Grace

> In every way I seem to be stuck, spiritually, financially.

"Look back over your life. How has grace come to you? It cannot be commanded."

> How can I experience Divine Grace, I am in despair.

"Divine Grace is all around you. Allow it to come to you – be sure not to repel it throu your own feelings of unworthiness. That is why we repeatedly urge you simply to allow. If you are on a sandbank, wait for the tide, struggling will do no good.
Remember, all desire the light – even those with impaired vision.
Spread outwards what you hope to receive. Create an environment that feels like what you want. Put love at the heart. Hold firm to your vision and use your prayer to me like a rudder to steer you with the current."

You are a co-creator of the universe

"Spread outwards what you hope to receive. Create an environment that feels like what you want. Put love at the heart. Hold firm to your vision and use your prayer to me like a rudder to steer you throu the current.
Trust that the path by which you are led is the only one that goes to the place you want to get to. But, you must constantly energise and reenergise that reality. That is your right and your privilege as a co-creator of the universe."

Dream Prayer 1

In darkness is the light.

In the unseen, the form of what is to be.
Love blooms in a stony wasteland as well as in a garden -
So God fills every heart held hollow for hir.

In fear, the gift to know your self.
In pain, an infinite resource of power.
Sorrow colours the night sky with a rainbow
since the dream-time world defines every waking action.

O you, my helper in the light,
draw me from the disharmony of illusion
to the consonance of a reality that
empowers my own existence as it enables others.

Sai Baba

> Help, Sai Baba, help! I want to come to see you, but I can't unless you fund me.

"Be at peace. Allow. Follow."

> mirabile dictu, I was funded to visit Sai Baba by the BBC the following year!

Words & meanings

"An airport in no way represents the totality of a city or country. It is a convenient entry point, a place where you touch down. Only upon leaving it can you discover what the country you’re visiting is really like. Words bear the same relationship to religious understanding – they’re a fine entry point but soon you must leave them and voyage into the unknown, trusting the maps you have acquired. Not all maps are perfectly accurate, but nobody bothers to make one that is hopelessly wrong. You can, indeed must, trust what others have recorded about the routes you can follow – otherwise you can easily get lost and have to retrace your steps to begin all over again. But to see words as synonymous with meaning is like not seeing the 90% of an iceberg beneath the surface of the water."

Love changes the landscape

"When you can do nothing else, concentrate on love. Try -even when it’s hard- to realise you are surrounded by love. Use your energy to send out love as much as possible, especially to those you imagine are opposed to you. Do not look for the current situation to be dramatically altered by your love (tho it might be) but expect that love, if applied diligently, will create a new situation where the constraints that currently bind you will be loosed."

Straining

"You cannot fall because there is no downwards in the spiritual life – just as you cannot rise because there is no upwards. Neither can you grow or diminish. You are entire.
Progress derives from resolution, from resolving contradictions in your personality.
As you do so you slip throu the nets that restrict those enmeshed in coarseness or anger.
This straining process ultimately releases you from all earthiness into a being of the purest spirit.
That is your reward for all the trials, that is what your testing is for."

Hurry = Worry

A river takes millennia to carve its course – a tree several hundred years – you have taken decades to reach where you are now. Hurry = worry. Whatever is made well is made slowly.

Trust is the natural order

"The river doesn’t need to know it is traveling to the ocean. It is simply 'doing what comes naturally'. It can do no other – it 'trusts' its guidance, gravity. The same trust upholds you. The river cannot choose, it is not in its nature, but you can choose – either to follow the natural contours of your life, the flow towards the ocean which is the immergence of your ego in the cosmic unity, or you can strive to impose your own plans on your life. God respects both, but one outlasts the other by millennia. Use trust as your guide and yardstick as you slowly assume focus on this great journey."

Atma - Brahma

"We, the Gods, surround you. If you would understand us, understand your self. You are different from us in only one respect – you have a body.
"Let us explain: Perhaps you have seen the letter A on a screen with the image repeated so it appears to stretch three-dimensionally in space? If you are the foreground A (the A that you see first) we are the intermediate AAs which diminish from your perspective until they reach infinity.
"Now think of it the other way round. Imagine you are looking from infinity towards your self. Infinity is no longer minuscule. You now see the function of the intervening hierarchy of AAs connecting what you previously thought remote to the human perspective.
"Infinity (the ever-evolving Godhead, Brahma) and manifestation (you, Atma) hang together as easily as either end of an expandable decoration. But neither end would make sense were it not for the middle which connects them, just as they are the logical extension of the middle. In ‘the real world’, that is the unseen world, the intervening links are necessary to step down the blazing infinity of power which fuels the universe to levels that can be handled by you. Electricity is still electricity, whether calculated in gigawatts at a power station or microwatts in a torch.
"If you want to understand further, relax your mind – Imagine you are in your favourite bit of countryside on a beautiful day after a good lunch – You are content. Under these circumstances your mind is free to explore anything without needing to know. Knowledge for its own sake is almost always harmful. In the spiritual life, experience /undergoing precedes revelation."

Be love(d)

"I am your God – you shall have no other Gods but me. Stop fretting. Allow your stillness to manifest its reward. Be in a state of constancy and prayer. You know – that is your power. Manifest it with quiet determination. We want you to succeed. Please simply accept and trust.
Don’t duck. The prize is in the severity of the test. Bear it without flinching. The discomfort is temporary, the reward everlasting. The purpose is to test and develop your stamina – if you call the test off by not enduring, your stamina won't increase. There is a purpose – trust.
Be love. You are love in the world – whom if not you?
Don’t worry about publishing these thoughts. Be them, that is the best form of publication.
You are infinitely precious in the great scheme. Please believe this and allow the process of wholing to complete itself."

> During this time, after the collapse of my magazine, I gave myself to composition.

Listen!

"Obey – don’t plan!
Err on the side of generosity.
Seek to understand the spiritual topography of the experiences you pass throu.
Be alert for signs, but interpret them intuitively not intellectually."

Trust your self

"Can you stop planning – dare you stop planning – and just be open?
We mean only good. Above all, trust – trust your self."

Why *not* be simple?

"So you see, even when you’ve done all your planning and all your clever dodges it still comes back to the simplest things. So why not be simple in the first place?"

Where love & trust rule there is no inadequacy

"Fear is the product of inadequacy. Where love and trust rule there is no inadequacy."

Holiness becomes you

"Holiness (intunity) becomes you – wear it like a robe of light and noone can harm you."

You are forgiven

"I am encircled by love –
led onward by love –
sustained by love.
Love is my present
and my goal.

Be still O soul – listen to the waves washing against the shores of your heart.
If in the world you have karma to undergo, in the eternal present you are cleared of all sin.
In your heart neither Jesus nor Buddha nor Sai nor any aspect of God condemns you – you are free – acknowledge that freedom and let it manifest in your life."

Uncover your golden heart

"To uncover your golden heart, softly and gently wipe away the dirt with your hands. If you ram a spade in or seek to yank it clear of its setting you will only injure yourself and your heart.
Trust that you need do no more than gently wipe and it will soon sparkle. But you must spend time on it."

Your work is to be yourself

"Your work is to be yourself – that will produce the richness, that will produce the sweetness. Music has the potency of electricity – its power can be harnessed for good or ill – but the experience of music must be grounded in the body."

When it's time your timing is right

When it is time I will reveal,

To prepare for revelation you must already know,
Knowledge comes from inspiration,
Inspiration comes from trust.
Trust is simplicity,

Simplicity never questions the timing.

Don't allow the weather to affect your inner truth

"The difficult times are no different from the easy times — for the ‘easy’ times should never be taken lazily, nor should the ‘difficult’ times give cause for anxiety. The same consciousness guides you — the same forces attract you inwards to the realisation of your true nature as both human and divine. Only fear can hinder the journey. Know, don’t just imagine, know that you are protected so long as you remain full-square within your own sense of truth. But if you are untrue to your inner senses we are powerless to help you because that is how we help you – that is our line to you – if you cut it, it goes dead for both of us.
"To create birth immense forces come into play. If you oppose them you injure everyone involved. It won’t take long. Trust and relax."

The universe reciprocates the trust of those who trust

"You have a unique turning point. For your own sake you must trust the unknown. You will entrap yourself more deeply in problems if you do not step out & release what binds you.
"You know the answers – that’s why there’s nothing else coming thru.
"If you trust, the support system will emerge. The problem for you is that your divinely-given ego is so strong it veils your spiritual personality. Once you needed that quality. Now you no longer do. You must let it go or it will stifle what is coming next."

Find your pattern - find your self

"The money issue is about coming into balance – no binge banquets and then days of fasting. Accept your pace and pattern and resist the carbohydrate highs of fair-weather friends who offer what they can never deliver. Coming into balance is a part of aligning yourself with the deeper patterns in your soul life, which alone can trigger your release into spiritual freedom."

> True. True. But dear me, how long it takes us to real-ise these things.

Let the goal be the path

"If your feet stray outside the sacred space you will have terrestrial problems.
Let your walk be on the holy highway of your soul's progress.
You can do it."

You create your reality

"Look out of your window. On the tree, the birds are playing. They are fed. They constantly seek food because their 'truth' (/nature) demands that they sustain themselves. There is summer and winter. But you control and create what happens around you – is it feast or famine? Simplicity or tricksiness? It represents a reality you have generated – that ability is part of your God-like nature. What are the birds doing? They are playing – glorying in their God-like nature.
If you can live in that reality you can truly bring the highest radiance into the awareness of the mundane."

Each changing season of life brings its own richness

> Recently I was dragged to visit Cadbury’s World by my kids – a full-scale chocolate exhibition that is now part of their enormous Birmingham factory. I was struck by how the whole enterprise rested effectively on the shoulders of one man, John Cadbury, who had not been merely a single-handed manufacturer, but a manufacturer to relied on an internationally tradable commodity. In other words in his early days he must have been doubly at the mercy of chance, for commodities are a notoriously fickle market-place. Yet on the back of this capricious monster he, and later his sons, erected not merely a successful company, but one which committed itself to spending millions improving the conditions of its workers – building houses with individual gardens in the 1880s and laying out an environmentally sustainable community that is its own monument. Such an enterprise now appears ‘as safe as houses’ – yet, whatever advantages they may have had, the reality must have been very different and at times, no doubt, very testing indeed.
> So it’s important to keep a sense of perspective when we face difficulties. And that perspective stretches way out of our sight, out of one single lifetime. I know no more of John Cadbury’s vision than the exhibition told me, but one thing stands out: in his ‘allowing’ the process within his life –his Quaker commitment to fair dealing and his concern for his fellow humans– he created a thought-form which survives as a living present.

"It is hard to embrace times of trouble and uncertainty, and yet they are as natural as changes in the weather. For how often, looking back on that film of our life, we find those periods have actually been ones of exceptional ‘innergy’ – what we thought was a disaster was the seed of future growth. We cannot know the ultimate outcome of any of our actions, what counts is that it seems right, in the deepest sense, when we take it – for the rest we must trust the ‘innergy’ that comes from allowing what is right for our lives.
"Within each of us lies our own answer. We cannot wrest it from ourselves as we would so dearly love. We can only allow it to emerge. Allowing is not by any means a passive or fatalistic process, it means fully engaging with the processes of life, but listening (to your self) as well as well as expressing your needs. And to do that you must first trust your self. And in order to trust your self simply allow."

Allow

"In the midst of great anguish it must seem impossible that it should play a useful part in your life – and yet if there is one lesson to be learnt from the lives of those who have overcome obstacles and reached peace, it is that they have allowed the processes within their life to complete their cycle, for unless the underlying dynamic of the problem is dealt with it will recur.
"Metal is fashioned into sharp or useful forms by being forged and tempered in fire. Amid the flames can it see any point? No, the point emerges as a result. We create whatever happens in our lives – albeit involuntarily. It may not be what we 'want', but it will be what we need if we're to grow. (We can of course choose not to.)

"If you are alone after a relationship has ended, especially if you have children to care for, it must seem as if the sky has fallen in. Each day is an unending weariness, followed by a night of worry. Remember the story of Alexander the Great who sent soldiers to a hermit /philosopher in order to seek understanding of life’s events. The philosopher made no reply but drew characters in the sand, and what he wrote spelled ‘this too will pass’.
"Thinking over what occurs in our lives the images blur like a film in fast forward – so many things that seemed important at the time, so many demands, so many worries. What we remember most are the good times, they seem like gifts. And out of the good times comes a sense of something we have always known – a happiness to which we feel we have a right, and which makes us anguished when we are denied it.
"When those times came they came so easily, the laughter was unforced, the companionship so natural. But nobody is now denying it to us except ourselves – & one of these ways we do this is to make certain conditions before we can be happy – usually we need a specific person or thing, eg money. Actually, happiness is what we are – if we can allow ourselves it. All too often we have an image of ‘happy’ that involves these other ingredients and so we say “I cannot be happy because I haven’t got X or Y.” Not so!
"Finding happiness without our prime ingredients is scary because it demands we allow our whole operating system to be remade from within. But stick with it, because when it's done it'll be the one you really wanted all along.

"One of Buddha’s stories is of a person pursued by wild dogs who falls into a pit, but in the pit s/he sees vipers. To escape s/he attempts to climb up a hanging creeper. Above hir appear two mice, one black, one white, who gnaw at the creeper’s stem. At that moment s/he sees a small cluster of wild strawberries directly within hir reach. Mmm, how sweet they taste."

Accepting turns the negative into a positive

"In the spirit world all is harmony because noone is limited by possessions of any kind. You may think possessions set you free, but they tie you to them. There is an area of mental conflict between the freedom that is yours as a child of God and the responsibilities you assume in connection with your incarnation.
"The skilful sailor must learn to harness head winds to provide the same energy as tail winds. If you have to tack, remember your direction and bless heaven that even in adverse circumstances energy is still offered to you for the accomplishment of your mission. Fear only being becalmed."

Living in the experience of trust

"For each person there is a ‘central issue’ – a psychological crux. For you that is money=trust, trust=money.

"Trust is reciprocal. It is not just a question of your trusting me, I must also trust you – which is another way of saying the ‘not–I’ within you must also trust the ‘I’, the ego that you are. Or to put it another way your ego–consciousness and your spiritual connectedness must be completely integrated. There must be no thinking one thing and doing another. Consonance, harmony.
"If you have been given a very complex character that may be quite hard: but this is the sort of test you have come here for! You have chosen one of the hardest paths of all — yet one of the most rewarding. and quickest. Because when you’re involved with commerce, that is with the lowest common denominator of worldly affairs. There is no sympathetic brotherhood who can collude with you to create an illusion of spiritual achievement.
"You are and will always be sustained. I think you know that at least by now. But that is not enough, you must go forward in full faith. It is inaccurate to talk of a ‘test of faith’ for that implies failure and spiritually there is no such thing as failure, so it would be better to talk of the proof or proving of faith in the sense that it is the first fruits of harvest.
"Honesty begins and ends in your most secret heart – not in what is believed about you elsewhere."

Being dependent should not equal dependency

> Holy one, your perfection and the simplicity of your beauty never cease to amaze me

"Thank you, thank you. If you're beginning to see /feel beyond your own need then we can work together. Who can work in partnership with someone who always places hirself in a position of inferiority? Tho I sustain all those who depend on me for that is my role, I rejoice when one reaches the maturity to begin to create a reciprocal relationship – for being a provider /sustainer is awfully lonely. Fun and the desire for friendship are as much the characteristics of higher beings as of those whose consciousness is dominated by the physical.
Pay all your bills in faith. Do not retain what is given you to share. This is the message of money. Holding it fast burdens you and keeps you earthbound; giving it away releases you to fly to the skies where you will meet it fluttering around free.
Go. Let us see if you have learnt your lesson."

Death wish

> Today I wish to die. I wish this great burden could be taken from me. I place myself in your hands Sai Baba, do with me as you will.

Do you? Then I will. You have gone as far as you can, now allow me to carry you the rest of the way. Only, you must relax and allow to happen whatever happens. I am with you. Hear my laughter in your ear, see my twinkle in the corner of your eye. Know that I am always with you and will never leave you. Sai Ram.

> This was a time when my life was in meltdown. But, when the melting was over a new form emerged.

The evolution of insight in world history

"In the beginning was the light, and that light continues to enter human consciousness, and the darkness cannot enclose or assimilate it."
We tend not to notice daylight, because its existence defines our awareness and ability to see. Moreover its colour temperature is the one by which we judge the quality of all other light.
So it is with that inner quality of enlightenment. Each of us has an instinctive sense of mental daylight. Other than in cases of mental disturbance, humans know the difference between light and darkness, good and evil. Indeed, symptomatic of this is the need of dictators to mask their corruption with a façade of legitimacy.
When cultural debris is swept away awareness of the inner light is astonishingly similar the world over.
However, the transmission of light necessarily involves its coloration, for every carrier medium has certain characteristics. And that is as it should be. The idea of ‘purity’ is a desirable illusion which engineers and philosophers pursue as a highest common factor, but the reality is that each carrier medium contributes a special quality to the information that passes thru it. And so it is in religious traditions. If we can see that the quality of light – the crisp clear refractions of a diamond, the rainbows of a crystal, the heavy sensuality of a ruby – if we can see that the character of each light-form is an important element in experiencing light itself then we need no longer be disturbed at other people’s choice of light source.
Not all light-sources are tremendously exalted. We select whatever we can handle. Some people block their windows against the light; but even they will use a dim, grime encrusted bulb to see by. It is the same power that enlightens all – in different degrees.
If you think of the progress of your life, you look back and you wonder how you could have been so blind as not to see earlier patterns which are now blisteringly clear to you. We can only see what we our karmatic development allows us to see.

How should we understand karma? It simply means the law of cause and effect. Hindus and Buddhists believe that this cause and effect stretches across more than one lifetime – and that its purpose is to balance that undying part of ourselves which returns as often as it needs to the mills of physical existence to complete a process of transformation. I sometimes see it myself as being like those fiddly hand-held games that preceded electronics, where you had to get a set of ball-bearings into fiendishly incompatible holes. You might get one or two in, but it required infinite patience and determination to get them all in.
Before we are able to pass totally from the earth-plane we have to surrender all anger, for anger is related to fear, and fear prevents the stability needed for us to surrender our personalities to the greater design. In different lifetimes those who have committed themselves to the path of inner development balance their life experiences to the point of achieving balance. As that point approaches the bigger perspective opens and we then see something of the cosmic structure which sustains life on earth. (‘As above so below’)
I believe this was why the greatest spiritual figure of all time, Jesus the anointed, had to experience the breaking of his body – it was to become the atomising of his very essence into the structural consciousness of humanity.
> I have been helped to understand this metaphysical structure because I am conscious of receiving the energies of an Indian holy man named Sai Baba. He first appeared to me in a dream in 1990, and in the dream I was specifically made aware of his name. At that time I had never heard of him to my conscious knowledge, and it took me a year and a half to discover whether he really existed.
The experience that I have of his energies empowering me, especially during the hours of sleep, is stronger than similar experiences with other spiritual figures whose energies have attracted me. I do revere him as an avatar (living manifestation) of God but this does not exclude or impinge on my respect for other great teachers and sons of God.

Is there a convergence of religious thought now communications have so shrunk the world? On one level this has undoubtedly happened. So called New Age thought synthesises the tenets of reincarnation, of respecting the earth as our mother and awareness of psychic powers with a non-doctrinal sensitivity to the spirit of Christianity. Some of this may appear ill-digested to outsiders, and to be sure it often is – but the fact that many, many people are independently coming to a collective sense that there is more to life than materialism and wishing to develop an extra-structural way of expressing it is a cause for celebration rather than derision.
There is of course also a body of opinion which is polarised by the revelation of similarities between different religious traditions. Fundamentalists are people who have experienced a religious opening in one particular tradition and are unwilling to conceive that their experience could be replicated in or by any other cultural context. In a sense the power of fundamentalism is drawn from a two-tier religion, the division between experts (priests) and the uninformed. I can think of no situation which this division is not harmful, and the insights of George Fox in breaking with humanity’s instinctive need to create objects of worship is, I believe, in the purest tradition of Christianity. For I am clear that the spirit of Christ exists in the rediscovery of that power is everywhere, in every object, every thought that surrounds. We do not need to look in obscure places to discover the light that already surrounds us.

Knowing comes separately from thinking

"Glory in your path. Rejoice in the route you are traveling. Allow the experiences that come to be your teachers – for they cannot lie or deceive. When you have completely surrendered – when there is nothing left to surrender – when you have surrendered even your surrendering – you will know. As long as you think, you prevent yourself knowing.
"You think because you feel inadequate. Your mind says ‘if only I knew …’ But knowing wouldn’t make anything different. If you can trust not knowing you are richer than the most erudite professor.
"To be in tune with yourself is to be at one with your purpose in the world. God asks nothing more of you than you value every breath: let each moment be supremely focused and love will flow from you as perfume from an open bottle."

Have faith

"Have faith – have faith!
"You have your calling, just as I have mine. Each of us is tested to the limits of endurance. The goal of life is for the individual soul to learn to surrender hirself into the fullness of the All, the OM, and thus at the last be released into the completeness of everything/nothing that is the divine nature, like the leaf once again becoming the soil.
"All religions teach this – the imagery varies but the theme remains the same."

Trust the path

"However improbable the path, you must trust me if you are to reach the goal.
The goal I intend for you is that of complete inner peace. It has nothing to do with any target or ambition – they are like booster rockets which fire the main vehicle into orbit and are then discarded.
Do not fear the arrow by day, nor the terror by night – maintain a continual sense my enfolding protection and let love be your guide."

Moving towards one-pointedness

"Do you not feel closer now to your goal? Do you not feel an inner resolution?
Everything could not happen at once. All has progressed according to inward priorities. No doubt you would have liked to see your material circumstances settled first, but my great gift to you is to leave you this creative spur. You must seek inner resolution before any outward form can manifest. You only need to know that I love you, and I bless you, and I lead you."

"Glory that your inner awareness no longer depends on outer circumstances. You do, it is true, feel certain twinges as the storm rages around you. But what you are feeling is the voltage being stept up as power is given to you to handle it. If you were training to unicycle across Niagara Falls you’d need to prepare yourself in all sorts of ways, so it is for this high wire. I, your Baba, am the trainer. Do you not trust me? I singled you out, and led you gently, sustaining you in your blindness until you were ready to see. Trust me. I am."

> At this point the storm certainly was raging around me, and learning inward calm when there is outward turmoil has been a valuable lesson.
> I have a more ambivalent response to recalling how close I was to Sai Baba at that time. I subsequently visited him. He remained a strong presence in my consciousness. I am confronted now by the difficulty of responding to a spiritual teacher whose reputation is clouded by scandals – notwithstanding the many & great gifts which I received throu him.

The Power of Love is very different to the Love of Power

"To ask ‘how much love can you handle?’ is to ask ‘how much power can you handle?’ For love confers power – tho if you use it as power the energy turns negative. It is like money. If you allow the capital to accumulate you become rich. If you spend it you are soon left with nothing.
Love and power are both gifts. They are given for a purpose – to bind up and make whole. If they are given to you, see that you only use them in those ways. To do otherwise is to incur a heavy karmic debt that may take æons to rebalance. The more of either you have, the more sensitivity you should exercise lest you burn those you wish merely to warm. But you should have no problems if you remain centred. Do you see what it’s all been about now? You can laugh!"

Don't fall back on old patterns

"Well, I’m sorry to have the last laugh, but that was really so easy — like stealing candy from a child. I offered you a hook into your old lifestyle, and you swallowed it with the line and sinker! Dear me! You can do better than that, you really can — and look at the time you wasted! So now, rejoice, praise, clear your mind and start all over again!"

> Can't remember what this was about.

Balance

"Stillness and activity are both illusions. The essence is balance. Peace is not an absence of action, any more than action is an absence of peace."

Be still & know that I AM god

"Did you act from a leading? Then you have acted without blame.
Be simple — be still — allow the response to come to you."

> At this time I was terrified for my very existence. I can remember bouncing from nights of inner enlightenment & a sense of profound well-being to white knuckle days spent on the phone apologising to people who expressed justifiable outrage &/or disappointment. Or contrariwise nights of anguish & uncertanty followed by fulfilling days.

Inspired prayer

"Most holy and loving God, my uncomprehending approaches to you are inspired and guided by your gentle magnetism. Give me that simple trust to accept that what is happening is your work in my life. Open my heart to swim with the great possibilities you prepare for me. Still the butterflies in my stomach and the doubter in my head. Let me be filled from the crown of my head with your glowing love, and protect me against the folly of my own decisions and desires. Guard those I love."

> This inspired prayer was given to me as I faced financial melt-down. I appeared likely to lose my house, & with it the trust of my wife & kids – yet when starting my enterprise I had believed I was guided by the cosmic force & so I had to trust that what was now happening was part of the plan. And so it was.
> We did indeed sell our house – for £13,000 more than we were asking – which almost exactly matched the amount of money I'd lost. Now we live in a beautiful house in quiet countryside, where our life-processes have been quietly unfolding ever since; albeit not without some fairly big hiccups. But the experience of this time in 93 has given me great confidence in trusting the God I sense within these events to bring about a harmonious conclusion after the intermediate processes required.

What is the lesson?

"Love. You work to spread love. Let all your doing be as to me. If someone short-changes or swindles you, imagine I had done it! Yes! What would you say then?
"To clean it, a blanket is plunged many times into the water, until the dirt is thoroly scrubbed, beaten and rinsed out. Then when the washer and the blanket are exhausted the blanket is hung up to dry, and all the dirt is discarded along with the water. If you haven’t understood a lesson it's repeated until you do. Don’t worry, you have as long as it takes! So just accept — that’s always the lesson."

If you trust the Powers That Be, trust the process

"Don’t try. Let truth flow out from you as effortlessly as water running downhill. It doesn’t have to urge itself onward. It simply responds to nature. It is your nature to love and wish to live truth. Simply express it."

> This was given to me at a time when my life was in melt-down. I was being sued & threatened left & centre for a situation that was not my fault. I was going to say that it was not of my making, but that would be naive – yet looking back on it I see how this guidance was a golden thread guiding me throu a wild & threatening night. I can also see how it was part of my process that my soul had led me into.
> Normally when people are in a difficult situation their first reaction is to try & back out, but actually if you allow the process you will arrive at where it is intended to bring you.

Being a ball on a fountain

"Your mind becomes confused when you try to figure your way round terrestrial problems. They are too many and too numerous to be resolved, products of other minds attempting to solve other problems. Work at the level that suits you. Don’t be afraid of a high calling. It may separate you from earthy people, but at what gain! Concentrate on being the gift, not giving it.
If you are a person who focuses hir energy on acquiring certain articles do not be surprised if these articles bind you to the earth. Powers of this kind are most rewardingly used for the benefit of all, namely to draw into existence healing, philanthropic endeavours and community-creating good-will - in other words whatever promotes wholeness and spreads that awareness.
"Concentrating on your own needs alone you create division: therefore instead of releasing your power you imprison it within your desires. Since it is not separate from you, your whole awareness is correspondingly focused on specific tangible objects rather than the liberating effect of raising consciousness. Whatever you do, do it for the sensation you have when your inmost being smiles and laughs - for truly, when you do actually please yourself you please all, and when you please all you yourself are pleased.
"All must be held in balance between the earthy and the airy-fairy, between the needs of self and the demands of others. You cannot make a mark and say 'this is my ideal point’, because, firstly, what would you make such a mark on?, and secondly, you yourself know that in two minutes, two days or perhaps two years you will feel completely different. Aim to be a ball on a fountain of water, dancing calmly in the sunlight, any violent moves and you’re likely to fall off. Concentrate on truth and the problems will either unravel themselves or disappear."

Balance the inner & outer

"The importance of detaching yourself from the expectations of others cannot be overemphasised. We are not talking of consciously entered agreements, but of the projections of a person or group. Be the opinion high or low, don't be enslaved by feeling you must respond. Walk quietly in self-awareness, be as close or as distant as you feel led.
"Another thing, don’t lose touch with the you you once were. As some people grow spiritually they retreat from the world into a cosy circle of esotericism, and as a result they may lose their full humanity because they're unwilling to stretch their minds to keep their outer awareness in sync. Try to avoid that - allow your deepening insight to expand your consciousness but keep grounded in the outer world of common-humanity."

Allow

"The birds were singing about you, now they are gone. One called, the other replied, and so on. They had no awareness of affirming or denying a destiny. They did what their heart impelled. That is your calling too – but if your heart is flighty whatever you achieve will be borne away by the next breeze. If you spend time with your heart it will grow and assume mass. It will become self-affirming, that is self-reproducing.
"Once you start, the process is self-expanding – not a one-location, one-off planting. Once a growing season has take place your seeds will be borne on the wind all over the world - until a network of consciousness exists.
"So go now, in my strength, and gently hold these feelings, choosing to surrender rather than fight - for so you imbue and, in your scattering /being scattered, impregnate all."

Leave space for dreaming

"Learn to say no - to yourself quite as much as to others. Dreamtime is essential for all humans: it is the appointed period for recharging the psychic batteries. If you allow it to be crowded out you become a mere battery case with no power left inside.
"Your fellow humans require many things of you, but all I require is for you to be in tune with your Self, for the true self is attached by a silver filament or a micro-link to all that is real. Then like a mariner with satellite navigation you can lock onto extra-terrestrial guidance and so pursue your voyage with absolute confidence whatever the conditions you encounter. Make space to dream. Don’t let anything or body steal it or short-change you."

What are you afraid of?

"Yes, letting go empowers. Yes, yes; say yes."

The chosen are tested in the furnace of humiliation

"You must go throu your fears to uncover your true nature. Fears are connected with lack and self-limitation. Trust your guides to gently peel away whatever is to go. In your case many fears about want/survival encompass your ability to create – well, these have to go. You must accept the initiatory night if you are ever to see the fullness of your true dawn. Go to the limit - you will find it isn’t the limit.
"Accept death, and accept dying in all its forms as nothing more than transformation – as part of life itself, as release. Do not fear to die to whatever you are now. Every organism requires certain structures in its early stages which it can dispense with later on. What feels like death is your limitations eroding to allow the larger picture to emerge.
"Trust. Trust it. Trust your guides. Trust your own heart, which has brought you this far without deception. Trust me, the force who draws you onward into the power of dawn.
The more you trust, the more you are: the more you are, the more you trust.
"God has no needs because s/he is total trusting. S/he is the only personality who makes no demands whatever of you, that is why so many find hir so hard to comprehend, hir touch is as the wind caressing your shoulder: you look round expecting to see someone, you see nothing: for there is noone, there is only everything, and it is only in comprehending (trusting) the totality of experience that you can begin sense the creator-spirit.
"If you ask how one awareness comprehends all, the answer is twofold: on the level of physical manifestation (the exoteric) that one awareness is all, or, all is one awareness. On the metaphysical plane (the esoteric) there is no division of separate personalities into separated personalities. It is like the closest and deepest family where all are in instinctive commun(icat)ion. The only law is love, and this love irradiates the universe(s).
"You can find and experience all this for yourself if you trust and love your own stillness enough to feel the infinitely powerless -yet all-achieving- solar wind of love passing throu you. When you can, you have hold of the immortal part of you, your very Self; but you can no more hold onto it than you can hold onto love; if you clutch it will evaporate within your hand.
"When love has shown hirself to you like this, you must follow, as surely as the pilgrim must follow the call of the road, or the wild animal hir senses. To do otherwise is death - in this sense deathis turning back, stagnating, not changing, and ultimately decaying. Even this has a place of course, but if your calling is to re-fine /redefine yourself in order pass behind the mesh of appearances to the freedom of the ever-expanding universe within, you will miss your fullest self-actualisation if you cannot let go and simply trust love hirself.
"It isn’t hard. Really! You are only being asked to be as wonderful as you know yourself to be, and you are being assured of acceptance so you don’t need to pose! Be, and know that I, your teacher and guide, will never allow you to come to harm if you trust. (If you don’t I cannot be answerable for the consequences. Trust, my dear one.)

"I have not given you my name because some of you know me by one name and some by another. All of us who serve the light at an esoteric level are like jewels, we reflect different intensities of light and balances of colour in order to help those whose nature most attracts them to respond to that particular energy-level, but it is the same light entering all. You too can be a light-transmitter, rather than a light-absorber, if you will allow the process of purification to work in your life, clearing away the dross, scrubbing clean the windows of your soul, spring-cleaning the dark and dirty corners of accumulated garbage.
"When you are in tune, in love, en-lightened, your whole being resonates with health and you attract good to yourself just as surely as the opposite state attracts the opposite fate.
Be, my darling, my love. Be, don’t apologise, be your true self."

> This came just after the bombshell had burst when my magazine had collapsed & only disgrace & disaster appeared to lie ahead.

Trust only 'that of God within you'

"Nothing is ever what it appears on the surface. Do not trust in anything except that of God within you."

> This was given to me at a time of extreme crisis in which everything I thought I was building in /throu the divine force was being stript away. And it's the truth – alarming as that can be.

Even the dark way leads to the light

"What do you expect? Miracles? Yes, you should expect miracles; but for miracles to happen you need to stay free. Miracles happen when you have a need and are in line with your energy.
"Do not limit me by your expectations. Fire purifies. I require of all who follow me the test of fire. The 2 may come together in some great crisis.
"Welcome adversity. Give praise for setbacks. They are to prove you not to reprove you.
"Well? Maybe you do have to walk the dark way? Are you willing to trust even that? 'Darkness and light alike are mine.’
"If you have done everything required of you what have you to reproach yourself with?"

> Later in this day in 1993 a bombshell exploded in my life. My magazine had been publishing an advertising supplement for a healing exhibition. The printer which the exhibition co had insisted on turned round & demanded £1000 above the contracted price. While we were negotiating the exhibition co went behind my back & printed the programme w/t the advertising - leaving me in the lurch. Coupled with that my advertising manager suddenly disappeared. I was thus absolutely hog-tied.

The training program

"Part of the strength of a soldier or a sports person is hir self-belief. It creates a psychic force-field around them. The integration of their personality and body is supremely focused in combat-readiness. In order to reach that position they had to undergo long, hard and painful training. So do you.
"When a human coach orders a trainee to do something s/he expects to be obeyed: if the trainee fails the result will have implications for the relationship. If you believe that those spiritual realities you have experienced are trustworthy submit yourself to them just as you would to a human coach. You don’t need to worry about being required to undertake any exotic tasks – all the early lessons are about listening and responding. Only when you are completely secure and obedient will you be sent any of the harder lessons.
"The divine force does not require your help: but if you prove your determination to at-one with it you will be led on a training program to make you into a spiritual warrior sustained in your intunity on a personal wavelength by a c(h)ord of divine harmony. Inner strength only comes from battle-toughness. Don’t shirk conflict. Look for the hottest battle-scene you have the faith for and stand firm regardless of what is thrown at you. Try not to duck out, but if you have to, don’t regard it as failure. The object is not a hard surface but a tough and flexible core."

> This came one day before an event that just about anyone would have regarded as a disaster. I certainly did! Looking back on it with hindsight I now see how by breaking things out of my hands the divine force was offering me the most effective kind of transformation.

As below, so above

"In a train journey you wouldn’t expect to travel for days on end entirely in brilliant sunshine beside a beautiful river. No, to get to your destination you must sometimes pass throu tunnels to reach different valleys – nor is the weather under your control. The vehicle you travel in is not immune to defects, and there are minor matters like uncertainties with making connections!
"In the outer life, your consciousness sets your goals and integrates matters to ensure their realisation. In the inner life your sub-conscious or super-conscious (they are effectively the same) sets your goals and integrates matters to ensure their realisation. Accept that if you are clear about your goal the path that unfolds is the one that leads there. Don’t worry too much about the route it takes, there are all sorts of considerations which may be invisible from the ground, but which your guide/s can see clearly."

A new cycle

"The start of a new cycle. Time to cleanse yourself of the past and be open to the future. Be in your power (Qi), and let your power be love."

> I hope that this message is relevant for you, today, as you encounter it.
> From my perspective, uploading this13 years later, I know now that it came at a specific time when matters were heading towards a dénouement in my magazine, CataList. The magazine itself was not breaking even so I had looked around for ancillary activities we could bolt on - and had undertaken to sell advertising for a health exhibition catalog. This required more staff but at first appeared a succesful and profitable in that it increased our turnover & thus eased our cashflow. What hapened occured later can be read in the entry dated 18/6/93

Love

Love allows.

Love does not force.

Love empowers.

Be still & know

"Let every movement come from stillness. Stay within stillness as much as you possibly can, and return to it as soon as circumstances permit.
"I gave you a hard time yesterday to see if you could stand it. You passed with flying colours. Consider yourself an initiate. This tight squeeze is deliberately to test your listening. You will need to be very careful."

What we think, we are.

"Your failures have come from your need to control. If you try and do so again here, only disaster can ensue.
RELAX.
ALLOW.
It is not you creating a thought-form so much as a thought-form creating you.
Publish only what you want to publish.
You have done your praying - you have created an image of the reality you want ... now can you sit back, remaining focused, and allow it to happen?"

> How clearly I can remember spinning around, trying to cover all the necessary bases, trying to wear my hats as a publisher, as an editor, as a writer and as the public face of CataList in quick succession - or indeed simultaneously. My ego was involved in believing that I could achieve this impossible juggling act in the absence of any real support, with all our finances touch & go. And for several months we did.

Cause & Effect

"Whatever comes into being will reflect the forces and the priorities which gave it existence. If your concern is principally to make money the vehicle you create will reflect this: if it is to teach spiritual truth, ditto. Whatever your motivation do not expect that you will be free of problems. but if your motivation comes from a high enough point you can be free of worry – as long as you are allowing the energies you are connected with to work on your behalf.
"So you see, always, the magic words are Allow & Be.
"If you allow, your higher self will correct whatever is amiss in your life or perception – and Being, like breathing, is all the Universe requires of you. Yet the higher faculties require you balance practical and metaphysical needs in order to grow harmoniously."

Problems are manifestations of inner psychic reality

"When the needs of survival drum in your ears it is hard to hear the soft pulse of the spirit.
Problems are always a manifestation of inner psychic reality. So often you blunder around in the dark looking for the fault when the answer is always to stand by the door and turn on the light. See the overview before you delve into the detail. The highest, purest light is always available to you. Nothing is ever clear if you're too wound up to see straight!
"There may appear to be an antithesis between doing the right thing and survival, between spiritual direction and material needs. If you are preoccupied with your survival it may (/probably will) obscure your true spiritual direction. A new-born baby’s sensory awareness centres disproportionately around its thumb and mouth, as it grows older its nerve-brain balance spreads more equally over the whole body.
"When the spiritual senses are first awakened you have this immense need to suck the universe dry - you require constant feeding, there is an ache in your stomach for nourishment. But if you cannot get past that stage you’ll never be able to take solid food. And without solid food you cannot hope to grow. If you are going to let your spiritual work be governed by your perception of your material needs you can really forget having a spiritual work at all!
As above so below - not as below so above! Few who achieve spiritual mastery do so not by innate ability – but by persistence, and a refusal to be bought off with anything less than realising the highest truth within their perception."

Keep your focus

"We approve of the changes you are making. Do not hurry them. Allow. Remember, you have all the time you need. Keep your focus, and allow its intensity to draw more and more of what you want within its ambience.
Be clear, and others will be attracted to your clarity.
Be peaceful, and others will be attracted to your serenity.
Be powerful, and others will be attracted to your confidence.
Be forgiving, and others will be attracted to your love."

Spiritual Days

"A Day in spiritual terms is an epoch or process. For instance your life is a 'day'. Deep insight is needed to see longer cycles, particularly since they often overlap, and what may be the start of a cycle (the incarnation of a master) is also a point in the middle of another 'day’s' arc.
"A physical day is a defined period, a revolution of the earth. A metaphysical Day is more like a piece of music or a book. When someone embarks on it they often have only a vague idea of the length, and the process of composition itself begins to define size and scope of the work: it acquires an inner logic as it progresses, interweaving the thought-strands until the creator feels that an inner logic is satisfied.
"Embarking on a spiritual enterprise creates a similar set of conditions, even tho the whole work may involve many individuals over more than a single lifetime. This is why it is so important that you do not attempt to 'control’ its spirit. What you do naturally reflects you: but if you try to control the result you limit it to reflect your attitudes and the prejudices of your peers – rather than allow it to acquire an energy that engages & integrates your whole personality in its creation, leaving you as well as it changed as a result.
"For any Day’s work to be fulfilled it is important that those who are called to it lay the whole of their personality 'on the altar’ of that work. They and it have been brought together precisely because of their alignment; if one party thinks s/he 'knows best’ it skews, or even prevents, the alignment. Knowing best may be as apparently harmless as following conventional wisdom - itself usually a misnomer!
"Learning to be true to the impulses of the spirit requires the kind of adjustments couples have to make when they first begin to live together. Their relationship’s 'day’ will be defined by the depth at which they’re willing to make adjustments. So it is in any spiritual work you may be called to. Because that work is an organic spiritual force quite apart from your involvement, you and it have to make adjustments. Remember, in any relationship the reactor is the one who moulds it!
"Do not be surprised if the work's evolution [in realms to which your vision may not yet be adjusted] may sometimes create pauses during which you may feel abandoned. When you are intensely involved with a human lover you are super-normally responsive and can sometimes smother relationships by failing to allow your lover the time and space to develop. That involves trust. If you cannot trust that s/he will return you don't have much of a relationship. So also spiritually. You may experience 'gaps’ in your contact with the divine energy source. There will always be a reason, but it may not be possible for you to know it at the time, any more than you can know why your lover has not arrived. Afterwards, when it is appropriate, you will know.
"You are like a traveller receiving directions on the phone from somone who knows the way. If the guide does not tell you to turn off, stick to the way ahead until further instructions are received. To do otherwise is to risk becoming hopelessly lost, and possibly to stray out of reach of the transmitter.
"So, steadiness & trust are the two prerequisites for allowing your day to dawn, sustaining it as runs its course, and having the courage to recognise when evening heralds transformation. With those qualities stillness comes as a natural by-product, and that stillness brings the sensitivity to the existence of Days which are invisible to a loud type of consciousness."

The Choice

"The choice is yours: before you stand Life & Death – choose which you will. Either a full and abundant Life in the Spirit ... or Death by a thousand wounds at an earthly level.
Get free. Sail like a balloonist silently over the heads of others into the sunlit world of being."

> At the time I was still very much constrained by the social, financial & business pressures of publishing my magazine. These were to grow into a crescendo, which ended in a climax a few months further on. And this, while scary, opened everything up and brought about a profound transformation in me.

The forces of Shiva & Kali

"I create and I destroy. I break down and I rebuild. If you know better than me, go ahead: if you don’t, trust."

Love is the evolutionary force

> We talk of love, but what do we really mean? Is love a feeling or is it a principle?
"Love exists as a metaphysical force, creating networks of energy in response to many different kinds of input, not least ours. When we love we instantly connect to that energy network and feel an empowerment. Often you focus such empowerment on another person, but in reality the other person has simply exposed the power source within you.
"Love is felt principally throu a relationship. It is almost impossible to imagine the existence of love as a force if you are not experiencing it throu some human agency. Some people think the opposite of love is hate, but it isn’t: the opposite is simply 'not love’. You have only to look round our cities to see what 'not love’ produces. It isn’t hate, it's indifference. Hate involves the recognition of a similarity in another person which you despise in yourself. Indifference involves no process of recognition at all. Science has demonstrated in many studies that children, animals, even plants, fail to thrive in conditions where indifference, rather than love, is shown."
> How can we strip away the overlaid debris of a busy life and come to that personal 'power point’?
"Stillness is crucial. While you are full of busyness it is easy to overlook or to mistake that 'still, small voice’ which alone is your faithful guide. You have to be willing to follow it without precondition. You may fear an inner impulse could ask some impossible sacrifice, but that is highly unlikely. What is more probable is that your inner voice is attempting to bring itself to your attention and that this is manifesting itself as an 'issue’ because your conscious awareness is actively repressing it. Lastly, and most importantly, you have to trust the process. If you are in a strange city you have no choice but to trust someone who is leading you. Often, to use the old example, you may need to start from a different point to get to your destination – and that may involve the rebuilding of your personality. That experience is incredibly scary, you feel as if the essential you is dissolving [which it is!] - for you cannot experience the depths of love while you hold blocked energy (/anger) in your heart. Love is a dynamic not a passive force – and once you invite it into your life it will work as exuberantly and as completely as the growing grass in springtime. Allow."

Dreams create your reality

"If you maintain your inner focus, a corresponding external reality will be created: if you fiddle with externals you can never produce the inner focus you desire. Nourish the vision. Feed the wellsprings of your dreamself. Clothe your spirit not your body. You already have all the power you need. Simplicity will uncover it – 'ingenuity' will obscure it with false rules and projections."

The way to the heart of the labyrinth

> Why can I not just die and return to spirit like a flower that folds at evening?
"The flower performs its 'righteousness' and is released - so will you be when your dharma is complete."
> What do you mean?
"An animal or a plant cannot deviate from the path allotted to it, wherever it lies in the food chain. Its nature is its path; its path is its service; its service is its duty; its duty is its righteousness; its righteousness is its harmonious perpetuation of life. It lives without choices with its soul at one with the great soul of its species, from whom it derives consciousness and without which it would wither and die. That is the meaning of dharma.
"The life of any plant or animal is the highest form of existence to which you can aspire. When you pledge yourself to the great soul you invite the same forces to operate in your life which operate in theirs. From that point onward pleasure /comfort /happiness is no longer your principal concern; you are now athirst for this 'righteousness', for this connectedness to the great soul – and thus the great soul hirself acknowledges you by treating you as hir own nature. That is your dharma; that is your calling; that is your reward.
"Whom s/he loves, s/he corrects. You enter this new value system with many old preconceptions and prejudices. What you're experiencing is the difficulty in adapting to the new value system. Certain attitudes have to be re-formed - and that is often painful, especially if you think comfort is the highest good. The great soul does not concern hirself with what is easeful but with what is truthful.
"Be of good heart. When your difficulties have led you to understand the new attitude/s required, the time of 'testing' is over. You will 'have your day', depend upon it, but your day is of a completely different character to the idea of an earthly day. If you interrupt the process you simply delay its dawning."

Keep your vision high

"Love, love, wonderful love.
"When you invite love to rule your life you enter a new dimension and your aura expands accordingly. You cannot then go back to the hemmed-in way you lived before (tho if you allow that aura to wither it becomes like an unstable orbit – you could crash into other bodies or begin to crack up).
"Your central task is to maintain and develop your own aura, to power it with spiritual growth. If you start getting preoccupied by anything material your aura begins to wither. Keep to the high energies: keep to the high vision. Let love be your guiding light."

Stay focused

"Let noone and nothing come between you and the light. Stay focused."

> This was a time when stress of my publishing enterprise was growing unbearable. The guidance that came to me most mornings as I woke was like a silver thread of connectedness to my inner divinity which tended to get obliterated as the pressures of day took over.

Let your inner reality speak

"Undertaking worthy projects can be the enemy of your inner life. What you do or say must never be allowed to become a substitute for what you are."

Ships of the Dawn

"You are a vessel of light. You are surrounded by vessels of light. As you voyage it is your light, not some external source, which becomes the dawn that overpowers darkness to create the conditions for growth. In the metaphysical world light is created by the intensity of each soul’s commitment to hir own enlightenment. Enlightened individuals are beacons whose light enters the dimensions of time, creating permanent illumination for all who follow afterwards. But you, captain of your own small craft, how much of that light currently burning in your cabin are you willing to risk by bringing it up on deck? Is it secure enough to weather the storms of the outer world?
"Now, as never before, the self-generating night of ignorance thirsts for its own extinction in the growth of light. Your service to that light may be no more than to allow its qualities of warmth and illumination to shine throu you and connect the earth and to the unseen world. You can only bring to any situation what you are: if you are at peace with yourself you spread healing: if your heart and mind are at war you cannot help spreading division. Horrors exist on the physical plane, now, as they have always existed, they are the consequence of humans’ free will. Do not despair at the folly and self-slaughter of humanity, rather, marvel at its capacity for love and healing.
"No one part of the world’s experience can be transformed separately: those fortunate enough to know enlightenment, security or plenty have a direct responsibility for the welfare of the less fortunate. Any suffering you turn your back on will in time become yours. Only by entering fully into the earth’s experience of pain, desolation, murder and abuse can you be released from anger-energy into the multi-dimensional world of wholeness.
"Within the metaphysical realm there is neither gravity nor one single direction. The function of pain is to release you from gravity: the function of joy is to offer you direction. The more your light shines the more it reflects in others, and the more you become aware of the incredible multi-dimensional dawning of an enlightenment that is encircling this globe. We see its effect in the many movements inspired by a vision of individual and planetary wholeness. Some are networks of light, some mere disconnected pinpricks. Which are you?"

A Virtuous Circle

"The message is love yourself - really love yourself: respect, cherish, reward and expand yourself. Give yourself time and space to grow tall in the sun, and spread your leaves to recycle the sky’s energy back throu your heart into the soil."

Live adventurously

"Now you have strong foundations do not seek to build a structure that reflects conventional ideas about business. Live adventurously. Place your foot on the unseen path. Let the structure form itself organically. Always obey the inner calling rather than outer demands."

What is the main event?

"Whether success excites you – or worries depress you – remember your only spiritual task is to bear witness to the light. Nothingelse is your responsibility.
The real you (your soul) is separate from whatever you're experiencing.
Sometimes, to help with growth, you may be heavily pruned; at the time this may feel painful but it leads to lightness and better motivation in the long run."

Your heart is the hearth

"Keep the core reactor glowing brightly in the centre place of your heart. That is what matters, not all the outbuildings and public reception areas. The central inner vision is what really connects throu walls and beyond time.
Allow. Don’t force."

Balance

"And so we begin again - begin again to learn what we already knew - to climb hills we had already ascended - to wash what is already cleaned. Balance isn’t sitting still holding your breath: it’s staying upright on white water rapids, riding bareback, following your instincts in a waterless waste. There’s nothing to learn, nowhere to go. Just be."

> Having been left in the lurch by a close colleag, I was so angry that 10 days had elapsed before the balance of my mind was restored.

Patience ... again

Patience is more than a virtue, it is a prerequisite. Rush & bustle are unavoidable on the earth plane. But do you realise how little of what you do you need to? Concentrate on your inner priorities. Keep them uppermost in your heart, and let your heart rule your life.

> During this time I was deeply troubled because my closest colleag on the magazine I was publishing decided he wanted to go traveling. I hoped to dissuade him, because I depended on him. When I saw that I'd failed I became so angry that I couldn't receive any guidance at all for 10 days.

It is better to forebear with a friend than to be right

Love is all you need

"Keep love at the forefront of your consciousness. Ask, in everything, how does this advance love in the world?"

Keep love at the forefront

"Keep love at the forefront of your consciousness. Ask, in everything, how does this advance love in the world?"

> But alas see what happened, a few days later! If you talk it, you'll surely be required to walk it.

Be alive

"Nothing is more important than the life of your soul, not even your body, and certainly not your career or business. Even those you love are of secondary importance to your need to be true within.
"To gain the whole world but lose your soul would be to pick up a toy riddled with woodworm and watch it disintegrate in your fingers. Whatever your outer-life goal/s - they're only a means, never an end. You have been given it like a spanner to perform another task. Who heard of anyone becoming attached to a spanner? The part that requires attention is the inner-life.
"The outer-life gets attention because its 'vehicle' requires servicing: feeding /clothing /housing /moving /responding to other people. In time the 'vehicle' dies, but the inner-life never dies. Never. However if the circumstances are cold and there’s no nourishment around it will go into a sort of hibernation. When you ignore your true self it gradually shrivels – and, because all spiritual law is organic and holistic, it cannot suddenly just jump back to being what it was: it has to be nurtured /tended /respected /loved back into full life. That is why you must keep a balance between these 2 aspects of your character no matter how intense your outer life."

Don't accept substitutes

"Even when it’s bad it’s good. This is the paradox. Nothing can happen that is not for your soul’s welfare. This is not to say that the fountain-spring of life causes it to happen. Far from it. Many of the greatest horrors that afflict the world are of humanity’s, or let’s be specific man’s, own making – his intellect prefers to discuss a belief, and believe in a belief, rather than penetrate to the reality where there is no belief, and therefore no discussion.
"You are at war with yourselves: that is why the right hand fights the left hand. It is significant that in terms of body language it is the exterior terminology that is described. For it is a competition of appearances. And those who are caught up in externality are the slaves of 'belief’. This has led to the death of billions. When their shallow and half-formed psyches hear certain trigger words it arouses the dragon of confusion, and like a sleeper suddenly roused, they lash out without understanding. And many die."
> This is not bad?
"It causes great suffering to be sure. But there is no bad or good, for these are terms you use to describe what you want /don’t want to happen or what makes you (un/)comfortable. You must penetrate beyond the surface reality if you are to understand and come to any point of balance.
The law of karma (action /reaction) governs the physical world. An unbalanced action produces an unbalanced reaction. Like a spinning top running out of control, only balance, centring and renewed motivation can recreate gyrostability. Many forces act upon the soul, some are constructive, some are destructive. And good fortune may be harder to bear in purity than bad fortune! True balance cannot be deflected either by good or bad, high or low, left or right, forwards or backwards. Grace(fulness) is balanced energy."

One-pointedness

"The whole is the part: the part is the whole. All experience is one. Because of your conceptual limitations you cannot cope with paradox - you see different types of experience as separate or unrelated. For instance, sexuality and sanctity – athleticism and æstheticism – compassion and car usage. That is why we emphasise the importance of a simple unified awareness, being. So don’t strive after cleverness, or compete for public attention or reward. Just be, and that authenticity will draw to you whatever you require."

Actions create re-actions

> Why can I not accept what I am so clearly shown?
"The difficulty you have is karmic. You are governed by a mass of inert life-experience which has to be reanimated and redirected. Remember the law which states that every action produces an equal and opposite action? That’s what you’re dealing with. But it can work for you too! For if you have built up good karma it will protect you from falling too far - for a time at least.
"You have so many 'minds’ that you must nourish them all. Action and energy stimulate your primary sensory awareness - sport, hunting, driving. That can squeeze out your deeper consciousness (where real change happens). The 2 must be balanced. And the balance itself will help the process."

Feeling down is just another way of being

"So, you feel better; but are you better? If so, better than what, better than whom?
You are the same, all that has changed is your feelings. To accept yourself when you feel under par is not to enjoy or choose to wallow in those feelings, but simply to accept yourself. And if you can accept yourself for the 'worst’ you are, how much more will you enjoy your future greatness when your integrated best glows like radioactive phosphor in the dark.
Love yourself; love every part of yourself, including the unsightly bits, and you will bring true love into your whole environment."

Why

"After this test will come another, and after that another - until all the hate and the rage and the hope is squeezed out of you - and you will be content to be in the present without looking either backwards or forwards, just perfectly balanced. So you see there is nothing 'bad’ that can happen to you – for good and bad serve the same purpose.
"Love is the motive power of the Universe. If you truly find that Love within your self, and lock yourself onto its spiritual trajectory, you cannot fail to arrive at the total fulfilment of all experience that Love (alone) offers. Is this not the destination everyone longs for?
Go - be - love."

Just be

"Just be.
Take this time to be."

Being faithful in small things

"Be thankful if little is required of you - for it's much easier to succeed! Of those to whom much is given, much is required. You know what you need, so be attentive to your feelings. No matter how grand the design, everything proceeds by small steps - watch them and don’t become obsessed with what lies outside your reach."

Do not fear the dark, embrace it

"Integrate yourself. Introduce the liar within you to the truth-teller. Make friends with the cheat. Bring the sponger into the light. Do not fear the dark, embrace it. You cannot achieve anything until all parts of yourself are of one mind - then comes a fusion of light, energy and love.
"That is your work, not dashing around on a white charger. It is simple, unglamorous ... and lasting. Heroes come, the focus of all eyes: they have their hour and are gone, leaving the debris for others to clear up. But this is not how I see or desire humans to be. I see the disregarded old person who showed love to hir small circle as infinitely more valuable. I see and cherish all those who are invisible to the world’s false value-systems. You will be very surprised when you enter fully into the spirit world and experience the atmosphere of delight, truthfulness & liberation from public posturing.
"Spend time thinking about this, and how you can spread simplicity and joy into everyone’s life."

When it's time, you'll know

"You may feel ready to rise and go but if circumstances don’t allow you must bide your time. The harbour master will only allow ships to leave when tide and wind are favourable. Premature departure would bring disaster.
"You have a natural propensity for action. But the busyness of action drowns the focus of your inner flow. Don’t hurry and scurry: dredge out and deepen your channels. Rejoice, be still, this is your training preparation."

Feeling not ok IS ok

"It’s perfectly alright not to feel okay. It’s just another way of feeling. If you don’t allow yourself to feel bad, it’s quite likely you won't allow yourself to feel good either. Your feelings are your best guide to reality.
"Everything in life is fluid, and your feelings are far better detectors of change than your intellect. If you’re really in touch with your feelings you’re far less likely to be sandbagged by events or other people’s fickleness.
Forgive yourself for not being perfect.
Allow yourself to fail.
Losing a battle is often winning a war.
Every servant of the light knows these problems. If the period of training were not long and hard people would graduate with unresolved (flawed) psyches that could heal /whole noone. Just let love rule, and do not question. There are answers but they’d only throw you further off balance if you found them now."

> Taken in conjunction with the post dated 8/2/93 this leads to an interesting question: what is the source of the wisdom that is made available to us in this way? I believe the answer is twofold – & it is summed up in the phrase 'what is truly within us is truly without us.' What we think of as being most authentically (& intimately) personal to our own mind is in fact our point of greatest openness to the great Mind in which we all participate & which some people call God/dess. We are unaware that when we present our clothed & painted public face (ego) to other humans our naked arse (unconscious) is fully visible in a mirror – & that nakedness is our god-ward aspect – so all the time we spend prinking & perming our public face is wasted, since it means nothing to our participation in 'God' & is in any case irrelevant to anyone whose perception goes beyond a purely physical /external level.
> So I think we are all carriers of the great wisdom that manifests throu dreams & synchronicities, but that it enters the world with the unique flavour of the personality who brings it. This I understand as the Orpheus myth – music is a divine gift, and once it's arrived it doesn't really matter who brought it, BUT it depends on specific individuals in order TO arrive. But the message is 'be authentic' - pay attention to your own inner process, let that speak, so that your own mind learns to synchronise with the great Mind.

At the end of my tether

Dear God. Yes, I must speak now and be heard. I have followed what I have been shown as faithfully as I know (yes, I know that’s not very faithfully) and now I have come to a full stop. The problem is we’ve lumbered to the end of the runway and the big bird is still on the ground. I haven’t got the energy to turn round and do it all over again - and why should it be more successful the 2nd time?
I want to evaporate, to disintegrate, disappear, vanish – be reconstituted on a different plane. But yet, here I am and here is everything else. I want it to change, to be fun, to be light & bright, to be spring, in love with the world and the world in love with me.

See the response

> What do I feel now, in 2006, about this heartfelt cry? I had set myself on a path towards transformation because I needed to know my self, and to manifest my inward reality in the world – which is, I think, the artistic impulse. Of course we'd all like to say 'fiat lux' and see instant illumination reflected on every face, and if I could've done that I'm sure I would have. But I couldn't, and so I have had to follow the longer darker path.
> I've written elsewhere about the sense of dharma I acquired when I reached 'years of discretion' and first became conscious of my creative impulse/s. My vision was so much as odds with others around me that it seemed as if 'the time was out of joint, oh cursèd spite /that I was born to set it right' – I felt an obligation to work towards a vision of
music and of society that seemed to me the way things should be, and not to accept the way they are. I haven't always done this, of course, there have been detours – and the supreme irony is that the only time I really ever made any money was when I was 'writing other people's music' as a drama composer rather than my 'own'.
> While it was all happening in 1993, it was very hard to accept that following my 'path' (which I really thought I was) should lead right into the middle of a swamp from which there was no apparent exit. Yet I see now the profound transformation I experienced -the experience that the universe is not a morally-neutral environment, that there is a force which responds to & ampilifies good intentions (to put it no higher)- could not have manifested in my life without this 'testing in the furnace of humiliation'. For after the shit was kicked out of me I began to see quite differently. It was brutal and relatively quick, because that, in fact, was what I'd set myself up for. Afterwards there was still a lot more to be squeezed out (like getting all the air out of an airbed!) which goes on to this day — but the real reward is to begin to experience the reality, the shit-less seeing if you like!, that I sought.
> And what other purpose could there be to life than to learn to see 'reality', to understand that the so-called Real World is only a manifestation of a mind-set, and that if you subscribe to an alternative mind-set you can begin to manifest that instead. The process of shit kicking simply helps you to get a better perspective on what really matters. Insh'allah.

Trust & Be

"What great joy!
The Bible refers to the time of Mary’s purification. Any ritual is not just for the individual’s benefit, it is for a whole community. You may think you’ve learnt some lesson, but it may be part of the wholing process that you have to be the means of others learning it too - and that may involve sacrifice. If you can surrender your will you’ll bring great grace and purification into your life. Above all, if you have experienced trust you must trust now. Trust & Be."

> From 14 years later I can still remember the intense anguish of this period – running a publishing company, not to mention family life, with no reserves at all. It really felt like being squeezed till every fibre of my body was alive with pain. And yet the memory of that feeling of aliveness is one that I cherish and have carried with me ever since. Thus are gifts contained in the most unlikely circumstances.