am truly Infinity, Eternity, Love, Compassion, Peace, Serenity, Contentment, Joy. There is nothing that I am not: I am Everything!

I just wish that everyone could read these words and repeat them with me - without shame or fear, without unnecessary modesty, without arrogance:

There is nothing that I am not: I am Everything!

You are. You really are. And if you could just remember this, if each of us could just recall who we really are, our world would change completely in that instant. If we know this statement to be true, then we see the God in ourselves and the God in everyone else and we know not what separation is anymore.

I know you may not know this yet, and I know I am still in the process (and I will always be, thank God) of fully remembering who I am and what I am doing here, but everything I have experienced in my life has led me to this moment to declare that I am the All and the Everything. I say this with only Love even as many of you would hate the "over-confidence" of the declaration. I do not, however, limit being "the All and the Everything" to just me. Everyone of us are the All and the Everything for it is not possible for there to be anything that is apart from "the All and the Everything."

When I look at each of you as you rush past me in your cars, when I see you running anxiously to catch your flights in the airports, when I observe you working so hard to make another person look bad, when I notice the misery in your hearts over the delusions in which you believe, when I watch you hate and destroy each other and our world, I see only God. I stare right at every human being, and I see God - another aspect of God - God being God in His/Her/Its myriad forms.

Yet, I also understand something else when I observe you doing everything you can to defeat yourself: I understand that the God I see does not know that he/she is God.

The only thing I want to convey here is that Now (and only Now) is the perfect time to remember the Divine Stuff of which you are made. There is nothing hindering you. There is nothing binding you. There is nothing enslaving you. There is no situation that is greater than Who You Are. All of these excuses that you make for not knowing, for not becoming awake to Reality, are as transparent as the wind. Unless you choose for them to be as unconquerable as the universe itself. For God cannot be bound by anything except by what He/She/It chooses to be bound by.

This means that you are deciding in each moment, albeit unconsciously, to wallow in the futility of believing that what you see with your human eyes can somehow contain the Force that You Really Are. Nothing can impose anything upon you without your choosing for it to be so. And you choose to be defeated, limited, and tortured each time you believe you are at the mercy of forces greater than yourself.

So all I hope to do here, both for myself and for everyone, is to remind each of us that it is impossible for us to be victimized in this life. Everything we experience, we have chosen to experience. This is the greatest secret on earth, and it is filled with all of the Love that is God. Why would this be the most wonderful wisdom for all the world to understand? Because, if all we have chosen to experience thus far has brought us nothing but suffering, we can now see that we have the power to call forth a new experience without being constrained by any of the perceived limitations that we once believed held us back.

We cannot be stopped accept by our own willingness to be. There is great Power in that. There is great Beauty in that. There is great Love in that. There is great Truth in that. Remember this in every moment you can, and you will trust, as I now do, that You are God and God is You.

The Limitation of Imitation

Accept no imitations! How clear can this be made to all of us? No one wants to hear this, of course. Therefore, if we don't want to hear it, we won't. This life really is wonderful, and we truly always get what we request in our experience of creating ourselves.

Ok, ok, I'm not making any sense to most, probably. I get so excited about all of this - so impassioned by what I am seeing and so eager to pass it on to anyone who will hear so that they, too, may know who they really are.

Where do I begin? Back to the beginning I'll go. We are imitators! This is how we live our lives and this is why we find no real spiritual satisfaction in most of our organized religions. Should a caterpillar decide to hold at bey its butterfly nature because it meets with worms a few times a week and worms say it is good to be like them, to follow the rules of their life, to stay on the ground, to not change form? Would not the caterpillar be missing out on the greatest part of its life if it decided to live like the worms with whom it meets just to stay in their community? Could the caterpillar realize the joy of the life it is meant to have if it refuses to believe that its unique butterfly nature is its true nature in favor of believing it is better to conform to the truth of the worms in order to avoid being alone? Is it not obvious that the caterpillar would experience misery and suffering in resisting the truth of its being, yet that it would experience only an exquisite peace and contentment in allowing its true nature to express to the universe what the caterpillar truly is?

I know some reading this may find my example absurd. However, I tell you with all the love in my heart that this is EXACTLY how we live! We are a Soul that, as Emerson stated, "refuses limits," yet we pain ourselves by limiting it to the life we would say it should have based on the ideas and doctrines that have been force-fed us by selfish, psychopathic individuals. We have, in fact, accepted these "beliefs" so readily because we ourselves are selfish, psychopathic individuals and it serves the selfish desire of the mind (that believes that the person must be divided in order for it to remain relevant and thus "alive") from which we are living to have someone tell us every week what is right and what is wrong without us ever having to figure that out for ourselves. Then, we actually have the gall to wonder why we feel no depth to what we study in our religious environments, and we don't understand why we cannot find practical applications for the rules and laws we go there to have brainwashed into our minds so that our minds can then try to impose these arbitrary limits upon our Boundless Souls.

We look to books and we look to so-called prophets and we look to the "Only Begotten Son of God" and we beg these resources to "be my source of truth because I cannot bear to think for myself." The ignorant mind is then confounded when reading book after book after book and imitating the messages of the books and the teachers and the prophets fails to quiet its incessant desires that cause it to suffer. How can such a person who looks outside of himself/herself for Truth find anything but discontent and suffering? This is the very definition of a "house divided against itself."

This is what Christ and Buddha (I use these names as very popular spiritual masters, although there are and have been many, many others who have been here to show us the way) tried to show to us all: set no one above you (even Me Christ, Me Buddha) because everything I am you can be (and, in fact, already are), too. Yet, you cannot be this by imitating those who would constrain you to their view of the world. You cannot be the God You Are by analyzing "scripture" and books and even Me (Christ, Buddha) who is showing you this. Rather, these scriptures and these books and I (Christ, Buddha) am here to guide you back to the only real source of Truth for anyone: Yourself!

Just observe that these two Beings are considered two of the most creative and original people ever to have walked the earth. Their teachings and examples were so controversial, so far off the beaten path, that many in their presence did not know what to make of them. Still, all who had the honor of being in the presence of these enlightened men could sense they were witnesses to Someone Magnificent. Then, observe the religious culture of the times and societies in which they lived: the Pharisees were self-righteous, hypocritical, blind slaves of a "law" that they could not even comprehend yet that they followed in order to look "holy" before other men. And the Buddha was a man in search the root cause of suffering in order that he might end it once and for all, and during his quest, he tried the fasting and other ritualistic techniques of the spiritual seekers in the forest. Did either man, however, follow in the footsteps of the accepted relious establishments of the time? The answer is obvious to anyone observing this with the least bit of objectivity (i.e. without the conditioned eye bent toward holding onto the idea that these men somehow accomplished something that we cannot).

Both Christ and Buddha did something remarkably simple that for its simplicity is totally incomprehensible to most of us now: both men observed what was not working (e.g. the rules and observances of the Pharisees and the practices and rituals of the spiritual seekers in the forest) for humans in their attempt to connect with the Ultimate, and both men then dropped what was not working and made their own way. They did not imitate. They Created. Each one then set out to show us that we are Creators as well.

Oh, look at us now! We meet in churches or temples or whatever we want to call them, and we do our damnedest to box in the teachings of these men by calling them greater than us and accepting that we are "Children of a Lesser God" through our creation of stale doctrines, dead mythologies, and empty rituals that we say Jesus and Buddha commanded us to believe and imitate without questioning. If we do not obey these (and notice that everyone has their own interpretation of these - who in the world is right?), then we will be punished with eternal damnation and suffering. Now this, to me, sounds like the old, unoriginal, imitation-worn, self-serving ideas of beings who have decided to be both "in and of this world." This sounds like human history to me, and Christ and Buddha, we have already observed, were Creators, not imitators. Therefore, how could I possibly accept (if I am observing properly) that they would reduce themselves to being the way humans have chosen to be for millenia by becoming imitations of how the rest of us choose to act and see the world (i.e. our desire for the comfort of routine [doctrines and rituals], our resistance to change [doctrines and rituals], our fear of dying [lack of true connection with God], our belief in punishment for those who wrong us [mythologies], our need for "rules" or "laws" to tell us what to do [doctrines and rituals], our longing to judge those who do not follow these "laws" [doctrines], etc. etc.)?

No, what we have reduced the lives of Christ and Buddha to is abhorrent. In our desire to imitate, we would have them be imitators of our imitations. You can all deny this until Kingdom Come (although Its already Here), but our world and its present condition, and the suffering condition of human beings all over it, is a testament to the shallow "herd" mentality to which we have attached, and enslaved, ourselves. Do not even dare to try to tell me that we do not have the power of Christ and Buddha to do something as simple as observe that what we are doing does not work for Who We Say We Want To Be. If we just looked at everything within and outside of us without justifying what we see, we would become "the Way" that Christ knew himself to be because we would no longer be wasting our real powers on denying what is True. If we just look at ourselves without fear of what we may find, we will see (it is guaranteed by God) why we have created such a mess. In that same moment, we will know exactly how to create ourselves and the world anew.

Imitating the truth that others would force upon you will always bring you back to the same pain, selfishness, misery, and suffering that comes with not allowing the Soul to express Itself and create Who You Are based on the Eternal Truths only It can reveal to you. Like Christ and Buddha, we are all Glorious Creators because we are all a part of the Ultimate Creator - God.

Therefore, the next time you feel spiritually starved and you return to the same futile search for your truth by asking others to tell you what to do about the suffering you are experiencing, create a new option, a new path, by going within and allowing yourself to remember the Truth by tapping into your True Nature that understands that imitation is death and Creation is Life. If you persist at this, you will come to accept what is (right now, in your present condition) so painfully obvious, and yet, so consistently denied by the mind: I hurt only because I have chosen to suppress what is Real and Original about me in favor of creating a false life of imitation of what everyone else tells me is real. This insight is the cocoon in which your butterfly nature will, with patient self-observation, create you anew with the wings of the Magnificent expression of Your Truth.

What You Would Have Me Remember

All this week I have thought myself into forgetting where I am and where I am going. After all this time I see it is still so easy to do. Then, that same forgetful thought, once I have grabbed onto it and called it Me, transforms into something more imposing: it whispers menacingly in my head - day and night - that I am failing in my efforts to know You. Again, I find myself overwhelmed by worries with the world, and, through the fog of the suffering caused by these worries, I cannot see or even believe that You can do anything to help me.

I have tried to remain diligent anyway. I sense even in moments of very little consciousness of what I am being in these moments that I am supposed to remember something vital about this life. This unexplainable feeling seems to ask me to look at...what? Perhaps, I think, I am being invited to look at what is hurting within me in order that I might see Your Will in that pain. Of course, I know, even in my darkest moments, that it is not You Who brings the pain, but I also know from experience with Your Majestic Ways that, if I just go into the pain of which I am so afraid, I will find You patiently waiting there to reveal to me that what I thought was real was but an illusion. There have been several situations this week, while I was doing things but forgetting what I choose to be because I was so immersed in the doing that I could not conceive of being anything, in which the pressure within me became so unbearable that I just cried out inwardly to just know Your Will for me.

I have known futility firsthand this week (not for the first time by any means), and it is this: trying to find an escape from who I am through judgements about this world and me and comparisons to what my thoughts tell me I should be doing about the conflicting states I find myself in.

You have been with me throughout, and, if I was not sure of this, You renewed my faith again today. While driving home from another day of what I have judged to be burdensome and banal work, I was able to see clearly, even if for but a moment, just how far You have brought me from where I was. For instance, at the first sighting of troubled thoughts about an event or person or situation, I used to run away - many times physically run away and many times run away into some self-pity or despair or depression. I have felt that tug on my mind to run again this week. Yet, I did not surrender to its unconscious prodding.

I will stay the course, not out of any stubbornness or fear of being wrong, but out of a deep longing for You and a pervasive understanding that Your Love is my only salvation. Thus, walking back to where I used to be - where my mind finds a familiar, but tormented home - just because my mind, in its panic over how far we've travelled from the lies it has built its home upon, tells me I am going in the wrong direction is now known to me to be the most useless option. In fact, it is no longer an option, so clear is my vision as I look upon the ruinous wasteland this constant "turning back" has made of me up to this point. I never could have seen with this clarity before You (although I acknowledge - as if You need me to do that - that You were always with me only I cared not to notice), and this gift from You alone has changed me in ways I could never describe to anyone who has not personally seen Your Will in their own transformation without that person thinking me insane. You are allowing me to see just who I am being - whether my mind likes it or not - so that I may know intuitively the next step toward transcending any lower levels of being I have trapped myself within, which moves me, then, into successively higher remembrances of who I really am. I must now take action that is guided by the Light of the knowledge You are giving me about myself. The key is that I must take these new actions despite the protestations of a mind that sees its power being usurped by Your Higher Wisdom, and, because it feels betrayed, it accuses the Wisdom of being Ignorance. Yet, I know You are true because of this: You do not judge or hate the mind for judging You to be ignorant and even evil. Instead, You welcome the confused mind, too, to share in Your boundless Love.

You found Me! I did not find You. There is ultimate comfort and peace and joy in this understanding. You never required me to go on a journey to search for You. You have always been there just waiting for me to notice You, never pushing me to see you and never becoming impatient with my ignorance. You have designed this wonderful life to help me remember that You never forget me, even if I forget about You. I know there is nothing that You will not do for me, if only I remember to ask for Your Help. You will not force Yourself upon us because that would defeat Your purpose for creating us, and this contributes to another way in which You do not judge us: whether we choose Your Will or not in any given moment, You are always standing by to lighten our burden even in that moment in which we have denied Your ability or power to show us the way in this Life. We cannot know a Love any greater than this, but we can choose to be this Ultimate Love that is You.

The diligence that You have provided me was born out of Your diligent watch over me. Understanding today (again) that You found me, not the other way around, has obliterated any false thoughts about what You can do for me when my mind puts me on the chopping block. The doubts I experienced earlier this week while being consumed by worry and fear and frustration could only, and can only, be healed by You, never by the promises these same negative feelings manifest in my thoughts. You found Me! And for this, I am eternally grateful.