“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment ” - Buddha

“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

“Life is Now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be” - Eckhart Tolle

“Before Abraham was, I Am.” - Jesus (John 8:58)

You cannot really argue with that line-up can you! It is like a who is who of spiritual awakening history.

The phrase ‘I Am’ has been one of the most controversial in history. Jesus repeats it several times in the Bible including the mind bending statement “Before Abraham was, I AM”. It is also mentioned directly and indirectly through the work of Eckhart Tolle which I have gained huge wisdom from.

All spiritual seekers and religion founders speak of the same one truth and its spiritual awakening. It is the same truth just expressed by different voices. It is similar to hearing about a football match from fans of opposing teams. Each have their own interpretation but ultimately they all saw the same game. The phrase “I am” means a breaking apart from the dimension of time. When you are in time you are subject to suffering, illness, dis-ease and on the positive side you can plan for the future and learn from the past. When you are in presence in the state of “I am” or “being” you cannot experience illness. Illness requires time. Jesus experienced timelessness and knew, as Zen Masters do today, that the mind cannot comprehend it so bypassed the mind. A great teacher will always tailor his teachings to the student.

“I am” is the state of a mind before it judges something which is the ultimate spiritual state – empty of preconceived notions. You are a human BEING remember, BEING right now. “I am X” means that something is not x which must be so it can be compared too. This is the first phrase which splits the world into two and takes away oneness. When something is described, there must be an opposite to compare it to or it could not be. This is why Lao Tzu says “Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short define each other. High and low oppose each other.” I am is totally barren of judging. I am X brings multiplicity into the world.

When Jesus uttered the mysterious and profound phrase “Before Abraham was, I AM”, he knew that people would try and understand mentally in the dimension of time what this means but there would be no answer. How could you be in this moment, before something that has already happened? In this way it is similar to a Zen poem which has the aim to awaken you because there is no logical explanation. For example, when your foot touches the ground it is the foot feeling the foot. That one was a huge awakening for me.

It does not mean that he is God as common interpretations will have you believe. Jesus was a man like us all. He had emotional times like in the garden of Gethsemane, got angry at the people selling things in the church etc. These common interpretations come from trying to logically interpret what Jesus meant when the truth is actually ridiculously simple and you will only find it when you stop looking. Jesus is consciousness, perfectly awoken. And since he “Is” that means that he is now. Jesus understood that the spirit can never die but the form, or what he calls “being of this world” can die and shift form whenever it wants to. His form died but his spirit is here.

You are essentially presence. Whenever you are not presence, you are mind. When you are in your mind you are in the past and future so the present gets put on autopilot. The only place of possible change in your life is put on autopilot.

I remember starting to search for deep truth around 14-16 years old. I read books of people like Marcus Aurelius and time management and whilst they were good they felt somewhat skin deep and superficial and I had yet to find anything truly deep.

One day during my university life I was in a book store and saw the book “The Power of Now” on a bookshelf and bought it impulsively without ever having heard of the author or book previously (scarily similar to what happened to someone that I know). After reading it for a while I realised the deep truth in it and experienced alignment with the now for the first time.

It was incredible, everything was fresh and I was aligned with it all, a huge spiritual awakening. I knew that everything was good in the universe and that nothing external could beat this knowing that all was good mixed with deep joy. I remember taking a job after that shuffling files and at dinner times I would walk around the local streets finding trees and plants and having experiences like Moses with the burning bush. You can sense their aliveness by sensing them for the first time not through labels. When you look at something without a label and are totally focused on it, you sense your inner connection and can harm nothing as you know it as yourself.

Since that day I have read the book, I pretty much every week at least once. That was years ago too as I am now 20. It has bought a dimension of depth into my life through its spiritual awakening that I never had before and I see around me many are still blind too.

It taught me that this moment TRULY is the only moment there ever has been or ever will be. Consider this. Have you ever experienced something that did not happen in this moment? Of course not. Jesus WAS before Abraham, he WAS in a physical body and he is now. Or you could say Jesus is before Abraham, Jesus is the leader of Christianity and Jesus is now. Feel free to replace Jesus with any name/label.

I cannot tell you how fulfilling it is to know the deepest truth for yourself. You have to experience it (in this moment I may add). It is so fulfilling to know that every spiritual path leads to the same truth and there is ways for humans to find this as I did.

“I am” is the deepest spiritual awakening truth there is. An idea is to sit in meditation and say as a mental mantra “I am”. Try it a few hundred times 2 times a day for a week and it will give you a spiritual awakening.It might not happen during the mantras it usually happens as you go about your daily business and the statement is allowed to seep into your deeper consciousness.

Buddha started on breath awareness but he didn’t just remain concentrated on his breath all of his life. He transcended that teaching and moved on after it has served its purpose. If you say to a rookie spiritual seeker “yeah, just become aware of your awareness” they will just look at you blankly and try and make some kind of mental construct of concept out of it. You have to lead the mind slowly.

When you meditate upon things you are still not completely aware of the stillness and formless within but it’s at least a start. It concentrates your mind and at least severs the idea that you are body, thought or anything else. When you’ve totally focused on something your mind is still.

As you get used to this state and master it you will experience the state of inner stillness and its beauty which is beyond words. Infinitely more beautiful than any physical possession. It’s the connection with what you truly are. You see it in someone who has a child and suddenly becomes more vibrant, alive and childish looking. They’ve connected with source and experienced stillness of the mind.



Removing The Crutches

Now you have realised a still mind, you are ready to take off your crutches and allow it to become your natural state. What you do is switch the focus from external things (the object of your focus) to awareness of awareness itself. This sounds complicated but it’s you completely natural state under all the mind made noise.

My technique for doing this is that I sit in a cross-legged state in a dark room. I do this so that I can stop my mind focusing on objects and I close my eyes to gain as much focus as possible. Then I sit at the gate of my mind where things enter and leave and just become aware of the inner stillness. At the start my mind is often busy and I have to acknowledge and become aware of thoughts. Whenever you realize that a thought has took my attention elsewhere on a little journey I just watch it, forgive it until it vanishes and return to silence.

You will eventually get to the point where you are just pure timeless awareness. You are not aware of a body or thoughts. It’s blissful. You can tell how close you are by the degree of lightness and inner peace you feel. When you connect with that state the ecstasy just multiplies the longer you say there, deeper and deeper. It might scare you at first with its power, go into it in degrees.

If at any point you feel like the mind noise is all too much, just internally and silently forgive and accept your state. Then move on from there. I can’t say how long it takes to get to that place because it requires the acknowledgement of timelessness and forgetting your space in time as that is a thought form.



The Stateless State

Once you’ve learned how to access this state it will become more and more prevalent in your life. You will feel an inner peace with you wherever you go that you can amplify at any time and a knowing of being one with all (coincidentally my favourite type of pizza). If you are struggling to find an answer then to this place and silence your mind and the answer will be given to you. God speaks his truth in feelings to a silent mind.



Your Minds Resistance

Your mind will always resist going to this place, ALWAYS! You will find it making up ridiculous excuses just to stop and distract you. It does this because it is fighting for its existence. It wants control of you and at the moment it has it. Old habits die hard. If you want mind control then you will just have to see through this and put yourself into meditation. That’s the hardest part.

One night before sleep, after gaining a great amount of control back from my mind, I was visualizing that I was in my body the following morning getting out of my bed turning off my alarm and going for a shower. Simple, right? Well when I got up the following morning I lay in my bed and I was aware of my mind telling me that I’d reset my alarm for an earlier time and that I should go back to bed. This wasn’t the “close your eyes for just.. another .. second” thought. It scared me a little and I got up. This all happened after just an hour of deep meditation daily, for about 3 or 4 days in a row.

Your mind is full of illusory concepts which it believes are reality. Reality is in constant flux while concepts remain rigid. Something had to give. I’ll take this as a good sign though as I read somewhere that Buddha saw the illusion of horsemen on a chariot galloping towards him just before he reached enlightenment as his mind was trying to fool him.



Appreciation

I found that without any conscious effort, I just started appreciating things massively. My fear of death just started to fall to the side in the place of gratitude and deep love of all, and sleep became incredibly deep and restoring. I’d awaken extremely alert as if I’d slept for years. I started to feel and know that life was living through me rather than the other way around, I’d touched the immortality of the human spirit and it is breathtaking.

A couple of days ago, I bought myself a winter coat with matching hat and it made me feel so amazing. It was as if gratitude and love just burst through my chest and swallowed me up. and after it had died down I just had no fear and it’s aura stayed with me for days. Go to this place, it’s the most beautiful, natural restoring thing you can do for yourself and others who come into contact with you.

Anyone can learn how to reach enlightenment right now. I would say it will transform your life but apart from being a huge cliché, it is a massive understatement. It will literally change the structure of your mind and how it views reality. In this article I will try and answer questions like “Does enlightenment involve work once achieved?” and “What is the role of mind after it is realised as not your identity?”.

As with a lot of spiritual teachings, the words used are sometimes misleading. You have probably reached outside for things your whole life (money, love, power, truth etc). Reaching enlightenment is paradoxically the opposite of reaching. Reaching comes from the idea that there is you and a separate state that must be achieved.

Enlightenment is embodying what you are and realizing the mindset of more as a bottomless illusion. In a sense, you are enlightened, you were born enlightened, you just aren’t aware of it yet. You may find your mind chewing on this and trying to logically make sense of what is being said here. Silence that voice that has controlled you and wronged you in the past for a minute by becoming an observer of it and then go and experience the truth for yourself.

As you learn how to reach enlightenment, you may find your mind saying “I am enlightened”. Disregard this voice. The mind can’t understand enlightenment and is just trying to fool you. You will know it personally as an indescribable feeling and a natural lightness accompanied by inner peace. As soon as you are in the territory of thought you have entered the arena of judgement, multiplicity into one here and another there and the enlightened connection is lost.

You may find that a shift in your perceptions will occur immediately. Things will appear less serious and you will feel less alienated to the world. Your mind, just like everything else in the world is fighting to live. The beginning of this process is like a huge mental detox where lots of the bigger more obvious unconscious patterns that you were already partly aware of are flushed out. Because you have identified with your mind for most of you life, this deep pattern of unconscious habits will come up again and again and at the beginning it will be extremely intense but it cannot prevail against your focused awareness. Like a rocket breaking through the atmosphere, the initial push it the hardest part.

You must be like a man who wants to cross a river by a bridge but rain has caused the river to burst its banks and he cannot access the “other side”. He sits silently a distance away and watches intently for the furore to die down before checking the waters are still and crossing the bridge. Your mind is the river, your focus is the man, and the bridge is the spiritual path that leads to the “other side” of enlightened conscious being.

Bringing Darkness Into The Light

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
~Chinese Proverb


Light gives of itself freely, filling all available space. It does not seek anything in return; it asks not whether you are friend or foe. It gives of itself and is not thereby diminished.
~Michael Strassfeld


From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

From an external time point of view your aim is to be conscious at all times and to continually improve your consciousness by removing attachments and shining the light of focused awareness onto your unconscious habits. Your aim right now, internally? Be conscious in this moment. Sitting in a room silently for too long is great but your unconscious habits will only come to fruition as you go about your everyday experience. This is where they were created and swallowed up by your subconscious mind. If you have the tendency to judge your family as annoying you for example, then the emotion that comes with that will have to be faced in real life situations.

Go out into the world and just be intensely aware of inner physical feelings and your emotion/mind state at the moment. Have your default state to be sat at the base of your mind observing with no judgement. Kicking yourself when you mess up is just another layer of unconscious habit. This is a life long process externally and you will progress to become conscious of all that is. This will lead to heightened sense perceptions too. You will notice smells that never existed before.

What Is The Purpose Of Mind After Enlightenment?

When you split from the one consciousness into an apparent individual form, your mind is used for navigating the world of form with your individuality in comparison to other individuals – learning from the past, planning for the future etc. For most humans, mind is like a razor blade that is used constantly and no care it taken to sharpen it. Sparse use and tending to the razor keeps your mind razor sharp and ready to pounce when challenges come along as its not preoccupied with trivial things. When using your mind for future planning, go into it with full consciousness. Try and raise your consciousness to even higher than your normal state because mind is the arena of illusion and may try and get you to identify with it again.

Your mind will naturally be more silent when you start learning how to reach enlightenment. You will start to notice the link between mind stillness and the peace you feel inside. Your mind will become a tool that you can put to great use and it will become extremely focused as you become aware of its erratic patterns.

The purpose of it is now as a tool rather than you identifying with it. The mind is not an evil thing, this is a common bad perception just like having a material possession with you is supposedly evil. It’s attachment and identification that is the true evil. Honestly believing things like “I am the owner”, “This is mine” and having an energy behind it is identification as opposed to mere words to convey meaning. Some people choose Asceticism to remove all temptation but it’s not the path for me although I’m content with little. You have to keep the knowing that you are not your mind with you at all times and use it only when you need too for its purpose. Stop thinking of the future too much, you can never experience it.

Once you achieve the state of enlightenment it will be obvious to you. You will be your true self for perhaps the first time and it’s beautiful, far more beautiful than anything else you can ever experience. You become like a baby in the world. Everything seems new and you have the sense of wonder that seems to belong only to children. Fears will fall to the side. Once you are in this state you have in a sense already achieved enlightenment. You have hit the first step and become consciously aware. Hardly anyone gets this far. Then, you just keep unravelling and transmuting other unconscious layers as you go through life. Your aim being to just keep doing this and be continually aware of old patterns trying to take a hold of you again.

Realizations I’ve Had

Since I started the path towards enlightened being I have realized many deep truths. Some of them are:

• Every judgement we make is basically saying to the Universe/God “You’re not good enough, I can make better of this than you”. You bring in a separation of “you” and “the universe” which alienates you and you have also cut yourself off from the formless state that is you. A recipe for catastrophe. How can you live the natural life if you don’t know what you are? The one thing that you only need to know is the thing that you don’t have.
• All actions will flow out of your increased consciousness. Just do what feels natural to you. Realise though that all these questions about whether I’m doing the right thing are coming from your mind and this is what we’re trying to bypass. Feel its power. Where do you feel it physically. Concentrate on that and observe it dissipate. Then the natural solution will come to you.
• My thoughts continually manifest into reality at a quickening rate. This is what Jesus did when he performed miracles. Extreme mind control changes external reality.
• The matrix idea isn’t as stupid as first though . You will start to see people as all plugging into collective mindsets and it is seriously freaky at first. They have a glazed over look in their eyes and you will see that they are basically sleeping through their life. Find highly conscious people and socialize with them as the unconsciousness can take you under as quickly as you escaped from it.
• The journey never really ends. You will always be bringing the light to new unconscious patterns. You will experience deeper and deeper peace throughout your life if you follow this path and all of your actions will be your own.
• You realize yourself as formless. You are not a form. You can view your mind, body and thoughts so what are you? Something beyond them. How can something with no form die? It was never born. Yes, your apparent physical body will dissolve one day but this becomes less and less important in place of serving. Your body feels less dense and in spiritual mastery, you have no body.
• You find that life is living through you and that there really is no life and you as separation. Instead of a mental understanding of this, you will come to experience and know it as daily existence.
• You become like someone who plays with the forms of the world. You do things just because you are curious about the outcome and will come across as not serious to many. This all stems from the realization that you’re not your body

I leave you with this quote which sums up what I’ve found nicely.

Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth. They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer – Eckhart Tolle

If you are a very logical person who excels at things like Maths then you may find it hard to find your spiritual side. How often do you see a Maths Genius who is also deeply spiritual? I am writing this article to help you help others find their spiritual side but many of you reading this may find something of use in it too. You use logical arguments which is the level they are on now and so they can relate to it. Those who are ready to awaken will do so.

Where are the answers?

Most logical people think that the answers are all in their mind. This is why you have to engage them with mind related arguments at first like …

Do you think you will find the answer to the meaning of life in your mind then why haven’t you yet, why should the meaning of life be so hard to find, it should be readily available right now. It’d be unfair that only those who are highly intelligent in terms of knowledge can have meaning in life.

Is their more information to digest and analyze before you find out your purpose and understand your nature? Do you honestly believe this will happen?

How could what we are be understood by a mind when even science understands that Humans have not always had minds when you look back at our far ancestry. We were something before mind arisen, weren’t we? How did we live with purpose then?There is something that gave us purpose and a process that ran the world before mind arisen so we can’t find it there.

Your minds natural purpose is resistance. Whenever you propose something to your mind it resists it by coming up with alternatives, it’s what it’s there for.

You say to yourself “Should I watch the Lost Season finale tonight?”

It says “No, that show had run its course by the end of season 2″

This is extremely useful as a tool.

Recognise this is what it is ALWAYS going to do. This is why you are finding this hard to digest.

Obviously these don’t all need to be used, and are only relevant points to bring up if the situation warrants it.

Here are some arguments and open questions to use to discuss with them before they commit to challenging themselves.

• Why are so many knowledgeable people so unhappy and what allows for people with no knowledge or possessions to find extreme happiness? Is it possible that happiness is not to be found in the mind and is beyond mind circumstances?
• Why do people who are highly knowledgeable about things struggle to take action when paradoxically they know more than 99% of others? Commonly known as ‘Paralysis Analysis’. They are stuck in their mind and an everlasting train of thought. They’ve imagined every possible way something could turn out but have put nothing into action.
• Give them some Zen Koans - These are statements that are designed to bypass your mind and give you a glimpse of enlightenment. One time, I read the Koan “When the foot touches the floor, it is the foot feeling the foot”. My mind went silent and I saw with complete clarity and I was astonished by this simple truth for about an hour.
• Bypass their mind – Many famous teachers of Zen realise that you cannot help someone to enlightenment by working with their mind. You have to help them see beyond it. If they ask too many questions, remind them the best you can without trying to provoke further questions inside their head that the words are only fingers pointing towards the truth. The reason I’ve decided it is a good idea to use logical arguments here is that when I came out of my Atheist daze, it was these logical arguments that started rocking my current beliefs and it’s been a total turnaround since then.
• I think it will work for others too. I’m sure I know that there’s loads of people in the position I was who are at about my age. They’ve got their time managed, their bonus satisfied and a comfortable little house in the suburbs but there is a deep yearning for more. Not on a physical of mental level but a jump to another plane entirely. Ask people if they feel this. They don’t even have to admit it verbally to you. It’s their change that matters.
• Ask them who their idols are – This is more for people who are on the lower levels of consciousness or children. If they idolize someone and want to be like them then try and relate how these people have a spiritual side. I’ve been into the personal development / self discovery thing for years now. I used to be a militant atheist and kept running into people who had reached an apex in personal development. A level where it took something huge to get up to the next one. They then introduced a spiritual side. I ignored it at the start but it kept on appearing. It couldn’t be a coincidence and I gradually allowed it into my life.
• Your Story – Explain to them the personal transformation in your life and try to relate without patronizing.
• Sizzle, not steak – Tell them the outer benefits of getting in touch with your spiritual side. The serene feeling of peace in all circumstances, the deep connection of love that goes far deeper than what we know of as love which is just surface level attachment. The feeling that everything is just as it should be.
• Explain the difference between religion and spirituality – Spirituality is connecting with source and is a personal experience whilst Religion tends to be a bunch of rules based on what humans have interpreted as correctly spiritual from religious texts. Sometimes religion and spirituality get tarred with the same brush and it’s unfair, some people have such bad experiences when they’re younger that they shut off any spiritual area in their life. Christianity is not something you should follow. You should follow Jesus Christs example. That’s a massively important distinction.
• Religion can be useful and is commonly a beginners tool for bringing spirituality into your life. Reaching spiritual maturity comes from taking it into your own hands and following what YOU know is right. Just look at how Buddha left the rich life to find truth and Jesus lost his life to be resurrected. You get taught loving your neighbour and compassion but the problem is these things come out of you naturally as a result of connection with source and should not be pursued on their own. you don’t love others because you THINK it’s right, You do it because you’ve been enlightened to the fact that it is truth.

After discussing with them say their beliefs will have took a little rocking so lay down the challenge to them. Say “OK, If you are so confident in your beliefs that all answers can be found in your mind then I invite you to be the big person and put aside those beliefs for just one month so that you may try out another set of beliefs. If you’re so sure, you can always come back to them. They’ll still be there. The only thing that could possibly hold you back is a fear of what you might find, I lay down a challenge to you … “.

The Challenge

“I commit for 30 days only to put aside my beliefs on spirituality and see what else is there. If I am not satisfied by the end of these 30 days, I will take up my old beliefs and carry on as if nothing has happened. I will go into this with an open mind, no prejudging. I will spend 1 hour each day consuming alternative material on spirituality that I’ve not considered before.”.

Remind then that their mind will say to them “don’t do this, this guy hasn’t got your best wishes at heart, he probably wants to sell you a church membership or something, bloody Mormons…” Invite them to sit back and watch their mind making noise impartially. It is fighting for its life as being in total control of your life and it’s pretty damn smart … it’s a mind! Do you really want your entire life ran by your mind? Common responses and replies you can use:

• I’ve not got the time *whine* - What about all that time you spend doing (enter hobby / type of book)? Wouldn’t that be put to good use reading something against what you currently believe in. How could you be so confident in what you believe if you’ve never even read and tried to apply anything by the alternative. It’s like saying I don’t exist just because your eyes are closed. You’re not scared are you? Didn’t Einstein say “Genius is the ability to hold two conflicting thoughts in your head without agreeing with either one?”. I dunno, it was someone brainy anyway!
• It’s not for me - Are you actually just going to give in? I thought we’d made some progress here? Are you honestly so happy in your life right now at this moment that you can afford to NOT give this a chance? Or is your mind just making you restless again. Be warned: This answer is likely to stir up some deep emotions and put the mind on super defense mode. Don’t do this unless you’re prepared to lose that friend.

[PS. This post was wrote for you ]

This is the start of a dysfunction that affects almost all of the human race barring the few who have woken up from its trance. When you go from being a baby, then to adolescence and adulthood you start to identify with thoughts. This happens at a very early age so affects your mind at its most susceptible. You are called by your name from birth and it will probably be one of the first words you can say, either that or the name of one of your parents.  This starts the process of thought identification. You identify with the basic thought that you are your name. “I’m Richard” pretty much equals “I’m a thought”, the thought of Richard. Take a moment to digest that.

Then later in life comes identification with jobs, social positions, financial strength, music preference etc. Thoughts are on the level of form. This it the level which all “things” are that we can perceive. The only thing we cannot perceive is what we are because we ARE it. If you could perceive what you are then what would be perceiving it? It’s impossible. You are everything that exists that is not a thing yet we are taught that we are things. This is obviously unnatural and leads to great disruption.

When you identify with thought you will then start to identify with beliefs which are collections of similar thoughts and physical objects which starts off as your body but this extends to your work place, home, possessions etc. You identify with your body because, like more than 99% of the human race, you are completely unaware of the formless dimension within yourself. You are only aware of the form. So the form aspect of you (your body) is what you think your true nature is. Does this sound familiar? It should do. It’s the story of the human race so far.

Consider this. Isn’t it silly and childish how something like your losing your job can get you upset? You are completely unaffected physically yet you feel inside that this could somehow mean your physical end. Something that you ultimately don’t have full control over has just changed form. This is not to say that you should passively accept it. Accept that it has happened, have no inner resistance and then go to work on changing the things that upset you.

You must have come to the realization in your life that all form things eventually won’t exist. Your first love probably didn’t last forever, your happiness at your first paycheck gave way to the fact that you paid so much in tax.  These things are subject to time whereas you are timeless consciousness temporarily embodying a human body. When you put yourself in the time dimension you become victim to the vigor of time. You will get anxious about death and this will affect every area of your life as your purpose becomes to preserve your form body and identifications. You will cling to money, family and other things you perceive as possessions as if when they die you too will die. This is because you think you are form and a form death would mean your death.

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever had a thought that lasted a year? Or even 1 month? 1 day? Thoughts are transient objects and tend to be much more transient than physical things. If you think you are a thought like “I’m Richard”, “I’m a banker”, “I’m a spiritual person”. Then when these things appear to you to not be true you will feel like you have died or death is imminent. This causes immense suffering for a person. To feel like you have no control and you are dying a little each day. It’s not normal.

This suffering has a purpose though. The suffering will break the false self that has been created. When you have suffered enough you will be so motivated to get out of this state that you will find a way. Your spiritual mother will force you to wake up just like my birth mother did all the way through school.

The universe will give you the teacher you need when you are truly ready. When the student is ready, the master appears. You will find the resources flowing into your life as if from nowhere. The universe wants you to do well and have what you want. Maybe you’re not ready to start to awaken yet and that’s fine. When you’re ready you’ll find a teacher.

Truth vs. Ego

If you find yourself looking for inner stillness to become something more in the eyes of your mind then you will 100% definitely NOT succeed. It has become another form label that you are going to add to yourself. “Look at me, I’m a spiritual person. I’m much more developed and therefore a better person than you.”. Go into it because your intuition tells you too and you are at the point of awakening. How do you know if you are ready to awaken? You will just know, you will feel the absolute urgency for change.

It can’t be an adding of form because this is an ego level thing and this is exactly what we are trying to transcend. Enlightenment is not the adding of more to you. It is the stripping away of all form identification and suffering until you are just left with what you are which is unity with all that is. Don’t try and mentally understand this. That’s the ego trying to come in again with duality. It wants to create the thing to understand and the thing trying to understand it which are illusions within unity.  If there is something within you that knows this is right even a little bit, listen to it.

The Plan

Here are some techniques that I and others have used successfully to undergo a spiritual awakening. Feel free to teach these to others too.

Logical Questioning – If you want to change a belief you have to rock it a little so it becomes unstable. Ask yourself questions that are designed to change your belief. Some that I used include things like:

• “If my pancreas was removed and I was my body then would I still be Richard? How much of my body has to be removed before I cease to be Richard if I’m still alive and responding?
• “If I died and then came back to life during illness was I my body during that time? What if people told me my body was still there? Are they lying?”
• “When I say my body, who is the me who has the body? What is the distinction here?”

It’s a good idea to put yourself in a meditative state through 20 minutes of relaxation meditation before doing this as you can concentrate and communicate with your subconscious much easier.

Good beliefs to question include:

• Am I my body?
• Where was I before I was born?
• What differentiates me from someone else?

Eventually the belief will become unstable then questionable and then downright silly.

This operates on the mind level so I would recommend this for beginners. Pure awareness meditation is more advanced.

Pure Awareness Meditation

One meditation I enjoy is to become pure awareness which is your true identity at the deepest of levels. I sit in meditation and after relaxing myself for 10 minutes I simply sit at the gate of my mind and become totally aware. If this sound impractical at all to you then simply sit, eyes closed in silence and listen to the silence which is the background to all things. Don’t struggle whatever you do. Just be. Let all things pass you by and become aware of them. You will see a thought come up. acknowledge it and sit at the gate of your mind. Whenever anything is bought to your awareness bring the light of consciousness to it without thinking. Just look at it like a man who’s mind is silenced by the beauty of a sun set. There is no mental chattering. The aim is to become concentrated in the state of no thought. Don’t be thinking “Oh man, I’m struggling, he told me not to struggle”. Just be. It’s tough at first but it is the most rewarding experience the universe has to offer bar none.

I’ve achieved pure awareness recently a few times for a couple of minutes or so and to be totally honest I was scared. The absolute unlimited feeling of power, the feeling that God is running through your veins right their and then and communicating with every fiber of what you are is pure ecstasy. You become transparent to light and embody it, you become timeless and infinite and then return to your physical body. It’s infinitely better than an orgasm or achieving your life’s dreams in the physical world. And it’s all free! But seriously, no words can explain it and when you experience it you will know exactly what I mean. Why else do you think the Buddha spent weeks contemplating whether his insights were worthy of teaching. They’re so subtle and hard to verbalize and much of it is a personal story.

How To Find Others who Have Awakened

There will come a point on your spiritual path when the people you used to socialize with seem dull and lifeless and you’ll feel totally disconnected from them because they are disconnected from their spiritual dimension and have yet to have a spiritual awakening. Reach out and connect with people who have found their way though suffering or others on the same journey as yourself. Here are some resources.

• The Internet – Humanity has never had so much information at its fingertips. It,s a vast resource of free information. Things are at the stroke of a few keys and 5 seconds now that just 20 years ago would have taken at least a trip to the library and 200 years ago you’d never get to read. Just Google things
• Meetup.com (Free) – This site helps you find or create a group of like minded people and has meetings worldwide. There is lots of spiritual groups on there.
• Books – Reading a great book is like sitting down and conversing with the greatest minds in history. Plenty have awakened to a new way of life. I recommend Eckhart Tolle, Lao Tzu, Buddha and Jesus. With Jesus though, try to be like him, don’t try to be a good Christian. Big distinction there and I’m sure you know what I mean.

Eckhart Tolles beautiful book ‘ Stillness Speaks has “a collection of “200 concise and beautifully illuminating entries arranged into 12 reflective themes”. These are perfect snippets for meditation. The 12 themes, in order, are:

• Silence & stillness
• Beyond the thinking mind
• The egoic self, the now
• Who you truly are
• Acceptance and surrender,
• Nature, relationships,
• Death and the eternal,
• Suffering and the end of suffering.
• Meditations

Oh before I forget, here’s the best resource to find anything online, enjoy!

When you next feel suffering, instead of internally running away from it, confront it head on. Just observe it without judgment and you will become separate to it instead of identifying with its highs and lows. If you continue to identify with your body you will feel suffering when it has pain. It’s as simple as that.

I am not saying that you will never have pain in your body. I am saying that you suffering it is akin to somebody else on the other side of the world being ill and you deciding that you will suffer for them. It’s completely ridiculous when you consider it.

The pain is there to alert you to something that needs to be taken care of.

Let’s say you have toothache or even worse … manflu. Instead of complaining and resisting it inside just let it be. You can take medicine etc and see a doctor but there rest of the time what is the point of resisting it? Just observe the feeling around your nose and eyes or tooth. Stay observing that feeling for as long as you can and you will gain a sense of power over it as you are shining the light of your consciousness onto the area and anything bought into the conscious light vanishes. The longer you can sit internally with it without thought coming in to judge it and cause separation, the less you will suffer.

If you don’t accept it and shine conscious light on it then you will allow it to remain unconscious and it will gain power. It’s kind of like when you have unresolved emotional issues from a past relationship. If you keep ignoring the little signs to look at it then it will just get worse and worse because it had to be dealt with . Your emotional physical body is a very intelligent being. It only brings your attention to things that need attention bringing to them.
Think about it. If you were aware of every single thing around you consciously right now you would go insane. The computer monitor, the sound of the keyboard, the pulsing in your right index finger.

I like to sit with my pain when it becomes intense and just see its movements with my inner eye. When you have a feeling of stress, tension and being blocked  in your whole body after a hard day of work or something like that, you need to just sit and look inside and let your body tell you where needs the attention. Consciously relax the area by becoming aware of the tension. This is a great gift that we are all born with.

This doesn’t mean that when you become ill you should just not go to the doctors. Still go about your normal illness routine but this is a route out of the suffering caused by illness to the body. Paradoxically, by realizing yourself as not your body you connect with oneness and come out of suffering. All deep spiritual truth is paradoxical to the mind.

Who is that ‘me’ that suffers? A collection of empty atoms? Your beliefs? You are the background consciousness that plays with form like a puppet. You might be able to feel a little truth in this statement but not fully understand it yet. That’s fine. Don’t try to understand it and you will understand it (another paradox). This is why they have the statement “Those who speak do not know and those who know do not speak”. Not always true but it is very often.

All things are mental phenomenon. When you enter the state of no-mind you actually see things as they are. They all appear to be vibrant, new and beautiful and this is the paradise on earth that we hear about in the Bible and is a state of being, not a physical place we used to live in. That’s a huge misinterpretation. Their is the totality/oneness and the mind who’s job it is to separate things into two so they can be compared. You have to know the difference. This includes time. It is not evil but it has to be transcended.

Next time you feel suffering from pain. Observe your minds habitual tendency to suffer. As you being light to a habit it dissolves because habits are things that are unconscious by definition.  As you observe without judgment you will begin to separate from all suffering.

According to Wikipedia, “A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by a puppeteer“.

In the outer world you have your form puppet whom you interact with and can control. This includes your body, thoughts and emotions as your primary puppets.

Your secondary puppets include things that are not totally within your control but can be changed by making changes in your primary puppets (changing your vibration). These include things like your social status, financial status, goals you’d like to achieve etc.

What is underlying all of these things? Your Consciousness that is playing with the form. Have you ever felt like a puppet master in your life? You’re juggling maintenance of your family, your job, your finances, your health and more?!?!  You are the puppeteer of all of those things. You are the thing underneath with his hand inside the puppet, or the man at the circus making sure the plates are spinning.

This is the primary realization. If you understand this then your form puppets, both primary and secondary become a lot lighter and less important but paradoxically you will be able to interact with them better and get better results in areas that matter. This is because you realize the temporary nature of these puppets and so treat them as such instead of needlessly clinging to them. You begin to come out of the time dimension and don’t want results right here right now and realize that great and beautiful things grow over time.

Concentrate On Your Primary Puppets

You ultimately can only change yourself, your beliefs, thoughts etc.  This is obvious to anyone who has tried to explain how spirituality works to a closed-minded “Christian”, clinging to their Religion because it gives them comfort and friendship scared of the whisperings of their intuition that there’s more out there …  I’m sorry, where were we?

Ah yes, Your primary puppets are the things that you must concentrate on changing. As within, so without.  If you want to become a millionaire or someone who enjoys a rich social life you must become that type of person.

A Personal Example

I once wanted a job which would allow me flexible hours and only 20 hours per week work so I could concentrate on doing things I love and realized that I would never get it being the way I was then. I got up late, didn’t even believe I could get a job and didn’t really want one. So what did I do?

I aroused an eager want for the job. I pictured to myself how great it’d be to have a stable income and get out there meeting people instead of browsing the net all day. I started to change my thoughts.  After putting myself into a suggestible state through meditation on my breath, I saw myself in the job at a supermarket strangely enough scanning things, smiling, enjoying myself.  Whenever I went into the old mind pattern of “I could never get a job, we’re in a recession” I just replaced those with positive thoughts and those negative voices got drowned out soon enough. The changes come around so quick it will shock you.

I eventually got to the point where I just knew I’d get a job soon. I got to the point where I was applying for about 10 jobs per day and my attitude was hugely positive. I didn’t even consider the possibility that I couldn’t get a job anymore. It was completely off my radar like not being able to walk when I got up in the morning. And guess what? I got a job at my local supermarket (as I visualized).

How to start change NOW

Concentrate on changing yourself and the outer world will change with you. Why is it that an immigrant can go to America and make millions in years when all he had when he got there was $20 in his pocket when a rich kid with his family business can go bust within years? It’s being internally in sync with what you want. Do you seriously entertain the idea that you could earn millions when you wait around for the food price to be reduced at the supermarket near closing time? Shift that mindset! Name me one millionaire that does this? I’ll wait right here…

Start making small changes in your life and you will feel it within yourself when you come into contact with that higher level of being and you see the external puppets in your life shift in your favor. The most beautiful thing is it is so much easier changing yourself and watching the outside change for you over time than just trying to change the outside.

A little side note here. You literally cannot explain to somebody how this feels and works except through personal experience. It’s like experiencing a deep meditative state where your knowing of reality shifts to huge clarity. How can you verbalize that? You really do have to just have the guts and courage to do this yourself.

I recommend you start small to cement the habit and start with your mindset. For someone new to this I would recommend using an Og Mandino style technique and writing out an affirmation to say to yourself morning, noon and night. Something like

I am constantly striving to deliver the best value that I can in order to receive £3000/month back in monetary terms.  It has to feel right to you.  If something within you says “no, that doesn’t feel right” then keep on changing it here and there until it does.

What’s better? To work on a football teams skills, mindset etc or to work on the pitch they play on? It’s simple isn’t it?

If you feel a bit more confident and have been into personal development for a while then you could start by trying to life your entire vibration. Go out there today and put yourself into the world as the person you dream to be. Just like when you see kids playing cops ‘n’ robbers. Just create a persona within your mind and fully step into it. When you do this all the time your reality will shift in ways that seem magical to you. Things will just go right and resources will just be there.

Or you could go click through to the next article that might somehow miraculously solve all of your problems. Hey you  probably wouldn’t have enjoyed that abundant lifestyle anyways .

Consciousness: “the state of being conscious; awareness of one’s own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.” – reference.com

As kooky as this sounds, most people can relate to it a little. Have you ever experienced what Abraham Maslow coined “a peak experience”? Where you are totally in the moment, in a state of flow, where future and past have no hold over you. People strive for these states of total momentary awareness by taking alcohol and drugs, or fighting to be in that state of flow which forces all their sensory perceptions to be in the present moment.

Consciousness in the world at the moment is at a very low level.

If you don’t understand what I mean, have you ever spent 20 minutes on a bus or in an elevator thinking about something, only to come out the other side and realise that you don’t remember a single thing from that journey? What colour was the mans shoes in front of you? How many floors are their in the building? That’s because only the physical element of you was in that lift, you were trapped in your world as thoughts.

Accessing presence

Recently I’ve read a lot of books and articles on becoming present. I use several techniques to become present depending on the situation and convenience. There is more than one way to become present, paraphrasing Eckhart Tolle, all these techniques do is remove the rubbish and clutter between you and truth which deep down you know already. A lot of these techniques involve stepping out of and beyond the mind.

• Eat slowly and deliberately – As you eat, eat slowly and concentrate on the feeling, texture and taste of each bite. Usually when you eat, you don’t appreciate the flavour of food, you simply consume it and onto the next thing you were going to do.
• Walking Meditation – Go for a walk in the local park or another area of nature and concentrate on each footstep you take, listen to the birds.
• Listen to someone you disagree with – When somebody says something that you disagree with, listen to them as they speak, don’t be formulating your reply or thinking about what to eat tonight. Just listen and look them in the eyes. This is a simple truth that is overlooked and probably the hardest on the list.
• Concentrate on your breathing – I often do this before sleeping as its helps get rid of useless mental chatter about the day ahead. Concentrate your focus on the rising and falling of your chest as you breathe, try not to control your breathing but simply become aware of it.
• Taking a long shower – By taking a long shower, you can feel the water hitting your back and concentrate on the physical feeling of it. This is a great way to start the day because it focuses your mind before the workday begins.
• Try looking at something without calling it something – For example, see a cup on the table and don’t call it a cup just recognise it as being here at this moment, observe it with your eyes and don’t mentally label it, you then step outside of your mind.
• Get up and watch the sunrise, or watch the sunset and stars before bed – There’s hardly anything that brings you present and bypasses the mind more than a sunrise. Just watching it, gives you that mental clarity and breathless feeling, similar to when you look up at a night full of stars and getting a feeling of connectedness.

The beauty is that none of this except for the slow down one needs to take time out of your day, its a question of concentration and focus on what you are doing at his moment, which is not related to time slightly

Benefits of presence

• Laser-like Focus: because you focus on only what is happening now. You are not pulled by your next activity or still mentally lagging from your previous activity so can give your undivided attention.
• The ability to see others for what they are – When you are truly present, you don’t label others with tags who you come across, you simply are aware of them. This makes it hard to make enemies of others and bring a sense of peace into your life.
• Banishing the self: Because you are presence, becoming more present means becoming closer to the real you. You are a constant stream of current moments. Not a person with a history. You are never last Thursday or tomorrow, you are neither today, You are the here and now. I realised this after reading a post by Steve Pavlina on presence, which I can’t seem to find.

As you go around your daily life, slow down – I know what you’re thinking, heaven forbid! I have enough things on my plate without this guy telling me to stop going so fast. Most of us are racing through life at 150 mph and never slow down to appreciate the current moment and what it has to offer, as Eckhart Tolle accurately puts in his paradigm shifting book “The Power of Now”. The only moment we have is the present moment, all past is a memory, and future is a projection of the mind. So as you type at your computer, stop for a second take a deep breath and start to feel each key as you type it and you will step out of past/future being and into the present, increasing your consciousness.

Discipline – You just keep plowing away knowing that you will get there in the end and while building discipline is a good idea, there are stages beyond it. Discipline is essential in the lower stages of consciousness. When you reach the higher stages your actions become the embodiment of source or God and things like discipline and motivation are useless because you have gone beyond that. It is like asking Einstein to learn Algebra. It is an essential step but also needs to be transcended.

Learn from others – At this stage you take a step towards higher awareness and learn from others. You see that patterns are clear and that if you follow the patterns of others you will get the same results known as modelling in NLP

Motivation/Inspiration – Then I though it was about motivation and inspiration constantly pumped into my brain. I would listen to Tony Robbins for a couple of hours a day whenever I could. I would get so pumped up and when push came to shove I would go back to sleep instead of getting up at 5am. Yes I had associated all the pain with negative consequences and pleasure with positive consequences but I was still operating at a low level of consciousness. I lived inside my mind and did not understand how to just be and how I worked internally. We are human beings after all, not humans thinking.

I’m not knocking Modelling or discipline because they are both essential traits that any human should embody but there is higher levels. Do you get angry at a child who cannot walk yet? No that is just silly, right? They are at their current level and will naturally progress at their own rate. Each level has its purpose.

Then after reading certain books including Eckhart Tolles The Power of Now, I gradually realised it was all about becoming more aware. If you are more aware generally then you are more aware of your subconscious patterns emerging mentally or physically. You can become separate to them in the moment almost effortlessly just by focusing the light of your presence upon them. They just come up and then you acknowledge them and transcend them. They will soon realise that they are not welcome.

Even though this is true I still recommend the usual notion of only changing one habit at a time. Most people who are improving their level of awareness are not yet ready for the bigger challenges and have to work on the smaller ones first. Be like the ball rolling down the hill and slowly gathering momentum for a huge finale rather than the sprinter that runs all out for 100 metres then gets taken over when it really matters. Pick one habit that you would really like to change and that would give you power and the courage to break other patterns with better ones.

In a way this mode of being transcends the whole notion of habit because the more conscious you become the more you are actually awake to make moment to moment decisions rather than relying on automations running your life for you. A habit means that your subconscious is ruling your actions without your conscious awareness of it in the moment. You might exercise for 30 days in a row and now say you have installed the habit. In the future it will run without you needing to run it.  This is a truly high state of personal development though and I’m not claiming to be a champion at it but I’ve seen it and it’s fantastic.

this could be said to be the primary habit as all habit changes come out of firstly realising the habit is there and in control of you. Becoming aware.

Many people think “If I just get out the door and start exercising then it can be totally automatic because I’m there and that is the most important step. right?”. Well that is right but when you are looking at the higher levels of consciousness you want to be totally conscious of your actions in every moment. Just be there. All the words in the world cannot explain this you just have to have the courage to seek this out yourself.

How To Increase Your Conscious Awareness

Pick one habit – Get one habit that you really feel could change your life and be a step up to bigger things if you completed it. Just practice one hour daily to be aware at all times either through meditation or just concentrating on the task at hand. You can be aware of your thoughts, your breathing, the silence.The important thing is awareness. Then when it comes to the time when the habit should be changed, sit still for 15 seconds or so.

Feel the urge to change your mind, fidget or just do anything except for what you want to do but do not judge it. Just sit there and watch it. It is your mind working over time. He’s getting paid minimum wage and he doesn’t like it. Then just get up and complete the task when the sensation has reached its peak and tailed off and you are back in control. You are bringing the subconscious pattern into the conscious light where it can be changed.

Your Body – Become aware of your body and the physical sensations associate with it. By doing this you can take your focus away from the mind which never stops talking. When this happens your minds rests and is silent and you can use it more effectively.

Watch The Mind – This is a technique that I love and have had a lot of success with. In one of Eckhart Tolles books he describes a technique where you are like a cat watching a mouse hole for a mouse to escape. Be like that except the cat is your awareness and the mouse hole is your mind. This can be used in conjunction with the question “What will my next thought be?”. These can both bring about instant internal stillness. A time with no thoughts.

How To Pick A Habit To Change?

Most people will say that they want to get fit, go vegan, become more spiritual, lose 30lbs in a year. These are great goals but where are they coming from? What is driving these goals inside of you. You have to find what it is that is bringing you those goals and analyze it. I work from an attitude of oneness where bringing more quality and love into the world will decide my habits. Becoming fit then becomes improving myself on the physical level so that I can contribute more.

What is it that drives you? What do you think could give you limitless energy. When you have a good enough reason you will find a way to do it. Its usually the reason that people lack.

Time Perception

I come from the train of thought that there is no time. Just this moment and a projection of the future. Paradoxically if you believe this you still have the urge to get the most out of your life but also you know that there is no time as such. What this does is helps you filter out all the socially and other people driven goals and purifies them to the ones that truly matter. Try taking on this perspective as you cannot explain something to someone who has never experienced it. You may change less habits this way but they will mean more to you and be more important.

You are not your thoughts – Do you ever find yourself experiencing emotions that you do not want to? Then you have probably been identified with your thoughts at some point. Your thoughts come and go as do moods, emotions and beliefs over the years. Once you realize this and actually internalize it you see how futile it is to attach yourself to something that will ultimately fail you and change because that is its nature.

I got most of these ideas on this area from Eckhart Tolles excellent book The Power of Now and later A New Earth. He explains that we can actually create and view our thoughts so that means we cannot be them. Can you sit there and view your thoughts without becoming attached to them? Without letting them carry you? If you can then you have dis identified from the mind. If not I recommend trying doing this for 5 minutes a day for a month and seeing the radical shift that happens inside you in relation to your thoughts. This is not for the faint of heart and may be one of the most difficult things you ever do but the rewards are indescribable. You have been warned.

You are not your body – Almost everyone identifies or has identified with their body to some degree. Your body is what you are taught is essentially you from school age and this makes sense right? “This is Richard” Well think of it like this. You are 10 years old and you say to yourself “I am my body, this is me”. At that moment you can take that in. What happens as you age is you look back at age 20 and think “How can I be my body if my body is changing constantly? My body may have changed over the years but I am still the same person aren’t I?”. Most people know that something deeper is the real, original unwavering you but are either too afraid or do not know where to turn next.

You are not your conditions – Many people explain that their conditions are themselves. I am a tough worker, I am a mother etc. What if you stop being one of those things? What are you now? Nothing when previously you were something? That is impossible and silly. Conditions are the same as thoughts and everything else in the world of form. They are transient and change all the time.

Just what am I? – When you take away your identification with mind and body what is left? You are. The original you that never changes and is immortal. You will one day dissolve from your physical body and return to source and that is something that has to be accepted. You will still live. You were there before your physical birth and you will be there after it. Were you given life? By your mother perhaps? No. You were not given life, you are life. And if you are not given something then it cannot be taken away from you because you do not have it.

The question that really got me to realise this deeply and not just on a logical level is this. Where was I before I was born?. It was a real a-ha moment for me when a deep truth reveals itself and your consciousness goes up a level. It felt fantastic. I thought well I must have been around in some way because I could just not be created from nothing. I was formless, part of consciousness and then was born into form. This led me to a series of deeper and more meaningful truths.

I realised that the eternal life that I am beyond body and mind and form expresses itself in many physical forms that are constantly changing. We are all expressions of that consciousness.

Formlessness creates form. This is simple to understand. An invisible force that is formless gives birth to a flower from a seed. The flower was not there before. In this way we are creators. We are in the dimension of formlessness yet operate in the dimension of form.

Why does there appear to be lots of physical people if there is only one unified consciousness?

I struggled with this question for a long time because I was attacking it from the wrong angle. I believed in a certain level that yes there was one unified consciousness that showed itself in different physical manifestations that returned to the formless state from which they came. Then I listened to a podcast from a great blogger, Steve and realised that I actually was making a huge silly assumption.

How do I know that any other physical people that I percieve are actually conscious? I can never access their consciousness. So I have to stop being so sure that they have their own motives and a fragment of consciousness etc and are not just physical reflections of me. When I stopped doing this, I realised that I could be the only conscious being in the universe. This led me to a strange feeling of how I should approach life at this level.

A great analogy came to me and it went something like this.

“If I was playing a game of football and I was blindfolded and was not aware of any other players, should I play as if I am the only player on the pitch?”

The answer was yes because I can never be sure if there is anything outside of my perception and acting so would be silly because that is not my personal experience. This gives you a real feeling of power in your life. There is no longer other people out there who have their own motives and desires and are competing with me. I am the one and only conscious being that I am aware of and should act accordingly. This also ties in well with the Law Of Attraction when considering what if two people have conflictiong beliefs, who wins? There is only my beliefs, thought and actions.

What will be your ultimate contribution?

When you dissolve your physical body and return to the formless from which you were created what will your contribution be. What the cliche says is true. You can’t take anything with you. All your physical things that you accumulate in your life time you never really own because ownership is an illusion so what should we strive for? We should strive for contribution to the greater good, God, Source or whichever name you wish to give it. When your life is over your contribution counts. If there is an afterlife of any sorts you will take with you the things you have given to people and the change you have made on a personal level.

Where to start?

These are the books that really changed me from a hard line skeptic to a more spiritually connected person.

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Tao Te Ching
StevePavlina.com – The site in general but especially the Podcast on our true nature