Tutorial for December 2021

The view of Dzogchen Buddhism is that you are already perfect, enlightened, awakened to One Life, exactly as you are. You and all living beings are pure, whole and complete, right here and right now. This is the “Great Perfection.” It is not developed or attained, it simply is.

How different that is from other religions and philosophies where every human being is considered to be full of original sin, flawed, and not whole. With the understanding that you are imperfect, life becomes a process of trying to fix the flaws and polish up the essential nature through atonement and other practices.

What would your life be if you came to know your “true nature” as the great perfection that it is? You would know the nature of your mind as spacious, luminous and compassionate. You would experience this true nature as who you really are. You would see that actually you are liberated from whatever pain you encounter, whatever suffering exists; you would see that you are beyond being defined by those encounters. You are essentially pure and will always be pure. You are also luminous and clear, with presence that is natural to who you are.

Describing your true nature as compassionate does not mean that you have ideas or actions that express compassion, more that compassionate awareness emanates from you in all ways that are radiant manifestations of One Life Awareness.

Once you become familiar with your true essence, your true nature, experiencing it and living it become your natural expression. You may still want to meditate and to practice in various ways to stabilize the recognition of your true nature. This does not mean practicing to achieve results, nor does it mean meditating to get somewhere. Instead, to keep on returning to the natural state of your true nature by recognizing it as such, utilize practice and meditation as simple reminders of what you already truly know. You know very deeply your true nature is the great perfection.

​Your true nature will become known to you as the ground of your being. That is who and what you truly are. Deepening your familiarity with this notion through practice and meditation will bring you to the full expression of your true nature. Your true nature is where you have always been, with wisdom, unlimited compassion and the capacity to benefit all living beings. This is the expression of the great perfection—your true nature.

So, there is truly nothing you can “do”—just everything you can “be.” Just to be present and allow everything to unfold as it will, having confidence in whatever outcome arises, is enough. You are the great perfection exactly as you are. There is no improvement necessary, nothing to fix, nowhere to go. Just be as you are, who you are.
​
All religions, spiritual paths and philosophies have points of view. Beyond whatever point of view you assimilate, there is only you and your perception of what is. Your spiritual journey, your path, your point of view can be anything that resonates with you. There is not a single absolutely truthful explanation for what is, because what is, is indescribable. We share with you words that ultimately can do nothing but point in a direction, or circle around the absolute. Find your way by being you, with whatever point of view you wish. Be natural, love and be loved, and that is all there is.

How can you find happiness? Stop looking for it. In fact, happiness is the euphoric feeling that occurs when the denial of its natural existence ceases. You have to stop investing in the search and come back to your natural self to experience happiness.
Everyone knows what happiness is. Everyone has experienced it,-- sometimes in short bursts, and sometimes for long durations,-- but no one knows where to find it. Looking for something or someone to make you happy never works. Neither does trying to make yourself happy when you are sure you are not happy. This is why there is a low rate of success for the use affirmations designed to convince you that you are already what you want to be. How can you find happiness, when happiness is literally the end of the pursuit for it?

True acceptance lies at the end of the pursuit and search for happiness. You will never be happy if you believe something, now or past, should be different than it was or is.

Happiness is revealed as the mental constructs and modifications of beliefs and thoughts are released and no longer reified. This is when Buddhism suggests that you have perceived the true nature of reality. It is not, however, that the true nature of reality is happiness, more that the true nature of reality is without the obscurations of attachments and afflictions.

Let’s not confuse happiness with gratification or pleasure. Engaging in sensual pleasure, self-indulgence, and instant gratification of desires, sometimes believed to be the pursuit of happiness, will not contribute to an achievement of happiness. Pleasure, indulgence, and gratification are all changeable and impermanent. Grasping for something, watching it slip away and trying to procure it again can cause you to feel more unhappy than happy. If you spend all your time, energy, and skill trying to protect, safeguard and secure what you believe you have achieved, you have lost happiness, not gained it. Fulfilling an insatiable desire momentarily does not bring happiness, it brings the frustration of limitation and the realization that happiness cannot be dependent upon time and space, but must be even more free of three-dimensional constraints.

So, what can you do?

Stop Pursuing and Start Expressing
Let go of the idea that you have to chase after happiness and learn how to simply express happiness in whatever form it takes in your world. There is no happiness savings account, whatever you have, spend it immediately on everyone around you.

Think of Happiness as Your Only Mission
The most essential mission of any human being is to be happy—to live in your most natural state. Happiness is not the ultimate outcome of a life “well lived,” it is the most fundamental outcome of a life. Get to happiness by diving deep into everything you are and just being that which you are in total acceptance of all that you are.
 
Remember Happiness Is Your Natural State
Whatever you are doing in your life, do it from a place of knowing happiness underwrites it all. Your nature is happy, however you might be feeling in any moment. Feelings move and change all the time, happiness is solid and deep inside you. It is reliable and abundant. It is at the source of your humanity, always ready to be shared.

Keep Your View Pure and Expansive
 The world is wonderful. Stars shine, the sun rises, everything is in order. Stop looking for what is wrong, and see what is wonderful. Appreciate your aliveness. It is your thoughts and feelings that determine your experience, and you are the thinker of your thoughts and the feeler of your feelings, but you are not the totality of All That Is. There is always happiness amidst and underneath and around all of life—all One Life. Allow yourself to keep returning your thoughts and feelings to the most expansive place, the purist view of One Life unfolding and expressing happiness.
 
Smile
 Something as simple as a smile can change your experience from suffering to happiness. Smile at yourself from the inside out. Smile at everyone you see today, and the next day, and the next. Don’t think you have to feel happiness first, then you will smile. Smile first and then you have a good chance of remembering happiness as your natural state of being.
 
Practice happiness. Be happiness. See the world through rose-colored glasses. Reality is not the fixed place “out there” where suffering occurs. Reality is whatever you are experiencing in the moment. Let this moment be whatever it is, accept it unconditionally, and express your truest nature: Happiness!

Acceptance is key for One Life Awareness. It is a foundation for stability and fuel for abiding in One Life Awareness. It is usually understood as something like “loving What Is” and seems easy unless you find yourself in the midst of suffering. What does acceptance in the midst of suffering really entail? Essentially, it means not resisting the natural unfolding, seeing things the way things are, and letting go of the notion that you are something permanent or special.

​Like most people, your tendency is to attempt the creation of a self that reflects your notions of perfection, or the ideal. You want to be loved and admired, to be a good person, to feel like you are leading a meaningful life. In essence, the desire is to be the best you can be, whatever that sense of best might be for you. Having those aspirations is laudable. However, if you become attached to achieving those aspirations and find yourself constantly criticizing your current level of attainment, you may be perpetrating a mistaken sense of self. You may be holding yourself to impossible standards, or not holding yourself to any standards. Neither of these stances is acceptance, both are operations of the ego. Acceptance is not approval, nor is it a result of disapproval. Acceptance is not ambivalent, it just is the natural unfolding of reality.
Most thoughts you entertain are thoughts about yourself. They are about “I” and “me” or “mine.” You tend to make all your thoughts, opinions, and commentary important and you view them as “yours.” In the midst of suffering, doubt and hesitation arise. As you focus on your self, self-acceptance becomes more important than any other sort of acceptance. Especially if self-acceptance has become the imagined result of attaining some state of pre-determined perfection, doubt about who you are may fill your thoughts. Everyone invokes a version of perfection from time to time, but some get lost in constant comparison of self to an idealized version of self, believing either or both of these versions of self are real. Your self is a fabrication of ideas that is changeable and reflects your moment-to-moment sense of reality. Practicing unconditional self-acceptance means noticing and not avoiding what you are thinking and feeling in the moment, and noticing and stopping this avoidance when it becomes chronic. This is particularly true in the midst of suffering, when you want to stop the thoughts that are uncomfortable.
Avoidance of the moment’s full experience is usually the outcome of seeing the experience as painful and causing suffering. Of course, it seems easiest just to sidestep the pain, put blinders on, and not see the suffering. The trouble is that when this becomes a pattern of behavior, you become trapped in an unconscious resistance that tends to blame all sorts of outsiders like fate, karma, parents, government, spouse, etc. for your suffering. This is disempowering, and if everything outside of you is blamed for your experience, there is no way out. Embracing What Is allows you to step out of your unhealthy habits of resistance and into true liberation. It does not require approval, you do not need to condone or judge the experience at all, you just need to allow it to be what it is.
It’s easy to think your suffering is special, that no one else has suffered like you. That could seem true—you might even look for evidence to support that notion. However, you are most likely trying to make your self seem special because in your suffering, you have judged yourself to be less than you want to be.  A special self might seem to answer “why” this suffering has come down upon you. You might think that it alleviates pain, but this kind of thinking actually increases the pain for most people. The pain of self-judgment is a trickster. There is no judgment—positive or negative—that limits or reduces pain. Judgment always leads to a lack of Awareness, not an increase in Awareness. This is because true Awareness, One Life Awareness, is always obscured when there is a lack of acceptance of What Is.
Notice if you are fighting against reality with ideas like “It shouldn’t be this way”. Acknowledge that life is magnificent even in the midst of pain and suffering. Love life for all of its complexity and diversity of experience. Let go of striving to be what you believe you are not. Open your mind and heart to love What Is without complacency or ambivalence. Acceptance is not becoming a doormat or hiding on a cushion atop a mountain. Unconditional self-acceptance is an active state of wisely allowing the experience to be whatever it is. Let it be, and you will be, all will be as it is.

​One Life Tutorial for September 2021

What if you knew for certain that everything in the world, or universe, within and without, arises interdependently, as One Life, and that there is nothing controlling any of it? What beliefs and notions would you need to modify or eliminate in order to accommodate this knowing?

Perhaps you would need to look at your perception of an all-knowing, all-powerful God in whatever form God has been conceived by you. Most perceptions of “God” depict a being or energy that is in control, in charge of All That Is, granting free will here and there in order to allow humans to believe they have some control. Alongside this perception of “God” lies the drive to emulate or become “God” hence becoming a human version of “God” and achieving a high state of being, one where actions have profound consequences and influence.

Perhaps you would need to look at your notion of free will, the ability to act at your own discretion. Free will allows you to make choices unimpeded. But is it really possible to act in whatever way you might fancy independently in a moment? Can you ever truly disregard the limits that are personally and culturally placed upon your actions? This is something to consider.

Perhaps you would need to look at your idea of sovereignty. Who or what has supreme power, jurisdiction or dominion over All That Is? It may appear to you that humans have dominion or sovereignty over the animals, plants and minerals—all aspects of the world. After all, humans are the dominant species of life on the planet as it is alleged by most humans.

Coming to One Life Awareness, the realization of One Life unfolding, or the Tao as the way that everything flows naturally on its course, must necessarily incorporate the understanding that everything arises interdependently. The natural world is completely egalitarian, everything is wholly dependent upon everything else, and that is a kind of order in itself. There are no preferences, no partialities, just the freedom to arise in concert with everything arising. The more the organization of interdependency functions, the more liberation emerges and the more peaceful the world. Mutual arising, in a spontaneous universe, is a unified field of interconnectedness that promotes thrival.

Many humans attempt to become “God” by trying to control everything, trying to make all outcomes turn out to be whatever they want or believe the outcome should become. They think they can plan, demand and control aspects of their world, or even the whole world. They see themselves as “creators” and believe they are in charge. They have lost their trust in the natural world. And as the natural world seems to be changing so dramatically, a sense that nothing can be trusted is arising among these humans trying to be “God”.  

This notion, that nothing can be trusted, is a result of rejecting the idea of mutual arising or interdependency. If you have invested yourself in becoming an individual, you will have most likely lost the broader perspective of One Life Awareness. If you have no confidence in the course of nature, in the web of existence, then you will only trust what you believe you can control. When you come to know you cannot control anything, that no one can control anything, that you cannot even control what you believe yourself to be, you will have run out of options, and there will be nothing left to do.

The time when you run out of options can become a time of transformation. It can become the time when you “let it be” and begin to live in equanimity. This is the deeper understanding of the world, the universe, the All That Is. There is no one planning anything, no one demanding anything, no one controlling anything. It all just is. There is nothing in life greater or more profound than anything else. There is no advantage that can be gained, and no disadvantage either. You might initially think that this understanding brings about a world that is boring or less passionate, but that is erroneous thinking.

The more interdependency is grokked, the more all beings are liberated, the greater the compassion for everything and all becomes the ground of being. We invite you to let go of your fascination with individuation, with self, with control, and creatorship. We invite you to stop trying to be “God” and become alive in One Life Awareness where all arisings are interdependent.
​

There's nothing
you can know
that isn't known
Nothing you can see
that isn't shown
There's nowhere
you can be
that isn't where
you're meant to be
It's easy
All you need is love
                                       
The Beatles
 
In the relative world of duality, love is both a noun and a verb. Generally, love the noun is thought to be affection, while love the verb is thought to be feeling and expressing that affection. There are other polarities which attempt to describe love also. We wish to discuss love in terms of another dichotomy: the contrasts between transpersonal love and personal love.

Transpersonal Love is a consciousness or One Life Awareness which lies beyond the limits of the personal experience and personal identity. This notion of love is at the foundation of everything that exists in the relative world. We could say it is the ground of being, or the energy that sparks life. We could say many things about what transpersonal love is, and we would never really describe it adequately. It is perhaps easier to identify what transpersonal love is not. Transpersonal love is not something to seek. It is not something to acquire. In truth, it is not some thing at all. It cannot be quantified, described fully, or understood intellectually. It seems to be everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Even if you have never heard the term transpersonal love, you know what it is. While all love is truly mysterious, you know much about it as the subject of innumerable songs, poems, books and art. You can find countless references to love in myriads of places, and know that more will be continued to be sung, written and depicted.

As we attempt to describe transpersonal love, so must we attempt to describe personal love. Most of you have some experience of “being in love.” This is most likely a feeling of affection that you connect with something other than yourself. You might then believe that you know what personal love is because you have a sense of its characteristics and a feeling you can relate to. You might believe that personal love is a particular state of being and is the result of intimate encounters with another. You might accept as true that personal love is a very special response to certain external conditions or circumstances. While all of this is true of personal love, there are many other characteristics to consider.

We suggest that personal love does not exist without a glimpse of transpersonal love being present. Without transpersonal love, the semblance of personal love is actually more like infatuation, or desire rather than true personal love, as we are identifying it. We are speaking of personal love whose nature is unconditional, and constantly reveals the potential for One Life Awareness at every turn. Personal love opens all reality doors such that unlimited possibilities for enlightened consciousness can be present at all times. Personal love, grounded in transpersonal love, arises when first you practice unconditional forgiveness and acceptance for yourself and all sentient beings. You let go of judgments and expectations and begin to see yourself reflected in everyone else and know that everyone is loved without preference or condition. Knowing that you and all beings are always loved and loving becomes the entry point into transpersonal love, which then becomes the ground of being.

You don’t need to experience personal love in order to then “graduate” to transpersonal love. Nor must you know the ins and outs of transpersonal love to experience personal love. We suggest that both transpersonal love and personal love are the starting point and the ending point simultaneously. Both arise interdependently as love.

The power of love, in its absolute nature, is within all beings. Conscious recognition of love in your life as a constant, as an is-ness that is always available, gives the power of love the ability to be expressed transpersonally  or personally without attachment to results or outcome. This power is not created by some cosmic force, nor is it created by you or any other individual self. This power is simply the allowing of all relative forms of love to be the natural and graceful expression of life as it is.

​Love is your essence and your most natural state. It is where you have come from and where you are going. There is an inevitability about love. It is reliable and trustworthy. While it is everything, it is also nothing at all. Love can be your teacher, love can be your student. Love can be your in-breath and your out-breath. Let love fill you and empty you. Be as loved as you are, and know that all love simply is, or as the Beatles once sang, "All you need is Love."

Who Am I?
One Life Tutorial for June 2021

One of the first questions you ask yourself when you begin a quest for awareness is “who am I?” There is no ultimate or permanent answer to that question, for in every moment you are someone new. What is the value of seeking to answer that question then? The value is in understanding the process of seeking answers, allowing the answers to arise, detaching from them, and effortlessly landing in One Life Awareness.

The process of diving deep inside and looking at yourself creates the ground for the naturally occurring question of “who am I?” This is a question which everyone has considered, and is used as a part of many meditation techniques. The practice is one in which the awareness of the self eventually disappears in order to discover that simple and effortless awareness, One Life Awareness, is all that remains.

This discovery arises as part of your questioning, as part of your experience, and is not separate from your experience. You cannot become a person asking questions of a self; you cannot separate the inquirer from the inquiry or the object of the inquiry. There is but one field, One Life, All That Is, which can never be truly expressed in words, as words are necessarily dependent on subjects and objects, inquirers and objects of inquiry.

So there is no answer to the question, “Who am I?” and yet you keep asking it because “who you are” is a compelling mystery, as life is a compelling mystery. Perhaps even by formulating that question, you acknowledge the mystery that lies deep within every question and every attempt to live life with awareness.

Asking “who am I?” encourages answers like “I am that,” and “I am not that” in an endless cycle of thoughts. By consistently detaching from these “who you are” notions, even for a moment, you can lessen the influence of your standard beliefs and habits, moods and perspectives, and free yourself from unconscious reactions to circumstances in your life. As you observe your automatic reactions with real detachment, you can begin to experience and interpret the conditions and events of your life with a greater sense of awareness. As a consequence, you can free yourself of many of the limiting assumptions you have unconsciously made about who you think you are.

This is especially the case when your unconscious habit is to describe yourself with terms that automatically highlight illness, wounds and dysfunctional parts of your life. Answering “I am a cancer survivor” while perhaps being true, will always be inadequate. You are always so much more. Learning how to detach from notions like these, as well as notions of self-absorbed or narcissistic identity can open the door to awareness that is no longer bound to ideas and thoughts of “who you are.” One Life Awareness opens up to you to the degree that you detach from old and no longer relevant attitudes about who you are. Opening up to your potential is limited when your attention stays focused on pain, physical distress, depression, anxiety, frustration, anger and apathy. “Who you are” is not determined by what you perceive about yourself, or by what you label and identify as you. “Who you are” is beyond any answer to any question that arises.

Eventually you realize that who you are is not just the amalgamation of “things” you feel, touch and see, but who you are is All That Is. Even though you may indulge in the examination of your thoughts and feelings, you will come to have a deep understanding that any answer to the question “who am I?” is just a fleeting and momentary look at a limiting assumption you have made about yourself.

We are not suggesting that you detach from answers you formulate to eliminate or discount memories or feelings. We are suggesting that in order to identify yourself in some practical or useful manner, you will often lose touch with deeper, non-verbal, All That Is Knowing. Your tendency is to habitually rely on the same old stories and ideas, and losing touch with All That Is Knowing, can often lead to generating more pain and confusion. We are also not suggesting that you should ask yourself over and over “Who am I?” though of course you could. We are suggesting that as that question naturally arises in the course of your thoughts, that you invoke the source from which the question arises. Withdraw the attention and fascination from who you think you are and are not, and allow the One Life Awareness to effortlessly emerge. “Who you are” at that moment then is being rather than discovering. Let it all become effortless and become free. One Life Awareness simply is. You are Aware, you are free, you are All That Is. Instead of strengthening the idea of “who you are” as a separate identity, let it all be. Just “Be Who You Are” even if you still ask “Who Am I?” 

One Life Tutorial for May 1
REALITY TUNNEL
 
Are you flourishing, prospering, and thriving? Or are you languishing, enduring, and dispirited?
No matter what you might be feeling, sensing, or experiencing, a deeper inquiry can lead you to discover what lies beneath your perception of your state of being, or reality. From our perspective, your perception of reality arises from your dependency on beliefs and attitudes you developed a long time ago, and which may not necessarily be relevant now. Your system of beliefs and attitudes is complex and creates a reality tunnel, whose boundaries are defined unconsciously. Your reality tunnel is comfortable for you to live in, and even if it seems coherent or incoherent, rational or irrational, it is always familiar territory.

We suggest that everyone lives in their self-created reality tunnel, but not everyone is aware that they do. Usually there is a sense of “in here” which acknowledges the comfort of living inside of your reality tunnel, and “out there” where it becomes a bit more risky. The challenges seem to be bigger outside of your reality tunnel, and simpler in the comfort of the system you have set up which determines when to feel “good” and when to feel “bad.” You feel happy if you complete a task, find the item you lost, or spend time with a friend. You feel unhappy when you get a flat tire, your internet goes out, or your friend doesn’t call you. All these “things” and many, many others, carry varied levels of importance to you and your perception of your state of being requires that certain conditions like these be met. All of this is reinforced over time until your feelings become sort of locked into place, routine and automatic. In other words, until you get stuck in your reality tunnel.

In order to feel truly alive, you have to unlock your feelings and inform your perception of your state of being with more nuanced information of your experience. You have to allow yourself to become more sensitive. You become more sensitive by stepping outside of your reality tunnel where you shift the primary way you feel and experience life from being determined by the situations and circumstances of life to being based on your deep knowing of One Life—All That Is. Without the boundaries of your familiar reality tunnel, there is nothing but One Life.

Now this notion might cause you to think that we are suggesting you must become more vulnerable. While that may be a result of becoming more sensitive, it is not required. Becoming more sensitive to who you are without the attachment to a carefully constructed notion of reality that is personal and inflexible can allow you to feel much more engaged with life, more available to varied experiences, and able to accept the impermanence of it all.
Letting yourself respond to life without relying on old patterns of thought and belief allows you to escape your reality tunnel, or at least to open up to having a flexible reality tunnel which can allow other reality tunnels to intersect with yours. This sense of an intersection permits empathy and understanding. If your reality tunnel is fixed and uncompromising, and you do not share it consciously, you will remain in a fixed and uncompromising reality continuing whatever program is running.

​It is time to realize that your reality tunnel can be limiting and that you may not be aware of how limiting it is. What you have considered “reality” is actually a set of unconscious beliefs and ideas which you have interpreted and called your experience. You often don’t even know that you are dealing with your interpretations, thinking there is a fixed and absolute objective state of reality that you must adhere to, while a deeper dive will reveal that your notion of reality exists within a tunnel you created and is not an objective and total understanding of “All That Is.”
An opportunity has arisen for all reality tunnels to dissolve into One Life Awareness. This opportunity is always here, and yet it seems as if a threshold has been reached at this time. It has become so obvious that everyone lives in their own reality tunnel and that previously built intersections and places of overlap have separated further than ever. It is not the time to continue fortifying your tunnel, instead, it is the time to come out into the light of One Life Awareness and All That Is. End the languishing, enduring and dispirited experience in favor of flourishing, prospering and thriving. Be who you are and love and be loved, now.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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