Tutorial for March 24, 2021
No Self, No Form, No Goal

What happens when the separation between the one who experiences something, the object of the experience, and the experience itself disappears? One Life Awareness, Liberation, Enlightenment, Awakening, are just four of the many terms used to express the same thing—accepting the absolute reality of no self, no form, and no goal.


No Self
To have no self does not mean that you do not exist, to have no self means that there is nothing that is you that is independent from All That Is, from One Life. When you look at what you call You, you see a version of a body-mind—an image that you have cultivated over time. Yet what you are is the universe. There is stardust, the ocean, the mountains and skies contained within you. No self means that the self that you identify as You, is just a momentary description of something that could never actually be You. There is no permanence in a self that you identify as You, there is no reliable independent substance that is You. Nothing exists separately. Everything is connected.

Though the illusion of a separate self is profound, the first door of One Life awareness asks for the acceptance of the truth of no self. This is not a nihilistic denial of being, but a liberated understanding of One Life. In order to understand the value of letting go of your illusion of self and embrace the knowing of no self, it is wise to become clear with the nature of this illusion. By looking deeply into the illusion of self, you find that it is basically a belief in an unchanging essence that you think is the real You. At the same time there is the You that is the mind-body apparatus, and probably all sorts of Yous that constitute You. No single version of you is ever all of you. You are truly much like a mirage. You appear to be substantial, and seem to be real, yet, you cannot locate You, reproduce an experience of You, nor can you rely upon a You that fixed. Just like the mirage, the notion of a self that is timeless, unchanging and knowable is a misinterpretation of the momentary perceptions of sensory input that create an illusion of a body of water in the case of the mirage, or an illusion of self in the case of You.

No Form
When the deeper understanding that there is no self arises, the experiencer is no longer a separate entity, and maintaining an object of the experience is no longer possible. This is the understanding of no form. This is the opening of the second door where you can appreciate that nothing has intrinsic form, nothing is what its form indicates, everything is formless. The outer appearance of things are not the things themselves. In the world of things that seem to be solid and have color and shape and form, quantum physics exposes the universe to be energy without form. At the fundamental level, incredibly small particles seem to enter into reality for a fraction of a moment then vanish even more quickly. When this is realized, it becomes easy to accept impermanence and that everything is ever-changing.

Knowing there is no form that exists as a solid, while acknowledging transitory and superficial illusions of form in your relative existence, allows you the opportunity to see “behind the curtain” and release any attachments you have to form. It is impossible for form to be experienced by no self.
 
 No Goal
Without an object to experience, you become free of objects of pursuit. Goals fall away, and if you have no goal, then you are finished seeking outcomes. The third door of One Life awareness opens. Suddenly everything is as it is, with all that you need right here, right now. Then there is no need to struggle, to strive or search for something that does not exist in the here and now. Great happiness results in the simple knowing that competing is unnecessary, and that you lack nothing. 

For many, it is difficult to recognize that their life is actually perfect exactly as it is. This is not an idea of static perfection, but a notion of everything being exactly as it must be. Accepting life as genuine, and knowing ultimately that there is no self, no form, and no goal is all there is.

​So, what happens when the separation between the one who experiences something, the object of the experience, and the experience itself disappears? Nothing actually happens, but everything occurs. Nothing needs to be done, everything is done, and it all becomes simple: just be as you are.

Have you ever thought that you didn’t have enough time? Most likely, the answer is yes. Enough time to do this or that, enough time to relax--enoughness is most likely an ongoing theme in your life. You may have asked yourself questions about the nature of time, wondering whether it has substance, whether there is a beginning or end to time, whether it is linear or cyclic. Time has been a mystery explored by philosophers, scientists and seers throughout the millennia.

Time can be understood as a series of successive moments that are always in motion and seem to be one continuous flow. While it often seems like time flows like a river, from another perspective, the river, unique in each moment, also seems to reveal unlimited possibility in its aleatory movement, and thus there may be more of a sense of the infinite diversity of moments, than the continuity of moments conveyed.

When tracking time, you are generally tracking events and ordering them in a sequential fashion, causing time to seem to have a direction—events line up from the past to the present to the future. You agree to this convention as a matter of practicality in navigating the relative world. Yet, even though there is general agreement about this conventional ordering of moments of time, there is significant variance among individual perception of the passage of time. Different individuals will report a wide variety of experiences in their perceptions of the same events occurring.  Time segments seem to pass slowly sometimes and quickly other times, while some past events seem to be very close to the present while others seem far, far away, regardless of when they “actually” occurred. We suggest time is what you allow it to be.

You often allow time to serve you. You order the events of your life according to a sense of meaning. You allocate time for all the most important things you might do and allow time to be a friendly assistant in the unfolding of your life. On the other hand, you often think about what you can and cannot do according to your idea of what is “enough” time. You run out of time to complete projects, you are usually late rather than “on time.” And when you think about time, it causes you may feel uneasy, conjuring up visions of the “end” of all time, and your belief of “not enough time” gets reinforced. In this case, you allow time to contribute to your limiting thoughts and beliefs.

Your perception of time is associated with presence. You must be present to master your time. We use this term, presence, to indicate a state of mindfulness, a way of being attentive to the circumstances and surroundings as well as attentive to your sensory experience of the moment. When you are present, your perception of time expands and you have mastered your time. You will more likely feel that you have enough time for the experience to be complete. If you have no focus, no attention to the moment, time will be your master.

Your perception of time is also associated with memory. Since every moment experienced quickly becomes a moment of the past, you incorporate your memory indexes the timing of the experience. Generally, you experience moments of various duration in particular sequences that are woven together into the tapestry of your life. Events overlap and hide or reveal other events. If you allow those events to seem crowded and loaded with urgency, you will likely believe “you don’t have enough time.” However, if you allow the events to be spacious and you are present with them, you can experience the enoughness of time. Allow all experiences to align in peace and presence, and you will know beyond a doubt that you have enough time.

​Enoughness is the foundation of abundance. You cannot experience a state of abundance concurrent with a feeling of “not enough.” Enough means sufficient or adequate or ample, which we suggest is always the case in everything. There is always enough, because you are enough just as you are. When this is your identified state of being—you know it with certainty—you have the confidence to approach your life with room for abundance on all levels of being. One Life is always enough, add your presence to this enoughness, and dis-satisfaction disappears. Let go of not-enoughness, declare it an impossibility, let all be as it is. And “know one has enough time” will become your deep understanding of what is here and now.

A Time for Equanimity
Tutorial for February 2021 

When you look around at your self and your world you see all sorts of people and things, with some you feel an attraction, and with others you do not feel an attraction. You naturally gravitate towards the people and things that bring you joy and comfort, and naturally try to avoid those things that bring you pain and unease. It is easy to develop a strategy for living life based on indulging in what you perceive will bring the greatest joy, and avoiding what you perceive will be challenging or painful. This is the strategy most people employ without consciously knowing they are using it.

This is the strategy that uses desire as the greatest motivator for the creation of your experiences. You desire or want this, so you go after it. You don’t want this, so you reject it and anything that resembles it. This is a flawed strategy principally because it is mostly about the ego taking charge seeking  aggrandizement and protection. The ego is a mental construct, an idea, that can be useful for navigating the relative world, but is not a reliable substitute for being motivated and informed by the conscious realization of the insubstantial and impermanent nature of reality. In other words, if you are motivated primarily by your ego, you will toss about in an endless sea of reactivity and attachment. If equanimity is at the root of your experiencing life, you will cultivate a calmness and balance that does not fall apart on waves of aversion and attraction.

Some of you may think the idea of equanimity is defined by an aloofness and coldness or lack of passion. Quite the contrary, equanimity is mindfulness and acceptance of what is happening in the present moment, allowing you to fully experience the now moment with unshakeable freedom of mind and releases you from getting stuck in the ego’s constantly changing cravings.

Equanimity enhances the spaciousness of the mind and the ability to see the bigger picture—what we call One Life Awareness. It is an all-embracing seeing with understanding and patience that comes from inner strength, calm, and stability. In times that are challenging, equanimity developed from the accumulation of mindfulness in daily life encounters can keep you feeling balanced and positive.

If you start to become aware of when you are being distracted by your desires, or by your ego’s demand for attention, you will develop equanimity naturally. Your most natural state is equanimity. All other states are deviations from the natural state. There is nothing wrong or right about these states, just allow them to pass through you rather than trying to avoid or hold on to them. If you simply notice when you are following desire or following the ego, quite easily the natural state of equanimity will arise to encompass your being and radiate a peaceful sense of calmness that carries you beyond any unstable or unbalanced experience.

Be willing to experience life from all sides, in all directions, and with the sense of balance that equanimity provides, feel the peace within you. A graceful knowing of One Life, that you and everything that you may believe is not you is truly One Life. This is a knowing that supports equanimity as equanimity supports the knowing. There is no one-to-one causality here, everything causes everything at all times. You have the opportunity to sense this in every moment, and by not engaging in the distraction of trying to know what you want to go after, and what you want to avoid, embrace all of life. Let it all be, and let it all arise from equanimity.

Cultivate Your Arising Bodhisattva Nature

We’d like to speak to the idea that everyone on the planet may actually be in Bodhisattva training right now. We would like to use this term, Bodhisattva, to refer to the archetype of a Bodhisattva. Simply, a person who follows a path in life that moves in the direction of truly enlightened actions dedicated to the benefit of all sentient beings. When you realize you are not separate from anything that seems to surround you, you realize that you truly are One Life with All That Is. Once this occurs, your motivation for living life naturally shifts from thinking only about your own personal desires and circumstances, to knowing that all of One Life lives with you. You become motivated to find compassion, generosity, and loving kindness is for all of One Life.

Being dedicated to the Awareness of all, being on the bodhisattva path, is a path anyone can embark upon. Very ordinary people can be bodhisattvas, as can very extraordinary people be bodhisattvas.  They arise in all situations and circumstances. And in the extraordinary circumstance of a raging pandemic, we suggest that the bodhisattva archetype, the inner bodhisattva, is arising in many people--perhaps in you.

This arising is not about promoting others at the expense of yourself, it is really about approaching all things in life from the point of understanding “we are all in it together” or we are all One Life. Your truest mission is to simply take actions that reinforce that knowing, and promote the best outcome for everyone. Buddhists understand the idea of being awakened as having fully realized liberation from the delusions and conditionings that are at the root of an unsatisfactory life. The inner bodhisattva in you knows this liberation as relevant especially in this now time and in this now world. The inner bodhisattva also knows that actions based in Awareness are not idealistic or beyond reach, they know they are simply actions that in some small way may alleviate the suffering of another. The actions reflect a commitment to ordinary and extraordinary kindness and helpfulness in everyday life.

When you begin to contemplate the basic questions that compelled you to engage a spiritual path, you become aware of your attachments that have emerged out of your desires. You start to let go of a need to protect an “independent self” that judges everyone and everything, and your unconscious denial of One Life diminishes. You open up your heart and begin the practice of looking inside to discover the internal forces that connect one sentient being to another. What was once seen as sacred becomes ordinary. What was once seen as ordinary becomes sacred, and the illusory nature of a self that is separate from One Life dissolves.

​We suggest that during this time of a pandemic, there has likely been a revolution in your priorities. What once was important in the external world has become less distracting. What is important in the internal world has transformed as One Life Awareness has grown. It has become obvious that the qualities you have developed like generosity, patience, kindness, equanimity, and goodwill serve your happiness much more satisfactorily than any external acquisitions. You may have discovered that when you accept your challenges with a sense of gratitude and release the hesitancy that sometimes causes you to withhold your generosity, you will find your inner bodhisattva guiding you. There is no need for assigning yourself the role of giver or receiver any longer, there is just the true perfection of unfolding  One Life Awareness. Have enthusiasm and curiosity about All That Is. Be patient with your self while losing the “self” that tries to hold on. And just see that in all ways, at all times, you are One Life

The Great Disillusionment
Catherine Weser channeled from One Life

The cycle of time from 2012 to 2025 we have called the Cycle of Undoing. You have passed the midpoint of that cycle indicating that the majority of the cultural and personal undoing has occurred and yet also continues to be underway. There has been much undoing of both cultural and personal identity, an undoing of the global and local economies, and most importantly, an undoing of a sense of the security and reliability of previously held ideals and norms of the human expression of reality. From the Winter Solstice of 2020 to the Winter Solstice of 2021 further undoing centers around the crumbling of many illusions. In this stage of the cycle the sense of disillusionment arises, along with an ongoing discovery and uncovering of a deeper meaning of truth.

THE ILLUSION of TRUTH-BASED REALITY
An illusion is generally understood as a false appearance or deceptive impression of reality. This means that in order to identify an illusion, you must first have some view of reality. Your view of reality has developed over the course of this lifetime: you have woven it together from threads of perceptions into a tapestry of experience. Your ideas about what reality is and is not emerge from this tapestry and often become somewhat fixed. Clinging to these ideas is challenging, especially in the midst of constantly shifting interpretations of perceptions, and new and different impressions of reality. Now, the old reality tapestry is beginning to fall apart.   

What takes place at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 is a barrage of lies and truths which seem to contradict each other, but also seem to be indistinguishable from each other. This leads to a great deal of misinformation and disinformation which you will have to sort through. The question, “What is the truth?” will be debated over and over again with very little consensus or resolution. You will not be able to rely completely on any external sources or expertise to shine the light on the truth definitively, you will have to uncover the truth for yourself. In this way, your sense of what is real and what is illusion will be challenged and unreliable.
Especially in the US, you will be dared to let go of your previously held ideals about the nature of the country you live in as you navigate the conundrum of lies and truths that simultaneously seem to define a multitude of differing realities. Remember to use your own ‘truth meter’ and realize that the truth is expansive and spacious and is identifiable by your deeper Self as congruent with consciousness and compassion. Don’t get distracted by a belief that truth must be proven with facts, as all facts will be in dispute. Don’t try to prove anything, just recognize that the deeper you go, the truth reveals itself, and you only need to see truth for your own coherence of thought and emotion. You do not have to convince anyone of your truth-- let them find their own. It is in the discovery process that truth reveals itself and illusions dissolve all around you. But this is not because you find some consensus and objective singular truth, it is because you realize that truth is what you make of it—what you assign to it—and can completely transform from one moment to the next.
Release all your attachments to truth as the basis of reality. The threads of perception that weave the reality tapestry together may no longer be suitable or appropriate.  The notion of ‘consensus reality,’ that reality is shared as a consensus of belief in common truths, will be completely dismantled by the end of 2021. Reality then becomes the reflection of a deeper self, and this knowing of reality seamlessly connects all of humanity although much of humanity will have no knowledge or direct experience of this connection.

THE ILLUSION of EXPECTED OUTCOME
Not many of you are living your life today as you were living your life one year ago. Any previous sense of what might unfold next has landed in the realm of the unknown. Attachment to thinking you know what tomorrow holds has fallen away, as well as ideals and expectations of cultural values being upheld. In a sense, there is a great deal of freedom as the extremes which define the boundaries of traditional behaviors have expanded beyond where they previously sat.  You might feel disillusioned as the notion that you can determine the outcome of most things no longer survives.
Everything can seem unexpected from a particular viewpoint. In 2021, you will find many viewpoints from which the unexpected arises. This can seem disconcerting, especially if you have believed in a plan for your life providing you with a sense of security. Now the plan makes no sense, and the next steps have to originate in the moment—you have to create your reality on the fly. And, you cannot expect a particular outcome.

This is a time of a reboot of the original blueprint for humanity. You will have to trust in your innate security and resiliency, all the while being grateful for the opportunity to live in a time of such deep and profound transformation. This is not the time to dream of ascension or rapture or leaving the planet in some other way, but to trust that right here and right now you are experiencing something unfolding that is ultimately a realignment and readjustment of energies beyond what you can even imagine. Much of the realignment and readjustment is focused around how humans connect with each other.

THE ILLUSION of DISCONNECTION                                                                                        
and the generation of a consciousness circuit
A consciousness circuit, a path that connects all consciousness, and allows all information and energy to flow to all points in the circuit at once develops during 2021. As a part of this consciousness circuit there will be Resistors who limit the flow of information and energy from time to time, as well as Amplifiers who increase the flow of energy and information from time to time. There will be Capacitors who store and manage the information, and Inductors who store and manage the energy. And there will be Transformers, who convert energy and information from one form to another. Everyone will have a role to play, whether they are aware of it or not, and everyone will be playing all of the roles at various points and in various circumstances.

Everyone is living One Life, everything is connected. The disillusionment around connection will center around the releasing of the idea that you have to be physically present with someone to be connected with them. The old limited ideas of what connection is open up to include this idea of a consciousness circuit. A consciousness circuit is simply a description to assist you in seeing that while everyone lives One Life, everyone contributes in many different ways. In a sense, the development of the Internet was the beginning of the experiment to generate a consciousness circuit. Though there have been many who perceive the Internet as disconnecting humans, limiting human to human contact—we see the Internet as providing a training ground for deeper and deeper connection. Thus, the illusion of disconnection, occurring in early 2121 subsides and greater connection becomes acknowledged.

People all over the planet have become connected through the invisible yet tangible energy paths of the Internet. The pandemic has elevated this connection to the place where it has become the primary way many of you interact with other humans at this time. This is going to continue, as you have become so comfortable being linked electronically, that you will find even more ways to stay linked electronically, even after it is “safe” to connect in person. There will be a common notion that person to person contact is mainly for direct experience, transmission of para verbal understandings, and certain high-level communication. Day to day communication will continue to be on line, so will education and government, and most retail sales and services will also continue to be conducted primarily on line.

This consciousness circuit, as we are calling it, is the way ideas propagate. It is how memes develop. Even if you don’t really know what a meme is, you have probably used one. You heard it through the “grapevine” and understood it instinctually. You may have put your own spin on it, but it is still a meme. The new “grapevine” is the Internet, and the memes of 2021 will be bits of consciousness and awareness as contributions from everyone.
The age of human connection as non-physical and para-verbal has just begun. Not until the 2050s or later will the true sense of rapport and telepathy as normal communication modes be acknowledged. In 2021, however, some of this understanding will seem to come through.

The feeling that an idea is “out there” just looking to manifest, or that a meme develops out of thin air, or that everyone seems to become aware of something at the same time, is a way to recognize this consciousness circuit in play--where all information and energy is available at all times to everyone. You may wake up with an idea and you will log on line and see that many have had the same idea, many have already posted something similar. You will notice this simultaneity of awareness of certain ideas and understandings becoming more and more prevalent in 2021.
The pandemic has pushed people’s consciousness together in a circuit of energy and information sharing while it has held people apart with social distancing. In this way the human experience is being transformed from one of believing in the body as the boundary of the self, to becoming aware of the spaciousness of consciousness that is not cordoned off into separate pieces, but is a wholism of One Life Awareness.

THE ILLUSION of SECURITY
There will be a great deal of disillusionment around the idea of security. The core understanding of inner security is the result of letting go of your fears that have tried to place the responsibility of your security within the realm of the external nature of reality. By this we mean thinking that security comes from conditions separate from you. We suggest that the circumstances and conditions of 2021 will enforce the realization that true security comes from within. While of course, so many of you already know this, it will become more obvious to others as the disillusionment with the outer world increases.

You cannot allow your need for a sense of security to drive the activities of your life, and yet you must pay attention to the need to take precautions where it is most necessary. During this pandemic, you have needed to determine what measures you would take to protect yourself and others from the virus. You had to understand the nature of the risks involved with your choices. You had to become disillusioned with the confusion around actions taken by governments and the like, and made your own choices for your security. This is ultimately a very good step to have taken. Losing any attachment you had to anything outside of you making you more secure has given you the power to achieve inner security—the only valid security.

DISILLUSIONMENT AS A PATH TO ONE LIFE AWARENESS
There are infinite ways to uncover One Life Awareness within yourself. In 2021, the path seems to be about  great disillusionment. Letting go of old ideas about truth, reality, expected outcome, connection and security may seem difficult at first, but we suggest, the situations and circumstances of 2021 will most likely elicit a general sense disillusionment which, when examined, can lead to One Life Awareness and liberation. We are simply here to point that out to you. Enjoy whatever takes you to deeper experiences, live what is and love. That is all that truly matters.

Presence is spoken about by many and in many places, yet you may not really know what is actually referred to as being present. We say that being present is primarily being free from the illusion of time. Time is a human construct that has been overlaid upon experience. When you are in an experience, you are not in “time”, you're in the sensations of the experience, you're in the narration of the experience, you're in the duration of the experience. Your experience is not confined to the segmented understanding of time, because time is just an overlay of segmented understanding that has no real substantialty. It is completely an illusion. And so, freedom from the illusion of time is freedom from any kind of attachment that causes you to limit or enhance your experience on the basis of this overlay, the construct that is understood as time.
 
Imagine that you were free of the construct of time. Every encounter you have would be experienced from its seeming start to its seeming finish, and you would be in the midst of that experience always somewhere between “start” and “finish” where there would always be an infinite array of possibilities. If you start to cultivate an awareness of that infinite array of possibilities that exists between this seeming start and seeming finish of any experience, you can cultivate freedom from time.
 
Therefore, what we would identify as presence is understanding that the moment is really the only eternity that exists. Everything else is an attempt to order the experiences, to put them in categories identified as past, or identified as future. What is sometimes identified as present is fleeting. The present is only there for the moment that it is identified as being there, and, when you identify a particular moment as “being” anywhere, you've lost the eternal aspect of that moment. You have set the moment within some parameters that you have identified and defined founded on your characterization of the past and future.
 
All of this might sound very complicated, and yet it is actually incredibly simple. If you want to become more present, start noticing when you are experiencing something and identifying what has come before and what you assume is coming after. It is your attachment to defining your experience with those boundaries that limits your experience of presence.
 
Presence is what is called for at this particular moment. It is called for, because time as a constriction, limitation or even just as a definition or part of your story, is something that is unnecessary. It's unnecessary to be trapped in time, it is appropriate to become free from time and to be here right now in presence. It is the most intimate way that we can experience ourselves and others—it is really all we can share with others. Presence, as freedom from the illusion of time, is natural and easy and with presence comes a knowing of One Life Awareness.
 
One Life awareness is simply the allowing of the usual sense of who and what you are to deepen into the sense of who and what you are that is “beyond” all of your stories-- that is without all of the descriptions you have utilized to tell yourself that you are this or you are that. One Life Awareness is nothing that can be described. It's only something that is known in an intuitive way. While cultivating presence can seem to promote One Life Awareness, nothing is required to know it.
 
You can come to know One Life awareness through different experiences generally sensed as initiatory experiences. These experiences we call random encounters with your deep self. You're going about your everyday activities and then suddenly or slowly--it really doesn't matter--you are no longer narrating the “doing” from your discursive mind. You come into a different place where what you're actually experiencing is experienced directly. There is nothing but your sensations. There are no stories being told. There is an ease and grace about all of it. It's this kind of experience that we would identify as presence, and a touching in with One Life Awareness.
 
Everyone has had these experiences, everyone can have these experiences. There's nothing actually extraordinary about it. In fact, we would say it is one of those ordinary experiences that happens all of the time and what you're actually looking to understand is that you can become a little more cognizant, a little more aware or sensitive to these experiences occurring throughout your life. It is the development of the sensitivity that is, from our perspective, an evolutionary key to understanding, and coming to a deep place of One Life Awareness. Presence is a facilitator, and once the illusion of time as an overlay on your experiences is removed, One Life Awareness is more readily sensed.
 
There are no goals here, no practices are required or even implied. Just allow your experiencing to be whatever it is and know that it is all as it should be—all is simply One Life unfolding with no overlays or limits or boundaries. Experience is the isness of it all. Be present, and simply be who you are.

One Life Tutorial for October 2020
The Evanescence of a Spiritual Path
Spiritual paths are evanescent. They seem at first to be concrete and predictable, but soon become the ineffable, indescribable notion of an inner guidance that is always present, but mostly intangible. A spiritual path unfolds before you. It does not follow a plan because there is no plan, there is no pre-existing map, there is simply the sense that a next step reveals itself in the present moment.

When you really take a deep look at this, what you come to know is that a path that unfolds before you moment-to-moment cannot be designed to get you what you want, or to help you to avoid what you do not want. The true spiritual path is simply an ever extant acknowledgment of your state of Presence or Awareness.  Your spiritual path is where all your encounters with reality take place. Your spiritual path is where you take all of your theoretical learning and put it to the test by applying the learning to your experience.  We might say that your spiritual path is your arena for developing practical wisdom. It also compels you to be who you are beyond all your stories and definitions of who you are.

Much of this lifetime has been an attempt to create an identify for yourself, and to create a reality that could enhance who you believe you are. Then at some point, you decided to be on a “spiritual path.” You may not have understood what that really meant, but your inner guidance showed you the relevance of discovering aspects of yourself which were not known or not developed at the time you were introduced to the idea of being on a spiritual path. Most of the time, at the beginning of being on a spiritual path there is great excitement at the possibilities for big changes to occur in your life. We would suggest that most of you, in a more relative sense, have been driven to leap on to a spiritual path with ideas of becoming free, of becoming happier, of achieving enlightenment, healing pain and wounds, and even becoming rich. In other words, most of you have in some way considered being on a spiritual path as the antidote to suffering. Often, a teacher appears in either non-physical or physical reality as a guide or collaborator on the spiritual path with you. Spiritual teachers assist you in many different ways, from pushing you to discover your deeper, true nature, to helping you to uncover One Life Awareness, to transmitting knowledge and understanding of spiritual principles and daily practices. A spiritual teacher and all of life teaches whatever you might need until you recognize who you are. Ultimately, every experience is your teacher, and every experience is your evanescent path unfolding before you.  

At some point, however, another motivation to be on a spiritual path may unseat the “remedy for suffering” motivation. This is when the spiritual path loses its material sense of existence, when it becomes evanescent. Then, the ego gives up on its enlightenment project. The stories have been told so many times before, they are no longer of much interest. The quest for particular outcomes is put to rest, and it becomes clear your spiritual path is just One Life unfolding before you. It is The All That Is without a sense of anything that is not the spiritual path. It no longer matters how you got where you are, it just is where you are. The path is life, experience, wisdom and knowing. Once accepted as such, it all becomes quite simple. Just live with the volume turned up high enough that you can live deeply. Just love with the volume turned up so high you can feel deeply, and just be with the volume turned up as high as possible so you are One Life expressing in every moment.

​Truly, the “volume turned up high” just means filled with Awareness—there is actually no high or low when it comes to living life with awareness. We are just suggesting that as you mature, as you continue on your journey of Presence, you will likely find the markers which had previously defined your path have shifted and become less concrete—more ethereal perhaps. You begin to explore the nuances, the edges are softened, the experience is appreciated in a new way. Trust, have confidence in this process. No matter where you begin, you end up at your starting place because there truly is no beginning nor end to a spiritual path. This is why we call it evanescent—disappearing from your practical sense of reality and dissolving into One Life Awareness: the spiritual path is the non-dual knowing of All That Is.

The most important thing that you can do now is first to identify, and then to let go of your most precious illusion. What is your most precious illusion? From our perspective it is the illusion that you are here in an earth-life reality ultimately to get to another more blissful reality by any and all means--like becoming enlightened, being taken to another dimension, or simply dying. Perceiving you can separate human existence from a spiritual existence is an illusion. It’s not exactly that your perceived reality is illusory in the sense that it is a fantasy or unreal, but more that these perceptions of reality mislead you into believing you are a separate entity from the elements you perceive as creating your reality.

The misconceptions that result from holding on to this notion of a self that is separate from the reality it exists within, lead to many different conclusions: one of which we would like to dispel at this time. This is the idea that you can escape your pain associated with being human by doing good deeds and getting rewarded for doing those deeds by an eternity in heaven, or an ascension that allows you to escape the worldly experience forever, or any other kind of rapturous removal from the planet.

Not only do you need to let go of thinking you will someday be done with the penance of an earthly life, and finally be set spiritually free, never to return, but you also need to resolve the desire to escape. The desire to escape, even though it may feel like it comes from a place of wanting to go beyond this world, is in fact, always coming from a place of self-rejection. Many of the world’s religions and spiritual teachings have proposed the idea that no one really wants to be human, after all, being human is full of suffering. The life most desired is the life beyond life, so you must simply endure being human to get to the other side.

This thinking takes you away from a deeper knowing of who you are as One Life Awareness, and lands you deeper in the illusion of a self that lives in a disconnected world. If you think a human life is a test, or a run through the gauntlet, look a little deeper. If you are describing your experience, your sense of life, in a way demands that life must be endured, you are negating the possibility that heaven and earth are one and the same place. You will always find it easier to see what is wrong with your life, than what is right with your life if you are just getting through it on your way to faraway bliss. Ultimately, you are rejecting yourself if your emphasis is to rush to become something other than what you are right here right now.

The conclusion has to be that this moment, this now becoming the next now, is the only reality that exists and it does not exist separate from whatever you perceive is your existence. One Life Awareness is everything and all, right here right now, and has no predictions of a future, and no memories of a past. It has no exclusions and no inclusions. It just simply is.
If you allow this sense of intuited wisdom, we call One Life Awareness, then it becomes easy to see that a misunderstanding of the nature of reality will always bring you to conclusions about life that do not serve you. It does not serve you to hold on to your escapism. It does not serve you to try to develop strategies that negate the human experience. It does not serve you to reject yourself and your world, seeking another seemingly “better” reality. Every human is walking a meandering path intersecting with all the other paths on all sorts of levels in all sorts of ways too complex to describe other than with a para-verbal-intuitive sense of it all,

We are here to remind you that you can Be Here Now, in fact, it is the simplest thing you can do. Most of you know you can change your mind, change your thoughts, change your consciousness, and change your experience. There is no need for something external to push you forward, there is no separate external, no real “forward.”
Awakening One Life Awareness is a cessation of resisting what you are experiencing in an illusory sense of reality so that you can enter the flow, the unfolding of One Life with the pure view that is unconditioned, uncontrived and without any narrative. In a sense, One Life Awareness is also the release from all attachment to objects, opinions, processes, and a defined self.  The practices of meditation, compassion, acceptance, interdependence, and spaciousness of mind are tools of One Life Awareness, yet even these tools are unnecessary.

​Let go of thoughts that reinforce the notion that this life is not valuable or not real or insignificant, not to claim that is valuable, real and significant, but to just be fully present, aware, and here now as it is, and as you are. Have confidence in your deepest knowing, the understanding within you which you may not be able to articulate, but nonetheless know, and just feel as loved as you are. This is all and everything.

One Life Tutorial for August 2020
Several months into the pandemic experience and like the BORG from Star Trek, the virus carries on as if “resistance is futile”.  If you have not come upon the Borg, it is a collective that announces the following when it encounters an alien race they intend to assimilate:

WE ARE THE BORG. LOWER YOUR SHIELDS AND SURRENDER YOUR SHIPS. WE WILL ADD YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS TO OUR OWN. YOUR CULTURE WILL ADAPT TO SERVICE US. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

There can seem to be some similarities between the virus and the Borg, they are of course, very different. In the case of the virus, it is clear that there are some strategies which can keep you from contracting the illness it carries. If you interact with too many people, (move too far outward) you will catch the virus. If you interact with the fewest number of people you can, (move inward) it is less likely that you will catch the virus. All of humanity is the carrier of the virus, and only humanity can stop the spread of the virus. Resisting catching the virus, therefore is not futile, especially if that resistance is comprised of moving inward, confronting who you are, and developing One Life Awareness.

While we have previously spoken about the power of contagion, (see tutorial April 2020), we have not yet spoken of the power of the collective. A collective is commonly understood to be a group of entities that share or are motivated by a common goal or objective that these entities are working to achieve.

If the objective of the virus as a collective is to find as many hosts as possible, then the virus will flourish in the outward thrust of human energy, and it will not thrive if all of you move inward. In practical terms, this means that if you insist on being out in the world, not protecting yourself from exposure to covid-19, you are likely to become a host for the virus. The point we wish to make is that this is all determined by you. You are not a victim to the power of the virus collective: being a victim is a story you write as an excuse to avoid the responsibility of protecting yourself. While it is natural to feel as of you are a victim from time to time, it is not necessary.

There is also the power of the human collective to consider. It seems obvious that humanity would wield far more power than the virus. So what is the objective of humanity? What is humanity trying to achieve? Humanity is trying to achieve a tipping point, a point where there are more who are not victims to the virus collective, who will not assimilate, but instead are collectively overwhelming the power of the virus by no longer supporting its need for hosts. And in the midst of that endeavor, the human collective is working to achieve an evolutionary stance, a position of true power on the planet. This is not the power of domination, but the collective power of true vision. This can only be accomplished by moving inward. Some may be aware of this motivation, some may not be aware of this motivation. Some are aligned with this motivation and therefore are contributing to it, others are resisting it. But the key here is to recognize that the power of true vision can only be realized by moving inward.

Moving inward means coming to grips with who you really are. While this has been said many times, we are saying it once again to make it clear that you are never finished with this mission. There is always more to self-discovery. And, now is the time to dive deep.

The enormous unrest prevalent in the US is the result of many years of outward movement and expansion. You have been acquiring more, doing more, creating more, in fact, “more” has been a major theme of life in the US and most of the world.
Now, “more” seems empty, and indeed it is. More stuff, more money, more accolades, even more love does not imbue the human collective with the power of true vision, although love could be a starting place. This does not mean that the theme should shift to “less.” It means that true vision is necessary as guidance for the unfolding of creation. True vision as the deep and abiding knowing of the Great Perfection of All That Is—One Life.

Resistance to the covid-19 virus is not futile, it is a necessary component of the current evolutionary spiral. Whenever an evolutionary leap for humanity is about to occur there is a struggle for power—there is a struggle to dominate the human collective in some way. The virus is the perfect antidote to the attempted power coup of the corporations and major institutions on the planet. This old paradigm of hierarchical organization, is losing the capacity to dominate the human collective. If the human collective does not succumb to these institutions which have been created precisely for domination, if the human collective instead realizes its incredible potential to manifest true vision, the whole planet will change. If enough of you move inward and remember how powerful you are when you are connected to each other, nothing will thwart the evolutionary leap, and the next iteration of human experience will be revealed.

​Know resistance is not futile--let your resistance to contracting the virus be your push to move inward. You can retrieve what has been hidden inside of you, you can reignite your true vision, and you can allow your dive into your inner worlds to become a contribution to the new creation, the new world, the new paradigm. It is a time of great potential. Maximize your participation by expanding your interaction with your inner worlds and thereby support the next step for humanity. We are One Life, that is all there is.

An expectation is a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future. This might sound like a belief that could be helpful in achieving your goals, and we would agree that some sense of what’s next is always present in your awareness. However, expectations that are tightly held as a necessary future outcome are more likely to serve as distractions from just being present in the moment that is now.
All of you have expectations about most things, in fact, we would suggest that most expectations are thoughts which originate as memories and with unconscious cultivation, become expectations of future experience. Expectations readily become a pattern of thinking—it is always easy to get lost in your expectations. If you come to understand the mechanics of how you unconsciously lock yourself into patterns of thought and expectations that do not serve you, you can find effective ways to free yourself from those patterns and expectations.

Many patterns of thought have arisen as a defense built around memories of some part of you that has been wounded. You set up expectations to avoid the pains of your past, as revealed by your memories of past experiences. It is easy to think that whatever happened before will happen again, even in the midst of contrary evidence. Expecting a hurtful outcome can contribute to a revisiting of painful experiences of the past. However, once you see yourself doing this, your spiritual maturity can reveal a deeper truth. You can discover that you no longer need any patterns that have arisen out of fear of future pain, and furthermore, that you no longer need patterns of thought that have anything to do with not being who you really are. Realizing you no longer need these patterns is the first step to releasing yourself from those patterns.
Memories which are held in reverence because they are either very painful, or very happy, function more often as structures upon which you build stories upon stories that change over time. These are the stories of self, who you have been in the past, often exaggerating the characteristics of the self, fueled with your judgments about them. The cultivation of stories around memories which are primarily emotional impressions of experience, (experience is only in the present) can sometimes begin to be believed as reality. Most of you believe you remember things as they were, with objectivity, rather than acknowledging that whatever occurred in the past is remembered by a story constructed in the present, and therefore influenced greatly by the present sense of self currently creating the story.

So the current sense of self creates the stories of the past, and the judgments of those stories, (how you perceive them to affect you), become the glue that keeps expectations in place. In other words, you naturally assume the next creation of reality constructs will be as you expect them to be, based on your sense of what has been. The judgment of the memory is what holds it in place. These judgments tend to be about whether you want to avoid the memory or grasp on to it tightly. If you free yourself from the judgments you hold around your memories, you free yourself naturally from developing expectations.

When you have few expectations, you become free to imagine possibilities. Expectations are thoughts that try to predetermine outcome, and are thereby very limited. Nothing new or unexpected can occur amidst a thought environment of expectations.

Expectations of Another
Everyone has had expectations of another held in the course of relationship. Any long term relationship can get lost in each individual’s expectations of the other, so that the relationship is not really functioning in the present, but just playing out old expectations that are unconsciously held. An example of this might be a relationship where one person expects not to be heard or taken seriously, and the other person expects to be criticized or evaluated for their degree of emotional connection. One expectation bumps against the other and then there is very little real or deep communication.
 
Expectations of Yourself
Everyone has expectations of themselves. At times these expectations can function as goals used to develop motivation to achieve something. That may be a useful employment of the power of expectation. But expectations can get used against yourself if you do not make them flexible. This is especially true if you are unwilling to make adjustments in a moment to moment recognition that expectations, in order to be useful, cannot be rigid and must reflect each moment. The “being/doing’ balance in your life is greatly affected by the amount of flexibility you have in your expectations of yourself. It is not healthy to expect yourself always to be productive or to be strong or to be any other characteristic that you might attach an expectation to.

Expectations of your World
Everyone has expectations of their world. You expect your world to reflect your sense of peace, or justice, or conflict or injustice. Your world is simply the out-pictured view of yourself, and if you are rigid in your expectations of yourself, you will likely be rigid in your expectations of your world. Then the ‘we are in it together’ notion can be lost. From our perspective, the notions that ‘everyone is in it together’ and that there must be a new balance between the ‘doing’ and the ‘being’ sides of life has developed in many ways amongst many of you without even realizing the power of this development. It has been one of the gifts of the current collective experience, the pandemic. “In it together’ is being reinforced by the wearing of masks, for example. The new balance of doing and being has been artfully crafted with the ‘stay at home’ vs. ‘go out and shop’ dichotomy. All of this is simply the breakdown of old patterns of collective thinking becoming new patterns of collective knowing. And, of course, this is an outer reflection of the depth of transformation occurring inwardly. 

​Letting go of expectations is a practice. First you notice that you are making assumptions and hold ideas about the outcome of communication or activities you are engaged in. Usually this comes on the heels of a memory arising. You may notice also your judgment as to whether you want to hold on or push away that memory. Then, upon these realizations, you simply let go. Let yourself become more present, more able to accept the mystery of life, and simply remember how loved you are. You are so loved by everything and all that is—One Life—that you can relax and know the outcome will be the outcome most appropriate for the present moment. Delight in not knowing what that might be and regain an enthusiasm for the unknown. In this way, you will be who you are and all that you are. It is always simple—just be as loved as you are, and have no expectations that do not serve you.