The Counsellor

The Awakening of a Nobody

A Journey Beyond Mind

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 The Compiler's Note

I have heard about a natural happiness, a smile that lies behind and beyond, within and without all forms, all life and events. Unlike the feeling of happiness with its unpredictable appearances and disappearances, this natural happiness, once experienced, becomes the solid pillar or background on which all other experiences are built. A baby's first smile melts the hearts of its parents, allowing them to be made anew. This is not a feeling of happiness, this is happiness itself, the great furnace from which everything is forged.

I have followed, to the best of my expanding abilities, the encouraging advice found in this book and sense the smile spoken of. The fact that these encouraging words have been available to a wretch like me supports the conviction that this smile, without exception, is available to everyone.

The initial six chapters of this book look at "individual experience" and at the easy methods of transforming it. The entire spectrum of human experience, from the greatest mental, emotional and physical discomforts to life's blissful ecstasies, is the spectrum of mind. The good news that I wish to relate is that anything in mind can be changed. Even the dubious experience of "I" with its sorrowful reflections can be transformed.

The consequent six chapters invite the reader to learn not only how to transform experience, but how to purify the mind of all conditions that do not serve the true life of Self.

Though these ideas sometimes seem to relate only to a specific, hard-pressed individual who is endlessly at war with himself, the underlying principles spoken of do point toward universality and so can be helpful to all. To experience these principals needs only that the reader accept his own experience totally and move deeper into it. The method of mind purification described later in the book has its source in the nature of consciousness itself and is therefore totally universal. Some alterations have been made linguistically to make these given ideas more readable; however, nothing has been changed in their meaning.

There is nothing written here that I feel belongs to what we normally think of as truth or falsity - such distinctions belong in cold clinics and are far divorced from life itself. If there is any truth in what has been written, it can only be tested through examining the real transformations of personal experience. Your experience of who you are is the absolute truth for you now. This reality, of your experience, is also the key that can be used to open many other doors and eventually lead you beyond experience itself.

As with life, you may take what is written seriously, this is your prerogative. At the same time it is only fair that you are reminded that life takes nothing seriously.

Introduction

Life! What on earth is life?

Life has taken many forms in your past, it is taking many forms now, and it will be taking many forms in your future. I put emphasis on your past and future because from the higher perspectives of Self, the past and future are merely dimensions of the Now. Your limited perception of Self and erudite allegiance to your physical mind hinder you from seeing that everything happens simultaneously. Like when you stir a cup of tea, there is tea behind the spoon and in front of it; as far as the spoon is concerned there is a past and future tea - for you, the stirrer of life, there is only one delicious, turbulent cup of tea... Now.

So life is a cup of tea is it? Well now I know - thanks for your invaluable council, how could I ever have imagined it to be a cup of coffee... Please tell me more, great Tetley in the sky.

Since the teacup analogy is obviously beyond you, I suggest you drop it and return to your coffee. May I resume?

Sure, you make little sense, but I am enjoying our conversation.

Ultimately there is only One Life. The forms this One Life is taking are countless, not merely because of a vast numerical configuration, but because of movement and change within the configuration. Sort of like detonating a thousand tons of TNT and a second later trying to estimate the number of subatomic particles, their locations and the relative distances individually between them, over a period of a hundred years. A task only a god or an irreversible lunatic would undertake.

What you call Life is an eternal internal-external explosion of Living Light. The light you perceive with your physical eyes is a relative light that can only exist in darkness, or rather; darkness and light are mere polarities of this One Living Light. To help you understand this you could imagine that both night and day arise in what we call the Now: it is the Now which allows day and night, and for that matter everything else, to arise. The Now is a very important aspect, if not the body of this life giving Light.

If you could remain in the Now for just a few minutes without referring to thoughts of the future and past, you would notice a lightness of being - it is this lightness of being that is the true Light, that which is beyond polarity. The lightness you sometimes experience when you are listening to my words is a reflection of this Living Light. When we listen with open, comfortable interest, it happens easily that we drift into a larger expression of the Now and a partial release from the mind constructions we call past and future. The Now is the One way we all share that leads us to the One Living Light.

What you refer to as life is the form aspect of this Living Light: the diversification of The One Light in form. This Living Light is moving in manifest and un-manifest directions, through countless possibilities, through innumerable lives and myriad deaths. You ask what life is? Because life is truly what is, it is everything - as it manifests in form it can be absolutely anything. However, all attempts to define and label Life’s essence are totally futile. All definitions belong to mind. Mind is the medium, or universal substance through which life manifests - it is the potter's clay. The clay can never know the potter; likewise, mind can never know or define Life. Mind is limitation. Life’s essence is without limitation and so remains untouched by mind.

And my life, what is that?

Your life is with The One and can be known as a central point of radiance within you - a pin-prick of light so pure that even though it touches everything, it is touched by nothing. Its reality is so solid that diamonds become fluid in its presence; its stillness so absolutely unmoving that all that it touches vibrates. Everything moves because it is still, everything is becoming because it is in everything.

This is your life, a life so bright the physical sun becomes its shadow - you are Self, endlessly and tirelessly creating and exploring possibilities.

How wonderfully perfect - the fact that I experience life as being a manifestation of discomfort is surely my fault. Your words are indeed stirring but they have no practical use in my life. I am sorrowful, I am empty, I am alone. I feel fear, disgust, hate - this is my life. Your assertions are designed for fairies, the pure hearted, the gifted and to those to whom providence is a guiding friend.

I hear you clearly, but I do not understand you. Although your words give me comfort, no sooner have I grasped them and they have gone.

If you want to help me talk to me of this life, this pain that I am living, why I never get what I want. Tell me of mundane things; tell me of that which I can understand, answer the questions pertaining to this life so that I may at least suffer in knowledge.

The specific is always relative. Your questions of pain, fear and desire pertain to specific and individual needs; therefore, the answers are also specific, individual and at best relative. As the lion sinks its teeth into the terrified gazelle there is suffering and great joy. What business has the lion or gazelle to question this joy and suffering? The suffering of the gazelle eventually moves into joy as its life falls back upon its greater self and the group consciousness it is part of; it excels itself and lightens the world as it lets go of the small life. This is a movement away from darkness; the pain has now become pleasure and release. The lion moves on from pleasure, fattened by its kill, nourished by the gazelle’s flesh toward future hunger and pain.

You are not the discomfort you experience; you are the master of all your experiences. You are the artist of imagination, the voice of intuition, the light of inspiration. The world and the life you call painful is at your command, you need not entertain it with sorrow.

Of what use are your words to me and my infirm body, erratic emotions and confused mind? My limbs are made of lead, my feelings burn like sulphur and my mind is akin to a monkey’s cage. I need to know about what is real for me. If this reality I experience is mine, then why is it so difficult for me to live in it? Your visions tell me of joy, my sight knows only dismay. Leave your lofty abode in the sky and tell me of what is real for me!

My suffering may seem relative to you but for me it is everything that I know. It is to the problems of life I am addressed and I demand that you tell me of these things. It matters little to me whether the things I experience are relative, untrue, ungodly, the tricks of Lucifer or the games of the angels in light - if I am these glorious and all powerful things that you say that I am, I demand that you answer my questions.

Beloved Self. Let us begin.

One

Why are so many of my relationships so difficult and sometimes even painful?

Everything is related. If any part of the universe were to suddenly loose its relationship to the rest it would disappear. A tree that lost its relationship to the ground would surely fall over; a bird that lost its relationship to the winds would plunge to the ground. The total constitution of Life is just one sensational relationship. This ceaselessly rejoicing, universal relationship of all of life’s aspects and forms, is a reflection of the true ubiquitous Oneness and its dance in matter. Everything is connected to the whole and therefore in relation to it. Without this relationship there can be no Oneness.

The main reason for your pain is that instead of developing your relationship to the whole, you prefer to concentrate on a few of its questionable parts. If you could walk across a painting like as a small insect you would experience many colours, shapes, shades and sizes. You would not understand the relationships between these colours, shades, shapes and sizes and would therefore miss the picture. It is our ability to observe the painting from a distance that enables us to see the relationships betwixt these colours, shades and shapes and discern the intelligible beauty within the painting.

The pictorial landscape of your life is filled with different colours, shades and shapes in the form of events, people, feelings, thoughts and sensations. You take these life manifestations and piece them together on the sequential thread of your own individual physical-mind consciousness. If you could stand back from your attachment to all these feeling-shades and shapes, you would sense the entire landscape you call your life as one great picture. All the hues, forms, intensities and tones of personal experience would suddenly start making sense as the beauty of your Whole Life became apparent.

To a certain degree this is what happens when you take one of your woodland walks. The natural connectedness of every tree and plant awakens within your own sense of Unity. This on occasions, as you well know, helps you to accept some difficulties associated with your relationships. Even your mother senses the effect your walks have on you and it is for this reason she so often suggests you leave the house.

You are in relation to the whole of your life; not just the people you believe are causing you discomfort. It is your limited understanding of your relationship with life that causes you sorrow. As you learn to understand the larger relationship you have with life, you will let go of the sorrow that is connected with the smaller relationships. This is tantamount to stepping back from your own painting of life and observing it from a less painful distance, or should I say, from a less acute angle.

When you cut your finger you put a plaster on it and forget it, knowing that it will recover by itself. You are aware of the fact that it is connected to the rest of your body and that the healing powers contained in the whole of the body will take care of it. You do not focus your attention on the cut finger and protest, "I am a miserable cut finger". You cut your finger a few weeks ago cutting vegetables: if you had been more aware of yourself and your divine relationship to life, instead of focusing on the limited relationship you have with your mother, this wouldn’t have happened.

Letting go of pain is letting go of ignorance. We can take waking up from a dream as an example. As you awaken from a dream your understanding and relationship to life increases - the fear and sorrow associated with a certain dream is released. The sorrow was real in the dream; as you awakened to your greater connection and relationship with life, the pain subsided. All sorrow, seen in retrospection, belongs to dreams.

All experiences of life are products of relationships; you are related to all your experiences, be they physical, emotional or mental. All of your experiences arise because of the relationship between Self and matter - your Self and what matters for you. All relationships are perfect; all relationships are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing - all relationships are connected in accordance with the Law of Nature.

I have a relationship with my father that is far from perfect. I feel tense and afraid in his company. He’s always telling me what I should be doing or how I have done something wrong. He really doesn’t like me - what’s so perfect about that? And my mother with her sad, pleading eyes - I feel such anger and irritation sometimes. Why do I have so many difficulties with my parents?

All relationships are propelled by previous relationships and guided by coming relationships. They are intricately interwoven; they are parts of each other. The relationships you have with your parents are parts of the relationship they have with each other. Going back we can also say that the relationships that your parents had with their parents are affecting your present relationships with them. This can be carried back hundreds of generations. They are all connected. If you think about this and try to sense this connectedness you may be able to experience what I mean when I say that: the sorrow experienced in the relationships you have with your parents existed before you were born: it is not your own personal sorrow, it is universal sorrow, universal ignorance of the connectedness of everything.

If you want to understand what you call your own personal sorrow better, I suggest you ask your parents to describe their own personal sorrow. You will find that in essence it is the same sorrow. Find out what life has taught them and you will discover what they have taught you.

If you understood the similarities between your mother’s relationship with her father and your relationship with her, you would find it much easier to let go and forgive her for what you feel she has done and is doing wrong. As you learn to understand that it isn’t necessarily her fault that she is the way that she is, you will discover ways of helping her change her mind and so release her from her own individualized interpretation of universal sorrow. As you understand and see her more clearly, you will understand and see yourself more clearly; as you help and release her from her sorrow, you will help and release yourself from your own sorrow. This is not a flower-power-peace-plan; it is The Law of Nature. Because everything is connected, what is given is received, and what is received is given.

You may believe that your parents’ tutorials are far from commendable, but this is also true of your own. Look at the way you treat the people you are in relation with, look at the way you blame everyone for your discomfort. What are you teaching people through your relationships with them? That they are guilty, punishable, that they are not good enough? Teach them what I teach you and you will simultaneously teach your self. Teach them that it is not their fault and that they are not punishable, guilty and unworthy. Teach them the truth: that they are loveable, innocent, and all-powerful Light. Teach them that they can change anything in their lives. Teach them what I teach you; give them what I give you: Unconditionally.

What can I possibly do when I am being threatened by dad or fighting against mother’s emotional contortions? Step back and observe my life from a greater distance! What kind of metaphysical acrobatics are you describing here?

All relationships are made for and with each other. Water flows from the mountains toward sea level, following the natural course offered to it. In the same way, all energy follows the natural course offered to it. All relationships are energy transactions. In a relationship you take what is given and you give what can be taken in accordance with a supreme natural balance governed by Law. You need only observe a tree to understand this truth. The tree takes water from the ground and sunlight from the sun; it gives its leaves to the soil, oxygen to the air and its fruits to life. The life of a tree is a perfect equation: on an energy level it has taken what it has given and given what it has taken. I repeat for the sake of clarity: all relationships are perfect.

This knowledge can help you understand what is happening the next time that you experience your parents as a trifle less loving. Try and experience what is happening as a mere flow of energies, be your experience physical, emotional or mental. To do this is to step back from what is happening in your life and allow a greater understanding.

Right, the Law of Nature has decided that it is my lot to accept abusive energies from my father and that everything is perfect. Well in that case I’ll just get on with my totally miserable life as best I can. Is this what you are saying? Tell me more about this miserable equation!

The energies that your father emanates, in your direction that is, are predominantly mental. There is something within you that accepts these energies - they move you. A note played on a guitar can cause, through resonance, the same note to vibrate on another guitar placed at the other side of the room. There is a mental frequency within you that is the same as the one being transmitted by your father. Do you see that he thinks you should be doing better than you are? Do you see that you think everyone else should be doing better than they are? If you could raise this mental vibration within yourself and start to think that everyone is doing the best they possibly can, you would eventually notice that you are no longer vibrating with your father’s lower mental energies. You will have ceased to be an open channel for this particularly bad broadcast. This will either force dad to re-direct his transmitters, or change frequency.

When we raise our own frequency we always encourage others to do the same. In your more superficial relationships, you may discover that people simply disappear out of your life, making room for people that can utilise your higher or more connecting energies.

Furthering our analysis of your relationship to your father, it can also be noted that you preside over an abundance of what can be called "poor poor me" energies. Have you noticed how your father picks up on these energies that you so willingly transmit to him? Likewise: if your father could change his own "poor poor me" energies, he would aid you in transforming your own. The give and take relationship you have with your father is perfect - an equation par excellence.

The energy relationship you have with your mother is also governed by Nature. In short, home for her has always meant a lot of abuse and denial of her self for someone else. This is one of the lessons life has taught her and so, in her attempts to make things homely, she sacrifices herself and encourages everyone else to do the same. You will probably find it easier to observe the connection between her sacrificial energies and Dad’s "poor, poor me" energies, rather than finding this correspondence and resonance within yourself and your own "poor poor me energies". You have already noticed that as soon as dad starts feeling sorry for himself, mum, in complete subjugation, comes to the rescue with her "Oh, you poor thing, it must have been a dreadful day - allow me to fetch your slippers and fall over backwards, just for you". As you have seen, this seldom helps dad, in fact, quite the reverse - he normally turns on the abuse. This mum, in accordance with her sacrificial energies, accepts.

You of course believe she should sacrifice herself and willingly accept her emotional transmissions. As a sacrifice, you even cut your fingers on occasions, "poor, poor you". Your part of the energy exchange with your mother is of course similar to your dad’s: those violent out-brakes, those aggressive tantrums you throw off. Your mother accepts your aggressive energies. If she could change her ideas on sacrifice and stop doing this, she would aid you in leaving behind the sorrow of aggression you experience.

All relationships, especially family ones, are paradoxically very simple whilst being extremely complex. Simple in the fact that they happen, on all levels, all by themselves; complex insofar as if we try and look at them and discover what is happening and why it is happening we easily become lost.

A relationship has many different energy exchanges on many different levels that simply happen. So, don’t be tricked by my superficial descriptions, but understand that there are actions and interactions of mental and emotional energies of many degrees and intensities.

So what we have then is a perfect energy configuration where everyone gets his or her piece of the action and reaction. If you ponder a while on this living equation, I am sure you will see my point.

I think I have sensed on occasions what you are describing. Only a few weeks ago dad confronted me with a letter he had received from my maths teacher. Angrily he questioned, "Why these ridiculously bad results in maths?" I was feeling confident that morning and answered, "I just don’t understand mathematics dad", to which he submissively replied, "Oh". I walked past him and out through the door without any problems. Later in the day, in the midst of one of my afternoon depressions, he confronted me again. I was feeling a lot less confident this time around, which I think he picked up on. He seemed to be even more infuriated and dominating than he had been earlier in the morning. I guess I was feeling sorry for myself... I remember that I kept trying to make excuses.

A lot of friction in relationships arises when one of the partners involved tries to change or evolve a certain energy flow. This friction does of course ultimately lead to improvements, though initially it can seem to worsen the situation. Like when you stir your cup of coffee and suddenly change the direction of rotation - first there is turbulence and then a return to an even flow.

When we try and change a flow in energy the result is at first normally resistance: this means that in the case of your father, he will at first become even more dominating. Learn to see this, as it is, which is a manifestation of fear, the fear of change, the inability to let go of a sorrowful identification. We hold onto the conditions of mind, be those conditions good or bad. It is sometimes easier to continue being unhappy than having to face the fear of letting go.

An important aspect of the Law is that "as one form appears, another disappears". As ice appears, water disappears - as gas appears a liquid or solid disappears. If we are unwilling to let go of water, we will never create ice; likewise, if we are unwilling to let go of sorrow and unhappiness, we will never know happiness. Law governs all.

Remember that it is the higher more subtle energies that guide and control the lower. Thought is the more subtle energy that is the controlling factor of all your weapons of destruction, space rockets, political movements and economic and social systems. On a humanistic level we can say that mind is over matter; thought controls the movement of energy within the human framework.

In short, all of the energy movements found in your relationships are controlled by your thoughts, conscious and unconscious. Your beliefs about your relationships are thought patterns on conscious and subconscious levels. It is these belief-thought patterns that are causing your sorrow.

To alleviate your sorrow you must become aware of your own directives of experience, that is, the thoughts and beliefs that you carry. To be able to do this entails complete honesty and the willingness to accept a few basic ideas.

Even though a negative condition in your life may seem to have its source in the actions of others, you will find, if you look for it, a belief or thought in your own mind that is helping to create and support that condition. Taking your "poor poor me" energies as an example, you also have "poor poor me" beliefs. Your poor energies are following your poor beliefs and thoughts about yourself. A belief-thought construction in your mind - nobody else’s - keeps telling you that the person you believe you are today is the product of family maltreatment and that your sorrowful condition is eternally etched on the substance of your mind... poor you. If there were any truth in this belief I would really be out of business - until the next cosmic round that is. The fact is that this belief can be changed and through that changing a new experience can arise. This life-inhibiting belief you so fearfully cherish has to be replaced by a belief that serves you a little better and allows you to flow into higher areas of experience.

What should I believe then?

Our beliefs about reality are continuously being rebuilt and modified as we live our lives. Because we are all individual, we have to find out which beliefs are best suited to our development at a certain point in our lives. Our age, maturity, character and much more decide what beliefs we hold. Children have the beliefs of children, intellectuals the beliefs of intellectuals etc. Beliefs about reality are individual and are a part of the individual road each of us are following.

Well you seem to know me quite well, what individual beliefs should I adopt?

To start with, those that make you and the people around you smile.

Surely you have a few suggestions?

You have to choose for yourself. I can however give you a universal precept that can be used as a ground on which to build your own personalised beliefs:

• What I am goes beyond all thought and experience.

• That you are not your thoughts and feelings.
• That they are mere energy.
• That you can change your experience of them through changing the beliefs you have about them.

Two

Wow, welcome back! Where have you been?

I am here and now - always have been and always will be. It is your errant mind that has been to new places without inviting my presence.

Well, my enigmatic companion, as far as my experience is concerned, it is you who have been elsewhere - just as things got really bad you opted out and left me to fend for myself.

Let’s be honest. After our last conversation you were bubbling with confidence. You felt then, for the first time in ages, that you had a firm grip on your life.

You chose to invest your newly born confidence and personal awareness in things of an external nature and to work things out on your own, without my help. This as you know led to many changes in your life. I feel little desire to comment on whether those changes were good or bad: the knowledge of your own inherent capacity to modify and transform personal experience is what is important. Your personal wisdom supports the truth that we are not victims of unhappy feelings and misery and that through choosing new beliefs, new experiences gradually manifest themselves.

Through your hard work, you have partially transformed your experience of yourself and life. The beliefs you accepted, changed and modified then, mentally and emotionally, now support your daily experiences.

 You’re dammed right it was hard work... you gave me a lot of advice, but it was I that got the work done, it was I that stood my ground with my parents, not you. So, now that the work is over, you’ve decided to return!

The reason why you have stepped back into our meeting place and space is because you feel that the changes you made then are no longer serving you today. The new beliefs that you adopted then have become your reality today; unfortunately, your present day reality is almost as limiting as the one you had before. You now have the knowledge and ability to change the circumstances of your life, but you feel disillusioned and don’t have the foggiest idea of what you now should be changing. Also, despite your understanding, you doubt your ability to partake in the process of transformation of personal experience. The next step for you will surely be the doubting of doubts!

 I doubt it!

It is hoped that your personal wisdom will someday equal your commodious wit and show you the importance of only accepting beliefs that you know will serve you throughout your life.

 What’s wrong with my beliefs now? Most of my relationships are much better. My parents have more respect for me and I have acquired many friends. So as I see it, my beliefs are working fine.

You appear to have forgotten much of what we have touched upon.

I have taken notes on practically everything you have said and just for the record, there are a few points I recommend that you reconsider - they are rickety to say the least.

It was not intended that my observations should lead to confusion. I speak only of the practical, that which clears the way for true knowledge. It is very important that you take my words in a corresponding practical manner: if anything said puts your mind in a greater quandary than the one you normally experience, you must demand practical clarification. I suggest your refer to you notes that we may "clear the air" and thus, enjoy a few practical minutes together without agitation.

 Okay, "All your thoughts come from without, not from within." What do you mean by this? The few people that I have tested this idea on either laugh at me, or if they are intellectual, feel insulted. Further more, I have personal experience of the fact that this cannot be true!

 Please go on, what experiences - I am indeed very curious.

For example, sometimes after I have slept I feel terrible. Surely when I fall asleep I am closed to the outside world, meaning that any experiences or thoughts I may have had during sleep must have come from within me. So, if I wake up feeling bad, it must be because of what is inside me.

A while ago I dreamt that an evil figure approached me and managed to put its hands around my throat. I was practically choking but managed to push its hands away from me and awoke with clenched fists, sweat pouring from me. I cannot accept that this fearful image actually exists and so assume it to exist only in my mind as some kind of sleeping thought: it must have come from within me.

If all thoughts come from outside of us then we should by all rights be able to select the thoughts we have, but we can’t, they just appear in mind. If all thoughts come from without, why do we all have different thoughts? You must admit that you are on extremely thin ice and that the temperature is rising.

 Study your notes with honest intent; is there anything else that needs clarification?

 Yes, the whole thing! You say that I am the creator of my life, "the commanding chief of all experiences". Why on earth would I create an ugly piece of dream-reality and allow it to try and strangle me? I would also like to bring your unwavering attention to a work situation that I have that, irrespective of new thoughts and beliefs, refuses to change - my boss is a real pain; he dislikes me with a passion. Have you neglected to tell me something or have you made a mistake?

 Maybe we should break our communiqué and try another time, I think it would be better so.

 I understand - things are getting tough again and so you’re making one of your nonchalant exits.

Thoughts have a magnetic creative quality. You are surrounded by negative thoughts that are just dying, or living, for attention, that they may also partake in the dawning of misery. Their lower frequencies put them in the area of your abdomen and solar plexus - can’t you feel how your attention is drawn downward and how you pick up on one negativity after another?

You must understand that where there is light there is no darkness and also, if you choose to move into darkness without taking the light with you, things will indeed become dark. Light and darkness cannot coexist; with the advent of light comes the realisation that the darkness was unreal.

You have the irrefutable freedom of following anything you like, including miserable, dark thoughts; excuse me however if I choose to maintain a more meaningful light-vibration and leave you to it.

Okay, I’m listening to you and only you now. Stay with me and help me, I can feel myself becoming calmer already - are you still there?

Let us clarify what has been said in connection with the statement "All your thoughts come from without, not from within".

You have tested this idea on several people and received only laughter and aggression. Fools laugh: Period. If you choose to tell a person that has great faith in his own thoughts, that they are not his and that they come from outside him, you have as such made an attack on his sense of reality. Are you really so naive as to believe that he would let you get away with this? Was it not your Shakespeare that said "give every man thy ear, but few thy voice". This is a very sound piece of advice that you could learn to follow. This information has been given to you that you may understand its practical value and apply it in your life, not just talk about it. As with the negative thoughts and feelings you were experiencing not five minutes ago, if you had taken the time to understand that they were external energies and that it was your beliefs about them that made them negative, the results would have been practical. You would not have followed them.

You are indeed calmer now and even feel more complete. The main reason for this is that you are no longer, despite their presence, accepting lower external thought-energies, but instead are open only for those that fulfil you; those that raise your vibration and bring you closer to fulfilment.

So, it matters not what other people think about our ideas, the main thing is that when we apply them, they create a larger space within which we can move; they help us create distance between ourselves and non-truth.

Just because I have released my self from a few negative thoughts and turned my attention to something higher, does not prove, in anyway, that my negative thoughts had their origin outside me.

If you could, once and for all, accept that all your experiences are external, you would eventually find through personal wisdom, that what has been said is true. For any mind-experience to occur we need two things: a subject and an object - a nominative "I" and an accusative "something" for it to experience. This accusative something can be absolutely anything found at the level of experience, a kitchen table, an itch, a feeling, a thought and even a dream - they are all experienced by you the subject and for that reason, can never be you. Your experiences come to you and are as such external.

All experiences arise in mind. Man, ignorant of his true Nature, believing that he is his mind, feels that his experiences are within him. It has been explained several times now that you are not your mind; you may want to study your notes.

You’re saying that my dreams are outside me... I don’t understand. How can this be so? Tell me about dreams.

There is so much that can be said about sleeping-states - the one you are now experiencing, waking-consciousness, is my speciality and vast it is indeed.

Are you saying that I am asleep now?

For purposes of clarification, we have to use the terms "awake" and "asleep". In reality, you have never slept and never awoken. You are beyond these mind conditions for they are, as you will later find out, both objects of experience. My allegiance is with true awakening, not the sleepy conditions of mind.

I sincerely hope that you find my short, submissive descriptions of your bedtime-repose, to be sufficient for our purposes.

Your initial experiences of sleep and those just prior to your awakening are predominantly, if not totally, astral. The majority of dreams that you carry forth into waking activity are vestiges from astral-plane activity.

You have awoken on many mornings and felt quite awake but, because of an indolent streak, chosen to continue sleeping. When finally forced to leave your bed, often hours later, you have felt groggy, moody and far away from the rested state you had earlier experienced. We can say that your extra hours of slumber are purely astral. Here you dream your fearful moods of fancy, clouded unreal pictures and astral shapes - these you are well acquainted with.

There are higher sleep experiences that are harder to recollect, not because they are too faint, but because your physical mind consciousness is to gross to register them. It is from these higher levels of sleep experience that you acquire you true rest, your sense of being and the energy necessary to take you through the coming day. If during sleep you only experienced astral activity, the lack of true rest would result in emotional devastation.

When you leave these higher levels of sleep experience, it is like falling asleep. This is a little abstract, so let’s be clear: You experience yourself as being awake now and you experience yourself as being awake whilst you are focused in these higher dream states. Which is sleep and which is being awake depends on which of these two states you are, at the moment, focused in and experiencing. These higher sleep-states can be attained without actually falling asleep: information regarding such movements may interest you later.

The astral connection is an emotional feeling connection - it belongs to mankind’s lower life. Your astral nature is built on fear and desire and all the nuances of feeling to be found between them. As you know, every dream has its own special mood or feeling. Normally, as we leave the bed, this moody feeling subsides leaving only picture frame images. You are able to remember the dream, but the feeling-reality it was created in, has been forgotten. In contrast to your higher dream experiences, your astral experiences are established in every day consciousness and can be found in everything you do. All of your fears and desires are indicative of astral activity.

There are different astral levels that offer a vast range of experiences. In sleep you may be confronted by angry elementals that chew your dreaming toes, or evil hands that caress your astral throat; you may be chased by your dreamy pin-ups or even fly through the air like a bird.

You also have, in waking consciousness, a well-established sense of "I" that is above astral experience. It is with this that we should keep our attention.

Tell me about my angry astral-adversary? Who created him and why did he try and strangle me?

To analyse this figure, its intention, your interpretation of what he did and why he did it, is possible, but it would surely take a lifetime. There is so much work to do. I can but offer a framework that may help you find the beliefs that caused the experience and help you sense the startling creative powers you reside over.

When you are experiencing higher sleeping states, you are in contact with the higher levels of your being. The information available to you here, concerning who and what you are, is resplendent to say the least. If on awakening, you could remember yourself in these higher states, you would never sleep again. As you descend from these lofty levels of being, you take with you as much as possible, hoping that you will at least remember something: the fact that you are revived and strong in the mornings is proof that you have remembered something! In these higher sleeping states you see many solutions to your daily problems, that you translate into astral imagery and symbols.

As you already understand, dreams are intimately tied in with waking day activity. For example: You dream of a friend and decide to visit them the next day, you spend a day at the fun-fair and spend the following night riding on astral machinery, you dream you have swallowed a butterfly and wake up with a strange feeling in you stomach. Dreams are not just parts of the assimilation process of waking day experiences, they are also messages from the higher levels of your being to your lower, physical mind consciousness. Your adversary, grim though its nature may have seemed, was understood completely on the higher levels of your being.

If you were able to listen inwardly and follow the signals your higher nature affords you in daily life, the need to create such night-time imagery, through accepting external astral energies, would cease. I can also point out that the messages available to you in daily wakefulness are in many ways far more superior than your astral translations.

Okay, what’s the message?

The throat belongs to creativity. Your present life style suffocates your creativity, you deaden the true vocal action of creative expression, you do not say what you truly know - you swallow the dry sensations in your throat, believing that you can digest instead of expressing your creativeness.

The dream portrayed desire, fear and aggression. You desire to be free, you fear the consequences and responsibility of freedom and so aggress the freedom of creativity. It is your fears and desires that dull your creative endeavours. Am I making any sense?

Maybe.

Though you do not remember it, it was desire that you first felt in the dream - you desired to be the free, creative individual that you are. Then came the fear of failure, the fear of not having the ability to respond to and stand for who you really are. And so the destructive aggression arose, in accordance of course with your beliefs, and tried to strangle you.

In waking-day consciousness, when you feel fear, you counter it with aggression. The aggressive belief that people are not doing the best that they can, that you sometimes suffer from, is a reflection of this astral fear. Your reaction to fear, as with many other people’s, is aggression.

You believe fear is a product of lacking and that if you owned more things, status and respect, your fear would subside. You neglect your inner creative worlds, hoping to make your outer ones shine, with you in the middle of them, in material splendour. This is reflected in your livid spouting on the subject of financial and material aggrandisement. The aggressive desires that cause your mind to totter are a product of fear. Fears live on desires and desires live on fears: this you are yet to understand. When you follow desires you are inviting fear; when you are reacting to fear you are inviting desires - you fear because you desire and you desire because you fear. This is indeed an inexhaustible dream condition.

You teach yourself through your dreams. What was your astral imagery telling you? How did you feel afterwards? You were disturbed by the dream, but please don’t deny that in the days that followed, you felt very present, more present than you had done in weeks. Why?

It was desire that created the image, a desire for control, power and freedom. You feared your creation and allowed it to aggressively fondle your throat. In the dream you forced the figure to release its grip, showing you that you are stronger than your astral-mind imagery. Despite the unpleasantness of the dream, you sensed this strength and was able the next day to phone friends and creatively express things that you had never expressed before.

Your dream was abounding with symbolism, all of which had a special significance for you; however, it is not necessary that this symbolism be analysed. The fact that your astral image had your mother’s white gloves on or that the ground was covered with dead leaves are minor points that you can ponder on if you so wish.

You are here to understand that you stand above all experience. The feeling of strength you experienced shows you that you are never a victim of desires and fears and that you have power over them; the dream moved you closer to this realisation. All this you did by yourself and you truly deserve a pat on your astral back.

There is no good or evil in your world of experience - there is that which propagates awareness and that which limits it; there is that which denies truth and that which reveals truth. Your dreams are neither positive nor negative, good nor evil, they are there to teach you how to awaken in awareness. Whether the enemy is hunting you through a dark forest or you are holding hands with one of your astral pin-ups is immaterial - put them away like books in a bookcase. Use these experiences to know that you have experienced them and can therefore not possibly be them. How can anyone be a fear or desire? You are beyond your feeling astral nature and your thoughts.

In the same way as misunderstanding disappears on the arrival of understanding, so will these astral images disappear as you purify your mind of the astral properties of fear and desire. A wholesome movement in this direction is the provisional acceptance of the fact that your dreams, though abundant with subjective design, are objective, external experiences.

A while ago you dreamt that you were crossing a river "on foot". An astral moment later (not to be confused with a mental moment) you had the idea that you couldn’t possibly walk on water and concluded that it must be dream - you became conscious of yourself experiencing a dream. When this has happened before, you have shuddered and awoken, slightly shocked. This time, because it was a familiar experience, you kept your cool. You didn’t like the idea of sinking into the astral waters and drowning and because you have read somewhere that one can control dreams, chose to believe that you could fly and took off.

The flying, as you remember, was great and gave you a real boost the next day. Not everyone remembers such events, so you are more fortunate than many in that you have subjective proof that you, as a subject, can be in a dream and experience it objectively: you already know that your dreams are external to who you really are. You also have the good fortune to have a companion such as I that actually enjoys wasting time and repeating the same thing over and over again for your stubborn and dreamy mind.

You assumed earlier that if all thoughts come from outside us, we should be able to choose the thoughts we have. You also found it strange that if all thoughts come from outside us, that we don’t have the same thoughts.

You can indeed, if you so wish, choose your thoughts. If a thought enters your mind and you don’t like it, merely turn your attention to another thought.

Your angle of perception of the process of thought makes what I am saying difficult: your mind-experience tells you that you are being entertained by your thoughts. It is you that are entertaining thoughts, they arise in mind and you choose to follow, feel and be manipulated by them - you allow them to run the show and give you dance instructions. You take a mind-given role instead of staying in the audience of great observers and enjoying the show. The problem is that you live such an externalised life, that a distinction between what is yours and not yours is impossible.

You already know that you can modify your experiences through thinking new thoughts. During the last year whenever thoughts arose in mind that made you feel uncomfortable, you kept them at a distance through thinking thoughts that that made you feel comfortable. You always have a choice. Stop believing that you have to entertain thoughts you do not like - it’s that simple.

You’ve said that my thoughts and feelings follow my beliefs; that it is my beliefs that attract energies, including thoughts and feelings. You speak about beliefs as if they were something not to be found in mind, but what in that case is a belief? I’m confused. By your definitions, a belief is also something that I experience and is therefore outside of me! My head hurts!

Let’s see if we can tie the threads of misunderstanding by taking your work situation you mentioned earlier as our schooling-model.

As soon as you see your boss, your attention falls to the area of your solar plexus. You experience discomfort and think thoughts that strengthen your feelings; for example, "I dislike this person". You dwell on these thoughts and feelings for a while and experience a swelling sensation in your stomach - the fermentation of aggression has started.

Because you believe that he is better than you are, you despise yourself. Your belief that you are inferior to him creates the experience that he is superior to you. When you see him, lower thoughts and astral-feelings of inferiority manifest as your fearful, physical discomfort. Beliefs are the directives of experience; the belief that he his superior to you creates your discomfort.

If you could actually see what was happening through your astral eyes you would perceive a ghastly reddish grey belt around your chest and abdomen, polluting not only you, but also the atmosphere around you. Your boss senses, unknowingly, what is happening and relates to it in accordance with his own beliefs: he believes that you are unfriendly and aggressive - that’s his dream. If he appears for work tomorrow wearing white gloves and carrying a sack of dead leafs, I suggest you pinch yourself.

The beliefs that create your sleeping dream imagery of fears and desires are also active in your day dreaming. Your boss situation is an illustrative example of waking day dreaming. These uncomfortable encounters are teaching you how to go beyond your feelings of fear and inferiority. Your dreams are teaching you how to awaken to who you are: this is true of all your dreaming, in bed or at work.

In your dreams you manipulate astral energies and frequencies and model them into forms in accordance with your beliefs. In waking day consciousness you invite external energies, frequencies and feelings and mould them into your uncomfortable experiences. If your initial thought had been "such a nice, kind and thoughtful fellow" and you really had believed it, your experience would have been far more deserving.

We can now start to understand what beliefs actually are. They are choices, ways of looking at something that guide experience.

The vase on the table next to you can help us understand. You can observe it from a superabundance of angles and positions; you can sense it with any of your senses, sight, hearing, smell taste or touch. Change any of these factors and you have changed your experience of the vase. It can be long, short, round, square, big or small; smooth, cold, heavy or light. Any of these characteristics are relatively true. They are ways of looking at the vase: they are standpoints in the field of mind, beliefs about the vase that create your experience of it.

We can also say that there are many different ways of experiencing your boss. When you first met him you had no major feelings of animosity. He moved into your mind, there arose a relationship and you tried to find yourself in that relationship.

Your first day at work was not one of your better days - your boss had a horrendous day: you observed him from one of your own limited points in mind and missed this point completely. Other employees have different points of reference that give them a more holistic appreciation of your boss, so they accept him - they have many virtuous standpoints that help them sense him. The secretary, to your dismay, adores him.

Because of the circumstances, your first experience of your boss was abysmal. This is not a problem. The problem is that every time you see him now, you return to those initial circumstances. You revert back to your starting beliefs about him and your initial way of observing him in mind. You have never re-orientated yourself in relationship with him, you have never allowed the relationship to grow or change, and you have not allowed yourself to see him from other points within the field of your own mind.

The vase analogy was intriguing. Some days I find it most pleasurable to look at, other days it is just a plain blue vase. My angle of observation never changes because I only ever sit in this chair. Why should my experience of it change?

Changing your angle of observation is exactly what you are doing when you are guzzling fermented hops and barley or imbibing any other intoxicants. Any change in mind will change your angle of observation. The field of mind is a field of change - everything that you can possibly experience is in a flux - vibrationary transformation. Your experience of the vase is different from moment to moment because everything is changing. You are aware that you perceive the vase differently when you are tired, when you have been jogging or when you are intoxicated - you easily miss the subtle changes. When you feel happy within yourself the vase appears different; sometimes after our conversations you feel lifted and view the vase from an elevated standpoint.

Our vase makes a good analogy, but remember, in the case of relationships, things are not quite so simple. We perceive people with more than our physical senses. We feel them, we have ideas about them, and we love them. These extra factors add depth to our experience of people - we observe them from many standpoints simultaneously, creating a more vital, animate experience. Irrespective of all these different and varied considerations, we are still experiencing our beliefs.

Your beliefs and ways of seeing and experiencing a person can never be the person. To see a person as he actually is demands that your mind is pure and cleansed of all conditioning and beliefs. You think you know who your boss is. The truth is that you only know the conditioning in your own mind.

Beliefs are also movements of being. In the same way as you move your physical body to the kitchen to make food, so are your beliefs the movements of your inner being. They are neither within you nor outside you.

Your beliefs can also be described as: you're being, or self, pointed or focused in certain directions. When your being is focused in astral realms your dreams are the reality for you. You never doubt your dreams when you are dreaming because your astral beliefs make them real for you. On awakening you stand back from your astral experiences and find yourself in an another dream called waking life. You now believe that the physical world is your home, because your being is focused in the physical world.

Scientists say that everything is energy and this is almost true. Energies and frequencies, a gamut of vibrations beyond imagination surrounds you. For clarity, understand, if we are speaking of physical, emotional or mental forms; colours, sounds, diamonds or a pieces of coal, we are speaking energy - frequencies in different dynamic configurations. You are the stationary witness of everything knowable: you are not comparable to the energy found in your physical focus, you are being - that which never lends itself to definition. All experiences are made from energy but the experiencer is beyond them all.

This is all very interesting, but to be truthful, I think I would be happier if you could simply give me quick summary of the beliefs that I need to adopt and those that I need to change in order to alleviate the tension at work.

The beliefs that you changed and adopted that led to your present life experience seemed to be the right ones at the time. The state of mind you held then was instrumental in your choices of new beliefs. In retrospect, you now see that these new beliefs served their purpose then, but are no longer needed today, in fact, that they are now almost detrimental.

Before you felt intimidated by your father, now you intimidate him... is this how you now want things? Before, you allowed many people to push you around and cowered away from all conflicts. These days when the opportunity to put someone in their place arises, you are there waving your red banner and upsetting people - does this have any meaning in your life? You believe that your are better than many other people and because of this, believe that there are people that are better than you! Is this really what you want?

Your new beliefs led you away from much of your immediate dismay, but as you have noticed, your chosen beliefs didn’t turn out to be the universal balm you had expected. Again, a wise rule to remember is to never accept any beliefs until you are totally sure that they will serve you throughout your life and that they are not detrimental to your environment.

As before, your beliefs have to be chosen by you. The experiences you wish to manifest, or should I say, the ways you wish to observe life, must be considered before you accept or change any of your beliefs. You ask for beliefs that will change your work situation. Do you have sufficient wisdom to see that the beliefs you adopt today will reflect in other areas of your life and that they will still be around in the years to come? Do you see that your work situation is connected to other areas of your life, even your future life? Do you remember that I have said that everything is connected and in relation to everything else? This includes your beliefs; they support, influence and work with each other.

Besides alleviating tension at work, what is it you now wish to manifest in your life?

I don’t know.

Well, when you have found out, let me know and I will help you select the appropriate beliefs.

I just want to be happy.

Do you?

Well I guess there are a few other things - the usual status and respect, material security.

You are already over-educated in this field of manifestation; the beliefs you need are obvious to you without my help. The right friends, the right material assets and status in the eyes of the world: a comfortable apartment, partner and a few comfortable children - all these things will manifest as soon as you make the decision to believe that they will.

Sadly, when you have achieved all this, you will return to our conversation and your first question will be "What beliefs am I carrying that are causing this misery, why am I afraid and never satisfied?"

It matters not what you have succeeded in manifesting and experiencing in life - a full mind is not a full life. After all your long and arduous forays into the manifest worlds, you have to return to yourself and spiritually speaking, to hinder you from hurting yourself, you are always empty handed.

The belief scenarios to be instigated at this point in your life will help you to cope with your fears of loosing all the things you have created. Surely you sense the madness of what I am saying: Creating beliefs that help you acquire things, creating beliefs that help you maintain them and battle your fears of loosing them and then finally, choosing beliefs that help you die.

Wise people throughout the ages have discovered that the sweet wines of externalised living leave only the stale taste of vinegar. We may call it a waste of time, but surely it is time wasting us: Man’s desires can never be satisfied and to attempt to do so, leads only to misery. You may be able to achieve standards that the external world places upon you and in the eyes of the world attain a plump prize, but this can mean complete failure to your inner identity. As said, everything is changing - your plump prize will fade and the only thing to remain will be your own ageing plumpness and pending death.

Despite your confused mind’s assertions that you are moving in a straight line toward better things, you are walking around in circles, inching your way toward a certain death. When you decide to defy the dictates of mind, it claims that you are going nowhere and that you are now moving in circles. Mind is like a jealous lover that never tells the truth. The reality is that irrespective of what you have manifested in the material world, it all goes to charity.

Mind’s greed and fear should not be allowed to steer you choices of beliefs - you must listen inward and find out what has real value for you, what you really want.

Okay, before you hand me over to the Angel of the bottomless pit, I change my mind. I want to be happy, I want knowledge and I want to live a full life without my fears and desires, without discomfort - the Porsche, the mansion and the golf course are not that important anymore.

Happiness, knowledge and Life are beyond beliefs - they are beyond the ways you look at things, they are beyond experience. You do not experience happiness when you are happy because you are the happiness. You are the knowledge that has made you. This knowledge is the ultimate knowledge and can never be an object of experience because it is the subject in all your experiences. If you want a fulfilled life then you must fulfil the life within you. The subject must be filled with life, not the object.

The three things that you want cannot be attained through beliefs; they materialise by themselves at the same rate in which you are able to rid yourself of beliefs. As you dismantle that which is untrue, the true, happy and knowledgeable life-giving nature that you are will become known.

If I decide that what you are saying is true, how do I dismantle my beliefs?

Through releasing yourself, unconditionally, from all experience. All experience happens by itself without your intervention - let it happen without your interference.

When you meet with situations and people that cause you discomfort, tension and unhappiness, say to yourself the following, or a variation of your own that infuses you with the life-force that you are:

• I release myself from this dream - I go beyond my mind’s limited interpretation of reality and allow the true reality within to speak.

With your work situation you could try:

• Both he and I are beyond this experience, this I choose to see. I let go of my mind’s interpretations of reality and allow happiness, knowledge and fulfilment to flow.

You could have told me this before.

Would you have accepted it?

Maybe not - your beliefs are outlandish to say the least.

I am not a dealer in beliefs. Though we are exploring beliefs and their uses, my aspiration and intention is to instigate movements that transport you beyond them, leaving them behind forever. We use beliefs to manipulate within reality, but for the actual reality to be known, we need to go beyond all beliefs.

Through refusing to follow our beliefs, we are guiding and controlling experience. Doing this opens the doors to fulfilment.

I find your ideas interesting but totally incredulous - I just don’t seem to be able to accept what you say is the truth.

To merely accept what I say will lead you nowhere; investigate and question everything with an open mind without drawing conclusions. Practice and reflect on things that broaden your horizons and feel meaningful and push your incredulous thoughts to the side. Leave hate, fear, jealousy, desires and all those things that corrupt truth behind you. Understand that you are more than your fears and desires; see that you fear because you desire and you desire because you fear: treat both fear and desire in the same way and know that you are not bound to them. Observe, understand and let go of all astral activity, sleeping or awake, as soon as you can.

You are a stern and harsh teacher that cares little for my feelings... I am where I am. There maybe truth in what you say, but I don’t feel my imperfections to be my own doing - I feel sad and powerless.

There is no need to feel sorrow, only celebration. You are awakening and are caught between worlds. I have said that you are The Living Light. Stay in the Now and know yourself as the witness of all experiences, for they are external. Remember that experiences are dualistic, they involve the self and the non-self. Your feeling of sorrow is a minor, mind-miss-interpretation of reality. Through the Love that I am, I give you unconditional release from this ignorance:

In the name of the One Living Light, it is seen, understood, forgiven and dismissed. By the light in my heart, I rid you of all beliefs that lead you away from the all-encompassing reality that you are.

Three

Why do I feel so bad?

Tell me about your objectified, external feeling-experience.

I’ve been experiencing a lot of emotional tension of late. One moment I seem to feel good about myself and life and the next second I am filled with angst and uncomfortable feelings. Feelings are strange things! You have said that when we are feeling things, we are experiencing energy - frequencies. There has to be more to the story!

Everything is connected; nothing is autonomous. It is said that we have a mind-body-relationship, wrongly insinuating that mind and body are separate constituents of Man. Corporeal form is physical mind, feelings are emotional mind and thoughts are the movements of mental mind. Your physical, emotional and mental natures work as one nature in the nature of mind. You have experiences on physical, emotional and mental levels, all within the field of mind. All experiences are found in and connected through the medium of mind. Don’t accept what I say to be true; understand at the level of your own experience that this is the case. I do not want to give you new beliefs; I merely want to show you what you already know to be true.

Today you have an experience of sadness. You see the world through your sad physical eyes; you think sad thoughts about it and yourself and feel everything to be true. You sense a physical sadness

when your attention is with your physical body, your feelings proclaim an emotional sadness and your thoughts a mental sadness. All this belongs to your experience of sadness.

An accident affecting your physical body may cause emotional disturbances and mental angst. After an emotional conflict with your mother, your body feels weak and deprived of its energy. Your thinking mind resounds with your emotional confusion. You have feelings of warmth towards the secretary at work, which affect not only your thinking, but also thunder through your body as enticing, lurid, physical sensations.

You find your sadness to be predominantly in the chest and solar plexus area, but you can also feel it behind your eyes and have sensations of weakness in your arms: your mind is physically, emotionally and mentally depressed.

 You don’t have to rub salt into my wounds. Just because you are so high on life doesn’t mean you have to push people down. Just let me know when you need cheering up!

What is it that you sometimes say to your friends? "Come on, loosen up and go with the flow!" Why not accept your own remedies for your feelings of sadness and discomfort? Come on - loosen up! You have noticed that sitting next to rivers, watching the water flow by, calms your emotions. We don’t have to have a river in front of us to experience the calming effect of rivers.

Use your imagination for a few minutes and build in your mind the following visualisation. Keep this moving feeling-picture-thought as clear and alive as possible:

You are standing next to a very powerful river and the water is thundering past you, millions of tons of water, relentlessly rushing by. You stand, enthralled by its immense flow of power.

Mind is not its own intelligence - in essence, mind is clouded, synchronised stupidity. Standing next to the river, or imagining that you are doing so, is for mind, tantamount to the same thing. Mind really does not know the difference between your experience of the chair in front of you and your thoughts about it. So, visualise your river and feel its flow for a few minutes whilst I shine the night lights out of a few of your old apparitions.

Not bad... that helped quite a lot, though I’m not at all sure why.

How does this fit in with what you have said before? You have said so much that I am having difficulty keeping a clear understanding. All that stuff on beliefs and experiences; energies, dreams, etc. and now this. It sounds fairly simple when you are explaining things to me, but not when I am trying to remember them. Does life have to be this complicated?

Things will gradually become clear and simple.

Isn’t there any way of welding what you have said into an easy, overall structure or picture?

Why do you like rivers?

They’re powerful and full of life.

Let’s imagine that you are now standing next to a great river, looking down at the water directly below you. You notice that the flowing water is in a constant state of change. Water is being replaced by new water all the time - the river is never the same, not even for a millionth of a second. Water is flowing into your field of vision and flowing out of it - arising in your experience and then leaving it.

You observe the fact that not only is the water different from moment to moment, but the formations it takes, the waves, ripples and currents, are also never the same. The river is in continual change and transformation.

You experiment with the river and discover that by plunging your hand into the water, you limit its flow and cause turbulence - your interaction with the river is causing it to change. The water around your hand is now moving faster than the water under it, affecting the formations the currents are taking.

Hard though it may be to accept, what you call life is like a great river. All of your life-experiences are arising and passing by in mind; all of your experiences arise and fall away like the water rushing past you. Through your interactions with the river of life you are changing it. You, that which witnesses mind, never changes - when you stand back from the river of life, you realise this.

Are you saying that I should allow my life to flow past me without lifting a finger?

What flows into experience and flows out of it is transient: this is not the life that you are. You are the observer of the river, not the river!

You have said that my beliefs form my experiences. How does this fit in with your river analogy?

Your beliefs are the ways in which you identify and deal with the river. Your actions, reactions and interactions with the river decide your experience of it: these interactions are your beliefs about it. Regardless of whether these interactions are physical, emotional or mental, they are still beliefs: they are your ways of looking at and experiencing the river.

Through putting your hand in the river, jumping into it, swimming across it or drinking it, you are changing your experience of it. If you had the belief and feeling that the river was dangerous and that you might fall in, you would have a negative experience of the river. If you saw the river as a means of making money, your experience would be of financial glee. If a loved one had drowned in the river, you would have uncomfortable, mental experiences of the river.

Your interactive dealings with the river form your definition of it and the way you experience it.

The river starts in the mountains and ends in the sea. This experience is not limited to just my individual standpoint or way of looking at it! This is a fact about the river that has nothing to do with beliefs.

This is a way of viewing the river that humanity shares - a group belief. If your sense of "I" were with a fish, the river would become the atmosphere that you breathed. If you were a minute speck of condensation, you may insist that the river starts at the sea, floats into the air, is carried inland by air turbulence and then, because of air pressure, falls to the ground in the mountains. The man drowning in the river finds your "mountain to sea" belief to be, at least from his point of view, quite trivial. Because of his angle of perception, he is convinced that the river is limiting his flow of breath. Also, because he is moving with the river, he claims that there is no flow, only sinking. That the sun rises and the sky is blue are merely human standpoints in mind.

Through your beliefs, you are giving yourself to the river. You are giving your grasping hands to it in an attempt to control it and through doing so, you are causing turbulence and tension. When you feel desire for, or fear of the river, you are trying to stop its flow.

Your fears and desires cause blockages and disturbances in the flow of feeling-life. Your thoughts about the river are limitations that you try to place upon it. Your feelings and thoughts about the river can never be the river - they are empty beliefs that you hope reality will fill for you.

Your greed for the river may lead to you building a dam so that you can use it for your own purposes. This would cause great tension, not only for the river, but also for the surrounding landscape. Didn’t you read a while ago "be of the world, not in it"? Be of the river, not in it; observe the river from a safe, enjoyable distance.

Everything arises in the Now; as you look down at the river, the Now for you is the water in front of you. Remaining in the Now will reveal more of the river to you. Using our analogy, this would be equivalent to looking up and seeing more of the river instead of looking at the water directly in front of you - instead of looking down at the river and claiming that your narrow vision and view of the river, is the river, you are releasing this false belief and experience and allowing the Now to show you more. See that your beliefs about the river are not the river and that the best way of experiencing its majestic flow, is through standing back and enjoying it. Allow your life to flow: without your miserable, tension-causing beliefs. Allow emotions to stay in motion and flow with the river.

This you understood much better as a child, without all your mental garbage and belief-congestion. The flow of life, at least on feeling levels, was very clear to you then.

What flow did I have as a child? I don’t remember any flow. Maybe you are mixing this flow business up with the swing of dad’s slipper.

All your experiences are in a state of flux, they are changing all the time: the changing is the flow. At the moment you feel a little emotional. This is because you are not allowing your emotions to flow and change - you are saying through your beliefs that you are your emotions, that they are yours. This is equivalent to putting your hand in the emotional, feeling waters of life and trying to stop them. Your emotional feeling nature is not flowing, causing your experience of blocked waters behind your eyes and in your chest.

As a child your were able to allow these emotional waters to flow and found this feeling aspect of life’s great river to be almost ecstatic.

Can you help me to remember?

I can bring your attention to a small park with a little pond where you used to catch indecently large frogs. You would first spot a pair of globular eyes above the water level between reeds, close to the edge of the pond. Then you would move your body like a snake on the ground, inching your way toward the pond’s perimeters, slowly raising your head, so as not to disturb the frog. Without further contemplation, in a moment of ecstatic focus, the ground you were lying on and the pond would disappear, as your grabbing hand and agile arm would thrust forward at an unbelievable speed, grasping the frog and pulling it from its aquatic recluse. How such a small hand could, with such dexterity, grasp something so big and slimy filled you with accomplishment. Do you remember this joyous, direct, flowing, feeling-reality?

I remember... what a grin.

This is your emotional, feeling nature working, as it should: without blockages. The fate of your amphibian friends was ominous. You would squash them between rocks in order to examine their contents. Without mental congestion and without the mental acts of relating to right and wrong, you would kick them as hard as you could and see them flow through the sky. You were warmly impressed by the distance a frog could be booted when caught in mid-air after it had jumped. This was a good advantage of having plastic sandals; you could simply wash the gunge of them off when you got home.

Enough, enough... what a giggle! Why did life feel so different in those days?

In those days you floated on your experience of the river without claims of ownership. You floated through the day experiencing that exciting distance to life that all children experience. Because you now cause turbulence in the river, it is not so easy to float on it, which results in you occasionally sinking into it.

When you see yourself in these younger days, you see a child that spent most of its time in an emotional, feeling-ecstasy. This was your astral nature working as it should: devoid of emotional blockages - mere ecstatic, emotional flow - the motion of astral frequencies and playful, floating fancy.

As a child when you were angry, it lasted only a couple of minutes - you never hanged on to it and claimed it to be your own personal property as you do now. When you felt happy, it lasted as long as it lasted - you didn’t go around telling everyone about your own individualised happiness like you do today. In those days your happiness and anger were allowed to pass: they were experienced as being part of the river of life. Now you take these transient feelings of anger and happiness and claim them to be your own property, when in fact they belong to the river of life. Trying to make them your own, which you can never succeed in doing, causes you and the river discomfort.

I guess in those days, I didn’t have my mental understanding of life, disturbing the flow.

Yes, limiting mental ideas can stand in the way of the flow of life, but this is not the main reason why it was easier for you to float on the flow of feeling-experience as a child. The primary factor was your ability to live in the Now.

Your ability to remain in the Now and your ability of letting go of the river are equal in strength. Letting the river pass without intervention brings you into the Now; remaining in the Now allows the river to flow. This is why, as a child, you grew and changed with such a ferocious speed. Letting go is inviting change and growth; being in the Now teaches you how to release ignorance.

Because adults fearfully hang onto the river and desire to have it forever, they hardly grow or change at all. The change between five and ten years of age is remarkable. Between the age of 50 and 70, hardly noticeable! As we let go of our beliefs we start to allow the river of life to flow without our limiting involvement. The river becomes a great pleasure as our awareness of it unfolds. It is in the Now that we witness the flow of life - this is the flow of our experiences, flowing into the Now and flowing out of it, changing all the time.

I’m a little confused by what you mean with emotion and feeling. Are they the same thing?

In our analogy, emotions are only energies, frequencies within the river. The sensing of these energies you call feeling. Emotion is the motion of the river on a certain level. The word emotional arises when, because of beliefs, this motional flow is obstructed. An emotional person is a disturbed person. The emotional energies around him are not flowing as they could do. The diminution of discomfort you experienced after visualising the river, is a reflection of an increased emotional flow. You stopped saying my sadness, my discomfort and emotions and instead observed the flow of mind imagery. Mental-mind is intimately interwoven with feeling-mind and so affects it. Think pleasant thoughts and pleasant feelings arise; think unpleasant thoughts and unpleasant feelings will arise.

A child in the middle of a tantrum is not emotional. Children never get emotional. They may become aggressively expressive as they explore the energies around them; they may bubble with laughter as they experience the free flow of their own feeling nature, but it only lasts for a while. They allow emotions to flow - into experience and out of it. Adults identify with emotions and say: "I am emotional". This belief makes letting go of emotions difficult. The child merely feels emotions arising and falling away without the identification - without saying "these are my emotions". A child that is allowed to express emotions and let go of them grows into a healthy, non-emotional adult. This does not mean that as an adult he will be unable to feel things. Because he doesn’t identify himself with his emotions, he will be able to see more of "the river" than a person with emotional disturbances will. This will allow him to feel, or sense more within the field of his feeling nature.

This kind of person is usually of the sensitive, cheerful variety that appreciates the simple things in life. He is not driven so much by fears and desires and the usual emotional, astral disturbances.

You have said on many occasions that I should have more faith in the now and remind my self of it at every opportunity. The now seems to have little substance in comparison to the real things in my life, what you call the river. Please tell me more - why the now?

Well to start with, the Now is totally free from all substance so you will never find it in mind as a thing. As you awaken to who you are you will find that the Now is more an aspect of being than some objectified reality. Coming closer to your own true-being automatically brings you more into the Now; conversely, the more you are able to focus yourself in the Now, the greater your presence of being.

You remember the game of repeating "Now" for a few minutes, to the exclusion of everything else and the sense of presence it gave rise to? This doesn’t just apply to you. This game can be played by everyone and the results will be the same. The Now is the body of enlightenment - it is the space in which the Living Light of your true-being manifests. As we strengthen our awareness of the Now, so are the falsities of mind diminished. Nobody need believe these words, all they have to do is to sit down, breathe maybe a little deeper than normal and repeat Now with a good honest intent. The heightened flow of their experience will speak for itself.

Your mind, with relentless persistency, confronts you with images of yourself in "past" and "future" spaces. The spaces of yesterday and tomorrow are mental ideas that have no reality per se: space can only exist Now. I have little desire to discuss this point with you, but I do respect your finite views. It’s fine by me that you insist, "my kitchen table has its origin in the past". I have to maintain that your kitchen table has never touched past and that it will never know the future. It has only been Now. The Now can never become a part of the past, only mind belongs to the past - mind is nothing more than the movement of memories.

You say "now" in your mind and believe that your awareness of the word "now" is all there is, or as you sometimes put it, "this is the now and I am in it - there is nothing else". In some respects you are correct, the thing is that you are only aware of mind’s imitation of the Now: thinking now, is not the actual Now.

Holding your mind steady through repeating "Now" eventually bores it into silence, or at least a lower level of activity, allowing a higher self-awareness in the Now. Through releasing the mentalisations held concerning the Now, we allow it to speak for itself. Sadly, man prefers his mental imagery of life to the real thing. To know the river, you have to observe it. Thinking thoughts about, or looking at dead pictures of the river will never replace the actual experience of it in the Now.

All this business of living in the now is becoming a little dated. As soon as you pick a book up these days, you read the words "live in the now". My friends and I have put great importance on living in the now. This has not been a solution for them or me in any way!

There is quite a substantial difference between talking about living in the Now and actually doing it. In the case of you and your make-believe friends, it is more of an intellectual ideology, or if you will excuse my directness, an excuse for self-destruction and abandonment.

You had better explain that one!

Saying that one has to live in the Now and simultaneously popping those dubious tablets your bewildered friends sell to you, is not one of life’s paradoxes, it is one of life’s sorrows. Rolling one of those things you call a spliff whilst lecturing on the importance of living after what you are, is a well-disguised cry for help. This is quite definitely not living in the Now and if you think it is, I recommend you paint you’re face blue and red and start selling flowers.

No comment.

I interpret your submission as being admirable and most dignified.

Man, in his search for release from misery and ignorance tends to wallow in it, believing that his misery belongs to life and that through truly understanding it, he will eventually understand himself. Believing that one is the content of one’s mind is total misery and the ultimate self-ignorance. The Now is the hand of providence that guides us away from this misery.

To be totally honest, I might as well admit that I am always forgetting the now. One second I have it in mind and the next it has gone without my noticing, returning a few hours later for a couple of seconds more. I always seem to forget - why?

The basic problem is not the fact that you merely forget the Now, it is your unwillingness to try and remember it.

My sentences are long and my messages sometimes deep, but what you have to do is very simple indeed. The direct road to the Now is mere self-remembrance. When you are trying to remember who you are, you are actively moving into the Now.

Wait, slow down, that sounded important. Give me that again!

• When you are involved with tying to remember yourself, the Now is remembering and manifesting in you.