We would like to dive deep into a very common trope: “Thoughts are things that create your reality.”
You will find this notion stated in much of the self-help and abundance-creating information you come across. Usually in this schema, since thoughts are things that have the power to create reality, all you have to do is manage your thoughts, and you magically get the “reality” or more precisely, the experiences you want. That all sounds quite logical and very simple. The problem is, whenever you try to manage or control your thoughts, they seem to run even more fiercely away from you. We suggest that any thought, controlled, managed, or contrived, therefore not arising naturally, has no power to create reality. The managed thought arises out of fear. The fear that if you think something you deem to be negative, you will have a negative experience. A thought that arises as one thing, and is forced to assume the guise of another thing, actually becomes the beginning of a usually quite elaborate story. It is easy to get lost inside of these kinds of stories.
On the other side of the idea that thoughts create reality is the awareness that “thoughts are nothing—insubstantial, have no place in the creation of reality at all”—it is all One Life unfolding.
Both and neither considerations are entirely true.
But what does that mean for how you go about living your life? Of course, it feels better if you are in a positive thinking habit. A negative one is just self-undoing. But wait! Self-undoing? That is the point ultimately isn’t it? To undo the self so elaborately created over lifetimes of experience? To eliminate the elaborate stories you tell yourself to identify who you are?
From our perspective, you are always the creator and the created simultaneously and seamlessly. The moment you identify with one position, you limit the possibilities afforded by the other position. You can easily get fixed in one viewpoint and then you are engaged in maintaining that viewpoint, unable to see anything else clearly. The only choice is to remain impartial in the face of anything that seems positive or negative, and not identify with either. Thoughts then rise and fall, without needing to be controlled.
Thoughts have no power of their own. Only your investment in them can make them seem powerful. If you think a thought is something or is nothing, or is anything what so ever, you are assigning characteristics to that thought and its “thingness” seems then to take on form.
Once a thought seems to take form, it becomes fixed in time and space. Whatever characteristics have been associated with that thought are elaborated upon until that thought attains the guise of reality. It is however, just a thought, even though the edges that are formed around it with ideas and descriptions create an illusion that can be quite convincing.
Thoughts naturally appear and disappear in vast emptiness. When you try to manage them, they can easily become reified. They seem important and separate from what is simply One Life Awareness unfolding. Let go of trying to manage your thoughts, and attempting to bend them to your will. Stop grasping on to the “good ones” in hopes they will last and bring good fortune—stop pushing away the “bad ones” you fear will bring you difficulty. The thoughts you grasp and the thoughts you push away are not creating your reality, it is the deep perfect still space within that creates and is created in every moment in equanimity, that simply is reality. The grasping and the pushing away have no real influence on your experience, therefore, your reality. With deeper understanding you can see how fruitless it is to believe you can control your thoughts, or force yourself to think a certain way.
Test this for yourself. Notice that thoughts come and go on their own if you let them. Just be with them, and just be without them, with no preference whatsoever, and you will find freedom, liberation, from the burden of trying to manage and control thoughts. Find the freedom that allows thoughts to appear and disappear and your experience, your reality, will mirror the spaciousness and liberation of One Life Awareness.

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

​Points of View

Notice the graphic:
Are the windows opening or closing? 
Is it sunrise or sunset?
Is the glass half empty or half full?
It depends on your point of view.

​THE TUTORIAL
 
Whenever we are speaking about One Life Awareness, we are speaking in some ways about that particular point of view, and yet we like to be absolutely clear that a particular point of view is a limitation. What we're really talking about is all points of view simultaneously interacting with each other in the grand display of phenomena which is not One Life Awareness but is life.
 
The Buddhists will often talk about the pure view and from our perspective, it is helpful guidance to find a path, to find a perspective that may be of great value to you. And yet we would suggest that you cultivate many points of view; because with more points of view you have more information about the nature of reality. You have the opportunity to see things from many different perspectives and many different sides. And it loosens your attachment to whatever point of view may become your favorite. If you find that you have a favorite point of view, we would say you found the nature of your natural mechanism for limiting your perception of life. You found the way that you draw boundaries around things, because your point of view necessarily means that another's point of view is outside of your point of view. It might interact and overlap here and there, but it is never going to be your point of view. But, if you have multiple point points of view, you have multiple ways to explore and experiment with the nature of your sense of reality. It is all of these points of view that construct your reality, and you are processing millions of points of view in every moment. So why limit yourself to what you perceive is your own point of view, or what you might think is the pure point of view? That view is just an opinion. Be an artist in your life, as artist has to take many points of view in order to understand the nature of an object or person that they might be painting or sculpting. An artist has to incorporate more than just one position in order to get a full representation that becomes their art. Even non-representational art requires many points of view to produce. We are using this as an example, wishing to suggest to you that you really are the artist that is generating the picture of your life. Inform it from many angles, from many perspectives. Let them all naturally weave together and have the biggest view possible. It is from that enormously open and free view that you will find who and what you really are, which is nothing but One Life, One Life Awareness.

​We look out into the world as it appears at this time, and there seems to be a lot of confusion over what is truth and what is not truth. Can all things be both true and not true? How can you understand “what is” if truth is relative and unreliable?
We suggest that to understand the nature of truth, you must first understand the nature of reality. While philosophers and teachers of all sorts have espoused many differing understandings of the nature of reality, all that matters is your perception of reality. It doesn’t matter if you can describe your notion of reality, it doesn’t matter if you cannot describe your notion of reality. Whatever might be real for you contains, or in a way simply is, everything that you perceive. Reality is not a thing, it is more like a condition, something like a state of being, within which all phenomena arises and disperses, perceived by the perceiver in whatever way the perceiver perceives.
Experience might be another name for reality. What exists for you as reality is mostly your experience of reality, with experience having no requirements. Any sort of experience is sufficient. This would necessarily include all thoughts, all feelings, all, that in any way is life. Reality is everything—imagined and illusory as well as tangible and seemingly substantial.
Then what is truth? We suggest that truth for any individual is a particular quality of reality—a particular frequency of reality that is contrary to non-truth, non-truth being what doesn’t feel right, what lacks integrity, what is flawed in some way. Truth is your label for whatever you believe. And you identify truth when you see it because you have a predisposition to believe truth based on your experience and evaluation of reality.
You have always had a deep understanding and knowing of truth, it has always fit into your notion of reality even if you have never contemplated any of this previously. Now, however, as the world seems to be divided as to what is true, it is especially poignant to recognize that your truth may not be anyone else’s truth. Also, to discover that truth is not a constant, or permanent, or absolute even though it might seem that life would be so much simpler if it were.
As someone who has traveled the path of paradox, discovered and uncovered One Life Awareness, you will probably align your sense of truth with deep, perhaps profound, connectedness and presence and innate perfection. Swimming through the ocean of everything that is, you will always be guided by your own particularly wise knowing of your truth. You experience both truth and untruth, generally ascribing the untruth label to whatever you do not believe, whatever you perceive to be disconnected, perhaps imperfect, and see truth in everything you believe is in alignment with you.
It all sounds quite simple—everyone has their own truth as a slice of their reality. Reality is everything, and your truth is the part of reality which is believable, reliable, and stable for you, and however else you which to define it, your truth is yours.
A struggle begins when anyone demands consensus around truth or insists that something is right and therefore something else is wrong. Whenever there is a right or wrong in a situation, the real issue at hand is truth, and which truth is the “real” truth. With the understanding that reality is subjective, a perceiver perceiving, requiring one truth that everyone believes in, agrees to and abides by simply will not work. When spoken in the abstract, one and only one truth seems irrational, yet in daily life the assumption is made that there is one truth and that it is absolute and permanent. An assumption of an objective truth is common yet logically, truth cannot be objective. Truth is unreliable and ineffable. Why? Because it is a part of a reality, a part of your individual perceived experience, determined by your ideas and thoughts which cannot exist independently from you, the perceiver of your reality.
The current collective experience of truth and untruth at all levels of governments and societies, all over the world, may actually be in service to becoming aware of truth and untruth as just concepts without any real essence. Remembering that truth cannot exist without the presence of untruth, and that it is all in the eye of the beholder frees you from the confusion generated by seeking the “one and only truth”.  What happens when this search is abandoned is that the argument over who is telling the truth and who is lying is over. When the argument ceases, and consensus around truth is found to be not just impossible, but unnecessary, the heart opens and One Life Awareness unfolds.
If you cling to the search for the one and only truth, you will be on a mission of evaluating everyone and everything according to whether they align with your changing definition of truth, because even “your” truth is impermanent.  And you will be constantly evaluating yourself.
Peace, from our perspective, is the end of evaluation as the center of the experience of reality. Without a constant evaluation of “what is” you experience life from an open heart of allowance and unconditional love. If you let go of labeling and rating everyone and everything, reality, operating as a condition of life, becomes a joyous condition.
We are One Life. All and everything is simply One Life unfolding. The only thing that separates you from another is any thought which you hold to be true, and seek to confirm as true. If all truths are truths for someone, then all truths are true. Even if they might seem different. Releasing your attachment to your idea of truth as objective and absolute is necessary to allow reality, your experience, to become clearly the perfection of One Life unfolding. Reality can be nothing other than perfection, a non-static experience of One Life—All That Is. If you argue with reality, you experience difficulty. If you hold on to a slice of reality, hold on to your truth, for example, you create ideas about nontruth which immediately invoke separation.
So what is truth and untruth? Whatever you believe it is. All things are both true and not true, depending on who is looking at them and what that individual is perceiving as reality in that moment. The key is to stop seeking the truth and instead to be the truth you seek.  
When you let go of holding on to what you believe is right, or true, when true and untrue become nothing special, your thoughts and ideas no longer intrigue you, therefore no longer distract you from the perfection beyond what the mind can describe or figure out. Reality becomes joy and joy becomes reality.
It doesn’t really matter who is telling the truth, and who is lying. Those are just thoughts. The thoughts perpetuate the idea of a you and your truth, of a right and a wrong. Truth and untruth only exist as ideas, and ideas which are liberated come and go easily. In this freedom, you can enjoy the drama of the stories of truth and untruth, not just the ones you think belong to the world, but also the ones you believe are yours. Stop believing they are important and necessary, but go ahead and enjoy the richness of the magnificent play of duality. It is all One Life unfolding. Truth and untruth are just words without meaning until you make them into something else. Let them be just words, keep it simple, love and be loved, remember who you are without all the labels, and just be.

Understanding the nature of doubt begins with seeing how doubt is associated with an attachment to a desired outcome or an attachment to a sense of forward movement in life.
Most of you seem to need to feel as if you are moving forward, evolving, growing, becoming more than you believe you currently are. It doesn’t really matter what part of your experience this sense of “forward” refers to; as long as there is at least one area of life seeming to improve and not fall behind, it seems to validate that life as moving forward.
If you are a contemplative person, you might be seeking a sense of gaining awareness and having deeper meditations. If you are more outwardly driven, you are likely to have career aims and monetary goals and seek forward movement with external measures. Most of you entertain both internal and external gauges, unknowingly always calculating where you are according to where you last evaluated yourself.
The moment you find yourself in evaluation mode, it is the moment you are entertaining doubt. We suggest that doubt, a kind of skepticism, or an inability to trust the moment, emerges out of evaluation which takes place because of an attachment to “moving forward” or achieving a desired outcome.
This attachment to moving forward is discomfort with the now, or at the very least, relies on a belief that staying in one place would cause you to feel as if you were stuck. Attaching to an outcome is just defining the forward movement more specifically.
This kind of thinking is common in the current culture. Most everyone wants everything to improve, to renew, to be great. However, what is covertly expressed in that sentiment is discontentment with whatever is occurring right now. There is a misunderstanding that contentment with right here and now could mean nothing should change, or that discontentment might imply that nothing can remain the same. Recognize that whatever is next is generally an unfolding and elaboration upon what is right now. Expecting what is next to be radically different from what is occurring right now, while of course possible, is generally an indication of the degree of displeasure with the present moment.
So where do doubts come in? Whatever you might contemplate, you will most likely evaluate. Whatever you evaluate, you will most likely want to improve. Whatever you want to improve, you most likely believe to be lacking in some way, and whatever you believe to be inferior somehow, you are most likely to doubt. You might doubt whether a peaceful experience of life can continue, or whether it's real or just some kind of figment of your imagination, or some kind of illusion. If your current experience is painful, you might doubt that it will ever end or change or lighten up in some fashion. Your doubts are always ready to arise in any moment that you think you are in charge of change. At any moment you think you can make things happen or not happen in your life, you will entertain doubt.
Experientially for most people, doubts seem to arise out of the blue. You are sitting in a in a beautiful place, feeling peaceful, happy and loved, and then suddenly a doubt, thoughts and misgivings show up. You think the ax is going to fall, the world will end, whatever doom and gloom you come up with, it is mistrust of the most likely natural unfolding of the now into what is next. The doubt stems from real knowing that all things are impermanent, but gets distorted into suspicion or doubt because of your attachment to “improvement” and only “good” outcomes. It takes courage to simply allow what is next to unfold. Culturally speaking, it is seemingly impossible to allow what is next—you have been taught to “seize” the moment, to “create your reality” and to move forward at all costs.
If you are feeling pain, doubts arise about whether the pain will subside, so the very notion that the next moment naturally unfolds from the now might seem to indicate that you will always be in pain. The doubt is an uncertainty and mistrust of life. We might even say that doubt is uncertainty posing as certainty if it is believed to be true.
The radical eradication of doubt succeeds only when all thoughts lose their power to enchant you. So while you were busy trying to distinguish doubt from other thoughts, you were actually making doubt really important amongst all your thoughts. All thoughts are the same. There are no good thoughts and no bad thoughts, they are all insubstantial, there’s nothing to them.
Now this is antithetical to many teachings that attempt to help you to hold on to the good thoughts and create your reality from them, and eliminate the doubts so you don’t create any reality from them. However, from our perspective, that keeps you in evaluation mode all the time. You are only adding to the cacophony of the thoughts in the mind if you are evaluating all of them and ranking them according to which ones will work and which ones will not work. We simply suggest that if they seem to arise from nowhere they will also seem to depart to nowhere, and its nowhere that is the true Now Here.
All doubt is thought, all thought is seemingly profound and real, but not to be believed or evaluated. Be fluid, you have the capacity to not believe anything you think, and to not make any thoughts important. It’s just allowing thoughts to rise and fall and to let those thoughts just become nothing. This is a profound time for diving deep into practices that will free you from thoughts which have no bearing ultimately on who you are. Life just gets easier and easier and easier, and becomes simple, peaceful, and happy.
Start to notice if you think you should be improving or if you think things should get better, or if you are telling yourself any story that encourages an attachment to forward movement or outcome. The deeper truth is that there is no forward movement that is absolute, the starting point and the ending point of life are one and the same, and there really only is right here, right now.

​The Illusion of Certainty
One Life Tutorial for April 2019
It is wise from time to time to contemplate the things you think are certain. “The sky is blue, the ground is stable, life is short, I am alive,” for example. Then ask yourself if there is any way that these certainties could be illusion.
What is illusion? Generally speaking, an illusion is something perceived or interpreted by the senses that is “wrong” or deceptive. “A figment of the imagination” is commonly called an illusion. “Appearance” is often another way of describing an illusion. It is easy to call something an illusion if you have already determined that what you are perceiving is false, or a hallucination, or has arisen from your imagination without any seeming connection to “reality” or “truth.” It can seem more difficult to discover the illusory nature of what you believe to be certain.
There are many sorts of illusions. The illusion we will discuss here is the illusion of certainty. Supporting any idea of certainty you might hold, there are usually beliefs that are primarily formed in the intellect, or the discursive mind, and thoughts describing reality, or “What Is.”  These thoughts tend to be thoughts of separation like “I am alone, separate, and this is mine.” These thoughts may seem to be real or true in themselves, but become even more seemingly correct when grouped together to support a belief. If you are really attached to these thoughts, it becomes difficult to even imagine that what you might think is real is not real, or that what you might think is true is false. You expend energy holding on to your conclusive thoughts about things and may even use them to attempt to convince others to believe what you believe. The very idea that rightness and wrongness is an absolute, something more than a concept, can contribute to this illusion of certainty.  We would suggest that illusions of certainty are illusions of no substance or presence taking on the guise of being real or substantial.
The current affairs of the day can be seen as a profound teaching on this subject. You may have been thinking that an investigation, a report, could be the very thing that can prove the beliefs that have been so importantly held as certainty or truth. There has been a big investment for the outcome of this investigation to result in proof of the rightness or wrongness of beliefs that seem to contradict each other. You may have felt invested in seeing the “facts” (proven beliefs) as a means of maintaining your well-constructed reality. However these facts were interpreted by you, you most likely continue to be driven to see what you continue to believe. If your beliefs were not proved to be “real,” you continue to hold on to your beliefs and look for another way to prove them. If your beliefs were proved to be real, you elaborate on the truth of the proof, making it seem even more substantial.
However you see information presented to you, it is through the lens of what you believe is “real” and “certain” and “true.” And, you will attempt to prove your beliefs with any thoughts that can support the beliefs. Notice how the beliefs stay fixed in the illusion of certainty, and the thoughts actually shift in whatever way is necessary to support the substantiality of the belief. Also notice, however, that the beliefs are inherently without substance—they rely on the ideas and thoughts that, like a house of cards, try to support them.
In what other ways are you “certain” of things and on a mission to prove the veracity of those things based on beliefs you are attached to which are supported by ever shifting thoughts? In your relationships, can you notice yourself seeing what you believe about another rather than more purely experiencing exactly what is in the moment unfolding before you? In your daily routine do you start with an idea that something will be either exciting or boring and then unconsciously thoughts arise in your mind that prove one or the other to yourself? Most people tend to forget how to experience life in the moment without preconceived notions of what that moment will be, and instead rely upon their habits and beliefs to determine the nature of their experience.
What is it about those notions you are most convinced are real and certain and true, and believe are not illusion? Why are you driven to be “certain” of things? These certainties are oftentimes the most important building blocks of your concept of reality. Yet all of these things can be seen as illusion if you are willing to look from a different perspective. As a practice, seeing anything from a different perspective expands your view and weakens your attachments, and attachments are at the core of suffering.
Illusions of certainty are not the only illusions you may indulge in. There are illusions of enlightenment as being dependent upon some process or practice based on beliefs of “no pain no gain” and the need for a progressive path. There are illusions around life and death with elaborate speculations about the nature of existence. All of these illusions are a part of the paradox of human life. What is real and true can never be proved beyond all doubt. Life has no substantiality, permanence, or certainty. Awareness is truly all there is.
To live in the now, to live in presence, in the moment, is to let go of the often times most dearly held beliefs of what that moment is to be. The tendency is to think you are living life, when actually you are thinking about what you believe life is, rather than living it. So take just a moment to contemplate something you hold to be true, or certain, or right. If you can find any way to loosen your grip on that belief, you may open up your mind beyond its fixation on thinking all the thoughts that support that “certainty.” The mind can then become spacious and empty. This liberated mind is the mind of Awareness, of presence and possibility. Let yourself find this freedom in seeing the illusory nature of all beliefs and allow your reality to contain more possibilities. It starts with contemplating whatever you believe is certain and knowing that you see what you believe. If the beliefs are illusory, then everything you see is illusion. And amidst it all, One Life Awareness unfolds, no certainty required.

​CREATIVITY
Your personal creativity is fueled by your imagination. We would define your imagination as the ability to conjure up images, ideas, methods, interpretations and appearances that are unexpected and original. You are able imagine many things that you have not seen or heard of previously; you can innovate because you can imagine.
Imagination is one of the great gifts of being human. It can bridge non-physical realms with physical realms by inspiring you to create. When you really investigate the nature of imagination it becomes clear that imagining something is a magical display of the mind’s ability to organize phenomena that may or may not have any substantiality, into something that appears to be substantial or appears to be able to achieve some state of substantiality.
We suggest that the imagination blossoms when it is given the opportunity to take some form. That means, when you imagine something and you make it, build it, write it, compose it in some way—create it--then the imagination “muscle” gets strengthened. If the imagination never fuels something creative into manifestation, it can languish and find itself diminishing.
We would say that creativity is the outward expression of the usually more seemingly inward energy of the imagination. Imagination renders everything internally, while creativity renders externally. The information used by the imagination comes from perceptions stored in memory most often. No sensations are necessary as input for the imagination to work, in other words it is not necessary to have a flower in front of you to imagine a flower. You can invoke the imagined flower image at any time and in any place.
Creativity flourishes with an experimental attitude, unconditional self-acceptance, self- confidence, and focus which we identify as the four main obscurations of One Life Awareness. By noticing if any of these obscurations are at play, and perhaps hiding your deeper view, letting go of any aspect of these obscurations may result in an expanded sense of your creativity. That is to say, creative expression can cultivate awareness, and can dissolve what might seem to obscure your most natural state of awareness. Creativity often prepares the ground for One Life Awareness to flourish. One Life Awareness is indeed the ground of everything, and may actually be noticed through imagining and creating consciously. It is in this manner, that conscious creation of any sort serves you in your ever-unfolding relaxing into One Life Awareness.
Having an experimental attitude as an outlook beneficial for a creative endeavor might seem obvious. However, many of you approach your creative process with a fixed notion of what must transpire to be successful. We suggest that you eliminate an inflexible fixation on either the process or the outcome in order to experience your presence in the process. Approach your creativity with the idea that it is all an experiment, that whatever you are going to do, you can shift and change and adapt to whatever unfolds as the creation. Try a few things out—don’t be afraid of mistakes and just experiment. This is true for life as well as for any creative project. Make choices in every moment to allow the unfolding as well as to spontaneously incorporate whatever you believe is your plan.
Unconditional self-acceptance is the most important condition to develop for all creative activities. Lack of self-acceptance, feeling full of self-doubt, will cause you to be hesitant and unavailable to your natural state of awareness. For example, you cannot create anything of value if you begin with thoughts of your own lack of value. We are especially speaking to how you handle what might appear to be at first a mistake. If you are self-accepting, this does not unleash a barrage of self-criticism. What seems at first to be a mistake can become the foundation for something new to arise in the process. How you work with your “mistakes” in a creative activity is good practice for how you can work with whatever you might perceive as “mistakes” in your life.
Self-confidence—not arrogance or a lack of responsiveness to what comes up—flows from unconditional self-acceptance. Self-confidence cannot be rigid or fixed, but must underwrite your actions while you also maintain humility. Self-confidence is what allows one action to flow to the next. From this sense of flow a sense of freedom arises. It is easier to fully immerse yourself in your presence and the flow of actions if you are also able to trust and have confidence in yourself. Connect with your presence, your being, and your imagination, and the active part of creating will naturally flow.
Focus is an important piece of creating. Not a narrowing of the aperture kind of focus, but the sense that you have some direction and some ability to “stay on task” and complete in whatever fashion you complete, something that you set out to do. This kind of focus is akin to intention. Focus cannot be contrived or efforted. The focus we refer to will allow completion to feel like a spontaneous result manifests out of enthusiasm rather than out of an intense push to achieve an end.
Now you are always creating. Creativity extends to all aspects of living life. You create based on thoughts, ideas and perceptions, and many of these creations inform the nature of your relative experience in your world all the time. Let yourself imagine something, then consciously create it by bringing it into some kind of form as a practice of Awareness and Presence. Creativity has more to do with your state of being, your Awareness, than really anything else. This is why it is a good practice. If you find yourself feeling un-creative in any moment, stop to see if you are lacking in any of the attributes described. A lack of any of them can be at the center of your feeling stuck or blocked creatively. Look within, dive deep and then just breathe and know you are loved! It is always that simple!

​PREDICTIONS 2019
Catherine Weser—channeled from One Life
UNDOING THE CULTURE---UNDOING THE SELF
With months of challenging energy in 2018 behind you, 2019 begins with a realization that you can transcend your usual, conditioned reaction to the challenges you perceive with One Life Awareness, presence and compassion for all life. That may sound like a tall order, however, we suggest that 2018 has pushed you in many ways to become more authentically you in the midst of ever shifting circumstances. For each individual, there has been some form of required diving deep into the nature of self in order to find stability in a world that rocks and rolls like a dinghy on a turbulent ocean. You have had to find where you stand, what you believe, and know that whenever you became comfortable, it was just a matter of time before you would be uncomfortable again. Most of you found yourselves wanting to withdraw from others, your culture, and the world, because it seemed as there was very little supporting the values and understandings you had gained over the decades that brought you to 2012.
We suggest the cycle of 1999 to 2012 was experienced by most aware beings, those who feel to be on a spiritual path, as a cycle of expansion and growth of One Life Awareness and shared consciousness—a time of realizing humanity is a family of light. While there was some fear of the year 2000 known as Y2K, most of you felt a celebratory entrance into a new millennium with a feeling of its potential for the creation of the new world. This carried on till 2012 when the predictions surrounding 2012 as an end time filled the collective with some foreboding. We would suggest that these predictions were correct if you recognize that after 2012 many things seemed to begin to unravel.
The cycle of time from 2012 through 2025 is a cycle of undoing. You are right in the middle of that cycle now. The culture needs to be transformed, the individual sense of self needs to be revamped, and the energies of the world reflects all of this. Culture is created by the humans who define the nature of the culture and are simply a part of the culture. The sense of shared values and judgments is the important glue that holds the culture together. A disparity of values and judgments in a culture contributes to its breakdown. Similarly, an individual sense of self is created out of defining a self in terms that contrast or align with another seeming individual self. When a majority of people believe there are more differences between people than similarities among them, the very notion of a culture crumbles. The world, all of relative reality, both contributes to and reflects simultaneously the undoings of this culture and also contributes to a sense of a self that also must “undo” itself in order to deeply transform.
In the course of the undoing of a culture, a belief in the contrast between people heightens as common ground erodes. This is evident now in many places all over the planet. At the center of this experience is a belief in scarcity, or “not-enoughness”. You may feel this “not-enoughness” on many levels---spiritualy, emotionally, physically, and even economically, for example. Though the economy in 2018 was touted as very good, most of you found it to be unreliable. This continues in 2019, and you may feel like there are creative openings and possibilities for economic growth in your personal sense of well-being, but along with that sense of things, there will be an anxious feeling that all could go very wrong very quickly. This is because the economy, like other cultural structures, is trying to rebirth itself and allow for a greater One Life perspective to emerge. This perspective is one of generosity and connectedness, and it will take several iterations of transformation before a One Life perspective is more widely held. In times of undoing, what is found to not work is often discovered before what is found to work, and that is what is underway. The economy moves very slowly with occasional reminders that it can transform dramatically in an instant. You will likely see slow changes in your personal economic situation, and see a few instances of the new paradigm of generosity and connectedness emerging as well.
Very noticeable changes in the culture in 2019 occur in the breakdown of trust in social media. Several events create the perception that the most popular social media platforms no longer respect the original motivation to connect people. More and more breeches of confidence occur and people exit social media in large numbers. This is a process which takes many years to complete, but will become evident in 2019. At first, new platforms may show up and seem more popular than old ones, then even the new platforms will be abandoned. In the “not-enoughness” belief that permeates the undoing of the culture, suspicion of others rises and the idea that you have to get yours or someone else will get it causes many people to simply withdraw from any situation which requires any kind of exposure of themselves.
In frustration and disillusionment with the culture, as it continues its undoing, we suggest that there will be a significant number of people who do not withdraw, but instead protest and become much more visible as activists. There seems to be a great divide between those who withdraw and protect, and those who come out to make a loud statement to the world as to their preferences. Of course, everything in between these extreme reactions will also exist, but will not be the majority.
The last few months of 2019 hold the potential for some of the gifts of all of the undoing to be received. A few leaders will appear who will be speaking deeper truths and promoting the new paradigm of a One Life perspective. These leaders will have empathy and true compassion and will become models for those attributes.
Women continue to come forward to play a larger role in the culture, taking over for men in positions of power. This is natural and gradual, yet distinctly a movement that is telling. We see women as necessary in the transformation of the culture, and appropriate in their claiming of positions of influence. Of course, this is not without resistance. You can expect to see an overall adaption to women in power, and likely will be able to appreciate this change.
What can you do to facilitate the re-creation of the culture? Even though 2019 continues overall to be a year of undoing, the spark of light---knowing you can transcend your conditioned reactions to it all---opens up new pathways upon which you can thrive. The idea is to go beyond your conditioned responses to whatever you are experiencing. This is the time to be so vigilant with your perceived state of consciousness as to be able to transcend the ordinary and cultivate the extraordinary. Now we do not mean this in terms of making something “better” or improving with effort or contrivance, we mean having confidence in the notion that you can have a clear and broad view at all times. Remove the blinders and see the whole picture for what it is—One Life unfolding.
To transcend your conditioning means to respond in a new and less predictable way, to understand that if you are operating in a conditioned manner, you are acting in a way that you have become accustomed to, or that you have been rewarded by. These acts become empty over time. The rewards no longer seem adequate, and the feeling of familiarity can become habitual and unconscious. In order to operate in Awareness, you must be flexible and resourceful. You must return to and rely upon One Life, which is unknowable, indescribable, indivisible, nothing/everything, luminous emptiness.
If you are constantly tracking appearances in the relative world and describing them, labeling them better and worse, for example, you can diminish your view so much that you start to falsely believe that you have control over your relative existence generated by a need to dominate. You can fall into the belief that you can manipulate your world and bend it to your will and expectations. This is actually a trap that emerges out of conditioned responses. If you are able to take actions which are unexpected or adaptive, you naturally open up your view to the infinite potential for anything and everything to happen.
You have to surrender to the ever unboundaried sense of One Life unfolding by knowing you are not who you think you are, nor are you who you think you are not. You have no real control, because there is no singular you who holds the keys to the Universe, there is just One Life unfolding. Even with all of your habits and conditioning, attempt to navigate the unfolding as if on an ocean of unlimited potential, but basically without control or any advantage based on appearances.
Initiating new habits can be a very slow process. You are naturally attached to your habits, especially if you have judged them to be positive. And if you have judged them to be negative, you may be even more attached because you can run a lot of energy through your judgments—how bad this is for you, how much you should be able to change, grasping for help and will power to make the change, for example. Sometimes, it can seem like there is no way to make change happen, and in a sense that is true. But you can plant seeds, nurture those seeds and usher them into maturity with patience and loving kindness. Just as the culture must undo itself in order to transform, so must you , in a sense, undo the conditioning and become who you really are.
The nature of your reality is dependent upon the boundaries you place around it. You define yourself and your world in a nano-second on the fly over and over again. If you create your reality from a conditioned reaction to life you end up living within boundaries that become rigid and inflexible. The qualia (individual instances of subjective conscious experience) of your existence, how things might seem to simply be to you, is direct experience, not a belief about the experience. You cannot evaluate an experience without generating labels for the experience and hence calling upon your beliefs about the experience. To have direct experience is to be, in a way, with out labels and evaluations, but instead with Awareness and presence.
We see 2019 as a year that is like a fulcrum—the middle of the undoing phase—with 2025 being the beginning of a new phase of creation. At this mid-point there are inklings of what is to come as well as the obvious breakdown of what has been that no longer serves. Be easy with impermanence. Everything must undo and redo simultaneously. You cannot force anything, but you can influence your perception of all that is with One Life Awareness.
Look to this upcoming year as a year of opportunity to commit to fearlessly allowing the changes which move the culture from a culture of “not enoughness” to a culture where the truth and the knowing that there is always “more than enough” becomes evident. Do this by allowing yourself to act with the wisdom that you are more than enough, to act with consistent loving kindness and acceptance, and confidence that as One Life unfolds, it is always Love that is.  

This is the time of year when friends and family often gather to share holidays. It is the time of year when the ups and downs of life can seem especially potent. It is a good time to reveal to yourself the nature of your emotional strategies, and uncover the deeper One Life Awareness that is who you really are.

There are times you feel good about yourself and times you don’t feel so good about yourself; these are the ups and downs and comings and goings of life as a human. Amidst the ongoing always changing experience of relative existence, emotional strategies appear usually unconsciously. These are the strategies used to try to always feel good, to try to feel loved, and to avoid everything other than “positive” feelings. The strategies take many forms, but have in common the need to prove one’s value and lovability.

“Underneath” all of the strategies, there is steadiness, a reliable emptiness that is always operating exactly as it must, meaning that there's always a sense of reliability even if you cannot name it. This sense doesn't go up and down, or have understanding and then lose it. This sense doesn't question whether people like you or not, whether family is connected to you or not, this sense is not trying to achieve or prove anything. This sense is One Life Awareness. The recognition of emotional strategies as false notions and attempts to identify yourself according to your expectations and beliefs about who you are, while not separate from One Life Awareness, can facilitate a deeper knowing of who you are.

For example, you believe yourself to be a certain kind of person—a spiritual person, an emotionally aware person—but also you can believe that you are unworthy, lacking, or naïve. These beliefs are supported by evidence gathered over the years and develop into important concepts that must be defended and maintained. The defense and the maintenance of ideas about who you are become the foundation of the emotional strategies you employ.
An emotional strategy is used in an attempt to release yourself from discomfort usually. You feel bad about something you said or another said to you, and it keeps coming up for you to examine. The strategy might be to try to disprove whatever you believe, or the strategy might be to try to suppress the whole incident and put it into some imaginary vault somewhere in your consciousness. Eventually you find that every strategy will not work—cannot work—because it is all insubstantial. One concept on top of another idea, held together with strategies and feelings, all of which are not the reliable emptiness that is One Life Awareness.

When you let go of the strategies, knowing without much doubt that they are not necessary or vibrant, when you come to an ease in allowing One Life Awareness to arise in the midst of all of your strategies, you relax into who you are. You are who you are and whatever unfolds around you is exactly what must be, and all is what it is.

We are not promoting some nihilistic or esoteric philosophy, we are suggesting just being who you are, by not getting caught up in judgments and inner soliloquies about who or what you think you are. Just notice that thoughts and emotions and ideas try to get your attention and attach you to a place you assume is stable because it is based on something you believe about yourself. The deeper dive reveals that you cannot live your life trying to achieve happiness, simplicity, joy, or even a sense of being loved. You have to live your life as it is, in the perfection that it is, without any arrogance derived from a belief that you can control anything.

You must be willing to consider that whatever you are experiencing is insignificant—even though you may think that that your experience is incredibly important and worthy of countless hours of examination and analysis. You must also be willing to consider that what you are experiencing is important, not in a self-aggrandizing way, but in the sense that experiencing everything is a part of living life. Holding these two views, that you and your experiences may be insignificant and important simultaneously is another version of the paradox of nothingness and everythingness.  It is the paradox of being nothing and everything without contradiction that allows for incredible freedom. If you get stuck in one polarity or the other you are no longer liberated.

​Just realize that being aware, being present, is the simplest thing you can do. Everything else gets very complicated and convoluted. Strategies are always complicated and filled with contingencies. They are not necessary, and furthermore do not work in the way you might hope for. Let go of all of them, even if you have believed in the past that in order to love friends and family, and to believe that they love you, required all sorts of strategies, the deeper knowing is that One Life unfolding is all there is. No effort is required, just love and be loved in ease and grace, and be the One Life Awareness you really are.