The term "illusory self" typically refers to the idea that your sense of self, or your personal identity, is an illusion or a mental construct that does not correspond to a real, separate entity. Your perception of your self as unique and autonomous is an aleatory creation in each moment, unstable and not objective. In other words, the self you believe to be real and enduring is simply a mental construct or illusion. This illusion is a temporary and dependent phenomenon created by your thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. The self you experience is defined by the borders and boundaries you construct to defend aspects of the illusory self that you are attached to, primarily your self-image.

Self-image refers to your mental representation or perception of your self, including your physical appearance, personality traits, values, abilities, and overall identity. It is a subjective and multifaceted concept that is influenced by a range of internal and external factors, such as past experiences, social norms, cultural beliefs, and feedback from others.

Your self-image is composed of different components, including physical self-image, social self-image, and psychological self-image. You may have even generated a spiritual self-image. All these components contribute to your overall self-image and shape how you view yourself and your place in the world. Self-image can be positive or negative, which can have a significant impact on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Defending your self-image is a natural human tendency enacted to protect your sense of identity and self-worth, and depending on the situation and your personality, you may utilize one or many strategies. Here are a few strategies you may recognize:

Denial: You may deny or ignore negative feedback or criticism that threatens your self-image. For example, if someone tells you that you are not good at something, you might dismiss the comment as irrelevant or untrue.
Rationalization: You may explain away negative feedback or criticism by making excuses or justifications. For example, you might say you did poorly on a test because the questions were too hard or because you were feeling sick.
Blaming others: You may attribute negative feedback or criticism to external factors or other people, rather than taking responsibility yourself. For example, you might blame your poor performance on a teacher who didn't explain the material well enough.

Comparing yourself to others: You may compare themselves to others who are worse off or who have similar flaws, in order to feel better about yourself. For example, you might say, "At least I'm not as bad as so-and-so."
Seeking social support: You might seek validation and support from friends, family, or other people who share your beliefs or values. For example, you might talk to someone who you know will be sympathetic and reassuring.

It's important to note that some of these strategies may seem to be adaptive and healthy, while others may seem to be maladaptive and harmful. However, we suggest that by accepting and knowing the illusory nature of self, you can eliminate the strategies altogether and liberate yourself from attachment to self-image. Expanding your sense of what self is will be a more effective means of freeing yourself from maintaining the boundaries required to reify your solo self. Most importantly, realize that you tend to defend your borders and boundaries in the belief that you are defending your self, however, the self is just a construct, an illusory perception and not real, so truly there is nothing to defend.

Boundaries are raised at particular times and lowered at other times. Consciously and unconsciously. As you move daily through various states of awareness and unawareness you constantly erect borders and boundaries to maintain the sense of self. Boundaries can seem to be practical for establishing autonomy and relationship, and yet boundaries surrounding an illusory self promote the notion of self as separate and independent. With this view, the illusion of the self can become a source of suffering, as it leads you to attach to a false sense of identity and to experience craving, attachment, and aversion.

The aspiration is to recognize that your self is totality, all that is, One Life Awareness, that your self is not a lone, singularly functioning entity whose boundaries must be defended.  A self that would be separate is an illusion. A self is a complex system, composed of many things—ideas, perceptions, emotions, actually all and everything that is. One Life is you—your self. The self is all that is, and you pick and choose from all that is to define some portion of that wholeness to be you, but you actually are that wholeness.

The concept that an independent, bordered, boundaried self can have connection to others is erroneous thinking. Having any boundaries at all is contrary to experiencing the ultimate knowing that All That Is is who you are. Let go of this idea that you are a separate self, and see how much energy frees up when you stop defending the borders and boundaries you perceive to be necessary. The notion that you must defend your self-image is rooted in fear of connection. And we would say that everyone experiences fear of connection just as they experience fear of disconnection.

​Your sense of separateness will most likely never leave you. Your strategies to protect your self-image will likely remain. But, you can understand how boundaries and defending them function for you, and realize there is no need to fortify boundaries in order to support a self that is ultimately illusory. Set your self free from attachment to self-image and notions of an independent self and you will thrive in greater and deeper awareness and loving kindness. This is simply loving everyone and everything and just being you. 

One Life Tutorial for April 2023

At times you experience the occurrence of events in your life as coincidence, appearing related without any apparent causal connection. Coincidences arise from a variety of reasons, such as chance and statistical probability, but are ultimately created by the way you process information—how you perceive and interpret the experience. You may see patterns and connections, without any objective capacity to prove they exist. Or you may just sense that something feels different in the interaction. A coincidence feels more significant than just a random occurrence. If meaning is present, you might label an experience as more than “just a coincidence,” because coincidences which are meaningful reflect a deeper connection to your inner psychological state than what a random occurrence might suggest.

Sometimes coincidences occur simply by chance. There are billions of people and events happening every day and the odds of things lining up in ways that could easily be interpreted as meaningful are actually quite high. Coincidence presents aspects of the dynamic and interdependent nature of existence. With the knowledge that you have a tendency to interpret most of your experience in a way that conforms to pre-existing bias, beliefs, and expectations, it becomes prudent to recognize that in a world of dynamic coincidence, auspiciousness is always present.

The term auspicious is often used to refer to anything associated with positive and favorable outcomes. It can be used to describe a variety of situations, such as completion of positive action or the arrival of a new opportunity. In Buddhism, auspiciousness is closely linked to the idea of karma and the belief that one’s actions have consequences that affect future experiences. We use the term auspicious is to describe anything that is fortunate and conducive to spiritual growth and well being.

The notion that auspiciousness is always present suggests that there is a state of consistent opportunity for positive events and outcomes to occur and that these opportunities are interconnected and interdependent. This could be interpreted as the belief in the natural unfolding dynamic play of One Life as evolutionary movement into a more and more profound state of loving kindness. Whether the evolutionary movement is towards anything or nothing at all is irrelevant, however. In the relative sense of reality, it just is more reassuring to assume there is a direction and purposeful quality to evolutionary movement.

You do not have control over all the events and occurrences in your life, but you can appropriately cultivate a sense of the ever present auspicious nature of All That Is. Your choices, actions and beliefs are always met in the dynamic play of One Life unfolding. This meeting is perfect in that there is always an outcome that serves the continued unfolding. Coincidence is the juxtaposition of events unfolding and auspiciousness is the terrain upon which the events unfold. And the deeper truth is that dynamic coincidence is always recognizable in the midst of prevailing auspiciousness. And auspiciousness, ever present, can be cultivated and thereby support the profound knowing of meaningful interdependent coincidence.

Another term for the concept of “emptiness” might be “spaciousness”. When you first pondered the notion of emptiness, you probably thought it meant the void or simply nothingness. Often, emptiness, as nothingness, brings with it a feeling that there is no potency or possibility. Instead consider spaciousness, a term that promotes a deeper understanding of emptiness as a way of looking at experience; as a view or perception of reality. In this sense, emptiness is the means by which you take experience as it is, not adding nor subtracting anything. This way of perceiving the world is without bias or personal history; it reflects an absolute knowing of the unconditional nature of One Life arising.

Spaciousness engenders a sense of optimism, with no starting point and no separate ending point. Spaciousness requires you to start where you are. Be open to your spaciousness and you can see in all directions without limits. Because of the interdependent nature of things, anything can come into being. It just depends on the circumstances and conditions that arise and how you interact with them. There is not a way that you should be or things that must happen in life, which is not to say that life is totally random. Everything, All-That-Is, is dependent on everything and All-That-Is in order to exist. This interdependency means there is nothing and no one with whom you are not connected. This profound state of being, and the wisdom to grok it, emerges out of abiding spaciousness.
Now, to really dive deeper, notice that just because you are interdependent with All-That-Is, and you therefore affect All-That-Is, you cannot create or control a particular outcome. If you act consciously, you do not guarantee that what comes into being will reflect your perceived level of consciousness. All possibilities and all outcomes exist at all times in the spaciousness of all reality.

​You are constantly interacting with the world around you, no matter how hard you might try to isolate yourself from the world. A mutual exchange is constantly occurring, endlessly shifting and constantly adapting. Standing in your spaciousness, you experience the non-static nature of the perfect unfolding and arising of One Life in all moments.
To ground you in your relationship to your perceived reality, see your life from the perspective of spaciousness, and incorporate the wisdom of knowing the interdependent nature of All-That-Is. By that we mean you can cultivate a greater acceptance and unconditional responsiveness to what occurs in your life’s circumstances. This is where loving kindness and compassion comes in. In the midst of true spaciousness lies the wholehearted understanding of the connectedness of all that is. Whether you identify this understanding as emptiness or spaciousness, allow love to lead the way to embracing the interdependency of all aspects of One Life. Nothing is required, nothing is missing from your experience. Let all that you see,  know, and feel be empty and spacious.

Most of the time, you feel peaceful, yet looking “out” into the world you live in, you find many acts of violence around you. Violence is any action or behavior that causes physical or psychological harm to an individual (personal violence) or group (global violence).  Physical violence like assault and battery and psychological violence like verbal and emotional abuse is perpetrated daily all over the planet. War, genocide, terrorism and oppression is violence that affects large numbers of people. Political, economic and social forces are often at the root of both personal violence and global violence. However, whether it is personal or global, fear is what ignites violence.

You have likely heard that “peace starts within.” Inner peace is envisioned as an inner state of tranquility. It is your own inner sense of peace and contentment that allows you to be open to seeing a peaceful outer world. Though outer peace generally begins with cultivating inner peace and balance, it cannot be generated at all if there is no sense that peace already exists. That is, by learning to find peace within yourself and to respond to challenging situations with understanding and compassion, you can create a more peaceful outer world if you have a deeper wisdom informing you of the peace that is always present everywhere. You must know peace to create even more peace.

​From our perspective, peace is the nature and goal of every sentient being. It is living in loving alliance with all of yourself and with all creatures and beings. Peace is indivisible, it exists everywhere, it simply is the true nature of things. Suffering is what obscures peace, so when suffering is overcome on any level of existence, greater peace is revealed. Peace tends to project outward, it is only contained temporarily by forces of fear-based violence.

Finding Peace means you have awakened to the ultimate inseparability between the happiness and well-being of yourself and of all others. This underlies the inspiration to attend to the needs of all, to love everyone and everything. With an engagement in mindfulness, promoting peace becomes the commitment to undertaking acts of loving kindness for all beings. While personal peace can be understood as the absence of tension, conflict, and disturbance, global peace can be envisioned as the absence of war and violence. Yet we would emphasize that peace is the natural state, and all that occurs, including the tension, conflict, disturbance, war and violence can exist in the midst of peace. This is to remind you that you cannot wait for there to be no war in order to live in a peaceful world. Nor can you expect to completely eliminate all personal violence compelled by fear before you cultivate and abide in a peaceful mind.

Equanimity is a state of psychological balance and composure, allowing you to stay calm and composed in the face of difficult situations. It is a key component of inner peace and can be cultivated through meditation and other mindfulness practices. Practicing equanimity allows you to respond to stressful situations with clarity and compassion, rather than reactive violence or aggression. This helps you to cultivate a sense of peace and contentment.

​Equanimity is often considered the last of the “Four Immeasurables” or four sublime states in Buddhist teachings. The first three are love, compassion, and joy. Love is the practice of loving kindness for all, compassion is understanding the suffering of others and contributing to the alleviation of it, and joy is a practice of sympathetic joy, the delight in the happiness of others. It is with these practices of the four immeasurables that peace can be cultivated. Foundational to the cultivation of peace is also the simple knowing that peace is the natural state. Peace is everywhere. There is always peace, even in a violent world.

Altruism is generally thought to be the belief in or practice of selfless concern for the well-being of others. Psychologists call an altruistic act prosocial behavior: behavior that benefits another regardless of the underlying motive, or the real or perceived benefits for the giver. All altruistic acts are prosocial, though all prosocial acts are not necessarily altruistic.

From our perspective, altruism is not only acts of kindness that are free of any sense of personal advantage, but altruism must also be free from any attachment or consideration of outcome. Understanding pure altruism is not just a mission for a Bodhisattva, but a practice of serving others whenever and wherever there is a possibility to serve. Service to other sentient beings with the simple motivation to liberate all from suffering is true altruism. Becoming free from suffering oneself with no expectations of what might be accomplished or attained for one’s own benefit, is also true altruism. True altruism with a sense of commitment and some sense of responsibility will generate bodhicitta. Bodhi means "awakening" or "enlightenment". Citta from the Sanskrit root cit, means "that which is conscious" (i.e., mind or consciousness). Bodhicitta may therefore be translated as "awakening consciousness" or "mind of enlightenment". At the heart of all true altruism is the promotion of the welfare of all sentient beings and Bodhicitta is the attribute most aligned with the nature of true altruism.

Ultimate altruism brings wisdom to all altruistic acts. However, wisdom alone is not a means of predicting and therefore protecting all outcomes. The wisdom we refer to is actually a deep understanding of all suffering with great compassion and insight into the nature of suffering. This wisdom cultivates loving kindness and illuminates the great capacity to be of service to others.

Responsibility and commitment to the great compassion arise in the midst of deeply understanding the nature of suffering. This underwrites an altruistic act. With responsibility and commitment, you are released from attachment to outcomes associated with your selfless acts. True altruism has no need for evaluation. It doesn’t matter what you do, but matters more how purely you do it. Allowing yourself to focus on boddhicitta, all your acts become altruistic. There need not be a strategy or even a clear intention declared. In truth, a strategy or intention to be altruistic can get in the way.

So the practice simply is the practice of awakened consciousness, One Life Awareness, or the realization of bodhicitta. Without a genuine realization of bodhicitta, even a basic intellectual understanding of Bodhicitta can be a foundation for altruism. Appreciate the preciousness of your human existence and the existence of all sentient life. Cultivate true altruism. Keep it all very simple. Be of service, be who you are, and love what is. 

Tutorial for December 2022

​Do you think of enlightenment as a perfect state of being that you must achieve in order to stop the cycle of birth and death? Most people view enlightenment as a self-actualization project, an attempt to avoid rebirth by reaching Nirvana, that is attained only by the few fully devoted masters.

We suggest that enlightenment is truly everywhere, and embraces everything and everyone. Enlightenment is your true nature, and is steady and stable while also being far from static. Because enlightenment frequently seems to be sudden, it is often depicted as a lightning bolt. Enlightenment can also seem to be a result of a long and usually arduous journey, commonly symbolically associated with a path. Awakening is another term used to describe the process of enlightenment, with revelation being the threshold upon which enlightenment is achieved.

Enlightenment is the attainment of boundless wisdom and compassion which necessarily allows endarkening and enlightening experiences to flourish. If the enlightening aspects of consciousness contain clarity and confidence, for example, the endarkening aspects of consciousness generate profound acceptance of the great mysteries of life. Enlightening is coming to understand, while endarkening is allowing not-understanding, all of which is One Life Awareness.
Most people view their spiritual lives as either progressive or revelatory, and enlightenment, from our perspective, is the weaving together of progression and revelation which stabilizes in embodiment. Experiences of spiritual awakening, whether gradual or sudden, intentionally induced or spontaneous, typically evoke an ineffable sense of deep inner knowing, or “unveiling” of your true nature, as well as experiences of peace and equanimity, bliss, ecstasy and aliveness and love. Just as significantly, experiences of spiritual awakening can be experiences of fear, despair, and other endarkened emotions and thoughts.  All of these descriptions, all of these aspects, whether seeming to be light or dark, are truly one when you don’t get tangled up in them and allow them to be. Make yourself available, and One Life Awareness will arise in you.

Enlightenment is everywhere. Everyone and everything is enlightened—as enlightenment is an understanding of the relative mode of existence as well as the ultimate mode of existence—the true nature of all that is. Enlightenment and endarkenment is simply One Life Awareness which has no beginning nor end. Your mind, your true nature, all of you is enlightened whether you are experiencing that or not. You tend to look at life as either enlightening or endarkening, yet who you are is all of it, not one view or another, but All That Is.
Allow yourself to be all that you are and enjoy knowing, what is beyond information and data collection, from a pure primordial view, that enlightenment is everywhere.

​You are all enlightened!

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.