As you begin to gain the greater awareness of connection, how can you hold a grudge?  How can you be indifferent?  How can you be in judgment, when you see the Life Force as it is, seemingly happening--often--in spite of circumstances and conditions?  You begin to live with an awareness, in presence and being, of the connections in Life, realizing that the time allotted to human beings is very short compared to the standing universe, to that of existence: a mere spot, a moment in all of eternity.  You can spend that moment in suffering, or you can spend it in connection.  You can spend a moment in the perception of separation, living in guilt and judgment, fear and survival, or you can spend that moment in celebration, loving what-Is, embracing what-Is, understanding what-Is to the best of your ability.
 
Is there really any time to waste on guilt or shame or judgment or remorse?  Is there any time to waste on "What if?", or "should", or "shouldn't"?  From this perspective, at times I can see the foolishness of human beings, so caught up into the selfish agendas, the "me first", the "what about me?", "what's in it for me?", losing sight of what actually is.  When you live in separation, you live in a realm of consensus reality, conditions, beliefs, and concepts; you live alone.  Even in the midst of crowds of people, you are alone.  You search for some identity, some recognition, some connection, but the core of your being, the very heart of existence, seems separate, so there can never be any real connection.  You fabricate connections; you try to establish realizations.  You have an intellectual awareness of possibilities, but unless the heart is there, unless the core of your existence is awakened, you are like zombies walking around, having "sort of" experiences, but no deep realization, no accessing the unlimited possibilities of each moment, so caught up into the what-ifs, the shoulds, the shouldn'ts, so afraid, absorbed in so much strain, struggling to survive, to hold some ideal, some belief, some concept. 
 
It is really to no avail, for your life can be snuffed out at any moment; it can all come to an end.  There is so much written, so much striving--to achieve, to believe, to conceive, to prepare--and so little is done to actually live: to live in presence, to live in connection, to recognize the fleetingness of Life, the fleetingness of your own existence, and to come to grips and awareness of all the time that has been wasted in remorse or guilt or judgment or "should have", all the time spent in being self-centered, alone. 
 
When you think about the whole of your life, when you realize how Life works, you can see that there are no guarantees or assurances.  There is no promise, because it is left to each of you to find within yourself the fortitude, the awareness, the power, and the connections.  Life does not force or compel you to achieve or to fail.  Life is not against you, Life just Is.  When you can live in the awareness and connection that Life Is, you begin to realize the true source of existence, the true place of being; whatever you call it is just a word, a label. 
 
This realization involves seeing that it is not outside, that it is inside, that everything you need is inside; every ability, every talent, every awareness, every possibility exists within you already.  It is like a gold mine that is just waiting to be found.  You keep looking on the outside--to books, to practices, and to systems; you keep looking for solutions, for remedies, for healing, and for enlightenment.  You keep looking on the outside.  Yet all that is on the "outside" is darkness.  There is no existence that is on the "outside."  All existence is within.  When you realize that, you come to see all the programming, all the ideals, all the judgments, the expectations, and the problems, as non-existent.  They "exist" only on the outside.  You bring them in by belief; you open the door to separation through belief. 
 
The beauty of it is that a door you have opened, you can also close.  You can realize that the source of existence is within.  You can realize that the knowledge, the information, is within.  You access it from within; not through great clamoring or effort or study or learning, but through presence and being.  It is a direct experience.  When you have learned that you cannot learn Life, you become full of wisdom.  You have to live Life; you have to experience it.  Of course, one of the tools that is necessary is trust, trusting that it is possible, trusting that there is something within you that is worthy of discovery, that within you there is that place of the universe where everything Is, all possibilities co-existing side by side, moment by moment, waiting to be discovered. 
 
Humans have been notorious for looking outside, looking with expectations, wants and desires, expecting from the outside some savior, some deliverance, the right word, the right concept, the right program, the right religion, expecting that it will somehow bring a gift of awareness.  But really the bottom line is the experience, and if you are afraid to experience, you have already cut yourself off.  You will live in programs, beliefs and concepts.  You can gain all the knowledge in the world, yet still be the most ignorant individual on the planet.  Intelligence, knowledge, those things that can be learned, are simply rungs of a ladder that lead to something that is priceless, something that is worth your whole life in attaining.

Most people cling to the rungs of the ladder, expecting a particular rung to be it, forgetting that they begin this journey at birth, and the journey is about the direct experience of Life.  Most individuals manage to escape the experience, living somehow as the other, creating a selfish persona, a "me," that is always in competition with the supposed powers-that-be, always looking for something, wanting something, being sick, diseased, addicted, lonely and separate. 
 
The intellect rationalizes, "Well, I haven't found the right religion, the right practice, the right path, the right teacher; I haven't found the way", or "It's their fault; my parents' fault; the government's fault; the world's fault; karma's fault."  If Life were controlling, if Life were an agenda, you could get by with that kind of thinking.  "Yes, it's Life's fault that I'm not successful. It's Life's fault that I am diseased.  It's Life's fault that I am lonely."  But Life does not control.  From the perspective of the conditional mind, Life is really indifferent to you.  Not too satisfying is it?
 
Humans are always searching for some "God" that will love them, but they have given up the expectation that "God" will love them unconditionally; it is a very conditional God they have conceptualized.  Religions are conditional:  God will love you, if you do the right thing; if you do the wrong thing, God will expel you, punish you for eternity.  Some believe that if they sacrifice their life, they will get to enjoy a host of virgins on the other side.  Some believe that if they live a pure life, they will get to sit at God's feet, play harp music, and walk on golden streets.  Some believe that even if they don't live a good life, they will get to come back and do it again.  You see, it is all about "outside"; it is all about the other.  Very few ever get around to recognizing where it is, or even what it is.  It is really an inside job.  That is why I said there is nothing out there; the "outside" is all darkness. 
 
Existence is energy waiting to be utilized and manifested in whatever way, whatever mold, whatever process can take place, but it is not usable from the outside.  "God," "heaven", "hell", and "the next lifetime" are all concepts which humans have devised about the outside.  They are concepts that come from the unknowing; it is like a child, who hasn't the slightest idea of the truth, making up stories.  Such stories can be interesting, even exciting, but there is no truth to them.  They are wolves in sheep's clothing.  The stories that humans feed themselves, in some way to pacify themselves, have a subtle divisiveness to them.
 
You continue to search, trying to make sense of the world around you, but really the only way to know is to come inside, to come into this place of silence.  The place of silence is where you are not reaching out, not striving after something, not using the intellect to calculate or figure out; instead, there is a stillness, and the stillness increases the more you can let go of any concept, any belief, any perception of need or lack or want or don't-want, any judgment, expectation or resistance.  The more you let go of these things, the more still you become, until finally there is that moment--actually when you least expect it--when you suddenly have the experience.  You have a direct experience of Life.  You may laugh, you may cry; you may feel as if you have lost your mind, but you've had the experience; you have experienced Life-as-it-is.  At that point, you are no longer concerned with who's there or who's not there.  You are no longer concerned with a goal, a should or shouldn't; there is no more judgment, no more resistance, no more attachment. 
 
The intellect thinks, "Oh, that means I will just fall into oblivion and do nothing."  No, not quite.  Because of the direct experience of The Consciousness itself, the real You, there is a creative explosion of possibilities; suddenly the whole universe opens up to you, and you realize that you can do anything.  You can direct yourself in any way.  You can move and exist and be all that you can imagine as possible.  There is only one requirement: that you remain in silence, that is, you don't let the intellect become activated and start laying shoulds and shouldn'ts on you; you don't fall into judgments about your creation; instead, you recognize, "Oh, that's it; now what?"
 
There is a movement, a dance, and an unfolding to direct experience.  It is like the rose.  Most humans go about it backwards: they try to get the rose to open by pulling on the outside petals.  What happens?  The petals come off.  You have to wait for the rose to open from within.  There is something within the rose that causes the petals to begin to open, and any amount of prying or forcing just messes it up.  You may get it open by prying, but it will be unnatural, deformed, and it won't last very long.  The opening of the rose takes time.  Your opening takes time. For some the opening will be quicker than for others, but it comes from within.  It is not a matter of confidence or ability.  It is not a matter of what you know or what you have learned.  Those things are fertilizers.  They can assist, but they are not really it.  They can help, but you can't get the experience through those things.  On the other hand, you may not have the experience without those things, so it is a bit of a paradox.  As you become silent and present, you begin to understand the "no way-ness" of Life, that there is not a process, there is not a way, there is just the stillness, being OK with what-is, stopping the struggle.
 
Accepting what-is is not complacency; it is a kind of surrender, surrender to the unknowingness of existence, surrender to the realization that there is within you an ultimate power, an ultimate place that is pure existence, and from that place comes revelation, connection, awareness of greater connections, awareness of possibilities, awareness and embracing of uniquenesses, the ultimate connection, the ultimate unfolding.  You find you have talents and gifts; you have qualities you can share with the rest of Life. 
 
The ultimate sharing is the sharing of yourself, the sharing of the direct experience, which is mostly beyond words, through acts of kindness, acts of inspiration, connection, a supportive awareness of another individual's possibilities.  Yes, you see the selfishness, the stinginess, but there is no point in focusing on that when you realize that whatever you focus on, gets the energy.  In every human being, there is that core that is often starving to death, in need recognition, and you find that in others AFTER you have found it in yourself.  If you haven't found it in yourself, you can't find it in others. 
 
Once again, it is an inside job.  Through patience, perseverance, and allowing, you begin to experience the direct knowing of Life, the very core of your existence, and then you begin to dare, to dream, to move, to expand experience in an inclusive outward way, which is different for each unique expression of The Consciousness.  You can't compare it to another, because it is so unique to the individual.  That is why there is no way.  What is good for one individual, may be very disruptive to another.  What works for one, may not work for another.
 
If Life wanted to create itself in sameness, everyone would look alike and talk alike; everyone would have the same feelings, the same problems, and the same experiences; it would be one experience.  Yet what could such sameness tell Life about itself?  How can something be experienced fully through just one little taste, one little look?  Why should Life be any less than unlimited experience?  Life has created itself uniquely as expressions, individualities full of possibilities, and these are realized and accessed through silence, through presence, through being. 
 
Be slow to have judgments; be quick to offer praise.  It is magic.  You can love or you can hate.  When you hate, all you really do is slay yourself; you diminish your being.  When you love, you expand, you find even more to love, even greater connections.
 
When you hold an opinion that is separating, in a way you are annihilating; you are destructive.  When you hold an ideal that is connective, compassionate, accepting, you expand, you add to Life.  It is actually a very simple way of being.  You can't really sit still.  You are either adding to or diminishing; that is the nature of Life.  You may think, "Well, rocks sit still."  Not really; you just don't see them move, because they are pretty slow.  All of Life is a movement, a dance, and the music is silence.  The experience is silent, the sharing becomes the words, the sharing becomes the joy, the sharing is the gift of silence.
 
You speak from a place of silence that is peaceful, serene, loving, and that establishes greater connections.  When you speak from the place of the intellect, it can be conditional, judgmental, opinionated, separating, and very noisy.  Silence doesn't mean that the intellect stops, or that there are no thoughts.  Silence arises when the intellect begins to serve the awakened Life, enhancing the experience and the gifts that are inherent within beingness.  The intellect begins to look for ways to establish a greater connection, greater possibilities.  It tries to extend the connections to be more inclusive of these possibilities.  So the intellect truly begins to serve the greater awareness, but it doesn't scream or complain about anything; it just serves, it just is there, and you hardly notice it working, because it is silent.  There is no argument, no contest, no competition; it just is.  That is Life.  That is the awakened Life, present as True Nature, and from the place of direct experience of The Consciousness, you find that Life is truly unlimited, that Life has no problems, that Life just has possibilities. 
 
Your resistance, or attachment, or judgment makes Life into a problem; your acceptance, allowing and embracing make it into an opportunity, so it becomes your choice.  You can choose to remain in separation, living in consensus reality, doubts, beliefs--all of that; or you can choose to embrace the direct experience and begin to expand with the unlimited possibilities of existence.  In that process, you might even find that you love yourself.  You might realize that you are not such a bad person after all; you just acted badly, and deep down, at the core of your existence, you remained pure, the Life Force waiting to blossom, waiting to bear its fruit, its gift to the whole universe.  It happens in a moment.  It happens in a stillness.  It is an experience, an experience that changes your life forever, an experience of awakening to True Nature, that unique manifestation of Life, The Consciousness that you are.
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