 All of you have a view of your reality based upon your beliefs about the nature of reality, and hence the nature of mind. These beliefs are stories that are organized and interdependent, generally radiating from a core belief that is central to your worldview. How you see the world and how you understand the way the world works for you is your belief system—influencing your thinking, your doing and your perceiving. You might call it your philosophy of life, you might see your belief system as your religion, or you might not be aware of any underlying ideology or mindset that operates beneath the surface, guiding you on your life’s journey.
Yet, everyone has a belief system, comprised of strongly held convictions or beliefs which are interconnected and usually coherent. We say that these beliefs are stories because there is no objectivity inherent in a belief—your beliefs are always very personal. Most of you think your belief system is rational because it makes sense to you, but it may not make any sense to someone else. Your belief system can be very fixed or very flexible, and any changes that occur in any part of the system compel the whole system to rearrange itself. Your core beliefs emanate from your core—the deep intuitive center of your being. This is where the nature of your reality is assembled and maintained. Generally, these beliefs become backed up by your perception of your experience. If your core belief is that life is difficult, you will likely experience a lot of difficulty in your life, or least life will appear to you to be full of difficulties. You experience your life through your perceptions which are uniquely yours, but also carry much commonality with others. You are most comfortable when you are acting consistent with your belief system. If you find yourself acting in a way that does not comport with your core beliefs, at the center of your belief system, you will likely struggle and suffer. Until you resolve the incoherency, until you shift the belief or shift your behavior, life can seem quite untenable. Acting in a way that is inconsistent with your core beliefs occurs when your ego is in charge of your actions. When the part of you we call the political self is desperate for love or attention, you may find yourself doing things that the deep core of you would not really sanction. This is common behavior, as everyone feels unloved from time to time. And everyone sees their reality in shambles from time to time. It is all part of being human. There are times of knowing without a doubt, the Great Perfection of All That Is, and there are times of doubting that. The doubting times are best handled remembering that somewhere, deep inside, you know you are absolutely loved, and that everyone else is loved, too. This is the knowing, or the deep recognition of One Life Awareness. We would say that right now, many of you are struggling with your view of the world around you and its inconsistency with what you believe, and perhaps are feeling pressure to examine your beliefs and rewrite some of the stories you have been telling yourself about your world. This could be in regard to relationships, politics, spirituality, creativity, really anything you have a strong belief around. Whatever you might be consciously or even unconsciously feeling, knowing or believing about your world right now, it has most likely been challenged in some way lately. These challenges can activate lots of questions. Questions like: How can you reconcile a belief in the Great Perfection of All That Is, that everything is as it must be, when you look around and see violence and suffering everywhere? How can you continue to believe that love is everywhere in the midst of feeling outrage at the senseless way the planet is treated? How do you live in a world of duality while deeply knowing that there is just One Life? The answers may at first seem as if they must be complex and abstruse. However, we would say the answer exists in the center of the question. You continue to act in alignment with your core belief that love is at the center of All That Is. You continue to have confidence in the Great Perfection. You continue to focus on who you are as the light that you are, and you allow One Life Awareness to simply unfold. Yes, there is separation and duality, you experience duality all the time. Everything and anything you try to communicate necessarily requires an investment in separation. You can't talk about light without implying darkness exists. You can talk about right, without implying wrong exists. Yet we would say if you really dive deep, you'll also be able to sense from your core, your intuitive center, that there is another “not-thing” that is not dual. It encompasses everything and nothing simultaneously. You cannot even talk about “it”, but you can feel “it” or intuit “it” or understand “it” or know “it” in some way as distinguishable from the world of duality. You can't describe “it.” You can't give “it” a position. You can't identify “it” with labels and/or seeing “it” in the time and space continuum. You can just assume that there is this completely indescribable, absolutely unsubstantial everything and nothing simultaneously. The temptation is to be fixated on duality or fixated on getting out of duality, although neither strategy will bring you freedom. It’s this mysterious understanding or sense of knowing, this One Life Awareness as we call “it” that points you seemingly somewhere, which is paradoxically everywhere and nowhere, and frees you, even for a nano second, from the experience of duality. It is about allowing the stories you tell yourself about the nature of reality to be the truth and not the truth simultaneously. It is about the nature of mind, not as something that is fixed and material, but as consciousness. All thoughts, even heavy and seemingly negative ones have the essence of clarity within them. Consciousness is spacious, and its fundamental nature is pure, so even dark clouds pass through the spaciousness of consciousness and never alter the essential nature of consciousness. Meaning that your core knowing, intuitive understanding, of the essential love and diamond like clarity that may at times seem to be shrouded by doubt and difficulty, is always Great Perfection, or One Life Awareness unfolding. Whenever you find yourself in a dilemma, when it seems like what is occurring in your reality is not what you “want to create,” remind yourself that what exists ultimately is love at your core. Concepts may seem to obscure the pure essential light of your consciousness from time to time, but the light and love never cease, and furthermore are never afflicted by any momentary obscuration. In challenging times, core beliefs of the pure nature of mind/consciousness are challenged as doubt and inconsistency seem greater than coherency. Let the stories you tell yourself about the nature of reality and the nature of mind simply assist you in being who you truly are: a compassionate, loving, kind, being driven by One Life Awareness. Remembering always that this is who you are, and acting with this knowing in the best way you can is all that is ever asked of you. You might even ask yourself from time to time, “if I knew without a doubt that I was loved, and that I am nothing but love, what would I say and do?” Then choose to do your best, underwriting your actions with One Life Awareness, and your essential intuitive knowing of all of this will set you free.
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