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.

Wanting More:
​There is Nothing Better than Right Here Right Now
 
At times you may entertain the idea that you “want more” from your life. You may be wishing that things would change and get better. You may be wishing for events to be over and for an old reliable reality to kick in again. Yet, amidst all you are experiencing, the deeper realization arises that the “grass is always green.” There is no such thing as greener grass somewhere else. There is no such thing as bluer skies somewhere else. There's no such thing as a better, bigger life experience, existing anywhere else but right here right now.
 
In this time of a pandemic, and really at all times, it becomes clear that you have to stay completely in the moment and maximize the potential of this moment. You do that by trusting that you are always operating at your maximum level of awareness, and that One Life is meeting you in that same awareness. What you realize is that it is impossible to have gratitude for your life as it is if you are in the throes of "wanting more." When wanting more is at the center of your experience, your experience is limited and cannot include attributes like acceptance and presence.
 
Thinking there is “more” which is somewhere else, but is not here right now, is a huge thought trap. These kinds of thoughts have no resolution, they can go on forever. When you get trapped in these thoughts, you get stuck in always seeking and never finding. Also, you stop enjoying the experience at hand, as you always look to the next experience in hopes it will exceed whatever is currently occurring. You can’t enjoy the moment if you are always running ahead of it, you’ll completely miss the potential held in the right now moment.
 
There are some ways that wanting “more” can ignite a drive to create. This can be beneficial and can promote change. Using desire as fuel for creativity can take you deeply into One Life Awareness, it can propel you into a next moment with a lot of energy. This energy is the potential of the right now moment being maximized. It is different than ignoring the potential of the right now moment by trying to get to the next moment as quickly as possible. Using the potential of the right now moment emerges from a realization or awakened sense of groking that moment. When you are not fully engaging in the right now moment, you are likely to assume that “more” is out there somewhere and all you have to do is to try to get there. In this realm of thinking, “more” is something elusive and seductive, yet we would suggest that the “more” you seek the less you will find.
 
When you know you are engaged fully with right here--right now One Life Awareness, there is no sense of wanting more. You naturally discover greater meaning in your life, you feel like your gifts are being utilized, and can find that who you are has significance in the world. Not egoic value, but a feeling like you are a treasured part of a larger whole. Often the desire for “more” is really a call to uncover the value of the right here—right now moment. Everyone wants to feel significance in their actions, everyone wants to know that life isn't hollow. That kind of wanting “more” can be a call to dive deeper, and to discover what lies underneath things. Not because there is a desire for something else bigger and better to happen in the future, but because there is a sense that there is “more” already happening right here--right now and it's just under the surface.
 
Sometimes you get distracted by thinking there is a plan for your life. You jump ahead of the moment to capture the plan, convinced there has to be more. A sense of a divine plan for life is usually a momentary experience of One Life Awareness. The only plan that exists is the plan unfolding right now. The plan is what was meant to be. How this plan was meant to unfold, was never known until now, as it unfolds. When you look at things from the point of reference of a deeper meaning, when you allow that to be a guiding principle for you, you won't get stuck in wondering what to do or what's coming next seeking an elusive sense of “more”.  You will be able to stay focused in the present, with One Life Awareness and the world around you meeting you in One Life Awareness.
 
Wanting “more” is at the root of the Buddhist Noble Truth that suffering is an unavoidable accompaniment to physical life. And the way out of suffering isn't a new car or more money or a house on a hill. The way out of suffering is coming to the deep wisdom that wanting “more” takes you deeper into your illusions, and cannot relieve you of your suffering. Coming to the deep recognition that everyone suffers no matter what they possess or what they acquire can remind you that your suffering is nothing special. Your thoughts about who is suffering the most, or where it is the worst, or what should be better, are all conjured up by you. These are ideas that are illusions, and these ideas are often used by you against yourself. There truly is not a single person alive, who has not suffered, or who will not suffer in the future. You will have a life of profound liberation from pain when you start to accept that the suffering is just there and it's not there to berate you or to beat you down or to take you out or to be overwhelming. You'll have liberation from pain when you accept that it just is another color in the rainbow of life. Suffering actually defines human existence, and every pain that you have endured, every suffering that you have experienced, has served you far more than anything else.
 
But you see, only if your life is dedicated to the deeper understandings and meanings of things will pain ever be accepted. If you can't see meaning and depth, then your life is going to be about keeping track of how much suffering you've had and how much joy you've had and always wanting “more”. Freedom from pain, freedom from suffering requires no more looking at life with the ledger sheet in hand, trying to figure out whether you are getting better stuff now than you did before. It comes when all of that is put aside, and who you are is just absolutely present in the moment looking deeper and understanding presence, the right here—right now as beauty in the complexity of the profound creation that is exactly what is. Right here--right now.
 
Approach everything you believe is coming with excitement and anticipation for the best outcome for everyone concerned. You do not have to know what that is in any kind of articulate way. It is just the unfolding of One Life Awareness expressing itself. Cultivate curiosity and enthusiasm for life. Realizing that wanting “more” can get in the way, just be as you are, acknowledging the right here—right now moment. Distinguish the desires that feel like positive motivation and direction, from the need to want ”more” that is habitual and unconsciously lures you away from being present. There really is nothing better than what is right here—right now. 

​The Power of Contagion
One thing you may learn from the current experience of the coronavirus is the enormous power of contagion. In the financial industry, contagion is the risk that financial difficulties at one bank will spread to another bank or one market to another market affecting the global financial system. Contagion is psychologically defined as the spread of a behavior pattern, attitude, belief, information, or emotion from one person to another. You have all experienced emotional contagion—when your emotions have mirrored another’s emotions. Think about how contagious crying and laughing can be sometimes. Someone crying can bring tears to your eyes, someone laughing can infect you with laughter. This synchrony of emotions between individuals is important to personal relationships. Most of the time it is unconscious, and all of the time the potential for contagious emotion is present. There is also cognitive contagion, when the dissemination of information, knowledge or beliefs occurs through the sharing of conscious or unconscious cognitive fields. And, of course, there is the contagion of physical disease. The contagion of physical disease has been illustrated powerfully with the current pandemic underway, and is probably the most common way you have thought about contagion.
In addition to the power of contagion between and amongst humans, there is also an ongoing synchrony representing the contagion between humans and planet earth. This alignment of energies, of you and seemingly everything else is One Life. We would suggest that One Life Awareness is an outcome of total and absolute contagion of all to everything.
Contagion is everywhere, all the time. From a One Life perspective, One Life would not exist without the power of contagion linking everyone and everything. Contagion is a powerful expression of connectedness, of truly being the One Life unfolding as All That Is.
As a human, now on this planet, you have the opportunity to not just understand this power, but to wield this power if you wish. Wielding this power might look like consciously infecting someone with your positive attitude. It might look like comforting someone who is ill or dying. I could simply be sitting in meditation and dedicating the merit of that meditation to all who may be suffering, or simply to all.
This is the time to realize the power you have to influence the experience of any and all outcomes unfolding. You can appreciate that influence occurs because of the power of contagion. It is the time to notice when you are becoming reactive or when fear arises within you. All of the aggressive behavior you may have seen in grocery stores or even in yourself recently is just the aggression that comes up when you are overwhelmed with fear. Fear can become contagious, and overwhelm can trigger both aggression and indecisiveness. Practice recognizing this pattern and notice that it is rooted in fear of the unknown, and can be halted with a simple check-in.
A check-in with yourself could include asking yourself these questions:
“is what I am expressing actually present right here right now, or am I projecting and futurizing?”
“is what I am expressing right now kind, loving and compassionate?”
“is what I am expressing right now necessary and essential for the wellness of all sentient beings?”
If you ask yourself these three questions and discover you are not where you wish to be, not contagiously emanating the loving kindness you truly are, remember the power of contagion and invite love to infect you. Take a deep breath and bring love into your heart and mind. Be one with What Is, be you, allowing the fear to be present, but not allowing fear to overwhelm the greater presence of love within you.
Basically, the lesson being learned right now is that there is no separation between any living thing on the planet. In all ways and at all times, all are connected. All humans, all animals all plants, all minerals, all the elements, everything that is the substance of the planet is connected to everything else. There is no way to isolate yourself from any of the things that exist on the planet. You are a part of it as it is a part of you, and that even includes the atmosphere, the space, the sky. It is all one living entity and at this point in time, this living entity is not breathing easily. It's not having the full capacity of life force that is necessary for the entire global system to sustain itself. It is in trouble, and the only way that things will change for the entire global system is from the inside out-- from the people inside the system, changing their relationship to the whole system in order to bring about a better experience for all. The power to invoke is the power being illustrated right now, the power of contagion. The change underway is a recalibration of all relationships, a coming together in One Life Awareness.
 
The is going to take a lot of work on a lot of levels. There are the physical levels. There are the mental levels. There are the emotional levels. And there really are very deep and profound opportunities to work at spiritual levels. At this point, you need to respect your sense of connectedness. You need to practice the breathing in of everything and all that is seemingly dark, and the breathing out of everything and all that is seemingly light.  This is a practice to help to transform all of the “dark” energy into “light”, even though the terms dark and light are actually One Life, not separate at all. It requires feeling like who you are is a significant part of the dynamic and profound global system. You have to realize that you are significant, that you are important, that your actions are going to have consequences, that your practices are going to be supported and supportive, and that you are going to help to create the change that is necessary. This is not because you are special—everyone is significant. This is not because you are not special either. This is because you have the power to be contagious.
 
You have to know who you are, ultimately--this really means to recognize that as a being of light, you can have influence on the whole global system. Now on a mental level this means really looking at your thoughts; really looking into your own mind and seeing if you are feeding the fear, feeding the nonchalance--the sense of not being involved at all--or whether you can make a positive contribution to the whole with basically positive thinking.
 
Now this doesn't mean to create a struggle with yourself and be upset with yourself, if your thoughts go dark. This means when you have a positive thought, as you're feeling happy and in any way delighted with the nature of your existence, you hit the imagined “share” button. Remembering the preciousness of your life, let yourself expound on that. Let yourself on allow those thoughts to fill you, to bring big smile to your face and into your heart and make that your contribution. Very closely associated, of course, are your emotions. They are not separate from your thoughts or from your spirituality, or from your body, but they are something that you can focus on. You may not be able to look at emotions as separate from thoughts completely, but have some sense of being able to examine what are you feeling in the moment. If you feel fear--which everyone is going to feel fear from time to time--you can ask to simply relax into it and let the light flow and cleanse you. If you feel darkness, let the darkness come in with the in breath and let light simply emerge from you. All of these practices are going to help you be in touch with your own physical body, which is a microcosmic group of organisms that is a part of this macrocosmic global system. Each individual has to participate in the best way that they can to contribute to the healing of this entire global system, the planet and the cosmos. All depends upon it.
The power of contagion is great. Use its greatness to help you to step out of your more afflicted emotions and fears. There is always love, there is always the direct knowing of peace, there is always One Life expressing All That Is. Don’t deny any of it, just be aware of all of it, and choose to spread the deepest peace within. Be who you are, be all you are, and just be.
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​A One Life Tutorial on Corona Virus
 
The nature of this Corona Virus has much to do with changing notions of separation. First of all, the virus has come from an animal source. This means that the relationship between humans and animals is changing, that animals and humans are coming closer together—the boundaries between the two have become less rigid. This is a return to a more profound state of knowing the nature of all beings not as separate entities, but truly as One Life.
 
Secondly, people are practicing social distancing. This means that a great deal of attention is being placed on the space between self and other. We suggest that this space—the space between you and another—is being redefined. It is no longer the space that separates you, it is the space that connects you.
 
By this we mean that there is an intimate connection between you and all others that is being rediscovered. You are being reminded of how deeply and profoundly you are connected to everyone and ultimately everything. You are being reminded that your life actually depends on everyone and everything much more than you may have previously thought.
 
You are also having to examine all the things you take for granted, and all your behaviors that are habitual. What is it that you have been doing that is essential for your well being? And what have you been doing without presence, without consciousness? Many things have been thrown into the air so that they can be sorted out in a new way. You are being asked to look at your priorities and your vulnerabilities. You are being asked, "What matters?” and "What does not matter?"
 
What matters is deeply personal, and universal at the same time. There is an enormous shift underway as earth’s culture moves away from acquisition and indulgence as an aspiration for a good life, to the deeper understanding that what is really aspired to is connection, compassion, loving kindness. So in this time, if you recognize the opportunity to acknowledge from the depths of your heart, connection to all beings, connection to all life, you will reach a state of awareness we identify as One Life Awareness.
 
All healing is a movement into a more profound state of being. You are one with everything from the virus to the stars, and in that knowing lies profound peace and fearless acceptance of what is. That is the foundation of a joyful life, an amazing existence, and healing that is endlessly beneficial to all of One Life. Let yourself be mindful and aware, feel loved in every moment, for One Life is love of the highest order.
Be who you are, be well, and so be it.
 

Sounds easy to “lose your mind” in this time of scary viruses, irrational politics, and extreme weather. It may seem like your mind is already lost. The deeper truth is you are more likely to be all caught up in your mind, and perhaps even fearful of letting it go.

During times like these a lot of energy gets redistributed. This redistribution initiates a lot of analysis as a way to try to understand what appears to be occurring. You may see your critical inner voice evaluating what is said by everyone around you. You may find yourself in constant assessing mode. You may notice a bias toward assessing everything negatively. This bias originates from evolutionary history when survival depended on knowing how to detect a dangerous situation. This bias remains in most of you as you find yourself confronted with modern day challenges which can seem to escalate mentally to a high degree of anxiety. One difficulty is that the fluctuations in the redistributed energy are also occurring on levels that are beyond the human capacity to analyze. Many of these experiences of transformation are para-verbal and express shifts in the deeper recesses of knowing.

Although you crave the simplicity of having figured things out, having second opinions that match yours, and an end to the inner critiques of what may seem to be, the more you stay in your head, the more fear arises. And once fear is involved, compassion ebbs. When there is fear, change seems threatening. When there is fear, change appears overwhelming. When there is fear, a barrage of thoughts can be released and start to seem real.

So, to become fearless in the midst of all your thoughts is to find the ray of true compassion that is actually your natural expression, your essence, and the center of your being. This discovery of innate fearlessness can stabilize the foundation of compassion that is at the root of All That Is--One Life. Seeing the compassionate perfection underneath the drama of the experience can alleviate the tendency to get lost in the mind’s anxiety and stuck in a fearful approach to the seeming imperfection of what is unfolding before you.

From our perspective, a more profound state of compassion is developing in all humans in order for humans to move to their next step of evolution. This state of compassion already exists, it is just obscured by the fears that are dominating the minds of those who are reluctant to “lose their mind.” There is actually no way to control the velocity or in some way manipulate the process of transformation underway. Everyone is in this together—in the One Life. Everyone has their role to play, even carrying the fear is a role that is valid.

Therefore, we are not suggesting that you “lose your mind” as a means of achieving something or promoting the transformation which is underway--there are no strategies involved here. You are going where you must go, being what you must be, and that is all that is asked of you. The dynamics are holographic. You are part of everything and everything is part of you. In One Life Awareness you find that no separation exists except for the separation present in the cognitive construct of words.

​You are learning more about yourself in this time than ever before, by noticing the words used to describe what is going on in the world around you. Every day there is a new meme rolling off the tongues of celebrities, politicians and pundits. These memes define the separation, punctuate the fear and ignore the compassion that also exists. We are speaking quite boldly about very subtle understandings that can be gained by resting in your awareness, and truly finding the compassionate you in the midst of your observations of your world. If you can love your world, you can love yourself. If you can see yourself in your world as loved, you can be yourself. The time is right to “lose your mind.” Use your fearless heart and let everything else go. Nothing is necessary. Everything is essential. And it is all love.