

The Nature of Being

Thoughts from a Fellow Cosmic Traveler

# Copyright 2014 by Fellow Traveler Press

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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From Me

To You

### Table of Contents

Foreword

Chapter One: The Big Questions

Chapter Two: How Real is Reality?

Chapter Three: Religion

Chapter Four: Our Place in the Social World

Chapter Five: The True Nature of Our Beings

Chapter Six: It's OK, Everything is OK

Epilogue: The Journey Continues

Back Cover

# Foreword

There are times in everyone's life when we stop and think about who we really are and what place we occupy in the vastness of the universe. Sometimes these moments are facilitated by periods of change or great loss. Sometimes they come from deep contemplation or spiritual pursuits. Some individuals may ponder these thoughts only a few times in their lives while others may spend an entire lifetime contemplating them very deeply.

The thoughts and ideas in this book have been developed over the span of my lifetime. The contemplation of our place in the cosmos has always been the most important element in my life. It is rooted in the very fiber of my being. Beginning in my teen years, I have constantly sought a better understanding of what and who we are in relation to the universe. I have spent numerous years reading and contemplating different schools of thought on this subject. This manuscript outlines the concepts and ideas that I have developed with regards to this topic over these past years.

This journey of understanding that I have been traveling is so deep and personal that until recently I have not shared it with anyone, believing that doing so would diminish its importance. To me, the understanding of my existence and my relationship with the universe and the creator of everything has always been the deepest and most important aspect of my life. It is a part of me that transcends the affairs of the world and it is just for me. I have never found the need to "sell" this aspect of myself by having to explain or defend it with others. In the past I had thought of writing down my thoughts in the form of a book, but it did not feel right to me at the time.

However, a few years ago I underwent a new period of awareness with respect to my cosmic journey. This life-changing period has prompted me to write these pages and share those thoughts and understandings that are most personal to me. My awakening was initiated by lighthearted interactions with a new friend, which allowed me the freedom to express a carefree side of myself that had been dormant for a very long time. The process of sharing this aspect of me was the catalyst that began an unfolding process that turned into a flood of interpersonal ideas and discoveries. I truly feel that there was cosmic guidance that directed me through this period of discovery. Every culture and religion has a concept of something that is believed to provide spiritual guidance to its followers, such as Divine inspiration, angels, cosmic guides, animal spirits, etc. The ancient Greeks had the Muses, the Hindus have Saraswati and other cultures have names for spirit beings that guide and inspire people. Guidance from sources outside of our selves can come from truly unexpected places or people and also at very unexpected times.

One of the results of this event occurring in my life was the understanding that it is not only OK to share my inner thoughts of the nature of things, but that it is something that I should do. In writing this book, I have put my understandings of our place in the cosmos in a form that can be shared with anyone interested in reading them. I share these thoughts knowing that many people will dismiss them, reject them or even become hostile towards them. I share them without any motive for personal gain or recognition. I share them with the understanding that you should take only what you want from this, only what feels right to you. There is no doctrine that I want to push on anyone. No donations to be sent anywhere. It will be totally up to you how you use the ideas that I present in the following pages.

There are no new ideas in this writing. Everything that I will present throughout these pages has been presented in one form or another in various texts written throughout history. My understanding of our place in the universe stems from the frameworks of others but has an understanding and organization of ideas that has been developed throughout a lifetime, my lifetime. There are so many concepts and ideas in the multitude of volumes written on the subject of spiritual and philosophical thought that the difficult part becomes separating the wheat from the chaff. Insights to significant ideas are realized at points in time; however, as additional time passes they become surrounded with meaningless words and rituals. After enough time passes, the words and rituals that surround the original idea become more important than the original truth. Many of us find ourselves reciting words we don't understand or performing rituals that seem to have no context when we are practicing our religious observances. We also depend on others to tell us what we should believe or not believe, what is spiritual and what is not spiritual, what is moral and what is immoral, as if others have the ability to understand these things better than we can. We all have the ability to look into ourselves and look for our own answers. The answers we find will all be different, but if we look deep enough, they will be right for us.

It has been very difficult to put many of the thoughts presented in this book into words. The thoughts are within me, but when it comes time to express them you begin to see the real limitations that language can present. Many times there are just no words that capture the essence of the idea and only an approximation of the concept is possible. Language is also fraught with preconceived meanings that can change the connotation of things, especially if a concept lies outside of the context of normal life situations and experiences.

Not only is there a struggle with the confines of language, it is also accepted that everyone will bring their own individual understandings and beliefs with them when reading this. Because of this, the ideas presented in this book will need to fit in into each individual's sphere of understanding, which will change the nature of the ideas that I am presenting, sometimes subtly and sometimes drastically. If someone comes to this book with an open mind to new concepts then they may find some thought provoking ideas within these pages. On the other hand, someone with a very rigid and uncompromising view of our place in the universe may find that many of the ideas that I present evoke an inflammatory reaction.

What is presented here shakes the very foundation of how we perceive ourselves, our beliefs and what we believe is important in our lives. As with other texts dealing with this topic, it will evoke many different feelings.

You would not know me by seeing me. I would look just like everyone else going to work, raising kids and doing yard work. You would not know who I am by talking to me as I would sound like countless others you interact with throughout the day. Yet, within, I believe that I am someone who sees things in a different light than most people.

And with that, I welcome you to this book and hope that you enjoy reading it and gain something useful in your own journey of understanding. It is your journey and if you are open to it, the possibilities are limitless.

I wish you a wonderful journey

a Fellow Cosmic Traveler

The Muse Euterpe

# Chapter One: The Big Questions

From the onset of self-awareness, the human race has been pondering its place in the cosmos. Looking into the vastness of the starry night, it is only natural to feel an over whelming sense of the universe which makes us question how we fit into the immenseness that surrounds us. Most of us go about our lives doing our daily activities with only short pauses to consider how our existence came into being and why we are here. We wake up each day and go about our daily routine, then at the end of the day we go to sleep before getting up the next morning to do it all over again. There is always something to do in our lives. There never seems to be time for us to pause and take in the fact that we are here and self-aware. Instead, we find ourselves racing around in ever tighter circles in an effort to fill our time with things that we believe will give meaning to our lives, things that we believe will give importance to our existence. We always need to get that next promotion, that new house, that magical relationship. We always need to get that next something, yet, as hard as we strive to gain these things, we find that our lives can seem unfulfilling and lack any real meaning.

The Everyday Questions

Our minds are continuously bombarded with thoughts and questions throughout the day from the instant we wake up until the time we fall asleep.

What time is it?

Where do I need to be?

What bills do I need to pay?

Do I need to get gas?

Did I prepare enough for my meeting?

What is my boss going to say?

How bad is the traffic today?

What homework do my kids have?

What will they think of this?

Do I need to stop at the store?

Do I look fat?

Do I need this...?

Did I do that...?

What, When, Where, How...?

Questions like these constantly go around and around in our heads, absorbing all of our attention. We live each day keeping ourselves preoccupied with the small details of everyday life and we gloss over the amazing realization that we actually exist as a being and are aware of a self. It is the same as the old adage that we can't see the forest for the trees. There is just too much detail to see the big picture. However, most of us do wonder at various times about the nature of our existence and who we really are. Some individuals, for whatever reason, seem to be more drawn to these basic questions than others. Some contemplate this notion when they are in a religious setting. Others contemplate this when their life has a dramatic life-changing event such as the loss of something or someone important. Some may briefly consider the nature of their reality as an academic exercise such as in a philosophical or scientific reasoning process. All of us at times consider the truly fundamental questions of existence to some extent. The value that we see in doing this is very dependent on the individual.
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The Real Questions in Life**

We all find ourselves, at times, asking the most basic fundamental questions about our relationship with the universe and our place in it. The questions that we find ourselves asking are similar to the following with some degree of variation.

Why am I here? Why are we all here?

What does it mean to exist?

What are we made of?

What is our purpose?

What is the true nature of our being?

What is self-awareness?

What is my relationship to the Universe/God?

Where did I come from?

What happens to me after I die?

What is it all about?

To answer these questions people turn to many different components within their lives. Some turn to organized religion as a means to confirm that our lives have more meaning than just what we perceive in our worldly existence. Some look to mystical belief systems in an effort to try to develop a better understanding of these things. Some turn to science or philosophy. Others put all of their energy in an attempt to drown out these fundamental questions through more and more frantic activity in their quest for power, possessions, sex, etc, due to a fear that facing these questions may reveal to us that we are actually very small and all alone in the universe.

These big questions are hard to wrap our minds around. Sometimes people only see these questions during the rare instances when the frenzied pace of daily living stands still. Others see these questions more frequently while some see these questions in every aspect of their lives and in the very fabric of their beings. Which one are you? The very fact that you are reading a book entitled "The Nature of Being" indicates that you are probably a more contemplative person when it comes to the big questions.
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Are We Too Busy Living to Be?**

Living our day-to-day experiences consumes all of our mental and spiritual energy. Are we too busy living to be? We need to quiet our lives and quiet our minds to allow the cosmic guidance to lead us.

We are caught up in the activities of the world to the point where we cannot see past them. Our mind races from one thought to another, from one activity to the next, from person to person. We keep ourselves so busy that we make sure that we do not see anything that may call into question anything that may upset the status quo of our perception, of our place in the universe.

One of the first realizations that we must have in order to gain insights into the big questions is that we must slow down our world. Only then can the seeds of our search take hold and begin to sprout with the understanding of the true nature of our being.

When our minds are moving too fast we cannot feel any connection to the higher realms. It is very important that we are able to hear the words of cosmic guidance that are always there for us but drowned out by the constant reverberation of daily activity. When we silence the mind, and allow ourselves to contemplate and experience our own being, we open ourselves to the infinite places beyond our everyday existence.

# Chapter Two: How Real is Reality?

The perception of the world around us has always been founded in the five senses of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. The basis for reality and what is real to us is based on the nature of these physical senses. Touch and sight define the concrete physical boundaries of our world. They define the discrete 3-dimensional objects that constitute our reality. Even before we are born we begin forming our perception of reality as our brains begin to develop and organize our sensory information.

Even though most people would define reality as the set of physical objects that lie outside of ourselves and that are perceived by our senses, it is in essence, much more than this. Our reality is a complex make-up of not only what we sense around us, but is also a composite of our belief system and our physical, emotional and spiritual state. Therefore, reality is not concrete and objective as always thought, but instead very subjective and individualistic.

There is no absolute external reality. There is only what we experience. There is no way to deconvolve what we each perceive into an absolute reality because there is nothing to use as an objective truth to compare it to. This is a very important concept. In everything, we are taught that there is always one or more reference points to which all things can be compared. Thus, we have a fundamental belief that everything in existence has a set of fixed innate properties that define them, which can be measured and referenced back to an objective reference point. We define physical space in relation to other objects in terms of length, height, width and distance from other objects. Mass is measured in terms of standardized units based on molecular structure; time in terms of atomic oscillations of cesium; color in terms of electromagnetic wavelength. The fundamental forces in the universe are all defined with standard units, all measured against a standard measuring stick. However, where did these measuring sticks come from? We have nothing that guarantees the objective nature of these measuring sticks. What if they did not have a constant innate stability, but changed through perception, interpretation, thought or consciousness itself? Then it would be seen that there is no single objective reality, but one that is tailored to the individual who perceives what is around them.

It is not possible for any two people to have the same reality, even if they are at the same place at the same time. Even the same person would experience a different reality in the same place and at the same time based on their emotional and mental state of being at that instant. This is the nature of our reality.

The Eastern Philosophies were developed with the understanding of the subjective nature of reality. Our Western view of reality, however, is based on the philosophies of nature and physiology put forth in ancient Greece during the height of Greek development around 500 B.C. The Greek philosophy laid the foundation of our reasoning process for the next 2500 years. Since the age of the Greeks, up until just a century ago, the concept of our reality was pretty clear-cut. There are certain natural fundamental laws that prescribe the workings of the physical universe. The physical world is fixed and understood with predictable and repeatable truths. Our senses perceive the order of things around us, which are dictated by these natural laws. Our senses relay the external truth to us. It is a single truth that is shared by everyone in the world. There is one reality and one reality only.

With the advent of the rise of modern physiology and physical sciences in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Western world's understanding of reality, of what is real, has changed dramatically. The idea that our world is composed of concrete physical objects has evolved beyond this simplistic construct. As we learned that the world and everything in it, including ourselves, is made up of complex chemical and electrical interactions, we began understanding that the world is not what it once seemed to be. The realization that we do not directly experience the universe around us, but do so through a series of intricate physical and electrochemical steps that take place between the outside world and the perception we arrive at within our brain has forever changed our relationship with the universe.

Learning to accept the fact that reality is our own creation is a significant part of the understanding of the cosmic journey.
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Religious Influences on the Perception of Reality**

There are many religions throughout the world and each of them carries a differing view on how the day-to-day reality is perceived. There are very wide variations on how the world's religions view the world we live in. A later chapter in this book is devoted to the topic of religion as it plays such an important role in our search for understanding. However, even with its own chapter, the discussion of religion in this book will only take place at high levels and broad concepts. In depth discussion of religious belief systems is very complex and is not what my intent was in writing this book. There are any numbers of scholarly or philosophical books written on the world's religions. It is probably the single most published topic throughout history. Therefore, in this book, I am touching only on those few points that are important to convey my concepts.

The nature of reality, as considered through religion, plays an important role in our everyday perception of our place in the universe. Those that include religious beliefs as a fundamental aspect in their lives perceive all of their actions and decisions within a religious context. What constitutes righteous actions varies significantly from one religion to another. The eating of meat, for example, in one religious setting may be perfectly acceptable, while in another it may be seen as a serious breach of the teachings of the scriptures. Some religions require or restrict one's actions, attire, diet, etc., while others do not. Different religions have different days of the week and different days of the year that are considered holy. Some religions have one god while others have many. There are any number of contradicting practices between today's world religions, all of which shape the way we see and perceive the world around us. Even religions that evolved from the same initial teachings show large differences in what is considered acceptable and pious behavior. Therefore, individuals in different religious systems see their surroundings, their reality, through the lens of their religious teachings.

On a more fundamental level, the concept of how the worldly reality fits into the cosmic or spiritual reality is also directly impacted by the religious beliefs of an individual. This also varies significantly from one belief system to the next. From a Christian, Islamic or Judaism point of view, there are two planes of reality, the worldly plane and the spiritual planes that contain the spiritual realms of Heaven and Hell. The Hindus, on the other hand, see a vast number of planes that are structured in a complex unfolding of one plane into another and all are contained within the single cosmic reality.

Every religion has its own understanding of how our worldly existence fits into the totality of everything. Our view of reality and how it fits into the cosmic scheme depends greatly on the religious system we were taught while growing up. The Western religions believe that everything we do in life is compiled together and used to judge us after we die in order to determine if our worldly actions merit an afterlife of eternal happiness or one of punishment and misery. Living with this understanding will color an individual's worldly reality much differently, than say, someone who comes from a religious belief that teaches that the worldly reality is part of a greater spiritual evolution and cosmic harmony.
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Eastern Philosophy Influences on the Perception of Reality**

The Eastern mystic teachings refer to numerous religions and schools of philosophies that come from the Middle East and Asia. These include Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, as well as many lesser-known teachings. They are addressed as a group to call out their general similarities to each other and to contrast these similar themes to the belief systems of those held in the Western world.

When it comes to the discussion of reality, the Eastern mystic teachings deviate significantly from the Western based religious teachings. The Western teachings separate the spiritual/cosmic plane from the physical plane as a matter of fact, as if they were separate and unconnected. It is as if we exist here, but there is another reality someplace else that is also real, but cannot be experienced while we exist on this physical plane. It is like there is an exclusionary boundary between these two planes of reality for those of us in the west. If we are here we cannot experience any other planes of reality. Even discussions of the existence of other planes of reality are considered lunatic fringe ideas and are outside of what is considered the boundaries of acceptable thoughts.

Western teachings have also conducted very little meaningful discourse in the examination and discussion of the nature of the reality we perceive. In fact, in the West, questioning the concept of reality is something that is considered questionable behavior that is on the lunatic fringe, or at best, is considered hip sub-culture or an academic exercise. Outside of the narrow venue where this sort of discussion is tolerated in our society, it is sincerely frowned upon and can even be questioned to be the result of mental instability. This is very different in the Eastern cultures.

A common concept in many of the Eastern mystic teachings is that the nature of reality is not a solid and fixed constant, as we in the West believe. The Eastern philosophies believe that reality is much more than what we perceive in our everyday life and is beyond the grasp of our earthly consciousness. This understanding is fundamental in much of the Eastern teachings, whether they believe that the world was created by a god, multiple gods or a cosmic force.

The Eastern philosophies believe that the perception of our reality depends on our state of mindfulness. They believe that we can learn to perceive other aspects of our place in existence through expanding our ability to perceive it. They teach many contemplation techniques to help the practitioner learn how to expand their perception beyond our physical boundaries.

Dreaming of Being a Butterfly

The great Taoist philosopher, Chuang Chou, more commonly known as Chuang Tzu, once told a story that has become a symbol of the way many Eastern teachings see the fluidity of nature.

"Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man."

This short story highlights the fluid view of reality as seen by some Eastern philosophies, as well as their ability to contemplate differing perspectives. In the Western view, this interpretation of reality would either be denounced as unreal to the point of being delusional, or seen only as an intellectual exercise. Either way, the significance of this perspective as a whole is summarily dismissed.

Why is there such a difference between the East and West in this regard? Why are people in the West so afraid of letting go of what is perceived as a concrete and stationary reality? What if it is not as we believe? What if there is some credence to what the Eastern mystics believe? If we let go of our perceptions, would we lose ourselves in the vastness of the universe? Would the meaning of the lives we know become pointless? The Eastern philosophies have found that we can still live in this world and at the same time they understand that there is much more going on than what we see around us. They can do this without the fear of ridicule, losing their selfhood or diminishing the significance of their existence.
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Is Chaung Chou dreaming of being a butterfly or is the butterfly dreaming of being Chaung Chou?**
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Artistic Influences on the Perception of Reality**

It has long been noted that true poets, writers, artists and musicians see the world with a different perspective than most of us. They seem to be more attuned to the sensations and vibrations of the world around us. The shapes, colors, sounds and words appear to have more significance to them than to the rest of us.

In Ancient Greece the Muses were thought to provide inspiration and guidance to help the artist find that part of them which allowed them to transcend the everyday reality and transform it into something significant and beautiful. The Muses provided guidance to help the artist transcend to a place where their art form had its own energy, an energy that came from outside of the normal boundaries of our life experience.

Many of us have experienced the soul lifting experience of connecting with a piece of prose, art or music. At these times, we seem to be able to tap into that same energy that the piece was created from. It allows us to experience our reality in a significantly different perspective. Our world slows down; it becomes much simpler and yet much more profound. It focuses our mind away from the constant barrage of distractions that we experience from the moment we wake up until the time we fall asleep. For that brief moment in time, we are much closer to perceiving the true nature of our reality within the cosmos.

For me personally, music has always been an extremely important element in my search for understanding. I find that music can transcend me into a place where I am much more receptive to contemplative thought. I have found that my greatest advancements have always been accompanied by music from artists that really seem to resonate with my being on a deeply profound level, similar to the way that other cultures use rhythm and chanting as part of their efforts of transcendence. During this recent growth period in my life, the Icelandic band Sigur Rós played an instrumental role in my progress. I happened upon this band just as I was beginning the most profound part of my understanding and their music was like a lens that greatly magnified the experience. I cannot express how profound their music has been for me. It has reached places in my being and has elevated me in ways that no music has ever done for me. This is why I have included the portrait of the Muse Euterpe earlier in this book. Euterpe is the Muse of music, the same music that has guided and accompanied me throughout my journey. Euterpe has taken me by the hand and shown me the music that is heard throughout the heavens to which we all dance.
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Physiological Influences on the Perception of Reality**

From the beginning of humankind's understanding of their place in the world and their surroundings, it was always understood that there were two parts to the world, the person observing the world and the rest of the world outside of them. It was as basic as that. Outside of the person, the world presented concrete substance, much of which was dangerous and needed to be headed in order to survive. It was the use of a person's senses; touch, smell, taste, hearing and sight that kept them from perishing. Each of the senses made us aware of a different, but very real understanding of what was around us. Whether it was the loud roar of a predator in the distance, the intense heat from a blazing fire or the sight of a large lightning bolt, these were all fundamental and basic encapsulated events that needed to be interpreted in order to stay alive. So, the very act of survival required the ability to label a set of sensory inputs as discreet entities that are perceived as fundamental elements of reality.

As the science and understanding of human physiology evolved over the period of human history, it began with the observation that we perceived our surrounding reality through our senses. The power of discernment of individual elements of reality was attributed directly to the human sense organs. Sight was centered in the eyes, sound in the ears and so on. This view of the perception of reality has remained fixed for virtually the entire history of humankind and it has only been in the past few centuries that this view has changed and it changed dramatically. During this latter period, we have developed a new understanding in the mechanics of how we perceive the world. Our new knowledge of this area has fundamentally changed our relationship with the reality that we exist in and perceive. This change in understanding has evolved most rapidly over the past century.

Modern science discovered that a person's state of mental and emotional being and their perceived senses are not elementary but a complex process of electrical pulses based on chemical interactions that occur in different areas of the brain. Information about our surroundings that is perceived through our senses start at sensory preceptors within our body and work their way to the brain via the network of nerve cells by a series of electro-chemical impulses. In the brain, they are processed in specific regions where they result in different sensory sensations. Even the simplest sensation is the result of thousands upon thousands of interactions within the body. Any change in the sequence of these complex process results in a change in the sensory perception.

As we understand now, the human brain is the center of perception. It is responsible for formulating our perceived environment and those thoughts, actions and emotions resulting from that environment. Research on the brain in the twentieth century mapped out the many specialized areas within it, including the areas for auditory and spatial perception, logic, artistic abilities, etc. There has also been a lot of research into the mechanism the brain uses to store information and memories over the past few decades. Storage and retrieval within the brain is a highly complex function. The brain organizes the information into a specific configuration of interlinked brain cells. Different types of information and perception are stored differently. Specific trigger patterns then allow that stored information to be brought back into awareness. The method that the brain employs in storing information is so complex that we are just starting to understand it. It is a remarkable feat of natural engineering.

As the physics of electricity and the field of human physiology evolved, we began to understand that the eyes, ears, mouth and skin were not fundamental interpreters of reality, but rather just stimuli sensing devices. We learned that these stimuli sensing devices were responsible for sensing our surroundings and transmitting the information via the nervous system to the brain where it was ultimately reconstructed into a tangible meaning using a complex and delicate balance of chemistry.

The sensory input itself has no resemblance to what the brain interprets. For instance, a lion's roar, when heard in the wild, evokes an immediate response of a very real danger. However, if the sound of this lion was broken down using modern equipment it would be found that this sound was really just air pressure waves of varying frequencies and amplitudes. The inner workings of the ear are responsible for changing the air pressure waves into electrical pulses that travel along the pathways of our nervous system to the brain. It is the brain that converts the body's electrical signals into a corresponding element of our reality. So the reality of the lion really exists as a set of electro-chemical reactions within the lobe of the brain that is responsible for auditory processing. The same is true for the other bodily senses. The reality outside of us is really "our reality" that is created by the processing of the sensory input to the brain.

So, it could be said that our personalities, our ideas, our feelings and perception of reality are nothing more than brain matter configured in a specific order, a balance of body chemistry and a series of electrical pulses. Science fiction has used the premise that a person's perception of themselves and their existence can be fooled through artificial sensory stimulation of the nerves and brain to induce a controlled reality. The movie trilogy, "The Matrix", is centered on a plot where a machine society enslaves the human population by implanting signal feeds directly into the nervous system at birth and stimulating the nerves in order to simulate a reality. In this movie the entire human population believes it is living in the setting of twentieth century Earth when in fact they are all living further into the future in a giant complex of cocoons where their body heat and electrical impulses are being utilized as the power source for the machine society. The movie "Total Recall" puts a different spin on this concept where they employ a technology that has the capability to implant new memories into an individual through direct reprogramming of the brains memory cells. By doing this, people can be given whole new identities with past memories without their knowledge.

Both of the scenarios in the movies highlighted along with many other science fiction writings exhibit the concept that the perception of who we are as well as everything around us could be as simple as a matter of electro-chemical interactions within our bodies.
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Scientific Influences on the Perception of Reality**

Our understanding of the nature of science has changed dramatically over the past three millennia. Very early concepts of nature were based on a mixture of observation and superstition. The Greeks are credited with developing the scientific framework that we still use today. They were systematic in their observations and categorizations of nature and the heavenly skies. The framework that they developed has lasted for more than twenty-five centuries.

It was not until the developments in scientific understanding throughout the twentieth century that our classical perception of the physical universe was radically changed, and as a result of this change, our perception of the reality around us was forever altered. Throughout the rise of Western culture, the realm of classical scientific understanding was always outside of the sphere of religion and Eastern mystic constructs. The two never intersected, as if there were rigid lines of demarcation between them. However, in the early twentieth century these lines of demarcation became blurred and have continued to become more tenuous with the rise of modern physics and cosmology.

Space and Time

The concepts of space and time are fundamental to our ability to understand our reality. Time gives order and continuity to the physical events in our universe. Time dictates cause and effect. It brings a logic that we can perceive, understand and predict. We would not have a concept of reality without time. Even the very basis of perception of the most minute sense is based on a sequential ordering of events. Without the concept of time all events and experiences would happen at the same instant. Without time we would still experience events but they would have no meaning that we could extract from them.

The perception of 3-dimensional space is the other ability that we require in order to understand our physical reality. Spatial relationships are key in our ability to separate ourselves from the external universe. Again, without a spatial discernment we would have only a spatial singularity where no meaning could be extracted.

Throughout all but our most recent history, space and time were a given part of our existence in this world. They were not even perceived to be a concept but a concrete fact of the universe. They were truisms of our existence and not questioned in any way. This was true to all but a few mystics that have lived through the ages and who had attained a much greater understanding of the true nature of existence.

However, with the recent advances in the areas of mathematics, cosmology and nuclear physics, the concepts of space and time have come into question. Where it was once inconceivable to think of discussing the concepts of space and time as being flexible and relative, it is now quite common to see books and television shows that discuss it in this manner. Most people are aware to some degree that science has proclaimed that space and time can have unusual properties outside of what we normally experience; however, these discussions are mostly intellectual exercises that are dictated by mathematical theorems and not through any true understanding. We are beings that are hard wired to the physical world and cannot separate space and time from our experience without going through a process of real contemplation of the nature of our reality and ourselves.

If we allow ourselves to be receptive to questioning the nature of reality, we begin to see its subjective nature all throughout our everyday lives. Some periods of time in our lives seem to drag out forever while other periods pass before we know it. Sometimes these variations in the perceived passage of time happen many times in the same day, hour and even minute. A room full of people all next to each other experiencing the same external reality can perceive very different sensations of time. The saying that a watched pot never boils demonstrates that we perceive variations in the passage of time even though it is given to be an absolute objective dimension with each second being precisely 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a cesium 133 atom. How can time be considered a rigid and objective measuring stick if everyone experiences it differently? How can it be standardized and objective?

We summarily dismiss the variations that we perceive in time as a consequence of how our mind works. We seem to accept that time is fixed and deterministic outside of us, but we allow it to be subjective and fluid within us. How often do we find ourselves being surprised at the way in which time has passed? We state, it is already 5 p.m., or it is already Thursday, or boy has this day dragged out. And on the grander scale, most of us turn around and realize that we are 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 years old and we ask "how did this happen"? We wake up one day and we are old and remember like yesterday that we were young and vibrant. We don't feel the amount of time that has passed, we just appear older and in a different place. Has time really gone by? Have a set number of seconds, minutes and hours really taken place in an objective and concrete construct that has the same meaning of realness from all perspectives?

The discoveries right up through the early twentieth century seemed to confirm the Greek philosopher Democritus' original postulate that all matter is made up of a set of indivisible units, which were deemed atoms. With the original discovery of the basic elements of the atom, the electron, proton and finally the neutron in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was looking like Democritus' view of nature was complete and confirmed. However, in the early part of the twentieth century, a shift in the understanding of physical processes began. This completely and irrevocably changed the concept of how the universe works and thus how we interpret our existence in it.

The advent of Albert Einstein's Special and General Theories of Relativity in the early twentieth century defined space and time as a single entity, which revolutionized our concept of the basic properties of nature. Up until that point in time, the properties of nature were absolute and objective truths. Einstein's theories outlined the concept that the physical laws of the universe are relative to each entity perceiving it. It stated that every element in the universe has its own framework of space and time that is different from every other element. Furthermore, there is no absolute reference point in space and time, no starting point from which everything can be delineated and ordered. The thought that both our spatial reality as well as our perception of time can be different from particle to particle and from person to person is truly mind-boggling.

During this same period, Einstein also published his famous mass-energy equivalence theory, which included the most famous of all scientific formulas, E=mc2. This theory states that matter and energy are just different states of the same thing. Matter and energy are the same thing? Think about it. This is a tremendously radical change in the way things were perceived at that point in history. Soon after Einstein's theories were published, the structure of the atom was revealed to be made up of virtually empty space that resembled clouds of energy rather than discrete marble-like physical entities as was prescribed by the classical view of nature put forth by Democritus in 500 B.C.

With the advent of modern physics, we were soon introduced to the following concepts:

1. Physical matter that we touch and feel is virtually empty space. Even the small amount of matter contained within it is essentially a formless field of energy.

2. Everything in the universe is equivalent to energy. Everything within the universe is a manifestation of the field of energy in different states of form.

3. Space and time are not objective, fixed and concrete entities but relative to the point of reference of the observer.

These concepts that define modern physics directly call into question the nature of our reality and it does not take long to understand that our idea of a solid concrete reality is really much more tenuous than we ever thought.

There is no absolute external reality. There is only what we experience. There is no way to deconvolve what we each feel into an absolute reality because there is nothing to use as a standardized measuring stick to compare it to.

The work of the cosmologists over the last six decades has also shown that the physical universe that we live in and once took as a constant and static entity is anything but constant or static. Theories about its creation dictate that all of the mass of the trillions of galaxies and stars in our current universe were once contained in a single infinitesimally small point of singularity smaller than a single proton. At the point of the Big Bang all of the energy bound in this single point was released in an unfathomable event. Space rapidly expanded and the energy coalesced into the matter that we see today as our physical universe. In the Big Bang event, the laws of our physical universe were fixed in the first moments after the event. Many cosmologists believe that there may be other dimensions folded into the fabric of our 3-dimensional space that are described in complex mathematical computations simulating the origin of the universe. In total, the universe that the cosmologists envision today is a much different view of reality than astronomers of past centuries could ever have imagined. It is as if we have developed a whole new set of senses in which we can begin to really see and experience the universe around us.

The Probability of our Reality Existing as it Seems

When you start examining all the different aspects that make up our conscious awareness and all that exists within the universe around us, you will quickly come to see that the odds of my writing this and you reading it are innumerable. The fact that our universe wound up with three dimensions cannot be explained. The fact that time travels in only one direction, forward, is considered a random chance. Why is it that space has no constraints on direction but time does? These are all required properties for us to be able to experience a reality in which we can derive a meaning. The chance that the fundamental laws of our physical universe happened just as they did begins to become incalculable. This fact has turned some agnostic scientists into believing that there is something more than we can understand that has organized the universe. Others that are familiar with both modern sub-atomic physics and Eastern mystic teachings have highlighted the similarities between the two when there was very little overlap when all we understood was classical physics.

Even if we believe that there are natural physical laws that developed because of the Big Bang that dictated the evolution of the physical universe just as the cosmologists, physicists and biologists now teach, there is still the fundamental problem of where the initial energy for the Big Bang came from. Cosmologists currently have models that describe the processes of the early universe that go all the way to the instant after the Big Bang, but this is where they stop. They cannot go back to the initiation of the event and define the source of the initial state of universe. They stop just short of this and ignore the fact that the energy for the physical universe had to have come from somewhere.

Even if we hand wave the physics at the start of the universe and move on, you then have to look at the probability of the next set of events that needed to occur in order for us to exist. The elements hydrogen and helium needed to coalesce into stars where they would burned for billions of years and exploded to form the heavier elements that we are made from. After the original stars exploded in supernovae, the heavier elements traveled across the vastness of space to our location in the Milky Way where they began forming into our solar system, the Earth and then into molecules and finally proteins, which are the building blocks of life. From here the proteins organized themselves into highly complex structures and somewhere in this period, they became a living single cell organism and inanimate materials become living organisms.

From a single cell organism, we moved to multi-cell and specialized cell organisms. DNA, the road map for creating highly developed organisms, was then formed which dictates where and what type of cell each cell in an organism will become. If you put together hundreds of millions of DNA sequences and a hundred trillion cells which are all created in the correct location and with the proper function you wind up with me writing this book and you reading it as well as billions of other complex creatures that are all self-contained, self-aware and able to perceive the 3-dimensional world and use abstract thinking to communicate ideas about the meaning of existence.

I am sorry, but all of the events that needed to occur in just the sequence that was required are so improbable that it is just not something that could have just happened by chance. There are just too many improbable concepts that are linked together to have any probability of occurring. There has to be some overriding structure of the cosmos that we cannot recognize that puts us in this moment with this perception of reality. There must be much, much more going on in the totality of things than we can ever perceive.

The perception that we have this nice defined niche of how we fit into the entirety of the universe seems to be a very convenient notion. It allows us to build a framework in which we can assign meaning while existing on the physical earthly plane. It is a notion that offers an explanation for our place in creation. In this way, it is very similar to explanations given by religions and mystical teachings for our place in existence. All explanations offer a foundation for a belief in how we came to be here, but all of them maintain large gaps and inconsistencies between their explanations and what must truly exist.

If we believe that our reality is not the simple explanation that we want to believe, but something much less obvious then what is it, where does it come from and how do we perceive it? I cannot offer any explanations for these questions and I don't know if it is important for us to put a lot of effort in trying to understand. This is something that is just outside our ability to comprehend in our conscious state. Trying to understand our reality with our limited ability to perceive the nature of the cosmos only leads to speculation and inference. It serves to move our focus off of the things where we can gain insight to those that just add to the blurring of our understanding of things.

# Chapter Three: Religion

Attempting to explain the world around us and the cycle of life and death has been part of the history of human kind as far back as when humans were first capable of rational thought. Experiencing the power of the surrounding elements of nature and the vastness of the starry nighttime sky, all signified the fleeting hold on mortality and the frailness of the human condition. The role of religion from its earliest form has been to help position mankind in its place in the universe and help make sense of the state of being conscious and aware.

Religion offers something that is larger than ourselves and the immediate world around us. It gives us something that begins to give meaning to our existence that cannot be gained from our worldly life. Religion offers structure for our place in the everyday material existence as well as the universe beyond it.

Religious teachings have varied widely over the period of recorded history. The very early beliefs were centered mostly on super natural forces within a framework based on the nature around them such as the wind, sky, trees and animals. As mankind's social structure evolved, so did the sophistication and complexity of his religious beliefs. Today we have many religions, all with very intricate doctrines and highly elaborate scriptures, rituals and symbolic icons. All of these systems of belief try to explain what cannot be explained by mere observation of the physical world. They serve not only to bridge the gaps in our understanding of the cosmos, but also to offer comfort by outlining purpose and order in our daily lives as well as defining a belief system that defines the continuation of existence after death.

This chapter is meant to summarize some of the important beliefs of the world's major religions, but only at a very high level. In my writings, I have tried to stay at a level that does not get too tied up in detail. All religions have an extensive level of detail, imagery, icons and rituals. Discussion of religion always risks inciting very emotional responses from those that closely adhere to various religious teachings. As we have seen since the dawn of religion, many people are willing to give up everything and take up arms in the defense of the religious ideas they have been taught to believe in. Because of this defensive and sometimes hostile view of anything outside of the doctrine that people have been taught, it is hard for many to be open to the concepts discussed in this book.

Most of us have grown up being exposed to religion in one way or another. In western culture, we are most familiar with the New Testament Christian teachings, whether it be Catholicism, the different variations of Protestant belief, or other derivations. In other cultures, people are raised with other religious teachings, some of which have similar concepts to Christianity, such as Muslim and Judaism, and others that are very different such as Buddhism and Hinduism. All of these religions play a major role in shaping the belief system of the cultures that they are predominant in.
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Old Testament Religions**

The Christian and Islamic religions were founded based on the Judaic tradition, which is one of the oldest of the modern religions. Judaism began in the region of modern day Israel and Syria in about 3000 B.C. Christianity came about in the first years A.D in the same region as Judaism as the result of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Islam was founded in nearby Saudi Arabia by Mohammed in approximately 500 A.D. Today, more than two-thirds of the people in the world practice one of these religions, which have all survived and grown in popularity over the years. All of them share the Old Testament Bible in common as one of their sacred texts. Unlike religions prior to these, they set up the belief in a single, all-powerful, all omniscient god that governs over the physical Earth as well as the heavenly realm. They define a struggle between the good and evil forces in the universe. They define the belief that man was made by God and was made in the physical image of him. They set out the belief that people are born into this world with our physical form but have heavenly souls that reside in our bodies. They teach that upon death the person's soul returns to the heavenly plane where it is judged on the earthly choices that the person made. If the choices followed a righteous path then they are rewarded with admittance into Heaven, a place of unbounded peace and loving. However, if their choices have not been in line with the teachings, then they are condemned for all eternity to Hell, a place of infinite pain and suffering.

The singular, all-powerful God that is in the Old Testament is a fatherly figure that loves the earthly children that he created. He looks to take care of and reward those that follow his sacred laws, which were delivered to the people by divine providence through his chosen holy men. God, as described in the Old Testament, is loving but is vengeful to those that disobey his words. Judaism and Islam teachings of today still follow this conception. The Christian teachings, on the other hand, follow the New Testament Bible which describes God as all-powerful, but forgiving.

Even though these religions evolved from the same beginnings, today they consider themselves fundamentally different from each other. This is true even though the Christians believe in the words all of the Jewish prophets. This is also true given the fact that the Muslims believe in all of the Jewish prophets as well as consider Jesus as a very holy prophet. Yet, most people do not see or know of the similarities between them and only see the differences. In fact, the differences are exaggerated to the point where they do not have any commonality. Over the course of history, countless lives have been sacrificed to the intolerance for one another between these religions.
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Buddhism**

Buddhism was founded around 500 B.C. by Shakyamuni Siddhārtha Gautama who has since been referred to as 'The Buddha'. Siddhārtha was born in Northern India as the son of royalty. He was raised in opulence only to feel that his life of luxury was not fulfilling his spiritual needs. In his early adulthood, he abandoned his wealth in order to pursue a quest for inner knowledge. It is taught that after he gave up all of his material possessions, he journeyed through the countryside where after some time he sat down under a ficus tree and did not move until he achieved enlightenment. The basic teaching of Buddhism is that true understanding of life, or enlightenment, can be achieved through self-contemplation and understanding.

Over time, the teachings of the Buddha spread westward from India across Asia, eventually finding its way to Japan. Each region developed a different flavor of Buddhism based on different ways to teach the basic message that were more meaningful to the local region. Today, several hundred million people practice one of the many forms of Buddhism found around the world.

Buddhism, in all of its variations, is based on the belief of mental discipline and training. They believe that through rigorous self-examination an individual can come to truly understand the nature of the universe and their relation to it.

The Buddhist religion/philosophy essentially believes that our physical form in this world is an illusion. Through training of the mind, we can see past the illusion and the pain (need, desire, spite, greed, etc.) that is linked to the physical part of our being. It is taught that we will keep returning to the worldly existence and experiencing the human condition of pain until we awaken and break the cycle through self-contemplation.

One difference that Buddhism, as well as Hinduism, has from the Old Testament Bible based religions is that in Eastern religions each individual experiences a cyclic progression of life on this worldly plane through reincarnation. Reincarnation is the process of a single soul returning to the worldly plane, each time taking the form of a different person. Each physical existence allows the person a chance to progress on the path to enlightenment until it is finally achieved at which time that person joins the cosmic soul.

The main concepts of Buddhism are simple and straightforward but time has added a significant number of extraneous components that were all heavily shaped by the different regions that followed the Buddhist tradition. Therefore, as with the evolution of all religions, the main concepts taught originally by the Buddha have been mingled with a further fifteen centuries of interpretations and modifications that only confuse the original teachings.
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Hinduism**

Hinduism is one the oldest of the world's major religions. With over one billion followers, it is the third largest religion in the world with the majority of the followers being on the Indian subcontinent. Its beginnings are not delineated by a single event or person as with many religions. It was formed out of centuries upon centuries of evolution. The first recognizable form of the modern Hindu religion is found during the Vedic period around 2000 B.C. During this period, the earliest Hindu scriptures, which are still part of today's Hindu religion, were written.

Hinduism is composed of a highly complex set of cosmic/spiritual concepts and philosophies that are intermixed with millennia of evolved social frameworks and rituals. Many of the concepts put forth in this book are found in one way or another in the Hindu writings but are hidden by the sheer weight of all the volumes of intellection presented as part of what is Hinduism. It is very hard to wade through the vastness of ideas and principals in order to condense the wisdom into a tangible understanding.

Hinduism is both monotheist and polytheist at the same time. While people believe in numerous gods within Hinduism, these gods are considered lower level incarnations of the single god, Brahman, which everything in the universe is made from.

Over the long evolution of the Hindu religion significant components have been interweaved with the evolution of the Indian society. While the Caste system found in India was not developed from Hindu teachings, it has become an important role in the evolution and sustainment of this system. The cycle of reincarnation, the process of being reborn into the earthly plane in the body of a different person after death is influenced by how one lived their previous life. The notion of karma, or being repaid by the universe based on how you treat others, plays the key role in both the Hindu and Buddhist belief system. Through generating positive karma one will be given a better life in their next incarnation on the earthly plane. Continued spiritual advancement through positive karma will eventually lead to the graduation beyond the earthly plane as well as subsequent planes and finally into an enlightened state of being which is becoming one with the universe.

In the Hindu system, the levels of earthly advancement based on an individual's karma have been equated, over time, into levels of socio-economic/spiritual advancement known as the Caste system, which exists today in India. The highest-class members in the Caste system are the wealthiest and considered the most advanced spiritual members. This advanced placement is considered to be the consequence of the multiple lives spent generating good karma within the universe.

Hinduism contains very deep cosmic concepts. It uses the concept of yoga, or religious practice, as a means to promote spiritual growth and progression. However, as with all religions, the spiritual practice begins to mix with social interests and over time, the true understanding of the practice becomes clouded and hard to distill.

Personal Thoughts

There are many religions in our world today as well as countless others that have come and gone since the beginning of human society. All religions, both past and present, have originated as a way to understand the universe around us and give our existence on Earth meaning. Mankind has devoted a tremendous amount of time and effort developing these different frameworks for organizing our place in the cosmos. More books have been written on religious and spiritual topics over the ages than anything else.

However, spiritual understanding is much more than words in books. It must be based on inner direction and guidance. Spiritual understanding is very personal and profound and cannot be prescribed through books. Books can help shape the focus of concepts but cannot be the foundation for a spiritual understanding. Most religious texts dwell, for the most part, on an insubstantial clutter of details rather than important concepts. There is much too much importance placed on the literal meanings and details in the religious texts of the world's religions. How does reciting holy scriptures and rote memorization of the texts make a deep personal difference in ones life?

Religious scholars and church members discuss and debate the meaning of each paragraph and passage of their holy scriptures. It seems to me that they do not see the forest for the trees. What is the real difference between one ritual or another; between which day of the week that is considered holy; between the number of people that were prophets, disciples or Imams when looked at in the full view of our true nature and our place in the universe? There is a much more fundamental aspect to searching for the nature of who we are than being addressed by the practitioners of organized religion who spend most of their time and energy addressing unimportant details that have little meaning on the grand scale.

To me, religion is analogous to present day lawyers and judges and their relation to the concept of justice. Modern law is practiced without regard to understanding the issue at hand and fairly carrying out a resolution. Justice is not even considered in the practice of the modern legal system. Modern law is about using any means available within the context of the legal system. It is about who can cite more obscure legal references and arcane precedence's. It is an absurd substitute for the true concept of justice. This is the way I view modern organized religions. It is not about the understanding of our relationship to the ultimate cosmic source, but about:

Rituals

Icons

Literal Meanings

Recitation

Blind Worship

Minutia

And this list covers the sincere worshipper whose heart is in the right place. The other side of organized religions includes much more cynical motives including:

Power

Greed

Manipulation

Ego

I only see that in the tens of centuries, which have passed for all major religions, countless people have been destroyed in their name. Countless wars have been fought over the smallest differences in the interpretation of something that was originally meant to be spiritual and sacred. Some of the most inhumane and vile actions that have ever been committed by man against his fellow man have been done in the name of spiritual rightness, many times over minute differences over a few words in a religious text.

The history of modern religions is a story of vast struggles for ego driven power and wealth. I personally have a very hard time reconciling organized religion with my spiritual quest.

There is an inherent dilemma with organized religion. Once the understanding of religious/spiritual concepts go beyond the individual, once it goes from me to you, then it enters into the realm of the worldly where it develops into my understanding and yours, our understanding and theirs and finally into what we believe is right and what they believe is wrong. The personal understanding of the individual cannot be experienced with others without losing some or all of its true meaning. This is the nature of the world we live in. It dictates that the true understanding of spiritual insights become swamped with the need for people to cling to the familiar by changing the insight into more of the meaningless background noise that we all feel comfortable with.

I will acknowledge that organized religion can act very effectively as a social gathering point where people can give and feel the support of others. I will also acknowledge that in some cases, people can break through and find the transcending ideals within a religion, such as true selflessness or real compassion, but for the most part, I feel that organized religion is an exercise in distraction from any real knowledge about who we are and what our relationship to God and the universe is.

# Chapter Four: Our Place in the Social World

Our very existence in this world depends on others. We are born of people, raised by people and live with people throughout our entire lives. It is an obvious and true fact that we are social creatures. But what is our true place in this social world being so closely entwined with others around us? What does it mean to exist and interact with others? What does it mean from the prospective of our cosmic search? The fact that so much of our life revolves around our interactions with others, we need to begin to examine what this means on a deeper level then how we normally contemplate it.

In the previous sections of this book, I discussed the significance of perception and how it shapes our reality. In this chapter, I will begin to show how we believe that the perception of our self-value is woven into our interactions in the social world and construed through a set of faulty beliefs of what we are and what we need. From this, we can begin to see how far off we are in the understanding of the nature of our beings.

The concept of self-value is fundamental to us within our lives and plays the largest role in driving our daily actions. Our self-value is generated by interactions with others on many different levels, most of which we are not aware of. This chapter helps us to understand the framework of why self-worth is so important to us and the social mechanisms we use to pursue it.

We spend our entire life and all of our energy socially maneuvering with others in order to try to win self-worth. If we examine ourselves deeply enough we will see that virtually every interaction we have has the underlying goal of trying to gain and protect our perceived worth. We try to make ourselves feel superior to others in order to rationalize our worth. There are many ways that we can make ourselves feel superior to those around us:

Financial success

Physical appearance

Physical ability

Intellectual ability

Sexual prowess

Artistic ability

Social skills

Social Circle

Religious devotion

High Morals

Social awareness

Cultural awareness

Sub Culture participation

Highly Traveled

Martyrdom for a cause

Spiritual understanding

Some of these qualities are very obvious in helping a person feel superior to others while others are much more subtle. Coming off as smart, witty, masculine, feminine, sexually desirable, generous, religious, spiritual or socially conscious are all ways of trying to validate our self-worth. For some of these we get direct validation from other people, but for others we gain it through our own ego. It is obvious that a popular entertainer or sports celebrity receives a tremendous amount of validation from a large portion of the population. While a politician, scientist, writer, philosopher, religious or social leader may gain validation from a specific cross section of individuals that have similar beliefs. These things we can readily see.

However, it becomes much harder to see how other actions and qualities are used in an attempt for increasing self-worth as they are more subtle. For instance, those that give to others and seem to be very sympathetic and sincere may be doing it to gain self-worth from the mere appearance of being a giving and thoughtful person. In most cases, we don't perceive the true motives of others; in fact, we don't even perceive our own motives. In the quest to find self-worth, motives are on a level deeper than we are able to discern. The actions that we employ to find self-worth can become so subtle that only through real observation and self-understanding do we begin to understand. Suffering and martyrdom are very extreme examples of this. Take someone that is suffering at some level while representing a political or religious cause. They may believe that they are suffering for the cause more than those around them, which deserves self-value. A person that is suffering at the hands of some force beyond their control may feel self-value just in the fact that they survived another day. Again, this self-value may not be realized on a conscious level, but is part of the inner workings of how we work.

If you begin to break down our everyday social interaction, you will become attuned to the subtle dance that takes place in every social situation. Everyone is constantly vying for position with each other in an attempt to gain that most important perceived element, self-worth. We are always exerting effort to generate more of our perceived self-value. However, the trouble is that no matter how much self-worth we try to amass for ourselves through a lifetime of constant struggle, effort and maneuvering, we never get any closer to attaining it. We are always striving and working to get it, and yet, we never seem to grasp it. Everything we do in our lives, every decision we make, every action we take, is an effort to validate our self-worth. The fact is, nothing external will ever give us the self-worth we are so desperately searching for. We have the flawed believe that exists on a deeper level within us that only by having value can we be worthy of being loved and fulfilled. I will discuss this in more detail later in the book.

Take a look at those around us that we call successful, those people that have what we believe can make us happy; entertainers with all those that give them admiration and acceptance, are they fulfilled? Look at people that are well off, with all the wealth that people strive for in their lives, are they fulfilled? Look at political figures with all the power they command, are they fulfilled? Look at religious leaders with all their spiritual knowledge, are they fulfilled? These people go through all of the same experiences as the rest of us; relationship issues, addictions, self-doubt, insecurities etc. These people may have attained what we believe makes people happy, but in truth, they are no different from any other person. They have doubts, resentments and regrets like the rest of us. They act small and petty just as much as anyone else. They have everything that defines self-value in our world and yet they do not feel it. They do not feel it because it is not there. It is an illusion that does not exist.

Every action that we initiate in this world is made on a level beneath our conscious state in the belief that it will bring us closer to becoming fulfilled individuals. However, the fact that we live in the human condition, that we live on this physical earthly plane, means that that there is nothing in this world that can bring us true happiness and fulfillment. It is the nature of this worldly plane of existence. This statement is not made in a negative way, but is meant as a statement that allows us to begin to see why there is something that we feel missing in our lives that we cannot seem to find.

In the attempt to build up our self-worth we also engage in an active campaign to try to knock down the value of those around us. By bringing others down it serves to make our own worth stand out even more. This concerted effort to de-value others is done on many levels of our consciousness, most of which we are not aware. It must be remembered that our real and true motive in life is to believe that we have self-value and are worthy of being loved. By bringing others down and showing that we are more worthy than they are for love, we have a better chance to be loved; at least, this is the thought process under which we operate. Again, this rationale is made on a level that we cannot perceive and which only comes into our awareness by taking the time and effort to rigorously examine our mind's process as well as the motives for our actions.

Every social interaction that we have is a subtle, or sometimes not so subtle, dance of dialogue and internal rationalizing, designed to maximize our own self-worth while at the same looking to minimize the worth of those we are interacting with. Mostly this is done on levels within us that we are not aware of. We do such things as using sarcasm, belittling others, questioning their competency, stereotyping them, etc. While this may be hard to believe, take the time to really monitor your thoughts and feelings when in a social situation. You will begin to truly understand the subtlety of the maneuvering and the exchange of comments meant to undermine one another. You will also see how, on a lower level, we will feel an attack as a pang of anger or discomfort, it may be very small but if you are attuned you will see it. You will also see how that same lower level within us will need to respond with a counter attack, even when at a conscious level we don't want to.

Within our minds, we make an effort to make ourselves feel superior to others by comparing ourselves with them and looking where we perceive we are better than they are in areas of financial, intellectual, social status, social issues, and so on. It is in our very nature to judge others and try to make ourselves feel superior. We judge everyone around us on many different levels, most of which we don't even realize. We look at someone who is driving an expensive car and say to ourselves "They can't really afford that", or "they have a nice car but they are fat (or old, or balding, or superficial)". We carry around an unending number of reasons to deflate the value of the people around us.

In some cases, we are very conscious of our action to deflate the perceived worth of others, it may be a plan for competing in the social world, in the work force or for the perspective of romantic situations. However, most of our actions to undermine those around us are derived on a subconscious level and take place without our knowing.

Anger is another powerful method that we use to cling to and protect our perceived self-worth. It is an additional and potent mechanism our subconscious employs to fend off any perceived attacks on our self-worth by those around us. The subconscious is under the misconception that our value is in jeopardy of being lost at all times and is hyper-vigilant to make sure that this does not happen. Anger is a defense mechanism that is invoked whenever there is a perception that we are being attacked, minimized, short-changed, or not given what we believe we deserve. It allows us to take the offensive and strike back in a way that we can stop the perceived attack on our worth.

Many times, we find that we get angry without really understanding why. It is easy for us to generate rationale to feel angry at someone as there are multitudes of reasons at any time that we can pick from. The rationale usually boils down to something like the following:

A Feeling that we are being ignored

A Feeling that someone did something to hurt us

A Feeling that something is not fair

Or Just feeling that we hurt inside

We need to understand what anger is before we can move past it and make real progress on our journey of understanding. I will go into further detail on why our subconscious operates in the manner it does in Chapter 5. In this chapter, I want to highlight that we are social creatures and perceive that our value, is tied to the interaction of those that live in the world around us.

At your next social situation, watch yourself use all these mechanisms. When you are with others, see how you need to interject something just to make sure you are seen as an equal and they don't get more attention than you. See how you need to one-up someone or reply with a witty comment. Watch others feel the need to minimize someone's accomplishments. Feel the small pang of anger when someone uses a joke to mask a stab at you. Even in the most caring and loving relationships you will still be continually vying for position to validate your self-worth and constantly exchanging very subtle messages toward this end. This is the nature of being social creatures and the reason why relationships are inherently not an easy endeavor. However, having a better understanding of why we relate as we do is another tool in our ability to see things in a clearer light.

The Inability to Change

One of the truly interesting things about us living in this social world is our inability to see that those around us cannot bring us sustained fulfillment and happiness. All of us look to people in our lives in an attempt to find the unconditional love and acceptance that we so desperately seek. Yet, it never happens. However, the amazing part of this is that we never seem to perceive this fact. We constantly look to others in the hope that we will find happiness, we fail to find it, and then we do it all over again. This recurring behavior is repeated throughout our entire lives and we still are unable to see this fact.

New relationships can provide a temporary feeling of love and acceptance. Short periods of elevated chemicals released by the body such as dopamine and endorphins give us the sense of acceptance, loving and happiness. The newness created by relationships also keeps our mind occupied so that we keep from seeing what we dread is true; that we are alone in the world and there is no one to love us. This elevated sense of being when we are in a new relationship does not last. When the newness of the situation wears off, we soon find that we are experiencing the feelings of unfulfillment again. We find ourselves falling into the same habits and behavior that we had before.

In reality, there is nothing that can be done, no person that we can know, no place that we can go to or any item that we can acquire that will bring us the fulfillment that we seek. It is like watching a movie where someone keeps doing the same thing over and over and each time they expect a different result from what they get. In the movie the actor playing the role cannot understand why they do not achieve the result they want and yet from our vantage point of observing the movie, we see that the outcome is never going to change unless the actor sees what they are doing in a different perspective and does something different. From our viewpoint, as observers, this conclusion is very obvious. However, from the viewpoint of the actor in the movie, it is a true mystery as to why the outcome is the way it is. This encapsulates what we do our entire lives. We do the same thing over and over in attempt to reach fulfillment and wonder why we remain unfulfilled. Most of us never gain the new perspective and never see that the outcome cannot change and can never change unless we see ourselves in a way that we have never done before.
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Will the outcome ever change?**

The most significant step in our life is to recognize that we continue to approach everything we do in the same way; in a way that we cannot see until we are ready to undertake true contemplation of our self, and only then will we be able to see why our world is as it is.

Once this realization is made, only then can we develop the tools that we need in order to begin to acquire a new perception of our place in the universe. These tools have all been taught by others throughout the millennia of our history. They center on different methods of self-evaluation and self-contemplation as well as the development of the faith to let go of our old self and allow ourselves to see and experience the love and guidance of the universe.

This change in self-perception is not something that can happen overnight. The development of these tools and the patience to use them is a process that takes an entire lifetime.

# Chapter Five: The True Nature of Our Beings

We are caught up in the activities of the physical world around us to the point where we cannot see past them. Our minds race along all throughout the day, from one thought to the next, never at rest, never quiet. We are so concerned with all the things and people around that we never stop to reflect upon ourselves.

In the previous chapters, I have outlined concepts that cast a different light on the understanding of who we are. In this chapter, I will begin to tie together the elements of our true makeup to give a more complete picture of my understanding of how we work. The understandings presented in this chapter have taken many years to acquire. I will try not to jump too fast as some of these concepts may take time to ponder. You may need to come back to them many times before some of this material starts to solidify or begins to chime a faint bell of recognition in the recesses of your being. For some it will never come together and will only remain as fragments of concepts that are of no interest, and that is OK as well. We accept what we are ready to accept when we are ready to accept it.

There is much more to our make-up than we see. As with the analogy of the iceberg, we only see the small amount that is above the surface. This chapter begins to outline the large amount of our make-up that lies below the surface of our day-to-day subsistence, that part of us that really defines who and what we are.

Onion Model of our Make-up

An onion is made of concentric layers placed one on top of another with a central core in the middle. The analogy of different aspects of our make-up to an onion has been used through the ages. It has been used in eastern philosophies to show such things as the complex make-up of our beings as well as the progressing levels of cosmic planes that we evolve through during our spiritual journey. The Eastern philosophies and religions have many concepts based around elements with repeating cycles and concentric layers, which makes the onion a good teaching analogy for many of these concepts.

In Western culture, it was made famous in the early twentieth century by the physiological movement of Sigmund Freud. Freud's theories in the psychoanalysis movement included describing the human psyche as a multi-layer construct with motives for actions becoming increasingly concealed the further down one goes into the layers in the human make-up.

The different camps that employ the onion model to represent the human being all start with the outermost layer representing the conscious self or that part of our self that we identify as us, the individual. As we go deeper into the onion of the human make-up we start to deviate from one model to another.

The Freudian model deals only with the workings of the human mind as seen from the Western view. As with all Western-based ideologies, it is based solely on the scientific principle and does not take into account any concepts outside those that are tangible. It strives to account only for the directly observable elements, such as behavior. I will not go into any detail of Freud's theory of psychoanalysis or his view of the human make-up but instead I want to covey that his theories were also based on a layered model of the human make-up.

Eastern teachings have long used the onion model but have incorporated many other aspects into the layers beyond the purely physical actions and motives we all have. The Eastern teachings bring in the spiritual and cosmic aspects as part of our make-up. From their viewpoint, it is not just the make-up of a physical human, but of a cosmic being. Some of the Eastern teachings have highly complex models that bring in many different planes of reality, each representing a different layer of our make-up and each with a different purpose in our cosmic development. Again, I will not go into any further specifics on the different ways in which a layered model is used in Eastern teachings but wanted to mention its tradition.

My use of the onion model is less sophisticated than many, but it is helpful to convey what I believe to be a useful picture of our cosmic make-up. This representation is at a very high level and is meant only to summarize the concepts rather than be a complete picture.

My understanding of the human make-up includes both the physical, or worldly, part of our being as well as the cosmic part of us. In my model, the outermost layer represents our conscious self, similar to models described by other traditions. Under our conscious layer, there are progressing levels of self that are increasingly subconscious. These levels still represent parts of us that make up our physical being. At the very center of the model is the core of our being, a place shared by our innermost level of physical self, our True Physical Self, and the part of us that is not part of the physical plane of existence, our Godself.

My Simplified Onion Model of the Self

The True Physical Self and Godself, which are found at the center of the model represents the most fundamental aspects of our being; that part of us which is born of and attached to this physical worldly plane of existence (the True Physical Self) along with that part of us which spans all planes of the cosmic/spiritual realm (the Godself). These aspects of our self are not known to our waking conscious and only through a great effort of self-examination and contemplation can one begin to see why these fundamental aspects of ourselves exist and how they interrelate with one another.

The True Nature of our Beings

Our Physical Self

I have termed the part of us that belongs to this earthly plane of existence the Physical Self. This portion of us is very complex and is multi-layered in its makeup. The top-most layer is our waking conscious state. It is the state in which we live our lives and experience our day-to-day reality. It is where we live with and lose the people that are around us. It is where we have hopes and dreams and try to make a difference in the world; where we have names, dates of birth and bank accounts; where we oversleep on the weekends and need to organize our closets. It is where we know who we are.

However, what we know as our self is just the top layer of a very deep level of being. At the deepest level, there exists our True Physical Self, the part of us that is directly connected to the earthly plane of existence. Because this part of us is connected to the worldly physical plane, it does not know about anything outside of this plane of existence. It cannot perceive the cosmic aspects of the universe, including the cosmic love and guidance that exists in all places. Instead, it only sees itself alone and in a place that it does not understand. Like a small child that feels alone, abandoned and frightened, the True Physical Self seeks comforting, loving and acceptance. It is desperate for unconditional love and spends all of its energy searching for it in the only place that it knows, the physical worldly plane that we are a part of.

The True Physical Self does not know why it is here or why it exits, it just knows that if it can show that it is worthy of love, that maybe someone will love it and then it will finally feel safe and warm. However, it never gets the love and acceptance that it seeks, and in turn works even harder to try to attain it. It knows nothing else other than seeking the safety of a loving embrace and being told that everything is all right, just like the small child needs. All of the emotions, feelings and motives for our life actions come from this place within us in an effort to find the love and acceptance that this part of us so desperately yearns for.

Nothing in the material world can fill the void that this small, fragile being feels. This includes all material possessions as well as the relationships with those around us. All actions and relations eventually lead to feelings of discontent and disappointment. It has to be this way. The great leaders of spiritual thought through the ages have all understood this concept. As much as it seems to hold the answer for us, the material plane of existence cannot offer what this part of us needs.

New possessions never give us the anticipated satisfaction. Relationships are a mix of changing feelings, needing attention, feeling disappointment, feeling superior, feeling jealous, etc. New romantic relationships offer an exciting possibility of having what we need, but once the newness of the relationship wears off then we are back to the familiar feeling of needing something more once again. All of the various forms of addiction; drugs, food, people, sex, money, power, are all attempts to fill the void we perceive within us by offering a temporary distraction to the fear and emptiness that the small child of the True Physical Self feels. Every action in our lives is only about finding a way to find the love that the True Physical Self seeks and stop the pain and fear of the belief that we are alone and unloved. This is the nature of our existence on the physical plane and it is essential to our understanding if we want to experience something greater than what we have in our everyday lives.

On top of the True Physical Self are layers and layers of different levels of our sub-conscious. The sub-conscious levels act as layers of protective armor around the True Physical Self. Because this lowest level of our physical self feels so alone, frightened and vulnerable, its strongest motive is to hide this fact so it will not be recognized. This part of us believes that if others see this fact then it would be rejected by them. Because our True Physical Self's most profound fear is not being accepted, it goes to great lengths to make sure it is never found out to be small and afraid. To ensure that this secret is never uncovered, the True Physical Self puts these many layers of protection over itself. As you work outwards from the center of the onion model, each of these layers becomes more and more unaware of the truth of our nature until you wind up on the surface, which is our conscious mind. The True physical Self uses these layers as insulation against the truth that it perceives must be guarded at all costs. Each of these subsequent layers acts as another walled fortification against this perceived truth. By the time we reach all the way up to the conscious self, we are at the place where we carry out our daily lives of existence without knowing why we do what we do and why we feel what we feel. The real driving force of our actions is so hidden from our conscious self that we live life without the slightest understanding of where we fit into the world and what our place is in the cosmos is.

In order to keep anyone, including ourselves, from discovering the fact that our True Physical Self feels alone and afraid of not being loved, it uses a very complex and intricate set of physiological mechanisms to hide this perceived vulnerability. Through all the layers of our conscious and subconscious, traps are set up to fool us and divert us from finding the truth that our True Physical Self believes that it is naked, alone and afraid. Only through real introspective reflection do we begin to see the traps that the different layers of our sub-conscious put into place. On the road to self-understanding, we come across many occasions when we think we are on the right path only to have it crumble down around us like a glass house. One moment what we believed was true in our lives only turns out to be another level of self-deception. Another mechanism our physical self uses to keep us from seeing its perceived truth is to keep the mind busy with a constant barrage of thoughts. Our everyday life, from the moment we wake, is filled with a constant stream of thoughts, one thought after another. This non-stop bombardment is intended to keep our mind so cluttered and distracted that we have no chance to see how we use these mechanisms to protect ourselves. We become much more attuned to the workings and deception of our own reasoning the more we quiet our minds and honestly self-examine our thoughts, feelings and motives.

At this point, the story of our make-up sounds quite bleak, but the real truth, the truth that is beyond our ability to experience, is much different as we will see in the next section.

The True Nature of our Beings

Our Godself

The Godself is like a loving parent that is in the next room and cannot be seen. The small child feels overwhelming fear when it is alone, but does not realize that its caring parent is just outside the door making sure that it remains safe and secure. The Godself, like a caring parent always accompanies the part of us that is tied to a specific plane of reality. It exists side by side with that part of us which exists in the material plane; the two parts constitute the definition of our being. However, because the part of us that is tied to a specific plane of reality, the True Physical Self, cannot perceive anything outside of the plane it exits in, it does not know that the Godself is right there with it, watching over it, holding it and loving it. Like a young child's point of view, when their parent is not within sight the world can become a very frightening place where mortal danger lurks within each unfamiliar sound and in every dark corner. However, from the adult point of view, it is seen that the child's loving parent is close by and that the child is safe and in no danger. These are two perceptions of the same scene but are perceived in very different ways. The parent has the ability to see and understand not only their immediate surroundings, but also the greater world around them. They understand the workings of the world. However, on the other hand, the child can only understand its immediate surroundings and cannot grasp the way the world functions. Our Godself is the loving parent. It is always looking out for our welfare and is in full control. Our True Physical Self is the small child that sees his world with a child's active imagination. He cannot see beyond his place in this physical plane of reality, and therefore, has a very narrow and colored understanding of the surrounding universe that we are a part of.

Our Godself is with us at all times. As we watch over our own children, our Godself watches over our physical self. However, it is not as the relationship perceived in the Western religions where God plays a role much like a wise and loving father to us as in our family tradition. Even the use of the term Godself is burdened with preconceived notions due to Western world's significance on the word "God", where it immediately conjures images of a strong and compassionate man with long white hair, a flowing white beard and who lives in the clouds, an image that has been used since the renaissance period of our history. The term, "God", is also used in many Eastern religions in a way that has a closer meaning to what I use here, but it comes with a different set of preconceived notions from our experiences with these schools of religion and philosophy.

Godself is a term that I feel is important to use, but we must do our best to separate it from the images and biased notions that may be generated by the term. In my usage, our Godself is that part of us that is everlasting and exists outside of the earthy plane of existence. It represents the aspect of our being that is beyond all planes of reality. It is us, but also everyone and everything else at the same time. It consists entirely of cosmic energy. It is pure spiritual love. Not the love that we think we know, but the absolute and complete spiritual love of the universe. It is that part of us that is connected to and part of the soul of the infinite spaces, the supreme consciousness, God.

It is not important for us to understand what the supreme consciousness or our Godself is made from, how it exists or where it comes from. These are specifics that do not and cannot be defined in terms that we can understand. There is no gain in trying to categorize and compartmentalize something that is so outside of our sphere of experience and conceptualization. If we become receptive to the loving guidance of our Godself within us, we can begin, at times, to feel its presence in our lives, a presence that fills us and elevates us to see the world from a totally new perspective.

Our Godself is really in control of our lives. This part of us is guiding us in every moment of our lives. Nothing happens to us that is not part of the loving development process that our Godself is guiding us through on this and subsequent planes of existence. We do not need to do anything. Everything that needs to be done is being done. Despite all the hectic chaos in our existence and the immense struggle to direct the outcome of our lives, we have no power. Our outcome is being directed by our Godself at a much higher level than can be perceived. Everything is just as it is supposed to be.

The folly of Self-Importance

As the perception of our physical self is limited to the physical plane of existence, we do not comprehend the reasons for our being here or why things unfold in our lives as they do. In order for us to give a perceived meaning to our lives, we need to develop a belief system that defines a purpose for us. We need to convince ourselves that we have a purpose and that we know how to affect change that will help us towards meeting this purpose. In effect, we are convinced that our conscious reasoning is complete enough to understand who we are and what is best for us. In the immenseness of the universe around us and the nearly infinite events that have occurred in just the correct sequence in order for us to exist at precisely this point in space and time in the cosmos, we still believe that we understand who and what we are, and that we have the power to direct the events in our lives. We must be extremely vain to even begin to believe that we have the power to understand these things.

We go to great lengths to believe the rationale that we conjure in an attempt to give our lives meaning. We accept as truth that our actions have a bearing on our cosmic journey and who we really are. As individuals:

We believe we are powerful enough to direct events

We believe that the choices we make have importance

We believe that what we do has moral consequences

We believe we are responsible for our lives

These beliefs are natural when viewed in the perspective of our conscious mind. From this perspective, we see that we affect everything and everyone around us. We see that we have the power to choose, the power to be moral, the power to be righteous, the power to be successful. It is only when we begin examining our relationship to the universe that we begin to see that, perhaps, in the bigger picture, things are not as they may seem to be.

We need to believe that we have control over our lives. We need to believe that we have the power to affect change. Without control and power we could never believe that we have importance in the universe and without importance we would never be worthy of the unconditional love that we so desperately seek.

Learning that our day-to-day thoughts and actions play an insignificant role in our cosmic evolution can be very hard to swallow. After all, for our whole lives it seems that we are making choices and directing change. How can it be otherwise? However, if we really look into our selves we see that there is no change beyond the mere surface. That underneath, in the superficial physical world, nothing changes.

Giving in to the understanding that we are much greater than what we understand we are and that this greater part of us is fully and totally responsible for us can have a very freeing and calming effect on us. The understanding that it is our Godself that is guiding us and nurturing us is key in developing an awareness of our place in the universe.

Understanding that we have no real power in directing what happens in our lives is fundamental in seeing the bigger picture. The fact that what happens in our lives, as we know them, has no bearing on our cosmic development is not a negative concept, as most people would believe. It is easy to confuse the concept of having no control with that of being weak and powerless and at the mercy of external forces that we do not understand and cannot influence. One can believe that this concept makes our life a meaningless exercise, a blip in the realm of the cosmos that has no importance. Understanding that the actions of our physical self do not influence our cosmic progression and that our Godself is in control of our being is a fundamental breakthrough in the way we perceive ourselves and our true nature.

Once we are able to accept that we don't need to try to control everything and that we are being guided by a loving and nurturing part of our self, we then understand that there is a much bigger picture to our place in existence and that everything in our life is the way it is supposed to be. We fight to impose our will on the cosmos but it does not change anything. We are always where we are supposed to be. It is like being in a rowboat paddling as hard as we can against the currents in the sea. We fight to get from here to there but in the big picture it is the powerful ocean current that we cannot see that is dictating our direction.

Accepting that everything is as it is supposed to be is the next step in our spiritual evolution.

There are no things that happen that shouldn't happen

All is the way it is supposed to be

We cannot change the true nature of our being

Understanding that everything is meant to happen as it does is a fundamental element in our development. Feeling the love of your Godself and understanding that you are under the caring protection and guidance of your Godself is key in the real understanding of our journey.

But how can we accept that all the shit that happens in our lives is supposed to happen? What about all the pain and suffering in the world, is this supposed to happen? Was there cosmic guidance to be born into a warring and starving existence? This is a question that has been asked through the ages and all I can say is that we do not see the bigger picture. What looks to us like one thing is only a very small part of the whole. It is like looking at the world through a pinhole. We cannot grasp the totality of our existence, and therefore, can only make judgments on the very narrow view of what we can see.

Our presence on this worldly plane of existence is part of our cosmic learning development. Exactly how our existence on this plane plays a role in our development is not clear to me, but I do understand that we need to be here as part of the path in our spiritual journey. The fact is, that it all does have meaning and purpose, but not in a way that we can understand. The real meaning of our existence is so far beyond our understanding that we need to recognize that we cannot comprehend our place in the universe and do not trust that there is a greater force guiding us, that we can just let go when we are ready.

Most of us find the thought of being powerless very disconcerting and distressing. We want to believe that we have the power to shape our lives, to control our destiny. We want to believe that our actions have meaning, that our lives have importance and that all of the effort that we exert throughout our lives, all the pain that we endure during our lifetime has significance. The thought that we are born and live a life without meaning is just not acceptable to us and because of this we have a tremendous need to try to exert control over things. The act of letting go of this need to control is something that is too terrifying to most of us.

Many of the important teachings throughout history center on relinquishing our perceived control of things and letting a higher cosmic power take over for us. We expend so much energy trying to maintain control over our reality and yet, we really have no control at all. In fact, having no control is a realization that our True Physical Self is terrified of. Our True Physical Self believes that it must control everything in its attempt to find love and acceptance. It is unable to perceive that the love and acceptance it seeks is already there, all around it, watching over it and protecting it.

The Need for More

Throughout the world, and especially in Western culture, we are socialized to believe that the reason that we feel unfulfilled, the reason that we feel a void inside of us is that we are not complete as we are. After all, logic dictates that if we were complete then we would feel fulfilled. We also believe that the way to fill this void and complete ourselves is by attaining something that is outside of ourselves. Because of this reasoning we spend our whole lives striving to complete ourselves through being:

More moral

More pious

More righteous

More forgiving

More successful

More attractive

More giving

More sociable

More athletic

More intelligent

More witty

More wealthy

More tolerant

More sympathetic

More powerful

More philosophical

More ethical

More, more, more

We believe our self-value is tied to the level we acquire these attributes. But even if we possessed more of these traits than anyone else in the world we would still feel the same void that we feel now. This is because these things will never fill the hole inside, they cannot. Nothing that exists in the worldly plane can fill this void. We believe we need something more in our lives to complete us, but in reality we do not. The truth is that there is no void. We are perfectly complete as we are. We only need to recognize this. We only need to slow down and let ourselves see this wonderful, beautiful truth.

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Cosmic Tree Model of Life and the Universe_

Your perception of what is around you plays an important role in how you perceive your surroundings. When we look at a tree, we don't see that the roots are separate from the trunk and the trunk is separate from the branches and the branches are separate from the leaves. When we look at it we say "Look at that tree, it is very magnificent". We see the tree as an entity rather than the sum of its components. Even with the different phases and cycles in the tree's life that make it appear to look different at times, we still know it as the same tree.

On a tree, each leaf appears separate, but we know that they are all part of the same tree. Individual leaves appear to die and fall off the tree. They fall to the ground where they decay into nutrients that are then reabsorbed by the tree's roots, which are embedded in the ground. These nutrients are then used to sustain life for the tree. From the leaf's perspective, it appears as if they are their own individual entity, separate from the other leaves. Not knowing about the tree's roots or trunk, the leaves believe that they only interact with the branch. They do not understand where their life energy is derived from, to them life just happens. When it is time for a leaf to die, it appears to the other leaves that this single individual leaf dies and then disappears from existence when it drops away.

From an up-close perspective from within the leaf society, it appears that they live and die separate lives. However, as we step back we begin to see the perspective from the tree's point of view, where the leaves are not separate entities but extensions of its being and are part of the recycling of the tree's life energy. Since the leaves are part of the tree, from the tree's perspective there is no concept of the leaves being individuals experiencing life and death.

Even when the tree itself appears to eventually die, its components break down into the soil where they are used by nearby trees, all of which grew out of seeds from the original tree. So now, when we step back again, we don't see the life and death concept for the individual trees, but now are looking at the forest's perspective. An individual tree is only an extension of the forest's being. And if we continue increasing our perspective step after step we see that everything is part of the whole and there is no concept of separateness or death.

Thus, the cycle of life takes on many phases that appear as distinct discrete elements, but are, in fact, just different aspects of the same life force from which everything is derived. This force is the Cosmic consciousness, the Over soul, God.

Life and Death

The physical reality that we experience is based on the concepts of space and time. Within this context, people perceive that we are all born into the physical world and grow older until we die, at which point we are no longer part of this reality.

In fact there is no life and there is no death. There is only being, a being without a beginning or end. Just as the days transition into night and back to day, our perception of physical life is only one phase of our cosmic-spiritual evolution.

Some see death as the end of existence with nothing following it. Some see that once the physical body dies it goes back to the basic elements and continues on that way in the universe. Some see that once the physical body dies the soul or essence of the person lives on in another form of existence in another realm. Everybody has a different view of our journey after we pass out of our worldly existence.

My belief is that it is not a significant transition when we pass out of this earthy plane. As with sleeping and dreaming, we transition into and out of our dream state without any fret or concern. We go to sleep, wake up in the morning and it is nothing unusual. It is part of the natural cycle that we are very familiar with. Our existence on this physical plane is akin to a dream state. Once our life here is complete, we wake up and go on, only to go to sleep and dream once again in another plane of reality. We progress on our cosmic development by experiencing existence on many planes of reality one after another just like progressing through grades of school.

Many Eastern schools of thought outline more elaborate thoughts on the planes of existence beyond what I describe here. Some go onto very detailed concepts of how and why we cosmically develop, invoking such mechanisms as reincarnation or transmigration. Others go onto discussing multiple/parallel existences, while others proclaim to understand all the levels of cosmic progression and develop complex diagrams to map them out. I will be the first to profess that I do not know about these sorts of details and I can state that I personally do not think they are important to our understanding of the self. What I have discussed in this book are things that I believe to be true through my experience. Concepts such as transmigration are interesting, but I have no insights into how a specific mechanism such as this would be part of our spiritual development. I leave the details of our existence outside of this realm as broad strokes, as we cannot fathom the hows and whys of these things, it is just beyond the capabilities of our worldly understanding.

Good and Evil

The discussion of good and evil is especially fraught with very rigid concepts and ideas. In the Western world, it is in the very fiber of our religious teachings and ideas of morality. I acknowledge that it will be difficult to discuss these concepts without raising a significant amount of animosity in those reading this, as it goes against what most of us have had instilled in us throughout our entire lives.

We are taught from the time we are very young that there are opposing forces in our world, good and evil. These forces are the fundamental concepts that make up our morality, ethics and religion. We are taught from a young age that all thoughts and actions have an intrinsic quality of goodness or evil associated with them. For many of us, all of our life decisions take into account the weighing of moral, ethical and religious virtues. Most believe that there is a consequence for righteous or evil actions either in this lifetime or after death.

The Western religions believe that righteous actions during a person's lifetime lead to an afterlife in Heaven, which is described as "God's spiritual kingdom of eternal love and happiness". Heaven is the place where good and righteous people go when they die. It is a place where there are no earthly troubles or worries, but only true and complete contentment. An individual's reward in Heaven is proportional to the extent that they followed the teachings of their religion. The most righteous people are promoted to a higher ranking in Heaven, such as Sainthood. Heaven is historically depicted as a place where people live in the clouds, wear white robes and have the same appearance as they did in their earthly form. Most people perceive Heaven as being up above us and believe that those in Heaven are looking down on us. Many of us grow up with this picture in our minds and most maintain it throughout their lives.

In the Western religions, those that defy God's religious commandments are sent to Hell when they leave the earthly plane upon death. Hell is defined as the place that is in opposition to Heaven, where there is eternal torture and pain. Hell is overseen by a being that is considered the true incarnation of evil known as the Devil. Here again, all those of us that have been raised in the Western tradition have a mental depiction of the Devil and Hell, which is based on a long tradition of art-work and religious texts.

Whether we go to Heaven or Hell after we pass out of this worldly existence is based on the judgment of our actions while we were living. The sum of all an individual's actions are weighed at death and the result decides which place we will reside in for eternity.

Instead of "good and evil" the Hindus and Buddhists believe in the concept of karma. Karma is the cosmic law that states that actions of love and kindness towards others is repaid to the individual by the cosmos as positive events in their life. Karma is not seen as a reward based on the judgment of one's actions, but as an intrinsic way in which the universe operates, you get from the universe what you give.

In these Eastern traditions, karma plays a very important role for the advancement of the individual through the different levels of the spiritual development cycle. What the West would call evil actions would be recognized as actions with "bad karma". Bad karma follows the same cosmic law as good karma. The person that creates bad karma through their actions receives negative life situations back from the cosmos both in this worldly plane as well as other planes of reality. If someone conducts themselves in such a manner that they generate good karma throughout their life, they progress in their spiritual life coming back in their next incarnation as a more advanced spiritual individual or graduating beyond this worldly plane to the next one. If, however, they act in a way in which bad karma is generated, what we would consider in the West as doing evil deeds, then that person may be demoted in their next incarnation where they may come back to this worldly plane as an animal or an insect by the concept of transmigration.

All of these teachings have the same thing in common. Life actions and decisions are based on the understanding that there is a reward for following a desired set of actions and there is punishment for diverging from them. Whether we believe our outcome is the result of an act of judgment by a supreme being or just the natural laws of cause and effect, either way the end result is that we behave in a certain facet because we believe it is in our best interest for us in our current situation, our future life and possibly the realm beyond death.

I believe that as we move up higher in cosmic development, the concept of good and evil dissipates to the point where the contrast has no meaning. What we interpret as evil on the worldly plane is just a misunderstanding in perception of how the cosmos operates. Because we are unable to comprehend the full picture of the workings of the universe, our interpretation becomes skewed. We see only a pin-hole view of the cosmic reality and base our belief structure on this very narrow view of things.

The concept that there is no evil goes against what we are all taught in social and religious settings throughout our lives and for many it will invoke strong feelings of indignation or anger. How can one say that there is really no such thing as evil or evil actions when we see examples of them all around us in the world demonstrated all the time? Throughout the whole world, we are aware of acts of ruthless violence, torture and hateful actions towards fellow people. The concept that evil does not exist seems to be a ridiculous and even dangerous idea. We hear of murder, rape and other malicious actions every day on the news. How can we say that the Hitler's, Pol Pots' or Jeffery Dahmer's of the world are not evil? These people and their actions are considered the epitome of evil.

It is a truly understandable to feel that the heinous acts that these and others commit are truly evil. However, when we look towards the rhythm and flow of nature, we don't see the acts of Mother Nature or the animal kingdom as evil; we see them as part of the cycle of things. If we go to a Broadway play, we don't see the actor that is playing Hitler as evil. We know that it is not really that person's true nature. When the play is over, we understand that he was an actor playing a role, which for the time of the play was believable, but when the play ends, the role he was playing is over. The concept of evil is similar to these analogies. Evil is seen as evil when viewing it from within a certain viewpoint, but when we begin to see things from a different and higher vantage point our interpretation of things begin to change. From the highest vantage point, we see everything in its entirety where there is only the spiritual light, God, the Over Soul, the Cosmic Consciousness and nothing else. No good, no evil, no life, no death, no want, no need, just spiritual love, just light, just God.

These things may be easy for me to write when sitting in a comfortable chair rather than living through the unspeakable treatment that many people have had or continue to live through. It is hard to give up the want and need to believe in rewards for good and punishments for evil, as these beliefs are so much a part of us and our so social world. Yet, if we allow ourselves, we begin to see our cosmic journey in a much different light, a light that is more forgiving and more loving then we could ever imagine.

God, the Over Soul, the Cosmic Consciousness

Most of us in the West are raised with a belief system in which the Supreme Being, God, is not of this physical world and yet resides over us. In many cases this being is benevolent and in other cases very severe. It has been taught to us that this being is a separate and independent being; a being that has great power but is also subject to human emotions such as joy and anger. We are fixated on this type of image. It is as if we need to be able to conceptualize this Supreme Being in familiar surroundings.

Books, churches and galleries are full of images of strong masculine grandfatherly figures in an ethereal setting surrounded by clouds and angels. This is the concept that we all conjure in our minds since we were children and we continue to carry this child's vision with us our entire life.

Even in the Hindu religion, where they define many incarnations of the one Supreme Being, each incarnation is depicted in a physical human or animal form. All throughout historical and modern religions, the depiction of the gods has always been in forms that we can recognize as part of our worldly experience.

I understand my own usage of the term God, but in writing it, I find that it conjures a very stereotypical concept for most people. I am, therefore, hesitant to solely use this term for this fact, and instead use different terms interchangeably that all represent the concept of the Supreme Consciousness. It is not that I am determined to use different terms because I have a dislike for the word God. I use other terms like Over Soul, Cosmic Consciousness, Universal Soul, to complement the grandness of the idea that God is everything, everything perceivable and everything unknowable. I don't want to get stuck on the single stereotypical image.

Why must our conception of the higher realm of the cosmos, God, then be so predictable and stereotypical? How can this be, given that each one of us has our own personal understanding of the nature of the universe and our relationship with the cosmos? How can we all share the same perception of something so deep and so personal and so important? Why are we all satisfied with the child's view we are taught while we were growing up? Why is it so important that we hold on so tightly to the familiar?

The concept of a loving, benevolent force that comprises our cosmic realm has been around for millennia. The thought that this force, which has been termed God, the Over Soul, the cosmic spirit, and many other names, is an energy that makes up the entirety of the cosmos is something that is essentially the same concept that our religious and philosophical texts tell us if we pay attention to them. So why must we limit our concept of the expansiveness of God and the cosmos to a narrow concept? God is you, God is me, God is everything and everything is God.

Our Material Plane

All that we see and all those people that we know all share a common place in the physical reality that we perceive at this point of space and time in the cosmos. We all share a similar three-dimensional form and physical environment surrounding us. We perceive each other as separate entities and on a more familiar level, we all experience the same feelings, anxieties and stresses that everyday life brings to us. But what is this place that we call our reality? Is this "the" plane of reality or only one of them? If there is more than this one, how do we go from one to another? How do the different planes of reality fit into the process of our ultimate spiritual growth?

We exist on this plane of reality, which, I believe, represents a particular level of advancement in our cosmic development process. It is also my belief, as found in many other teachings, that we are beings that are on a journey of spiritual development. I do not understand how this development progresses, but believe that we go through different planes of reality as we progress towards becoming truly actualized spiritual beings. These planes of reality, I believe, are like grades in a school. We progress from one level to the next only after we have mastered the skills on that level.

I believe that we perceive a glimmer of things outside of our material plane through such things as intuition, extra sensory perception, dream and meditation states among others. I also believe that other planes of reality may be able, at times, to poke into ours, where they can be perceived as elements of super natural phenomenon. However, delving too much into these concepts begins to derail us from the important concepts that I am outlining in this book. It is very easy to get wrapped up into ideas and concepts that move us away from the big view of our place in the cosmos. It is important that we keep our perspective and stay focused on what is important as well as understand that we have a very limited ability to truly comprehend the workings of the cosmos. In the end it is enough to know that this material plane that we perceive is only a few notes in the symphony that drives the cosmos. Trying to figure out the specifics of how things really work in the process of our spiritual development, as many religions attempt to do, only serves to confuse and diffuse the direct understandings discovered through self-contemplation and meditation.

# Chapter Six: It's OK, Everything is OK

While experiencing the recent growth period that prompted me to write this book, I had a major insight that tied many elements together in my personal understanding of our place in the cosmic order. It came to me when I was driving home from work in a contemplative mood and looking at the sky in front of me. It was a beautiful contrast of dark and light colored clouds with sunlight streaming between them. It was an insight into something that I had always wrestled with in my understanding of things... and there I was driving and it just hit me right at that moment. Although much of the subsequent understanding from this insight shaped what has been written up to this point, it is this chapter where the understanding of who we are is made complete.

Like most people, I have also found it easy to see the apparent differences between the Eastern teachings and the Christian belief. There seems to be many more differences than commonalities. People, for the most part, only see that the two cultures represent very different worlds, worlds that are so different that they do not seem to intersect with one another in any way culturally, philosophically or spiritually. It is only when one steps back and tries to understand the fundamental ideas that they can begin to see a picture that shows a complimentary relationship between the Eastern and Western schools of spiritual ideology.

It is only when we can separate the real teachings from all of the noise that we can begin to see more clearly how the teachings from all around the globe and all throughout the ages start to fit together. This, in itself, is a real feat of seeing the world around us in a new light. When we don't understand something it is easy to confuse and complicate it or just summarily dismiss it. This is what has been done to the wisdom that founded the major schools of spiritual thought. We have become so preoccupied with the texts, rituals and icons that nothing has clarity. This is also compounded by the fact that we are so preoccupied with the differences between the texts, rituals and icons from one religion to another that it disintegrates into just a power struggle over who is perceived right and who is perceived wrong. Nothing is seen, nothing is realized, nothing is important except who is right and who is wrong. The original message is lost and all that remains is the power struggle and the meaningless words and rituals.

In my younger life, although raised as a Christian, I found that I had a real appreciation of the Eastern mystic teachings found in the Chinese Taoist philosophy.

It may have been the newness of these ideas or perhaps the novelty that caused me to gravitate towards them. Whatever the reason, it was the spark that started the awareness of my journey as a cosmic explorer. I did not so much start asking myself the Big Questions, but they started welling up from inside of me. It was something that was beyond my control or understanding. It was if there was some unknown part of me that was prompting these questions and would not be deterred from searching for answers.

For many years, I read texts on different philosophies, religions and spiritual teachings. The way in which the eastern teachings addressed the concept of reality and existence resonated within me in such a way that it seemed very natural to me.

Years later, I began to gather an understanding of the Buddhist philosophy. Initially it was just reading and parroting back the concepts. Then I began to gain some insight into the more fundamental understandings. While I grew to see the significance of the main Buddhist principles, I also found that there was something that was missing, at least in my perception. While I understood that the Buddhist teachings revolved around disciplining the mind to break through the layers of self-deception that hide the truth of who we are, I could not help but feel that the role of spiritual love was missing; the same spiritual love that was the basis of the Christian teachings.

I grew up being taught the Christian beliefs but never truly felt that I had a true understanding of the role that Jesus played in the overall picture of our cosmic nature. As with anyone that has access to and can read the Bible, I read what the stories in the Bible stated, but never felt the connection or importance of the meaning of the Christ figure. However, this was to change with recent events as my understanding of our place in the cosmos and the role of Christ as well as other teachings became much clearer to me.

Buddha Consciousness (Internal Discipline)

Understanding of the Buddhist reference to pain and the Human Condition

What does it mean to be human? What do we all have in common? What is it that defines the Human Condition? From the Buddhist viewpoint, it means that being born into this physical plane we all experience the same struggle; the struggle of our True Physical Self trying to find its way through this plane of existence. This struggle is an innate consequence to our being in this world. This struggle is the same "pain" that the Buddhist philosophy refer to in their teachings.

When the Buddhists make the assertion that human existence is pain, they do not mean pain in the same sense as what the Western culture would think of. This is why most of us summarily pass off this concept of the Buddhist belief system. We hear life is pain and we automatically think that it does not pertain to us. We think "I am not in pain" and that this is a condition reserved for those who are oppressed or who may live in severe poverty. While there are those in the world that are in physical pain most of their life, the Buddhist use of this concept is much more subtle than this. They understand that it is not what we normally think of as pain, but the pain we all feel as part of being human beings. As humans, pain is in the very nature of our worldly existence. The pain of need and desire, of disappointment and rejection, of sadness and loss, anxiety, fear and anger. Everyday we encounter these feelings as part of our normal lives. Some of these feelings arise from obvious causes such as someone saying something hurtful, the fear of losing our job or the sadness at the loss of something or someone. The Buddhists understand that the origin of our pain is really a much deeper and more fundamental place in our being that we are not able to perceive.

The Buddhists understand the layers of the self. They understand that we attempt, in vein, to seek a way to relieve the pain by looking for something in the material world. The mistake that we make is believing that these feelings can be alleviated by such things as possessions, relationships, status, and addictions. The Buddhists understand that this is the condition that all humans exist in as a result of being on this physical plane and that pain and unease is the natural state of human existence.

In realizing that there is nothing in this world that can bring us true happiness, a large burden is removed from us. We can stop racing from one thing to another in our futile attempts to find that one thing that we believe will finally bring fulfillment to us. Once we are beyond this, we are then able to begin concentrating on what we really are looking for in the cosmos.

The Buddhists have developed many techniques that help the individual quiet the layers of self that are racing in an attempt to hide the perceived venerability of our inner physical self. They have developed very effective methods of mental discipline in order to see through the diversion tactics that the lower layers of the self uses to protect itself. They use very rigorous elements of introspection that allow an individual to begin to understand the motives behind the thoughts and actions that we think and exhibit in our daily lives. By using methods of deep meditation and techniques to quiet and observe the mind they are able to gain a true understanding of the nature of the physical self.

Once an individual is able to hone these introspection skills through years of intense study and practice then one can see the truth of their existence and their relation to the cosmos and in doing so believe that they can experience oneness with the cosmic soul, a state known as nirvana. This state of being is the final goal for the Buddhist practice.

While I believe in the Buddhist concept that we are not able find the love and self-fulfillment that we are seeking in the worldly existence, I also believe that there is something that the Christian teachings bring that provides important additional insight into the understanding of our relationship to the universe.

Christ Consciousness (Love and Compassion)

Learning to feel the all-encompassing love of our Godself

I have stated in different parts of this book that I was raised in the Christian religion; however, I never truly understood how the story of Christ fit into my own personal beliefs. To me, the story, as told in the New Testament, just did not resonate with me other than having lots of important principles and practices. The concept that God has one son that he sent to Earth never made sense to me. It was just something that I could not feel inside as being right for me. Then on top of this was all the religious clutter that has accumulated around the different sects of the Christian religion with each variation claiming to be the only real teaching of Christianity.

It was not until the recent breakthrough, which I experienced that I felt like I understood the true underlying concept in the Christian teaching. While the Buddhist and other mystic teachings arm you with skills and knowledge to peel the onion of your being and understand the make-up of your true inner self, the Christian teachings let you feel the truth of your inner self.

The very essence of the teachings of Christ is centered on the concepts of Love and Compassion. However, it is my understanding now that directs me to believe that this love and compassion is not something that is outside of ourselves. It is not "I will love this person" or "I will feel compassion for that person"; it is much more personal and important than this.

In my new understanding, the love and compassion taught by Jesus that was seen as love for our fellow mankind, but it was in truth really meant to be for our internal selves. In the onion model that I presented in the last chapter, we see at the center of the model the two fundamental parts that make up our being on this plane of existence, our True Physical Self and our Godself. In that chapter, I discussed the condition of the True Physical Self as an entity that is attached to this plane of existence but does not understand where it is or why it is here and as a result is deathly afraid and feels alone and unloved. As seen in this model, it is the Godself that is there right next to the True Physical Self at the center of our being. It is unperceived by the True Physical Self but it is right there, embracing it.

The Godself is the loving guardian part of us. It shows us the love and compassion that Christ spoke about. It is our self, loving and caring for our self. It is the spiritual self-love that bonds us directly with the ultimate source of the universe, the cosmic soul, God. It is this part of us that if we allow it, tells us that we are deeply loved and that everything is OK. This part of us is not judgmental, does not care what we do or don't do, or think or do not think. It loves and accepts us unconditionally at all times.

Our Godself tells us that it is always OK, no matter what. If I am scared of something, "It's OK". If I am feeling that I let my love ones down, "It's OK". If I feel my life is out of control, "It's OK". If I feel alone, "It's OK, because you are loved". The fact is that no matter what we do in our physical life, no matter how good or vile our actions appear to others or ourselves, no matter how successful or desperate our lives appear, it is OK and we are truly loved by the very source of love itself. Nothing in the material physical world matters when it comes to this intrinsic fact. Nothing can change this fact, it just is, and once this is realized, it is the enlightenment or rebirth that many teachings talk about.

This love and compassion surrounds our True Physical Self at all times but cannot be perceived by it without doing the work required to unfold the layers of protection set up by the physical self. Only through this work of self-contemplation can we disarm the protective traps that the physical self sets up. Only when we get to the core of our physical being, the True Physical Self, can we help this part of us, to know that the loving Godself is right there. We are so busy trying to manipulate circumstances and people around us in an attempt to gain love and acceptance that we cannot see this totally loving and accepting part of us is right there and it has always been there. Only by quieting the racing mind and real introspection can we see and feel this wonderful truth.

The awareness but still living in the everyday

Even when we see the truth of our make-up and begin to understand our relation to the universe, we cannot escape the fact that we are in a human form and exist on this worldly plane. The more we become attuned to the truth around us, the illusion of the importance of world actions begins to lift. Politics, power struggles, wealth, excess, and mass media all begin to seem more and more like meaningless commotion, even childish. It is, therefore, important that we change our perception of the world around us to see that these things can go and we don't have to give them power over us. We can work hard and strive to make the world more just, more peaceful, less chaotic, but it is important to know that our value to the cosmos is not dependent on what we do or don't do.

The physical self is wholly tied to this plane of reality and can only comprehend things through the perception within this plane of existence. Like in the analogy that I have used previously, it is like a small child that is in unfamiliar surroundings. The child is afraid and perceives life-threatening danger in every noise and movement. Yet, from a different point of view, the child is safe and sound in a protected place with a loving parent just out of sight. Just as a child has an active imagination and sees all sorts of imaginary things, we see our perceived reality in the same way. Our Godself, on the other hand, sees reality as it is and knows what is best for us just as a loving parent does for their child.

Because we cannot escape the fact that we are in a human form and exist on this worldly plane, we are constantly susceptible to our physical self-acting in its own perceived interest. This part of us is attached to this plane of existence and only knows what it believes. It cannot take part in the understanding of our true situation in the cosmos. Therefore, it always tries to maneuver us according to its narrow understanding of the nature of things. Only the most advanced spiritual seekers are able rise above this truth. The rest of us may have glimpses of our Godself, but for the most part find ourselves becoming anxious and agitated over everyday events in our lives. We still fall into the traps set by the lower layers of our self. We may even see the traps and know that the actions that we make are part of the self-protection mechanism, but we still cannot stop ourselves from making them. We need to understand in our journey that we are part of this plane of existence and cannot separate our-selves from it and, therefore, will be subject to thoughts and actions based in this world. However, this does not mean that we need to be discouraged when we do something that we know comes from that part of us which acts to protect itself. We need to keep coming back to the realization that no matter what we do everything is OK and that we are loved and accepted just as we are by our Godself, with no judgments or conditions. No matter what we have thought, said or done, or will think, say or do, everything is OK. Everything is always OK.

Sometimes we really feel the love of our Godself and we truly feel that everything around us is OK. At other times, we do not experience this feeling, but even then, we can simply know deep within that we are being watched over and that everything in our existence is OK and just as it should be. Before I had the realization that my Godself was there for me, I would believe in a philosophical manner that we were where we needed to be in our lives, but did not truly understand what this meant until I experienced the revelation of my Godself and the unfolding of the cosmos while driving home that one day from work. Now, I know that all that I perceive that is happening around me, and all the actions that I make are just motions, and me, you and everyone are all part of the cosmic symphony where everything is just as it is supposed to be.

The Oneness of Everything

The concept that everything is derived from the same source of energy is one that has been around since the beginning of self-contemplation. While this concept is normally found in the religious and mystical teachings, it has found its way into theories in modern day physics. There are principals in physics that state that matter and electromagnetic energy are quantized packets of an underlying field of energy that can spontaneously come into existence and then disappear. This happens due to an underlying field from which everything is derived and which everything in the universe is connected to and a part of. Although this is a principle in physics that is accepted by many, it is understood that we are not able to measure this field with physical instruments. It is accepted because the principle logically ties together other principles that have been measured and exists as a logical extension of our observational understanding.

The concept of an underlying element of which everything is composed is analogous to the structure of the cosmic realm. We appear as separate human beings to each other just as particles of matter seem discrete from one another. And just as the physics theory predicts an underlying field that all matter is derived from, in the spiritual realm, there is an equivalent underlying energy that everything in the cosmos is derived from and connected to. And just as in physics, this underlying source of energy cannot be detected or perceived.

The source of inception for all spiritual beings, for all planes of existence, for everything in totality is the cosmic soul, the all, God. Our Godself is a realization of the cosmic soul. Everything stems from this source; the apple that you eat, the tree swaying in the breeze, all the people that you see, the sun, the stars, everything. Everything is part of everything else. Everything is a part of the whole.

We come into and live this life with the perception that we are separate and distinct entities. All throughout, we believe that there is our self and that which is everything else. It is ingrained in us that we are distinct beings. Because of this, the concept of oneness is very hard for us to accept. It is foreign and even undesirable to us, and because this notion is so alien, we reject it. We do not like the concept of losing our identities, of losing ourselves into the seeming giant void of the cosmos, so we just do not consider it. If we do contemplate on it then we do so only as a compulsory component of our religious teachings or as an academic exercise when we are philosophizing, but deep down we never really feel it or accept it.

As we become more comfortable with the concept of the oneness of everything, a large burden is lifted off us. We begin to see that we are all part of the ultimate source of spiritual energy that makes up the totality of everything. We begin to feel this fact the more we allow ourselves to contemplate it. The more we are attuned to this understanding, the easier it is to stop fighting and struggling against the cosmos and be more at peace with everything and everyone in it. Once we allow this understanding to take root and grow, our perception of our place in the cosmos changes drastically allowing us to see that we are much greater than what we believe ourselves to be... greater than we can imagine, greater than can ever be imagined.

# Epilogue: The Journey Continues

We are all on a journey of cosmic spiritual development. It is the only reason we are here. If you really look at the possibility that we could have come to this place and time where we can contemplate our own existence, I do not believe that anyone can support the fact that this could have happened by chance. I do not believe that this place we are in just is, and that we as beings just are. I cannot believe that this reality exists just as we perceive it and there is nothing more.

If it was the case that we are random happenings in the cosmos then I do not believe that we would have the deeply profound calling to find our place in the universe.

The journey never stops. Even when there are times that we wish it would. It continues while we are awake and asleep. It continues through the joy and pain. It continues through life and death. It continues through all the planes of existence. It is part of us, it is us.

So like everyone else, I shall continue on the cosmic journey that we are all on. Having what I believe are insights into aspects of this journey does not exempt me from being human and being part of the physical world. Therefore, I will continue to live life everyday. I will do the best for my family that I can. I will go to work and do my job. I will worry about my relationships, children and finances. I will make mistakes with those around me that I will regret. I will lose loved ones and feel intense sadness. And I will have periods of contentment. But the journey for me will also be about my relationship with the universe. My relationship with my Godself and the knowledge that the part of me that is connected to the ultimate source in the universe is there, it is loving and watches over me. I know that there is really nothing else that I need to do in order to stay on the path of my journey. As with everyone, I am already on the path and God and the universe are guiding me every step of the way.

This short book was meant to highlight the main concepts in my understanding of our journey. I purposely did not go into significant detail on many concepts in order not to blur the important ideas. As I have stated prior, as concepts get more complex, it becomes very easy for us to get lost in the minutia and lose sight of the important ideas.

It has been difficult to boil down the years of contemplation into the concentrated concepts of my understanding found on these few pages. If I find it important to continue writing, future books may further develop some of the concepts presented in this book in an effort to expand on them.

As was outlined in the foreword of this book, please take whatever you want from this writing and disregard the rest. If you don't understand something, just let it mull over in your mind. If you strongly disagree with something, as many will, then don't trouble yourself with that part. You can agree or disagree as strongly as you need to, I will not be offended by any thoughts generated as a result of this book.

Finding our connection to the universe around us and the cosmic soul is a deeply personal pursuit. No one can tell us what we need to do in order to get there or what direction is the right on for us. No prescribed interpretation or actions will be right for you. You must find your own path, a path that will take many unexpected turns and ups and downs. You must trust that you are being guided by the higher force in the universe. And you must believe that you are loved, a love beyond any love that you understand and that everything is OK, everything is always OK.

We all move together on this great journey we are on. We are all fellow travelers on the road of Samsara, the road to oneness with the cosmos, with each other, with God. I wish you all the best on your journey. I am there with you, we are all with each other, we are all part of God and God is us.

The Universe is waiting for us to open our eyes and see the cosmic dance that we are all a part of

Feel the beautiful connection

Feel the loving grace of the cosmos

Experience the oneness of everything

Everything is Me

Everything is You
**BACK COVER**

