The Flower

by David De Palo

Being alive, he thought he would take a stroll.

He came upon a flower.

The sun shone upon the earth, bathing one hemisphere in light.

He noticed his shadow was falling on the flower.

“No, not falling,” he mused, “but casting.”

His shadow was cast about the flower . . . and the flower did not mind.

The sun gave life to the flower, and yet it came and went with night and day, weather, seasons, trees, animals. So much about the flower was tenuous--dependent--and so much was fearless and strong.

And yet, the flower was none of those traits.

The flower was, technically, a weed--a dandelion.

And the man was, specifically, a middle-aged white male of one-hundred, fifty-four pounds.

“There is something in this, a truth I need to learn,” he said, still staring at the flower.

The moon was somewhere up there, orbiting the earth. A fly  buzzed past his ear. The galaxy spun upon the spoke of its center. His stomach growled, the sound like distant thunder.

“This flower . . . I don’t really know what it is. How extraordinary!”

He squat down, only slightly stiff from a round of tennis he’d played the day before. He could see some sort of small mites crawling between the petals.

“This flower is hosting life. This tiny flower is a world for something else.”

He scratched his curly black hair which was shot through with grey. Dandruff rained on the flower. He did not notice.

Nearby, some dandelion had molted. A gentle breeze stirred the air, wafting clouds of seed over him, liberated by the wind. 

He smiled and at first did not know why. And then he did. He knew the freedom of the seedlings, the joy of the flower, the gentleness of the wind. And he understood for the first time why everything worked the way it did.

“The sun loves the flower,” he said, “and the flower loves the sun. The wind loves the seeds. The seeds love the wind. The earth, the air, the water; all of it.”

He stood, smiling, and his back foot crushed an ant, a worm, and some blades of grass. A bluejay swooped before him, catching a slow-flying moth in its beak. He breathed in, swallowing a tiny gnat. Microbes under his arms broke down sweat into acids, increasing his smell. Offshore, in the water of the bay, a fish was snared by an abandoned net. Mount Etna, five-thousand miles away in Italy, released a plume of molten rock and ash.

He smiled as he exhaled. “I see. This is love, too. The bird loves the moth. And the moth . . .”

How could the moth love the bird, he wondered? The moth fled from the bird, did it not?

He heard the electronic bells of an ice-cream truck in the distance; the song reminded him of something long forgotten. His heart beat faster, reliving a feeling he’d experienced in his youth: excitement, joy, love for the ice cream truck. 

He bounced upon his toes to the music and then he knew.

“The moth does not flee,” he sang. “It dances!”

A moment of pure stillness filled his soul. All the world seemed to stop around him, a complete silence washed over his mind. His thoughts stopped and only the brilliance of the beloved filled his awareness. 

His body moved him forward toward a nearby bench. Then the body sat on the bench. 

A stray cat rushed over to him, rubbed its body on his leg, purring. His hand fell from his lap and the fingers idly scratched the smooth round head of the cat. The wind blew gently. The earth rotated. Somewhere, a flower opened.

To be in the world but not of it

The paradox of seemingly infinite creation and illusion can be understood only by the mind that does not fear the answer. For the answer signifies the end of all that is--as far as we believe we know it. And that seems to be fearful only to that part which is blind and dumb and confused. Let go control and submit to the will of God. Love is your purpose.

When we talk of projection and connection we are talking metaphorically, not literally. If my daughter throws a tantrum, she is not projecting my own frustration and guilt, she is struggling with her own awakening. Where projection comes in is how I perceive (project) her actions. If I see her as throwing a tantrum because she is frustrated by her lack of control, or the unfairness of the world, or whatever, then I am projecting my ego consciousness on her actions. However, if I simply see her actions as a call for love--no matter what she says or does--then I am SEEING THE MIRACLE. I am seeing through the veil into the true nature of God.

Too many on the spiritual path get confused by the onslaught of seemingly endless manifestations of their unrecognized guilt. They blame themselves somehow when things in their environment are not exactly perfect and harmonious. They've gone three-sixty from blaming the world for their suffering to blaming the suffering of the world on their own unresolved issues--and that is an error.

Enlightenment doesn't mean the external physical world changes around you. Enlightenment means you see the external physical world through an unfiltered lens of Christ Consciousness. It means you recognize, no matter what happens, that it's not your fault, it's not that bad, and you are loved.

The truth about life.

Life isn’t exactly how you think it is. 

You think you know how it works, and what you think is partially true, so it is effective, but you don’t know--you can’t possibly know the whole truth, and because of that you find yourself limited. If you only knew, as we do, how wonderful you are, how creative and beautiful and powerful, you would never question your destiny. You would have no fear. And having no fear, you would be practicing at your highest possible frequency, and as such, you would see almost instantaneous manifestation of your desires into your “reality.” 

But you are still finding yourself lacking, and that is an error.

Preference vs Acceptance or Buddhism vs Abraham & Bashar

Buddhism suggests the aim of enlightenment is to do away with preference, wanting, desire, and come into oneness with what is, but channels like Abraham and Bashar seem to contradict that, saying the point of existence is to “follow your excitement” and “fine tune your vortex through preference.”

How can one come to a place of acceptance when one has preferences; one situation over another; one lover over another; one body over another?

Well we have preference. You can not deny that. Would you prefer being smeared with feces to being clean? Answer truthfully. Can you say it does not matter either way?

Okay, so preferences (seem to) exist. But what is it that has preference? Is it the concept I have of my self, or is it my Self itself?

Obviously it is the concept of the self, for only the concept of the self can hold a concept such as cleanliness, or warmth, or even happiness. All concepts stem from the concept of the self, and the point of all spiritual practice is to transcend the concept of the self and arrive at the true essence of Self; you as you are in oneness with God. Only then is the concept of self denied, for only there (in oneness with God) is all-that-is found.

So how do we get there?

One practice is to deny preference and wanting and desire. Another practice is to fine tune preference and wanting and desire. Both are methods for becoming more self aware. You see. Both the channels and Buddhists can be right. Because it’s really about self awareness. And the more self aware we become, the more we realize that the self we are aware of, the concept of self we think we are, can not be the true Self. I could not have been put on this world to desire a Maserati, just as I could not have been put on this world to desire not to have a Maserati, or to be at peace with being smeared with feces. I could not have been put on this world for any purpose, as a matter of fact, because all purpose presupposes the necessity for something to be done, and if this were in fact the Real world, then all things would have be done. So I was not put on this world at all. I simply think I was put on this world, when in fact, I Am this world, this universe, this moment.

The truth is, I can not desire to be more than I am, because I am already all that is. The part that desires more is only a construct of the concept of my self which I hold onto.

In the end, the loss of self is the final key. When we can not know who we are, or what we are doing here, or what we are meant to do--when we can wander through the garden, eating when hungry, sleeping when tired, being at peace because nothing but peace is Real, then we are living in the truth of existence.

But must this come at the cost of all that we think we are? Must we lose our personality, our loved ones, our possessions?

Nothing need be lost. Only everything need be let go.

The Question of Lessons

This is a confusing paradox. On the one hand we need to accept what is--even the bad stuff--and look for the deeper meaning. In that way we learn and grow. Our souls learn and grow and move closer toward awakening. But on the other hand, we have to recognize that “what is” is arbitrary. God is not setting tests for us or asking us to jump through hoops. God simply IS, and is his ISNESS, he knows that we simply ARE also, so he’s not worried. He doesn’t bother with what seems to be going on here because it’s not relevant to WHAT IS; it has already happened, in fact. It’s over. (When I capitalize WHAT IS, I’m referring to the true nature of existence, not the manifest reality of form which we seem to be living in.) 

God is not setting us these challenges, we are. 

Huh?

Not WE the One Soul. But we the collected individuations of that One Soul, splintered and set adrift (for what reason it does not matter) not unlike the individuals in a pod of sperm on their life journey through the vagina toward enlightenment. Though each sperm is unique, they have all been created by the same One Thought, and though each sperm is unique in appearance (personality), they each share the same goal (purpose) so that when any one of them makes it, they all make it. 

Do you see it? On some level we feel this connection with each other, we know we all want the same thing; our higher selves--though still separate--have an inkling we are asleep and dreaming this dream of separation, and so they choose these different life paths--full of little tests--with the intention of learning enough to eventually awaken the individuated consciousness to the truth of its being: Oneness. And, since this is all happening in an instant, the soul can see what is and isn’t working and choose accordingly. Like choosing a character in a video game. We choose the character--based on our previous experience in the game--that we believe will have the best chance of succeeding (learning the lessons it will need to learn in order to win). 

So then why all the different paths? Why the different tests, the unexpected turns of fate? Why is everyone’s path unique?

Although each soul is an individuated aspect of the whole and as such is made up of the same stuff, each soul is not identical. Try dividing a chicken into equal parts; dark meat, light meat, gizzards, skins, feathers, beak, waddles, fingers, claws, etc. They’re all parts of the chicken and so, in that way, they are all the same--equally of source--but they have their own taste, their own predilections, their own personality if you will. And it is these distributed aspects of being which we see and recognize as archetypes. (I think there are 144, but that’s just a guess.) 

It explains why one soul manifest bravado in every character it chooses, while another manifests meekness, and still another manifests sloth, or cruelty, or vigor, etc.

Left alone playing the game, it might take a very long time for a soul to pick a character and make the proper decisions along that character’s timeline (life) for it to win (awaken). Sure, it would happen eventually. But because of this soul’s predilection for bravado, let’s say, it might imbue even the shyest character too full of the stuff for it to realize the need to choose again (in the game), to choose differently and so come to the crucial moment of awakening before dying and having to go through it all again. 

But the soul is not left alone. Although God does not interfere with our apparent suffering here in the world of form, he does send his messenger, his Spirit: the Holy Spirit in fact.

The Holy Spirit steps in and offers a helping hand. “You’re doing fine, my son, but would you mind if I made a suggestion?” And maybe the soul turns away the first fifty-thousand times, but then on one reiteration the soul accepts. And the Holy Spirit offers, “Was you to play the character of the avant-garde composer with a floundering career in the twenty-first century, I think you might learn the final truth.” And the soul is like: “Okay. Whatever.” And boom. You find yourself here, writing a blog, running an avant-garde music business, raising some kids, and slowly awakening to the heaven that is all around you.

But that’s just the start. Your soul has finally chosen a life path that is well suited to your awakening. Now it’s up to you to recognize that each of your decisions is modifying that path every moment of every day. You had been living in a nightmare reality where the only things certain were death and taxes. You’ve decided there must be more to life than that. You’ve started to search. You have found which ever path suits you best. Now you just have to believe in that path! It’s not about talking the talk, it’s about walking the walk.

The game is really simple once you know the rules. It’s like a maze. You just have to keep making decisions based on Love rather than fear. 

Always. 

Truly do that and you will awaken in this lifetime.

The Thought Paradox

Okay. On the one hand I say your thoughts create (or at least effect) your reality. But then, on the other, I say that thoughts are the cause of all suffering. How can these two different points of view be reconciled? Are they simply different steps? Do you first need to control your thoughts, realign them so to speak, before you can do away with them? That doesn’t seem right.

I think it’s easier to understand this way; Thoughts are not the cause of suffering. It is the belief that our thoughts are true which causes suffering. In addition, while it may seem that some thoughts can make us feel “good.” In truth, those thoughts are not the cause of the good feeling. Instead, they simply help remove the blocks we have created to the awareness of our innate “good” feeling, our joy.

So the “good” thought is the one that releases our joy. The “bad” thought--erroneous, unnecessary, judgmental, worry causing, doubt, anger, hate filled thoughts--are the ones that buttress the blocks to inhibit our natural state. So any thought which seems to make you feel badly should be questioned. Where does it come from?

But how do you know which thoughts are valid (or natural) and which are in error? You can’t. They must all be questioned. Let’s look at an example. Perhaps you have a daughter going to a friend’s house after school for a sleep-over. Your daughter doesn’t call to let you know she arrived. Yet the parent’s haven't called either to say she hasn’t arrived. The thought comes into your head: I should call to see that she made it there okay. Then four things can happen.

1) You call and find out. 2) You call because you are worried if you don’t something “bad” might happen. 3) You don’t call and worry. 4) You don’t call and don’t worry.

If you call simply because it comes into your head and you do it--like feeling thirsty and getting a glass of water. Then bravo. You have acted without interference from thought! However, if you called because you were worried your daughter might come to harm, or if you were checking up on her because you didn’t trust her, then you were allowing your thoughts to control your actions. You were buying into the collective consciousness of doubt and fear. You were saying that your daughter could come to harm. You were denying the truth of existence and buying into the illusion of ego consciousness. Had you killed your daughter with your bare hands would have been no different than believing that one thought... 

Then again, you might not call because you don’t want to bother the other girl’s parents, or because you don’t want to embarrass your child, or because you just feel awkward; in that case, your not-calling is in error. You have projected your own fears and foibles onto people you know nothing about. Sure, we’re all connected, and so they are an extension of yourself, but that doesn’t mean they are an extension of your  personality, it means they are extensions of your soul.

You see where this is heading. It’s not what you do, it’s how (or why) you do it. But just to complete the example:

If you don’t call and spend your time worrying if she is okay, what have you done? You have wasted the Now by speculating on the future. But even more than that, you have denied the truth of her--and your--existence. You have bought into the collective fear-based consciousness that demands constant vigilance over the ever present (illusory) danger of death.

What if you don’t call and don’t worry? Are you callous? Uncaring? A bad parent?

Once again, it depends on the motivation. If you don’t call and don’t worry because you’re out partying with your friends and have forgotten all about your daughter, then yes, it’s fair to say that you’re not the best parent. But if you don’t call and don’t worry because you know that nothing “bad” can ever truly happen (but you are also willing to accept whatever does seem to happen, even up to the point of your daughter’s possible kidnapping) then bravo once again. You have learned to act and be in harmony with God’s will.

This is not to say you should not be prudent. It simply suggests that when you live knowing the truth of existence--that we are spiritual beings having a temporary physical--and therefore implicitly illusory--experience, there is no room and no need for fear . . . ever. Its like playing a video game. You may jump into the hot lava every now an then just to see what happens to the character--maybe it’s funny to see the way it screams and turns inside out--but you get more enjoyment by staying alive, moving on, finding your way through the maze, defeating the bosses, and achieving the final goal. 

But it’s no big deal if you fail, you will just try again. You have unlimited lives to try. You have unlimited lifetimes to get it right!

Awakening through Sound

Last night at 6:30 was the annular solar eclipse of the sun. It was also the start time for a New Moon Crystal Bowl Ceremony led by Dominic Moore at the studio.

I touched true being; the Nothingness of Source. I heard absolute silence. I moved in and through the music as I made it, as I heard it, as I was it. The purity of the tones along with the group toning we did affected me much more powerfully that anything else had ever done in my earthly experience. 

I experienced reality from the perspective of Oneness at the same time as I experienced it through the veil of my own illusion. My two closest projections, Chloë and Ava, were in the studio with me. At one point Ava came and lay on my lap. Fidgeting a bit, but in truth, just wanting to be part of the ceremony.

She lay and squirmed . . . and then she began to scratch on the carpet. I did the same and we created an amazing rhythmic accompaniment to the sounds Dominic was making in the center of the room! Then Ava and I played bass drum and gong and crystal bowl. Intense.

And even as I sometimes corrected Ava, for the most part I agreed with her sounds and presence. Still, I didn’t shy away from stopping her when I felt it was right. There was no frustration or worry, though. That was the key. There were many paying customers, eight or nine, but I didn’t let that effect me. Ava was as much a part of that opening experience as was Chloë who was working quietly on her computer in the back room.

I went inside a tone at one point!

I experienced the stopping of time. I felt the enormous power of the earth; sensed the filtered rays of the sun shining down on me through the walls of the studio. I was charged. I am charged. I have been changed drastically, and yet I am still exactly the same. I came home to find cat poo in the bedroom. I cleaned it up.

Chop wood, carry water.

How can this world be an illusion?

There are two schools of thought which fight against the recognition of the illusion, or the Maya as it is called in Hinduism. The first most common complaint is that shit happens and we feel it. How can it be an illusion? 

The second far less common but perhaps even stronger complaint is that God is everywhere, therefore nowhere can be apart from God, therefore nowhere can be untrue--so none of this can be illusion.

But consider that God is eternal and infinite. If we accept that, and if we accept that we are of God, expressions of the Oneness that we call God, then how can we ever die? How can anything ever die?

It can't. Not if we know we are of God. So then, what is happening all around us? How is the universe expanding and slowly dying? How can a person die, or a sun, or a galaxy? 

They couldn't, of course, if they were real. So then . . . they must not be real. The illusion of death is all part of our projection of reality. 

But what's the point of knowing that?

The point is that knowing the world is an illusion allows us to forgive and to accept everything we seem to experience in it. We no longer fight, and by not fighting, we slowly wear down duality toward oneness. By not fighting, we no longer create good and evil and so we return to eden, to paradise, to the state before man tasted the forbidden fruit and "knew of good and evil."

Nothing real can be threatened

Nothing unreal exists.

This (from A Course in Miracles) just means that what we are, God, can not be anything but God. So death, suffering, disease, lack, worry, competition, decay . . . life. None of these are real. What is real is our nature as Spirit. When we understand that we can be at peace.

There is a way that all things can seem illusory and yet be wonderful at the same time. You think this world is a dream--and you are correct--but that does not mean the world is 100% error. It is your perception of the world as all there is which causes it to become 100% error. 

The first foot set on the path toward atonement leads you into the grace of the Holy Spirit. There His gentle guidance accelerates your step, and His love transmogrifies the dream. When you see the world as wondrous, joyful, full of love and light, then you are seeing the corrected version of the world. In the corrected version, all things are possible, because you know it is only a construct, and you know it is an amicable construct. The Holy Spirit allows your way in the world to be soft. Be easy, life is not meant to be so serious.

Satsang with Mooji & Gangaji

I like these two so I found a playlist and copied it here.

How Thoughts Affect Reality

Wherever you are in your path, this is the most important concept you need to understand before you can move forward: Your Thoughts (conscious and unconscious) affect Your Reality. This is what books/movies such as “The Secret” and “What the Bleep do We Know” and “You Can Heal Your Life” suggest. This is what the following steps are all about, the reason they can work at all. But this is also a radical theory to many people, and so I will attempt first to illustrate the truth of it. 

We all know that our state of mind affects how we perceive the world. When you feel grumpy everything seems to goes wrong--your world appears to treat you grumpily. When you’re confident everything seems to be easy for you. When you’re happy the whole world seems to smile back at you. But what if we reassessed cause and affect? What if the world treated you badly (grumpily) because you expected it to do so? What if things went your way because you expected them (confidently) to do so? What if the smiling world wasn’t smiling at you, but reflecting your own happy thoughts and feelings back to you? Wouldn’t you come to the conclusion that your thoughts--the way you see the world--affect how the world seems to become manifest in your experience? Wouldn’t you come to the conclusion that your thoughts affect everything?

Imagine walking across Central Park in Manhattan on a hot summer night. It’s four in the morning. You need to pass through a tunnel. A bunch of thugs are loitering near the entrance, smoking and laughing and watching you approach. You’re afraid. You think they’re drug addicts. You think they might mug you. You walk past without looking at them, holding your bag or purse or books close to your body, hoping they won’t notice you. Hoping they won’t bother you.

What happens?

Of course; you get mugged. You’re a perfect target. You’re scared and everything about you projects fear. Everything--even your thoughts--project you as a victim.

Now imagine the scene again. It’s a warm summer night. You hear distant traffic, crickets, frogs, and cicadas. The night air is warm. You walk through Central Park in Manhattan and you’re completely tuned into your surroundings. You’re in love with the stars in the sky, the smell of the grass, the whispering of the wind in the trees. You come to a tunnel and notice the intricately carved trefoil arch, the wonderful brownstone exterior bordering a sixty-six foot brick interior; it looks mysterious but inviting. You wonder how the acoustics will be inside. You look with interest to the group of young men at the mouth of the tunnel. They look at you, curious to see who would brave the most notoriously dangerous park in the world in the very dead of night. And you smile and nod to them as you walk past. “Beautiful evening,” you say, eyes bright, back straight, and you mean it.

What happens?

Sure, they might still mug you. But have the odds changed? Is there a greater possibility they will think twice? Of course there is. Perhaps they would be taken aback by your confident demeanor. Or maybe they’d think you were a crazy vigilante and not worth the struggle. The point is, the only thing that would have changed was your perception of the situation, yourself, and by extension, the world. But your thoughts would have affected your reality. 

Step two of the following process comes from French Philosopher Pierre Tielhard de Chardin; it is the recognition that you are not a body having a spiritual experience, you are a spirit having a physical experience. This is key to controlling your thoughts in situations which seem to be negative. If you recognize that nothing which happens to your body ever really touches that which you truly are, there can never be any cause for fear no matter what your situation.

Sure. It’s seems impossible that all this is just an illusion as the spikes are driven through your hands. But that is exactly what the crucifixion was meant to reveal...If you can bring yourself to understand the truth about the power of thought, then you will be able to put it into practice, no matter what seems to be happening around you. And understanding the truth about your soul is still not the same as knowing. So, in order to know we attempt to retrain our subconscious beliefs. This is why it may take so long for some people to achieve results. They expect their outer world to change before they change their inner landscape, and it can’t happen that way. So we repeat certain affirmations or mantras which may seem from the outside to be simple polyanna-ish positive thinking, but in truth, we are un-doing the brainwashing of our ego’s and re-training our minds to know ourselves to be unlimited, omnipotent, and omnipresent: God, in other words.

Personal preference is another example of how our thoughts create our reality. One person hates a particular piece of music (or painting, or type of food, or smell) while another person loves it. The music (or painting, or type of food, or smell) hasn’t changed. It’s the perception--the thought--of the respective people toward the static object that is different. So what then is the truth about the object? What then is real?

On the highest level there is only one truth; everything is an expression of one thought; everything is fundamentally connected on the level of Source. On the highest level of being there is no duality, no good or bad, everything simply IS. But here, while writing and reading this, we are not at the highest level--or more accurately, we are not aware that we are at that highest level--yet. We seem to be here in this world and our thoughts seem to give meaning to everything we perceive. Therefore, when a tree falls in a forest it doesn’t make a sound unless someone is there to hear it. In this way we all make our own truth. So I say choose not to be a victim. Choose to understand that your thoughts today reflect your reality tomorrow. Choose to understand that cause and effect are backwards in our accepted paradigm of reality.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? 

What came first was actually the idea of both.