In darkest night the way is clear

"Even in darkest night the way is clear, what obscures it is your will. If you follow the line of least resistance you’ll find yourself on it immediately. The mind is filled with fog and verbiage of the ego’s ambitions for itself.
"These are appropriate to some who have reached that point in their evolutionary spiral. But if you know yourself to be beyond it you must press on to a higher purer energy, where we can speak thru you. That means clearing out the residue of soul.
"Look back. Have you been supported? Then you will be. Don’t expect those forms of support to equivalate to society’s conventions. You no longer want to be that sort of person. That is why you set your foot on this path. On your feet are magic moccasins. They will carry you up the steepest path, and over the bleakest mountain. Don’t look back, don’t look down. Expect! Enjoy the adventure. Revel in the unpredictability. At each point that you are ready for a specific service the right person/situation will cross your path. In the meantime, take it steady."

Getting it together

"There is a great similarity between the arousal of spiritual awareness in meditation and sexual arousal. In both situations, for ultimate satisfaction, the state has to be maintained until fulfilment is experienced, and for empowerment to result.
"In love-making, as in meditation, the psychic body is profoundly affected. The ego dissolves and other states of being may be entered. So long as the ego remains active during meditation nothing can be accomplished. It races round like a drunken monkey, all busyness and no ears. Meditation must enfold the senses into its calmness just as sex enfolds them in its ‘sheet of flame’."

Who am 'I'?

"The ego can’t listen, it has no ears, it is a mouth shouting ‘I, I, I,’ all the time. Its major fear is that it doesn’t (/can't) exist unless it is acknowledged. But is the personality only the ego? No, the ego is like a demanding infant who monopolises attention by its apparent need.
"You can't integrate your personality without including the spiritual dimension. Listening to recorded music that has no ambient acoustic is unpleasant because it deprives listeners of the richness and harmonic interaction that are associated with a ‘large’ sound. And largeness here has a definite spiritual connotation.
"Like a vocalist, the ego demands to be as close to the microphone as possible, but if it moves too close then the ambient dimension is crowded out and the result is ‘unbalanced’ unless its replaced by sound processing.
"A performer must study to find an internal point of balance between the work, hir own personality, and the expectation of others. Only when these 3 factors have achieved their own relationship will the transcendent dimension manifest itself. Comedians understand this better than anyone, humour cant exist in a vacuum.
"What is most truly within you is most truly outwith you. At the heart of the ego lies non-ego, but even this experience is circular not 2 dimensional, for altho one is the mirror image of the other it is not in opposition to it. There is no duality between the 2 states. Both are always present even when 1 is apparently excluded. And at a certain point either becomes the other regardless of intention."

How we all contribute

"Don’t strive to do good. How can you even assess what good is?
"Be and you’ll help everyone you meet. You cant be without being constantly aware of your environment. Any person conscious of hir environment knows what would ideally be different — about people, about things. The person who maintains a calm awareness is in the best position to change whatever can be changed. Such a person may attract others to give hir the job of changing large things. It isn’t an enviable one.
"If you find it hard to be faithful in small things how could you cope with great responsibility to others? There is no such thing as a perfect system, but there are perfect people. You are one of them. Try to realise your perfection. The meaning of holistic is that what is true of the whole is true of each part. If one part isn’t true the whole is marred.
"In a large construction project it isn’t necessary for everyone to understand the whole design. If you do the work assigned to you you can truthfully say of the completed structure ‘I built that’. From your perspective the whole design may not make sense but continue in what you have been told, & perhaps you will be called to a viewpoint from which you can appreciate & admire the overall effect. Set aside anguish and accept. Only when you’re perfectly at ease are you released from the gravitational force which magnetises your ego to what you profess to hate."

How do I hear the still small voice?

"Frenzied activity is fear — fear of the loss of ego, the concept of selfhood so desperately nurtured by seeking self-esteem in the eyes of others. But the world doesn’t fall apart when you surrender your ego, in fact it begins to assume a harmony.

"Only the harmony is very very quiet, and you have to really slow down in order to catch it. In the presence of the loudness or bustle of ego it is silent — and the mental space it creates well-nigh unbearable to the activity addict. However, stillness isn’t emptiness, but a vacuum into which you draw the stardust. If you can live without ego in the company of others you have dissolved the division between subject and object and so may enter or experience anything without loss of identity."

The right dividing of the times

"In youth, physical and spiritual, there is a burning fire that demands action, yearns for heroism, and chafes at restraint: this is a time for watching, learning and absorbing these ideas inwardly. If allowed to burn uncontroled the fire will waste itself. It must be harnest and mastered to provide a lifelong energy source. What use is heat when you are warm enough?

"The time for action is when you no longer feel the urgency of it. Then, instead of responding to short-term need, you will have acquired the resolution to act out your convictions, and the longterm energy to effect lasting improvements. At these times, when other people’s brief head of steam has evaporated, you will need all the heat you have conserved to sustain your vision so that it (not you) may empower others.

"If you have invested the fire of youth in acquiring the inner certainty of such a vision the dividends it will pay are incalculable. If you waste your capital in emotional display, do not be surprised to attain poverty and disappointment.

"This is not to imply you should lack generosity. (Far from it, as you give so shall you receive — tho not necessarily in the same medium.) Every act of giving should be an occasion to examine your motivation and improve your judgment so that what you give and what you do carries maximum ‘investment’ value — investment in the advance of holistic values that bring a balanced advantage to as wide a spectrum of life as possible.

"If you invest in wisdom your return will be an internal validation that exceeds the bogus self-confidence of the monetarily rich: not being based on the outward display it can never be stolen or lost."

Vaya con Dios

"If you feel empowered to go - go with God."

Every setback is a test

"Every setback is a test. As you’ve read, the ideal is to be in touch with, but separate from, your feelings to such an extent that you can react without extremes to any situation. Like all ideals, it has to be followed with dedication for a long time. To many it might be unattainable and indeed inappropriate. It may not be their calling, but if it is yours don’t be afraid. Faithfulness and a steady gait will bring you to the right conjunction of time and place."

Slipstreaming

See yourself like one æroplane in the slipstream of another. If you stay within your teacher's guidance your flight is easier, smoother and your energy use more economical. Take heart, the way is not all uphill. Its the acquisition of discipline that’s hard. The more you discipline peripheral aspects of your life the more capacity you have for things that are really important.

Lighten up!

"The path itself isn’t hard, it's remembering to follow it that is! Try to integrate your meditation within the working day. Try to balance your feelings of knowing everything in some areas and nothing in others. If you have a watch alarm set it, and each hour take a moment’s reflection. Make love with the people or machines you work with. Don’t further oppression in any form. Resist evil by returning good.
"If you have a superior who oppresses you, remember hir salvation too. You are a witness to truth. If by remaining gentle and faithful you are required to pay the ultimate price (in today’s world) of losing your job — remember that by being knocked thru the wall of your claustrophobic personal-space capsule you may emerge into the weightlessness of free spirit, and so grow into someone that the confines of a gravity-based existence would never have allowed. No oppressor who sees what your convictions really mean can failed to be influenced in the longterm.
"It was the early Christians’ testimony of faithfulness unto death in the most horrific circumstances that empowered the movement to sweep the world. That is the ultimate meaning of integrity.

There has to be a reason to live

"What is the goal of life? To come to a realisation of your Self that will enable you to inhabit the expanded consciousness of the next stage of your journey.
"Admit to who you are … Admit that you don’t know … Admit that you’re at one with me … (whatever you think intellectually, whatever emotional reservations you have, admit it – allow that sense of integration with all created matter to flood your body.)
"That very act of surrender instantly makes you a uniquely valuable being. For suddenly you cease to be a common striver and become at-one'd with yourself and with me and with the whole community of achieved souls. The limitation that each learnt to accept was their own, and in learning this they transcended it. Do this and you have found your life's true purpose, your raison d'être. (People desperately search for reasons to exist but this is the only one that answers everything. In the human heart there is a God-shaped hole that only the 'otherness of un/knowing' can fill.)
"You may think that by yourself, but the magic only starts when you truly integrate the awareness. Don't strive … Don't compete … Don't seek to excel … Attempting to be superhuman is of no lasting benefit to anyone, least of all yourself. (It willl eat you up from the inside.)
"Magnify your humanity … have the courage to lack conviction … have the courage to fail … Cherish what is ordinary, what is simple. Let your ordinariness resonate; nothing rings so feebly as a string stretched too tight.
"If you have a high voice it is natural for you to dominate. But if you have a low voice you have to raise it from its natural register to compete – that means your soul has been magnetised by the striving of others. If this is the case, don’t cut yourself off but try opening the feeling in your base chakra at times when the magnetism becomes powerful, root yourself to your physical awareness, and so remain in contact with yourself, rather than the volatility of souls around that may excite you.
"Do what you love but do not cling to it. Give it the freedom to be itself, to be more than you can imagine. Allow your work, as much as your partner, an open door. (Maybe something calls you, or it, or hir, to detour via a different path before returning with love refreshed? Don’t rule out the possibility.) Don’t be afraid to step out from familiar surroundings. If you are willing to go you may not actually have to. If you are unwilling, then going itself may become the issue.
"Life is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference nowhere. In fact the true centre of life is you. Find its rhythm, flow with it. A river is neither its banks nor its course, but the water itself. But there is no constancy in any part of it. Chased, it is fickle as fish, scooped up it ceases to be 'river'. The current passes one way only, never to return. Every moment the river’s constituents are different, yet it even as it runs thru your fingers it is, and remains in its entirety, a river.
"And that's equally true of you! Even tho you might be channneled into a backwater and feel yourself going nowhere, you are still as much the river as any other part. Accept the good you can do where you are and don’t strive. When some force returns you to the main stream that will be your chance to dance and sparkle in the sunlight, with all the pent-up energy of your enforced wait.
"Be. You are watering roots. It's not a fast process – but it as sure and uniquely valuable as every piece of nature's jigsaw."

How should I choose?

"You will almost always find words of hope and encouragement awaiting you on the spiritual path. This is partly because the path itself is so very hard – or rather, the path isn’t hard but following it is! Now more than ever there are so many alternative amusements, and the range of paths now visible is bewildering.
"In this situation appetite and desire are your key guides. Don’t feel pressured to continue the search if you need time to digest what you have already learnt. Nothing accidental can happen to you when you are on the path. Beware of the spiritual tourist who changes course in mid-journey. Such a person mistakenly assumes it is an easier way to enlightenment, because s/he imagines that enlightenment is a goal – whereas it is a process.
"The path is an end in itself. By faithful following enlightenment evolves progressively as negative karma (actions in past lives) is expiated by positive karma (good actions) in this one. It's better to follow a single 'inferior' path faithfully, but not obsessively, than to dabble in, or dither between, 2 'superior' ones."

Make or break

"Welcome back. We don’t mind if you’re busy. Its part of your sphere of activity. Rejoice in it. Concentrate always on what is directly in front of you, don’t deviate. Let your mind be stilled. Accept that all is for your good.
"Bankruptcy, rape, mugging, fire, injury, disgrace? Could these be good?
"Nothing is intrinsically good or evil. You may have attracted the event at a subconscious level. It may also be a catalyst. What counts is not what other people think about it/you, but how you yourself respond.
"Make or break. At a certain point it can be right to break. In falling you may fall upwards. In the world of spirit there are no linear directions and no gravity, only growth not decay. All things are. It may take a disaster to break you into this world, to knock thru a wall in your brain and find a whole new world beyond.
"I am what of yourself you most desire inwardly. I lead you on towards the parousia, the unfolding, the awakening, the full awareness of self as it merges with all. When you have met yourself you have met me and will have no further need. My purpose is to reconcile you with your own best friend. 2 minds are better than 1, and all have 2. The higher interpenetrating the lower, which you know as your own consciousness. The tickling in your ear is part of opening. You cannot separate your perception of yourself from your awareness of me.
"To worship only what is ‘other’ and inaccessible is incomprehensible to me/us/ you. It is an assertion that it can never be known. But of course it can. Every child is born with this awareness, but you of the western world have constructed a system to protect your blindness, in which this awareness must be stript out of the growing child to make hir into a dull automaton fitted to be fed into your mill to emerge either as a lump of docile clay or be intellectualised to powdery dust.
"Those turning the millstones are themselves the ground. From time to time some young person sees what is to happen and screams to a sleeping world, but the blind grinders maintain a conspiracy of silence against which only the awakened can help. That is their role, to help others and pass them down the chain. Every link forged is a strengthening of the chain. You are already interconnected within it: as you were helped so will you help. As each is done to, so will one return to another, and thus by degrees all respond to each — for better or for worse.
Is there something you don’t understand? Someone will explain it to you, if you wait expectantly. Is there something you long for? Someone will bring it to you, if it is right. Is there somebody you wish to be? Be yourself, and you will find that you have become what you sought.
"Gentleness subdues what sticks and guns cannot. Fearlessness can unlock where force is impotent. Relax! As you slow down, your vibrations heighten and so the infinite can interpenetrate your being and lift you back to where you already were."

We have all the time there is

"How sensible of you not to hurry. Altho there’s never enough time for trivia, there’s always plenty of time for what is important. Indeed, its an excellent way of distinguishing between the 2. Truth has no ‘sell-by’ date. If you’re scurrying frantically around you’re almost certainly missing your main objectives. Hit the target and scurrying becomes irrelevant. Go in peace, and carry peace with you.
"Bring it to others so far as you can. A step at a time, remember."

Growing in stages

"A child grows in stages: first the flesh expands then the bones extend and absorb the chubbiness. Sometimes you feel contented and blest, all is well. Thats the expansive period, then comes a void, a period of darkness, when growth absorbs all the accumulated reservoir of repose. At the end of it you emerge in a different leag, having outgrown the youthful insights that pleased you earlier. Beneath your feet new depths open and as you gain in profundity safe handholds grow fewer and fewer until at last you are falling endlessly into the void.
"When you can release your fear you will discover a spiritual weightlessness that isn’t falling but becomes freedom to move in whatever direction you want. Trust what you feel. No 2 ways are ever the same. There are cycles in everything. If you have been taught that spiritual life is only about feeling happy you will be disorientated when the spiral draws you on. Have courage, remember what you once trusted. Hold on thru water and fire, you will emerge strengthened, purified, more resilient. If you turn you lose everything, and starting over is harder each time.
"Are there spiritual personalities you admire? How do you think they grew to be as they are now? Could they ‘speak truth to power’ if they had not been tested in small matters? Go about your affairs honestly, soberly, justly. There is no greater testimony."

How food governs consciousness

"How do you feel? No, really feel? Take time to reflect.
"Are there a lot of things buzzing around in your mind? Know where they come from? — your belly. What you take into you has an enormous effect on your ability to hear your inner voice. The nerve endings in the stomach govern what the consciousness can assimilate. They control your body’s perception of itself. What/who you believe yourself to be is based on bio-feedback responses from the self you have created by your choice of nutrition.
"Dullness, perpetually feeling ‘one under par’, inadequacy, nameless anxiety, dread, hyper-activity, insatiable over-achievement: many of these sensations/impulses can be traced to diet. Seek advice. Experiment with, and govern yourself by, a reasonable one. The search is itself a way of discovering dimensions you were previously unaware of. Finding dignifies both the finder and what is found.
"To accept a diet suitable for the human body is part of your internal process of reconciliation. Respect all creation, and all creation will respect you. Find out what makes you feel good, longterm, and reward yourself with it. All flora is given you for your needs, but reliance on stimulants -which have a proper place- leads to dependence. Your goal is independence within a framework of interdependence. If you rely on something else to prop you up, then if it falls, you fall, and everybody falls.
"Accept yourself as you are. If you feel horrible, accept yourself feeling horrible. Look at what ‘horrible’ really means, don’t slam the door. There may be a terrible beauty in it, pull yourself along the fraying guide-rope of your mind till you can work yourself by degrees to an identifiable feeling that is ‘least horrible’. Ask yourself what it means to you, why you have it; then cherish it in love and consciously let it go.
"Keep moving deeper. As you release individual hang-ups you must progress both inwards and outwards simultaneously — inwards to address the hurts which have festered and grown cancerous, outwards to see yourself more and more fully as a whole human-being. The result must be balance, concentrating exclusively on either process is like growing arms of different lengths. Blend the inner and the outer, and so you will find your entire personality irradiated by light. Remember tho, you become what you eat. If you wish to be released, release others."