All Hearts are Open
Love Everyone and Everything
 
Truly there is no such thing as a heart that is closed. All hearts are open. This is the nature of “heart.” Although sometimes it may be difficult to feel the open heart of someone or yourself, you can always find a perspective of openness. Everyone that you meet, that you see, that you communicate with, stands on the same ground as you do. They stand under the sky as you do, they love and feel loved as you do. When the sense of separateness falls away, there is only One Life and the expression of the open heart.
 
You are all vulnerable, you are all invulnerable, too. This is the experience of being human and knowing that finding the perspective of the open heart can be demanding. The feeling of open heartedness is obscured by lots of issues and concerns, ideas and concepts. Yet there is a knowing, at the core of your being, of an unconditional acceptance which loves everyone and everything.
 
With every exchange with another, find the perspective of the open heart and cultivate unconditional acceptance and loving kindness. This perspective is ultimately the only way that you can develop a deeper understanding of your unlimited capacity to love. At first it might seem hard to feel acceptance and loving kindness towards people who have hurt you, or those who have acted seemingly badly, or those who just don't have the same kind of awareness or capacity to understand awareness as you do.  But, of course, those are the people you practice with. Those are the people you forgive and experience with the greatest sense of equanimity and the least judgment you can find.
 
Once you find your open heart perspective, know that you don’t need to build walls around your open heart to protect it. Your always open heart becomes stronger and more resilient the more you love. If you build walls, and you fortify them with righteousness, pride, judgment, and fear, you will find there is always a crack—a place where the openness resides. The crack, the opening, is always quite simple to find, even if it does not seem easy. No matter whether you feel afraid or courageous, open or closed, you will always come back into the awareness of your open heart. It is your true state of being and your most natural place to abide.
 
The open heart is a perspective which recognizes the value of relationship—being and communicating with another. Nothing about an exchange with another is predictable. Nothing is reliable either. This is why you need to simply be in love with everyone and everything. Acknowledge love everywhere and you will be compelled to be present, in the moment, and aware.
 
Loving everyone and everything is not passive. If you are lazy, expecting everyone to love you in some way in order to justify loving them, you have missed the open heart perspective. You have to become free of ideas, expectations, previous experiences, and fantasies of future experiences to discover and maintain your open heart perspective. This perspective thrives when you arrive at it spontaneously. Although you cannot practice spontaneity, you can practice the expression and the qualities of the open heart perspective through simple awareness practices. Let go and allow for the openness of all hearts. Assume nothing other than that all hearts are open. Take nothing personally. Love everyone and everything.

The Meta-Personal
Tutorial for October 2022

As you engage in the process of self-liberation, spiritual understanding, and realization of One Life, you are likely to experience times when you feel stuck, times when you feel exhilarated, and times when a deeper and more fully unfolding reality begins to manifest. This reality is the outcome of consciousness allowing itself to encounter realms “beyond” the realm of the personal--what we call the Meta-Personal realm. This may be how you experience meditation, and it may be how you experience doing the dishes. There is no real or defined way to enter the Meta-Personal realm, there is just an innate intuitive sense that consciousness has been altered, even if seeming to be only minutely.  
The Meta-Personal begins to appear in your life when you become aware of the nature of your perceptions as being predictable and habitual. Whatever takes you into a new direction of thinking or causes you to be curious; whatever can remove you from the habits you employ or overrides the predictable, That energy can grant you access to the Meta-Personal realm of experience.
The realm beyond the personal does not exist as an actual boundaried or unboundaried segment of All That Is, as All That Is is indivisible.  However, a label of “beyond personal experience”-- Meta-Personal-- can describe accurately what you feel when a consciousness shift occurs. We suggest that “beyond” the realm of the personal lies the “formless”, “cosmic”, Meta-Personal sense of One Life unfolding.
Usually, the sense of the Meta-Personal realm includes a dissolution of egoic attachment, a knowing that there is no separate existence, and something that seems to be beyond or outside the boundaries of the body. Your very sense of form, primarily determined by the boundaries of your body, is somehow allowed to diminish until there is only “formlessness.” Sometimes, you sense this awareness, this Meta-Personal realm, as transcendent, and disengaged with the workings of the world.
There is a tendency to idealize formlessness and transcendency and believe that these aspects of All That Is represent a certain kind of spiritual attainment. You can become confused, believing that a dip into formlessness, or egolessness is realization or liberation. Most spiritual practices orient towards methodologies that promote experiences of “beyond” worldly experiences. This is a limited view. While there is great potential to develop a pure view in the other-worldly experiences, there is also great potential to get lost in the prejudice towards these experiences and value them more than other more mundane experiences. No matter how far you go, how deep you dive into the Meta-Personal, you will always be brought back to the world, for that is where you as a human belong.
It is important to simply allow consciousness to be wherever it is in the moment. Do not seek to alter reality to fit your ideas of spirituality or enlightened states of being.  Just live your life fully and keep your motivations aligned with loving kindness for everyone and everything. Then all personal aspects of your existence will naturally integrate into what is your totality and you will understand One Life with greater clarity. It is only possible to be liberated, realized, or spiritually evolved if you incorporate everything that is personal into all that seems Meta-Personal, or “beyond form.” Let your Personal reality and your Meta-Personal reality naturally reflect and refract each other, for no spiritual practice is complete without appreciation for all aspects of All That Is.
If you are seeking understanding and realization of One Life, all the personal views of what that entails are as relevant as all the transcendent, cosmic, and formless experiences. Always allow the balance, allow the fluidity of consciousness unfettered by your expectations and desires. If you simply let go of what you think is spiritual, you will actually be spiritual. The Meta-Personal and the Personal are truly One Life, even if they seem to be experienced as independent and separate. Be all that you are, as truly you can be nothing less and nothing more!

One Life Tutorial for September 2022
 
A personal experience of transcendence where a finite sense of self becomes a deeper or more profound sense of All That Is or One Life is referred to as awakening. Awakening is also a story you tell yourself. To awaken, you must first discover that you are asleep. To know that you are asleep, you must know something about being awake. There are many stories of awakening, with many variations. However awakening is experienced and expressed describes a change in your consciousness from one state to another.

Here is a well-known story of awakening: “One day, seated beneath the Bodhi tree (the tree of awakening) Siddhartha became deeply absorbed in meditation, and reflected on his experience of life, determined to penetrate its truth. After much meditation and contemplation, he achieved Enlightenment and became the Buddha.”

​The term “buddha” refers to an “awakened one” and the aim of many spiritual practices is to become “awake” and find ultimate freedom or liberation from suffering and an unsatisfactory life. Many masters, teachers, and those who have achieved some degree of understanding and liberation from the difficulties of human existence claim to be enlightened. They may also have a story of how they have awakened. Often, they share stories of their deep states of sorrow and hopelessness which are suddenly transformed when the power of awakening to the deeper understandings penetrate the darkness experienced in their lives. “Waking up from the dream” is an analogy that is often used to point to an experience where the world which once seemed “real” is found to be more like a dream or something illusory. What is truly interesting about this analogy, is the way that different disciplines describe the “before and after” awakening in terms of levels of consciousness and states of awareness. Many Eastern traditions suggest the farther you go from waking consciousness into deep states, the more Consciousness perceives All That Is. The Western perspective tends to look at the notion that the more awakened you are, the less unconscious you are. The process seems to be to find what is unconscious and give it to the wakened mind to interpret and understand. Either way, the result is essentially a story of perspective shifting.
 
Ultimately, awakening is a story you tell yourself based on your predilection towards a wakened self as knowing whatever lies deep within, or a deep self--aware of all that is awake. What story you tell will likely begin with the realization that human existence is not an “endarkened” slug through time and space, but a truly magnificent unfolding of opportunities and potential. There is nothing to do to achieve enlightenment, even if it seems like awakening to the illusory nature of existence would lead you directly into enlightenment. If you never come to this realization, that One Life is all there is—it is unlikely that you will awaken and enjoy liberation from the discomforts and sufferings of life.
 
While awakening is a very personal process, there are some experiences that seem to be common. Early on there is often inspiration from Masters, teachers, inner guides, authors, translators, even “people next door”. Sometimes a book is a Master for you. Sometimes mastery shows up in unexpected forms. There are many masters, and they all differ and will appeal to different people. You will find throughout your life that certain masters stimulate inspiration at certain times, and that other masters and teachers may inspire you at other times.
 
Once inspired, you will likely notice a need to feel that it is worthwhile to explore deeper realms, to jump into other liminal worlds, and to expand beyond whatever limitations have imprisoned you. Sometimes a sense of yearning for more arises. Beliefs that there is something you can do or explore that will open a door, get you over a hump, progress you towards some aspiration you hold may develop. When you sense you have this yearning for more it is wise to clarify that aspiration and to follow through with whatever is discovered in an unconditional or experimental way. Let your imagination guide you, be sincere, and take responsibility for your actions. Never subjugate your good sense to some outlandish scheme of enlightenment. Always trust your inner knowing and authority. The outcome will be a realization that there truly is nothing to yearn for, nothing that must be attained.
 
In some of your stories of awakening, early stages of One Life Awareness may have found you feeling disconnected or lost. Your old time worn ways of being and thoughts might come to be scrutinized. Ideas you had about “how it is” become ideas that no longer seem relevant. People and friendships shift and transform, while synchronicities and other phenomenal anomalies arise. You might notice that spirituality has become a more important part of your life, with meaning and fulfillment becoming important priorities, and you trust your intuition more fully and completely than ever before. You may feel like you want to be of service somehow, connecting with others in ways that promote the well-being of all. Often people feel more connected to the natural world. You come to the understanding that all beings and all things have value and are interconnected and co-dependent. Nothing exists without everything else, there is no separateness or independence. You may notice this taking the form of empathy and sensitivity with a view of the world that reflects that in deep and profound ways.
 
Many would say that awakening is the first step on the spiritual path, while others would find awakening to be the last step, the culmination of practice and a long journey on the spiritual path. Some believe that a “dark night of the soul” is required to initiate the awakening. Whatever your story might be, awakening is a recalibration of reality, that is often accompanied by a letting go of old beliefs and ideas. Awakening can lead to surrender and discovery. It can be creative or destructive. It can be anything and everything.
 
We suggest that you make space for awakening in all its forms and at all times have confidence in the loving kindness and compassion surrounding you. Always be who you are and let your story unfold. Love and be loved, and practice sincerity. Awakening is what it is, nothing more, nothing less than a story you tell yourself, a shift in your perspective, a change in your sense of reality, a rebalancing and a recalibration of the notion of self. 

Tutorial for August 2022
A Time of Polarization

Most people would agree that it is a time of polarization. The apparent emphasis is the contrast between things, with differences that are extreme, and tensions surrounding these differences are great. It may feel like these differences cannot be reconciled and this may generate feelings of despair and disappointment as well as feelings of overwhelming loss or failure.

In times of polarization, you may feel like you have to choose one side or the other. You may believe one side will win and necessarily the other side will lose. The notion that you have to choose becomes loaded with projections of fears and judgments of both personal opinions and cultural sentiments. Personal opinions become tightly held and can become extreme. Tension escalates and absolutism dissolves whatever natural or genuine equanimity may have been present. The polarizing thoughts and expressions distort the sense of “other” in an attempt to find relief from the discomfort of the tension. Polarization is different than the acknowledgement of the nature of duality as a predicament of human existence. There is a great deal more tension and distance in the extreme nature of polarization. The tension is what exacerbates the feelings of despair, doom and gloom. While the human sense of self is comfortable with duality, the high stakes tension and extremism of polarity seems to have no antidote.

You can eliminate the tension to moderate what is inherent in polarity, but that does not end the polarity. Solutions have to come from something which has never arisen previously, never before been known. Out of the chaos of the intensity of the polarization will arise a glimpse into the pure "View", and with that, pure creation of life. One Life. Creation is the only resolution to polarity. It is in the midst of the high stakes of polarity that creation can and must arise.

It is fruitless to seek One Life or seek the resolution of duality. You cannot resolve the aspects of polarization either. You will get stuck in the grasping for something and the avoiding of something else, creating a chasm, a dividing line that tends to intensify or maximize the division. One Life, indivisible as it is, does not exist in the chasm between poles, it is the chasm and the poles simultaneously. When known as such, the Great Perfection of All That Is becomes livable and its great brilliance shines through everything.

The great or primordial Polarity is that of the cosmos and chaos. The cosmos is where the implicate order holds everything together and the chaos is where the order falls apart. The light that shines through the “chaosmos” is the light of The Great Perfection, considered the most profound and direct path to enlightenment. The instructions associated with this path present a radically direct approach that cuts through confusion and lays bare the mind's true nature of luminous purity. 

Chaos must be lived through and mitigated with practices of meditation and practices of loving kindness. Only then can one imagine the nature of One Life that is attempting to emerge. And One Life Awareness is the only viable resolution to polarization. Whenever you are encountering polarization in the world, you are encountering inner polarization. Your inner polarized notions intensify the outer expression of polarization, and the outer polarization intensifies the inner polarization.

​Let One Life Awareness flow through you and the recognition of All That Is as without polarization will emerge as the new creation of the world in that moment. It is all there is, right here and right now, so Let it Be.

One Life Tutorial for July 2022
Don’t Look to History to Solve What is Now


​When something difficult happens in your life, do you look backwards, trying to find the origination of the problem? That is what many do. It is very common to look for a past lifetime that will explain the karma of this lifetime, or look for the behavior in the past that can explain the experience that is now painful. However, looking to the past to solve something difficult in the present is not likely to yield any insight. Why? Because that strategy is contingent upon the belief that there is causality, and that direct and complete creation of an outcome is caused by an origin you can uncover. The belief is that if you find the origin, and eliminate its influence, you can thereby alter the outcome. However, any origin you find will be the result of your biased memory attempting to explain something that is ultimately unknowable. It will be speculation, and not the cause. There is no true knowing of anything except in the right-here-right-now present.

When a problem arises, it is necessary to look at the problem and allow the solution to unfold. This is different than being attached to making a difference and creating a resolution to the problem. When difficulty arises, non-action can often be the best choice. Staying present with what is can be the most meaningful way to navigate the storm, and letting go of trying to find an answer to “Why?” questions can bring the greatest peace. So non-action, presence, and letting go of an automatic reactive run to the past is going to serve you best when in the midst of a troubling situation.
Don’t get stuck in the common thinking that all you have to do is unravel the past, and hack away at the roots of the situation in order to solve your current dilemma. How many times have you said or heard said, “If only I would have taken that fork in the road 10 years ago, I would not be here” (substitute your own “if only”) The deeper truth is you ARE here and that is all that matters. How you got here is ultimately irrelevant.

There are many justifications of past choices. “I only avoided the fork in the road because it looked much more challenging than steering straight ahead.” Or “I didn’t think I had the power to choose the fork in the road.” Or “Someone was in my way and blocked me from taking any other next step.” You can see how all these excuses can actually distract you from what is happening now, and get you lost in the interpretive fiction of the past, rather than cultivating a full-on acceptance of what is now present.

What is Now Present is exactly what is supposed to be Now Present—it could be nothing other than Now Present. You cannot take what is Now Present and find its cause in order to alter what you believe is the direct and complete outcome of this cause. It might look like a good way to try to avoid a future you have judged as troublesome, but actually you are just creating more confusion and delusion. You can only live in the Now Present. Nothing else exists. You must be present with whatever you are now experiencing in order to live whatever the experience is. Let go of all the assumptions of causality and you bring your whole self to the Now Present. The all that you are will then have the perfect experience of All That Is. You will never have a definitive answer to “Why” questions. “If only” statements are in the end meaningless. Just be with What Is and Present Now, and all will be as it is. 

Synchronization is defined as the coordination of two or more things so they happen at the same time or rate. There are lots of illustrations of this, for example, an orchestra uses a conductor to keep individual musicians playing in the same time signature. You and your friend both set matching timers on your phone. Systems that operate with all parts in synchrony are said to be synchronous and those that are not are asynchronous.

At first you might think that synchronization is dependent upon a conscious agreement amongst all parties involved. In the case of the orchestra, all the musicians desire to be in sync, and agree to follow the conductor’s instructions. But there are many examples of objects with rhythms that naturally tend to synchronize: crickets sing together, fireflies blink on and off together, and when placed side by side, pendulums swing in unison. Neither crickets, fireflies nor pendulums make agreements or have conductors.

Synchronization of rhythmic things is self-organizing and self-reinforcing. Once things are synchronized, there is very little reason for them to deviate, so synchronized objects are very stable and reliable. The influence that seems to initiate the synchronization can be anything, and systems of things that have rhythms most often synchronize naturally and spontaneously.

In computer simulations of sync science, often there is a mix of synchrony and asynchrony that appears. A state containing many exotic forms of synchronization, with regions of randomness and asynchrony has been called the chimera state. Consciousness can be understood as a complicated and delicate balance of synchrony and asynchrony, and from our perspective will always be a chimera—incongruous parts seeming to make a congruous whole.
When you look within, and dive deep, you will likely uncover ideas and feelings which seem to be in sync with your world and just as many ideas and feelings which seem to be out of sync with your world. In the human world of duality, even synchrony is an understanding that cannot exist without the presence of its partner, asynchrony. You find that neurons fire in patterns, heartbeats align in sync with other heartbeats. Yet total synchronization of all aspects of the self is impossible, and is always unachievable.

Synchronization requires distinct and separate aspects of a system to be defined as such. You need two to tango—duality to synchronize. The point we wish to make is that synchronization with All That Is is not One Life Awareness. It is not an indication of movement towards One Life Awareness either. Consciousness is often in sync with All That Is, but just as likely may be “out of sync” at some junctures in the time and space of everyday life. That is the chimeric nature of consciousness. That is the mystery of All That Is.

​Synchronicities occur when synchrony is acknowledged, and recognized as present everywhere, and when asynchrony is recognized as necessary for synchrony to exist. Synchrony and asynchrony are mutually dependent. One Life Awareness is not dependent on your finding synchrony or asynchrony. One Life Awareness simply is. Non-duality is the recognition that underlying the multiplicity and diversity of life experience there is an infinite and indivisible reality, or One Life Awareness. Being present, being who you are, or just being, can allow you to sense that ultimately, synchrony is nothing to try to achieve, nor is asynchrony something to avoid. All That Is simply is, and all is One Life.

The very common understanding of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin is usually characterized as “Survival of the Fittest.” Evidence supports this claim with species of organisms arising and developing through the natural selection of inherited variations and adaptations that increase an individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. This theory has influenced many, and has been modernized to include newer scientific theories of evolution. This biological sense of evolution grows out of the relative nature of duality. From the non-dual understanding, One Life Awareness, evolution would be represented more appropriately as “Thrival of the Cooperative.”

As you dive deeply into at this axiom, you will find that Thrival of the Cooperative operates in Awareness as a process of conectedness. Nothing thrives without cooperation as all life is interdependent and connected. You can see One Life Awareness in the midst of cooperation functioning in all levels of being, and all life expression.

In a world filled with fear, primarily fear of enoughness and death, Survival of the Fittest presents a roadmap for a seemingly successful navigation of life’s difficulties—just become the fittest and you win. The trouble is, that becoming the fittest is really only possible with the realization of deep connectedness to others, and must be fueled by cooperation.
In the realm of Thrival of the Cooperative, groups of organisms work or act together for common or mutual benefits, frequently understood as “adaptation” that promotes some benefit for all concerned. All involved see whatever they attain to be a positive result of cooperation, whereas in the throes of a Survival of the Fittest orientation, competition puts every organism at risk for survival. Without a Thrival of the Cooperative approach to life, the goals and achievements of individuals are unrelated to each other and tend to promote a sense of isolation and separation.

There are many different kinds of cooperation. What has been called direct cooperation refers to people all doing the same thing together with one goal or outcome in mind. This might be everyone pulling the weeds in the garden, or even everyone chanting together ceremoniously. This kind of cooperation is voluntary, and could be done by oneself if desired. Indirect cooperation is when people all do different things to achieve one goal. An example might be all the different laborers and tradesmen who are necessary to build a house, or perhaps all the musicians in an orchestra, or any other endeavor that requires a division of labor. When people specialize and add their skills to other specialists, the form of cooperation is considered to be indirect. Both forms utilize connectedness and achieve results that could not be attained without some form of cooperation.

Connectedness is the knowing that everything living and non-living is connected in some way. Not all connections are obvious or measurable. Yet connections exist and reinforce the truth of interdependency. Knowing you are connected to everyone and everything is the ground from which thrival commences, and cooperation is the path to express that knowing.

Think of all the ways you cooperate. It is one of the most primary elements of all experience. It doesn’t matter if you are cooperating with a friend or spouse, with your community or country. Cooperation is the process of One Life—All That Is—and it is difficult for an individual to thrive without it.

​In the past two pandemic years cooperation has been highlighted. The only way to move beyond the virus has been to generate cooperation amongst individuals and use the power of coming together in new ways as a means of continuing to thrive. The human world is still quite unsettled around the virus and its activities. Connectedness has created thrival by using cooperation as a better strategy than a competitive “fittest” strategy. Ultimately everything and All That Is must cooperate directly and indirectly in order for all to thrive. Let go of fear in order to allow deep connectedness, and simply find ways to cooperate with All That Is. Every action is an opportunity to cooperate, every cooperative expression is an affirmation of connectedness and thrival.  

​ 
Making a choice is an exercise of incredible power. You might at first think that we mean that there is a lot of power in making the right choice, but we would suggest that the power of choice lies in the realization that all choices are ultimately right.
 
Understanding dualism, understanding the nature of living a human existence, is understanding that you will be constantly confronted by the either/or scenario. Basically, what happens in these either/or scenarios is that both sides get incredibly loaded up with all sorts of things and unconsciously the “ledger sheet” process is begun.
 
You have choice A and choice B and then you come up with an enormous number of concepts on which to compare these two options. Some pros go on one side of the ledger, and some cons go on the other side of the ledger, and the lists are endless That's what goes on unconsciously, and the fact is you'll never be able to resolve dualism with dualism. You'll never be able to resolve A or B by contrasting A to B because eventually you will have to recognize that A and B cannot exist without each other. It doesn't matter what A is or what B is, and the moment you acknowledge the interdependency of A and B, you are set free from the unconscious compulsion to pick the “right” one.
 
A and B are necessarily equal. Every choice leads to an infinity of possible outcomes. You cannot have a better experience with one than the other. You're going to have your experience with your choice no matter what it is. That is all you can have, just your experience with your choice.
 
Choices are quite arbitrary. The idea that one choice is better or worse than another, or easier, harder, or more important than another, is often fabricated out of fear of making the choice. If we were to tell you that good choices can be made without too much consideration of the possibilities, this often brings up a lot of resistance. You might believe that life is about making the right choices and not making wrong ones. You might think that you must evaluate all choices carefully. We would not suggest that this advice is wrong, only that this advice can lead you into a state of fear as your thinking plummets into a nerve-racking attempt to decide between two possibilities. And looking at your options is almost always a speculation of future events—a fantasy projection.
 
 We suggest that you settle into the here and now and make the choice with complete abandon. All choices are ultimately choices between two equals. You can get past the fear that you will choose something that brings you a bad outcome. Ultimately your experience of the outcome will be what you make of it. With this understanding, a choice between two perceived outcomes is a choice between two equivalents. You'll experience what you'll experience: your presence, your gratitude, your heart open, your spirit, in either situation if you allow that to be your intention, rather than an intention of a right choice. The deepest intention you hold is the best place from which to make a choice. If you superficially set the intention to “choose the right thing,” you will find yourself having a superficial experience. If what lies much deeper within you is to experience everything with the greatest compassion and wisdom you are, then allow that intention to be present when ever you are in the process of choice making. So if you find yourself paralyzed, because you are in a total conundrum about a choice, see the big picture, and understand that the feeling of being stuck between two choices is a picturing of duality. The resolution of duality is stepping completely out of it, not diving more deeply into it, which is what happens when you try to make choices based on comparison.
 
Tear up the ledger sheet. Stop thinking about what could be the result of this choice, and what could happen with another choice. It's all speculation, and bottom-line you're just going to experience you. Your expression of life is the you that you will experience in the moment of the experience. Keep it all very simple. Let the choices flow into one another with confidence that all of you is present making the choices. Becoming more aligned with One Life Awareness allows you to recognize how simple it is to let go of old limiting beliefs around the possibility that you could make choices that are wrong.
 
As you become more and more comfortable in One Life Awareness, you will stop obsessing about things in your life. A choice won’t become overwhelming. You will still focus, and be engaged in meaningful and joyful choice making, and the experience will come to match your intention naturally. You won’t be overwhelmed unless you get stuck in believing the power of choice is about making the right choice. If you open up beyond your choices into One Life Awareness, you will actually feel less overwhelmed. The more expanded you are, the smaller choices become in your totality of One Life Awareness.
 
It is simply training the mind, not to gain dominion over your thoughts, but to allow all thoughts to just be whatever they are without making them substantial. You are energy, your thoughts, your mind, all is energy. Training the mind is not controlling the mind, or conquering the thoughts, but allowing them to simply be. There is always a you that is not invested in any of the thoughts. This you has power. This you has the power to choose from what we call a deeper place—One Life Awareness. In One Life Awareness all thoughts are equal, therefore all choices are equal. Look deeply within, notice your thoughts, accept them for what they are--just thoughts. This place we call the deepest part of you, the you that can access other points of view, is the place of One Life, an indescribable yet simple place where all choices are equal.
 
There is a lot of power in choice making. Make all your choices from the deepest place, from the you that you know is loved, and all choices will be loving choices. Make your choices not from a ledger sheet that you have studied with an intense comparing and contrasting of speculations of results, but from an open-hearted, expansive, flowing you that is present, right here and right now, willing to choose with abandon, confident in the rightness of all that is, letting go of thinking you create “rightness” in favor of knowing you are simply One Life Awareness expressing what is.
 
 

Tutorial for March 2022
 
The Observer
 
To be “The Observer,” also sometimes called “The Witness,” requires you to enter a realm of consciousness that is absolutely neutral and free of attachments. The Observer realm of consciousness is simple awareness, noticing, seeing without judging, just being present with the here and now. When you are observing yourself, you are gathering information about who you are, therefore gaining in self-awareness. This information ultimately becomes a database for your perceptions, and the foundation for the stories you tell yourself about who you are.
 
You don’t have to conjure up this realm of consciousness, it is a part of your natural state. Your experience is the sensory data you have amassed combined with your perception of the data, and that is followed up with your inner narration of the events. How you engage with the sensory input and how you perceive it is habitual, and generally automatic and unconscious. You can, however, train yourself to perceive things in new ways—this is what an artist does. An artist can learn to see things in terms of shadow, light and perspective, for example, and use that trained perception to reproduce what is seen on a canvas with paint. A pet owner can learn the various sounds their pet makes and interpret them, while anyone else might just hear generic pet noises.
 
The part of this process over which you have the most agency is the inner narration. In The Observer realm, you are aware of your thoughts and feelings and have some sense of their usual biases. But you also have the capacity to shift from your usual point of view to something more unique and responsive to the here and now moment. The story you then generate is not attached to the point of view, but rather is fluid and malleable. You come to realize you are not stuck or submerged in any of it, not the experience as it is narrated, nor the narration itself. This Observer becomes liberated from habitual processing of sensory input. That is sometimes seen an experience of “stepping back” but it is actually a releasing of your customary way experiencing.
 
With the self-awareness that arises in the Observer realm as we are calling it, often comes the ability to feel more joy and compassion for self and others. It is truly a present state of One Life Awareness. By paying attention to the subtleties of the inner narration, you can train yourself not to believe the parts that are full of judgments and attachments even if these judgments and attachments do creep into the story from time to time. By not believing your inner stories as being absolute truth, you open the door for the judgments and attachments to simply dissolve. Once you know the place within you that is not attached to your stories and judgments, you will glimpse the pure view, the experience as it simply is, life as it simply is. There is great joy in simply being alive and being right here, right now. Assuming The Observer point of view can be a wonderful tool to remember that joy.
 
Let being The Observer be a centering tool for you. Have confidence that you know what we are speaking about—it is not a great mystery. It is just the observance of the mind and its habits of perception without distractions. You don’t interfere with what you are observing, you are not affected by it, but instead, when noticing how you are interpreting the experience, let go of believing it. It is like the outbreath of the experience. Breathe in and out, and let it all be. 

Practice Generosity

One Life Tutorial
February 2022

Generosity is often mentioned in Buddhist teachings as a practice that helps to clear the mind of attachments and fears. What matters most is the intention with which you are generous. You need to have a pure motivation to simply give without any craving for personal benefit as a result of your giving.  Generosity can be a spontaneous and natural act emanating from a loving and open mind or heart. There is no effort, it just flows as a result of feeling connected to the One Life, All That Is. Generosity can also be a practice undertaken as a means of cultivating a natural flow of generosity. This practice, coupled with meditation, can amplify feelings of connection and improve relationships. As a practice, generosity can also point out to you where you hold back or are aloof, and where you have fear and resistance to connectedness or to the understanding of interdependency. There is only One Life, and All That Is truly arises from an interdependent state of being.

There are generally two ways of practicing generosity: Giving material things, and giving loving kindness. Giving away money and possessions, usually comes to mind immediately when thinking about generosity, but being kind and gentle to others—giving loving kindness--shows generosity of spirit. Being a generous person is ultimately more important than any particular act of giving. Acts purely coming from compassion and good will contribute to being a generous person. Allowing others to be recognized by putting them before yourself can be an act of generosity. Understanding and being empathetic can be an act of generosity. Just smiling at someone can be generous, too. Generosity is a practice of unselfish kindness.

​Kindness is one of humanity’s greatest assets. To be kind is to consider the feelings of others and to avoid actions that do harm to others. If kindness is as the root of all your actions, you can have confidence that your actions are in service to humanity. We suggest that you look at your motivation for actions of kindness. If you are motivated to help, it means you have evaluated the situation and see it to be in need, or lacking in some manner. If you are motivated to fix something, it means that you are seeing the situation as currently broken. If you have a sense of service arise within you, it means you will enhance with generosity what is already as it should be.

Now that does not mean that you cannot help or fix things, but that if helping and fixing underlie most of your believed altruistic actions, you may not have pure intentions, you may unconsciously be looking to benefit yourself or your ego in some way. If you desire reward or recognition, or even hope for a favor in return, you are not driven by pure intention. Being aware of why you are acting is necessary if you want your actions to really serve others. True generosity stems from unselfish motivations and will express in affection, empathy, gentleness and giving to others—all qualities of kindness.

There are personal benefits to giving generously with pure intention. Practicing generosity helps to eliminate unconscious greed and judgment, while extinguishing ill-will. You reduce your attachment to possessions by letting go of them, and if you can give your time and energy to benefit another, you will find many obstructions and obscurations lifting in your life—though they may not necessarily be connected in a logical way to your giving. Practice generosity, allow it to become a natural emanation from the who and what you truly are and all One Life will benefit.