Chapter 2

To Love God
The First Great Commandment

Meditation for chapter: Be still and know that I am God, that I am Love.
Mantra ~Kodoish. Kodoish, Kodoish Adonai’ Tsebayoth ~ Hebrew

"We know how much God loves us because we have felt his love and because we believe him when he tells us that he loves us dearly. God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in them." ~ 1 John 4:16

“Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain, can we truly know what love means.” ~ Leo Buscaglia

“A happy outcome to all things is sure.”
~ A Course in Miracles

A man came to a guru and challenged him,
“I will give you an orange if you can show me where God is.” The guru answered, “I will give you two oranges if you can show me where God is not.” ~ Source Unknown

“All of man’s troubles stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ~ Pascal



1) Thou shalt “love” the lord thy God with all thy “heart,” with all thy “might,” with thy “entire mind,” and with all thy “strength.”

Now this commandment has nothing to do with walking around acting all holy and self-righteous, and using holy names in our every day conversations, and never using profanity or going to church a lot. No! Forget all of that “you should do this stuff.”

In order to love God we must have the desire to know and understand God’s “way of being.” I remember when I was young a Televangelist program would come on Sunday morning and the opening remarks would always be, “Remember, He that is in you is greater then he that is in the world.” I always liked that, and it is profound to think that God is in me. My religion never taught me to find God inside of me, but that’s where I found God.

They taught me that I needed the church to find God? I guess if everyone found God on their own, that would be bad for business. God is in us, around us, in everything we see, hear, smell, taste and even more intuitively understand; “Omnipresent” - always with us and everyone else at the same time, and “Omnipotent” - all powerful.

In truth God is the space that unconditionally lovingly allows all things to Be. If you think about it God is the space that allows every thing to be, if there was not the space then your physicality would just blend in to every thing else but it is that space of precised nothing-ness that allows you to be, like a beautiful piece of music.

It is the space in between each note that allows the beauty of the music to be perceived with out the space it would just be noise. In truth all the space in all of the universe the nothingness is what we call God we are surrounded by and since every atom in your body is mostly space we are filled with the space we can call God. The greatest explanation of this is in Quantum Physics where they have found an intelligent link between every atom in the universe; this is called the “zero point field.”

In the Bible in Isaiah it says, “God’s voice is like a voice crying in the wilderness.” Also in John 1:23 he said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness...”

You will find his voice in the silence of your own divine soul; you don’t hear God with your ears or from someone preaching to you. When you have learned to quiet down your continuous ego-driven mind chatter and truly be at peace, then you will know.

Dr. Wayne Dyer calls the silence where you find God “the Gap,” the silence between the sound of OM or AH (two Sanskrit mantras). In other words, to know God you need to meditate and learn to calm down the restless mind of the EGO and learn to listen to God “with your heart.”

Meditation is learning to set aside the endless ramblings of the ego-driven mind and just be still; then you will feel God in your heart.
Now I would like to say a few things about meditation. If you try to force a stop to the mind chatter of your ego it will drive you nuts. Remember, “what you resist will persist.”

Instead, just watch your mind from a perspective as if you were watching someone else’s mind without a need to change it, just a desire to understand it. From this place you will notice, when you observe your ego, it will constantly change and eventually you will be able to let it do its thing and you can meditate undisturbed. When you understand your ego it loses all of its power to create distractions and illusions to get you off track.

The Ego has to make its self an unconscious process because if you observe its functions you will see it is extremely stupid, and totally insane, and it will always lead you towards pain and suffering. After many years of observation of my ego I see it is like a small mischievous child completely full of nonsense and often comical.
In the world we live in there are ultimately only two forces.

They are “love” and “fear.” These two forces are opposed to each other, and cancel each other out. In the realm of spirit or the Divine Universe there is only Unconditional love, Unearned love and it has no opposite, this is the driving force of the entire universe, it is eternal and limitless. So if you want to love God and be a force for good, recognize where you are coming from!

If your message is “fear based,” even if it is done in the name of good it is still opposed to love. To declare a war against any thing is to empower that you wish to eliminate, because this is an act of resistance. Also anything you fight against you don’t destroy, instead you empower it. This is so simple you may overlook it but don’t, it’s very important. You need to ask yourself, “Do I live in a safe and loving universe or am I in danger?”

“Your defenses will not work, but you are not in danger” ~ A Course in Miracles

We are not in danger, none of us. We are all being observed, loved, and protected constantly, without any judgments at all, just a desire for us to become continuous to love. Every single thing in the physical world is not permanent and will pass; the declaration “This to shall pass” is true about everything in the physical universe. The true you, on the other hand, is permanent and when the physical universe ceases to exist you will still be.

You are love! You are consciousness, forever alive in the present moment now. Love, as the world talks about it, has nothing to do with love but instead just an Egoic state of the desire to possess, and it believes by possessing this thing it desires, “ I somehow will be more.” Nothing you can possess will ever make anything “more” and will pass, and will leave you feeling empty and lost, ultimately causing pain.

There is a story of a man who married a woman because she could sing. On their wedding night she started to undress and he found she had falsies; she took off her girdle and her big belly popped out and when she took off her wig and makeup, that revealed blemishes and wrinkles and he looked at her and said: “Sing, for hell sake sing!”

True Love may be called many things. You could call it happiness, joy, bliss, freedom, awareness, consciousness, stillness, centropy, understanding, kindness, compassion, peace, empathy, Light, Spirit, God, the power of the universe, life force, timelessness or Eternal Life – it’s all the same – “Love.”

“Love castith out all fear” ~ Jesus of Nazareth

“Perfect love casteth out fear” ~ The Buddha

Fear, makes you think it is very important but it is pure Ego; it is Entropy, the downward spiral, the ultimate emotional vampire, and like Bran Stoker’s count can only remain as long as it is not exposed by the light of consciousness in the present moment; it is the desire to possess, the desire for power, fame and money; it is hatred, vengeance, lies, deceit, the great illusion, misunderstanding, the wicked one, war, destruction, decay, prejudice, the devil, Satan, Beelzebub, insanity, genocide, evil, the dark side of The Force, the anti-universe, the anti-Christ, or anything else that causes you to distrust yourself and others – it’s all fear.

Now if you have some fears that are very real for you then I could say they’re not real, and to you it will seem like I’m lying or crazy, but they are not real or a reason for you to be afraid. “fear is false evidence appearing real” and it is the opposite of faith; it’s having faith in reverse. It’s the belief that “shit will happen because it happened before” and as you perceived it at the time as bad then it will happen again. “As you believe, so shall you create.” It’s the belief that the past equals the future.

It is the belief that I am My past. It makes you think you are doing something very important, but it is only a resistance to the present moment. When we accept what is, we see that there truly is no reason to be afraid. In the light of pure awareness and consciousness there is nothing that will cause fear, you may need to spring in to action to take care of what is but never fear what is. Also there is not a single evil event or evil thing (a Judgment) in the world that you cannot trace back to fear! Not one!

Any message of fear promotes more fear and this is opposed to love; it is the opposite of God’s “way of being.” It is also not real in the realm of perception. So, how many messages a day do you get that promotes fear? How many conversations do you personally have that are fear based? How many decisions do you personally make because of trying to avoid something feared? How many news reports do you read or hear that make you fearful. Remember, ultimately there are only two forces in the world – “love” and “fear.”

That’s why Christ said, “Resist not evil!” Anything you are against is a fight against fear, and fear is not real, it is an illusion. It will seem real if we believe in it, but it is not real. Whatever we resist or fight against we empower, because whatever we focus on will grow. That’s the way the universe works. Again: God (the Universe, the Creator) is not fear! “God is love!” Anyone who would teach you to fear God, does not know and understand God’s way of being. This I speak with knowledge for I have experience God and I know for curtain he is love and love alone. If you want to be working with God’s or the Universe’s laws, just be for the opposite of what you are opposed to or afraid of.

Some people have learned to distrust and dislike the term, “God” because of bad or difficult experiences with religion. To you I say, “Use the term ‘Universe’ or ‘the Creator’ or ‘the Force’ as it doesn’t really matter what term you use. You can’t ever offend God; his way is “unconditional love.”

That means you cannot stop his love for you ever! That’s right - never! So don’t be against war, “be for peace.” Don’t be against anything you would judge as bad. Instead be for “all that is good.” “If there is anything good, loving, or of good report, seek after these things.” Any message against anything will produce the opposite of the desired outcome. This is because of the “law of attraction,” or you can also call it the “law of creation.”

This law is God’s law for the physical Universe and it will never change. It is one of the principles to which the Physical Universe is built on, and like God, it will never change. The law states, “That which is alike vibrationally (or energetically) will attract to itself that which is like itself vibrationally (or energetically).”

You could also replace the word “vibrationally” with “intention.” What you intend to bring forth, you will. Christ stated, “As you sow ( with your thoughts), so shall you reap” (in the mind set and physical world and your experience of the world). The Bible also says, “As you believe, so shall it be done to you.” You could also say, “What you believe in will happen, or what you think about all day long becomes your physical and emotional reality. As I said before, this is because of the way the physical universe works.

Whatever you focus on will grow. So if you focus on the crap you don’t want, you will get more of the crap you don’t want. So whenever you find something you “don’t want,” change it into its opposite and then go forward with what you “do want.” Always excepting what is nothing that shows up in our world is there with out reason so except what is, and you will be at peace. This shifting your attention to what you do want will change your world in every way.

Earl Nightingale stated in his famous recording called “The World’s Strangest Secret,” We become what we think about all day long. This, in a nut shell, is the law of attraction. Why is this so? Because God shares the power of creation with every man, woman and child on the planet, and so whatever people focus their attention on will grow and come into the physical world. God really does have a sense of humor when you realize that everyone’s life is just a “reflection” of their most dominant thought forms.

That’s really funny and ironic; also kind of sad when you think of all the people in the world who live in the insanity of fear and create more reasons to be fearful. “As you sow, so shall you reap;” if you sow seeds of fear, you will reap plants of more fear.

Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds. ~ Albert Einstein

When God created the heavens and earth and all living things, he saw all that he had created and said, “It is all Good.” Did He lie? Or is your present perception just skewed or the world’s perception of itself skewed? I know they are going to say that the Bible talks about how God gets angry and I’m saying the Bible is wrong. God is incapable of anger because he is incapable of illusion! We are only upset when one of our illusions are threatened. If you check in with yourself when you get upset, ask yourself, “What am I afraid of ? What am I attached to that I believe I will not be happy without?” You will find every time you are upset, it is because of a belief in a preconceived fear, a preconceived attachment a preconceived illusion.

“Seek Not to change the world but choose to change your mind about the world”. ~ A Course in Miracles

The world we live in truly works perfectly. The only problem is that so much of the population is not creating on purpose and that’s why there is so much chaos. As the population becomes more conscious we will see drastic changes for the good of all of mankind. So how do we move into the new paradigm? You need to see the world as God does - SEE IT IS ALL GOOD. If this is too far of a leap for you at first, just give it a possibility. Say to yourself, “Everything in the world is here for a purpose and its purpose is ultimately good.” Then look for the possibility of it being good and you will see it.

In Byron Katie’s “The Work” is 4 simple questions that can change any upset or fear in to “Loving What Is” the name of her first book.

So the law is, “Seek and ye shall find.” Everything in the world has a purpose and that is why it’s here. If its purpose is not a reflection of what works, it is a reflection of what doesn’t work and is a teaching tool and this is ultimately good.

Even fear is a teaching tool, but it still never works. “Where your heart is, there will your treasure be,” or there will you see results. Why, because you asked for it! So if all that God created is good and you see it all as good, you will take on the great attitude – “gratitude!” You will become grateful for everything. “ He that is grateful in all things shall have the whole world as his oyster.”

If you want to improve your personal world, right now, just make a list of what you are grateful for. Then tell God – “the Creator,” “the Devine Universe” - you’re grateful for this list and you will be filled with joy right now. You will feel the need to say out loud, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” And, in fact, you can’t say it (“Thank you!”) with real intent without feeling God’s love and joy right NOW.

Now if you dislike someone, it is because you just don’t see them as God sees them. Whatever it is that they do is an unconscious act that they are truly not responsible for as they are innocent and blind to their dysfunctional behavior. Also, if you see any personal experience as bad, you don’t see the experience as God does. Even the bad ones are good because they bring continuous strength of character and understanding. And it is only a moment in time that will pass as everything in the physical universe is transitory and will eventually end.

So if you see any situation as bad, you’re taking a snapshot of a moment in time and drawing a conclusion that is false; you’re looking at the world through the distorted view of the Ego. God sees your heart, and he knows who you are, and he also knows you will become all that you are meant to become. To draw a conclusion in any situation, you don’t see the bigger picture, but God does. Remember, it’s not over ‘til you have drawn your last breath and then it’s still good because that which is “true you” continues on, just in a nonphysical form.

To let go of this delusion of understanding all you need to do is say to yourself, “I was mistaken to make this judgment. I will choose to leave the judgment of this moment in time up to the universe.” This powerful statement – “I was mistaken” – will change your world.

Good and pleasurable experiences makes life wonderful. But they usually don’t lead to growth. Even something like the war in Iraq right now is serving mankind because everyone in the world is watching and can clearly see that war is not the answer. And war is never the answer and never will be because. “to promote fear is to promote illusion which promotes Ego.”


“Father, Father! We dont need to escalate. War is not the answer, for only love can conquer Hate!” ~ Marvin Gaye

There is never a way to peace; peace is the way. Sometimes the purpose of the event is to just teach what doesn’t work. This gives the opportunity to choose a new direction and that is ultimately good. So how do we come to the consciousness of peace, forgive the terrorists; that’s right forgive the terrorists.

And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more. ~ Isaiah 2:2-4 KJV This I have seen!


“I am never upset for the reason I think.” ~ A Course in Miracles

Again, difficult experiences lead to growth, and this is all good. If you look back on your life, you will see that every difficult experience that you had was also the greatest teacher to open your consciousness to understanding and truth.

“What could you not accept if you but knew that everything that happens - all events, past, present and to come are gently planned by One whose only purpose is your good?” ~ A Course in Miracles

God is love, and the greatest thing we personally can do to honor him is to open our heart and love as he does – unconditionally. This is not as difficult as it may seem. Father Anthony DeMello in his religious retreat called “Wake Up to Life” says, “The largest things standing between us and God is our concepts and conditioning.” What he means by this is the way we were taught to look at things. He continues, “The only reason you are not experiencing God’s love or bliss right now is because you are focusing on what you don’t have; otherwise you would be experiencing bliss right now.”

The reason you are focusing on “what you don’t have” is you were conditioned to this by society. Society dictates, that in order to be happy I need everything. And it dictates, I will be happy when I have a new car, a new house, a new job, a new wife, a new boyfriend or a new city to live in. I need everything, but it must be new. All advertising is geared to promote the concept, “I will somehow be more when I possess this thing.” Nothing in the physical world can make you anything and will ultimately disolve into dust, as this to shall pass. And when I get this stuff I don’t need, my Egoic mind will tell me I need to keep them and so they become “an attachment.” I need to keep and protect my stuff!

I need to protect my stuff so you don’t take it from me. That’s why insurance companies make so much money because they are supposedly protecting us against fear of “what if.” But if everyone just put their money that they were spending on insurance in the bank they would have the money when a mishap happened, if it ever did.
Father Demello also says, “Society’s major preoccupation is to keep you sick, and the sooner you realize this the sooner you will be able to let go of it.”

The truth is, that in order for you to be happy right now, you don’t physically need anything added. You need to drop the foolish idea that society told you and me that you need things to be happy. Now don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with having anything. The universe we live in is filled with an abundance of everything we could possibly desire. And it is your birthright to create all the abundance you could ever desire. But desire is the source of most misery as “things” don’t bring happiness! Why, because happiness “comes from within us, not outside of us.”

So the truth is, you can be happy with or without anything. Yes, anything! Now, there is “awareness” and there is “conditioning;” the two are opposed to each other. We have many beliefs and ways of thinking we are not aware of and they control us like a computer program. Someone hits our button and we react; just the way we were programed. So we have become thinking, walking, talking, mechanical computers! That’s not human. Someone presses a button and we are up; someone else presses another button and we are down. “What you are aware of, you are in control of and what you are not aware of, is controlling you.” So what I am proposing is that you become aware of the programing.

Why? Because it’s not you, and it’s not human. So watch yourself as if you where watching someone else, with no need to change a thing, just a desire to understand. And when you do understand you will change with no work or no force; it will just happen without any effort of your own. The reason why I say, “Don’t try to change anything,” is this will just mess things all up, because you will be trying to change under the direction of your programing and conditioning the Ego, and this doesn’t work. In truth, you are perfect. You were born perfect; nothing is needed to be added to experience it now, though you need to drop something.

Jeff Hawkins is a research scientist of the Redwood Neuroscience Institute who is working on a scientific theory of how the brain works (by the way, there isn’t a theory yet). He says that the brain is nothing like a computer and it works nothing like a computer; that the brain needs to experience something over and over again in order to remember it, and the more it re-experiences something the stronger the memory you have. The brain also assigns value to things and brings them up the more they are used.

But the most significant thing about the brain is it is constantly predicting what will happen next, like when you listen to a music CD you have listened to several times; as soon as a song ends the next song will pop up in your head and you will have an anticipation and know the next song before it even starts to play. The brain is a predicting machine and that’s why we have intelligence, because we can predict what will happen next. The problem that arises is based on your belief system which will determine what you are aware of and how you will predict.

It’s like your beliefs overlay a template that literally will selectively remember experiences and edit out certain parts of the experience based on the belief system. It’s like your brain is an editing room and what parts get left in the movie of your life and the parts that go on the floor is determined by the beliefs you have about the world and how it is. And these belief systems limit life and the amount of joy and happiness we allow our self to have. We also have awareness of our self and how we feel about what we are doing or talking about.

We can even step outside of our self and watch yourself as if we were someone else. So just be aware and seek to understand yourself and others and then you will know. As you do watch your mind you will find that over 80% of your thoughts are just the unconscious, rehashing of random events and mental process that you have little or no ability to change as long as they are left in the unconscious.

“Awareness” is kind of like the driver of a tour bus who is having a conversation with you and at the same time he is aware of the bus and where it is going. And he says to you, “If you look out that window you will see.....” You see, he is aware of everything going on in the bus, outside the bus and you all at the same time. So when you are being aware, you don’t focus on one thing. This is a spotlight and often creates more violence and further programing.

“Understanding comes with the awareness of what is. There can be no understanding if there is condemnation of, or identification with what is. If you condemn a child or identify yourself with him, then you cease to understand him. So being aware of a thought or a feeling as it arises, without condemning it or identifying with it, you will find that it unfolds ever more widely and deeply and thereby discover the whole content of what is.

To understand the process of “ what is” there must be choice less awareness, a freedom from condemnation, justification and identification. When you are vitally interested in fully understanding something, you give your mind and heart, withholding nothing. But unfortunately you are conditioned, educated and disciplined through religious and social environment to condemn or to identify, and not to understand. To condemn is stupid and easy, but to understand is arduous, requiring pliability and intelligence.

Condemnation, as identification, is a form of self-protection. Condemnation or identification is a barrier to understanding. To understand the confusion, the misery in which one is, and so of the world, you must observe its total process. To be aware and pursue all its implications requires patience, to follow swiftly, and to be still.” ~ J. Krishnamu

So what I am advocating is “awareness.” “Awareness is like a floodlight, exposing everything at once.”
The brain processes around four billion bits of information a second but you are only conscious of around two thousand bits of information. Your awarness is already and always working. All you need to do is tap into this awareness and use it to see reality. Also, don’t seek after truth. Truth is not somthing you seek. Like the great Indian mystic’s say, “Just drop your opinions and then you will know.” Drop your prejudices, drop your judgments and then you will know.

Father Anthony Demello also said, “Some times we have to lose our concept of God to find God, “ so most religious people are as aware as a block of wood. “Why?” you ask. Because they already know or they think they know. “Lose your concepts of God and you will find God.” When you “think you know,” you are “closed off” to new information and new understanding. So if you can let go of your models and your preconceived ideas, then you will see the truth.

I recently read a quote from the leader of the church I grew up with. It was sad as the message was one of fear and lack of understanding God’s way of being. Mormon president, Gorden B. Hinckley said, “ It’s not that bad. This is what I tell myself every morning when I get up. God will not forsake us if we are worthy of his blessings.” Let me be so bold, to correct him! It’s all good! God is now and always was in charge of the universe. He will not forsake us ever, no matter what we do.

God’s love is unconditional and we can never do anything to stop this love from continually supporting us forever and ever. Amen. God never forsakes us; we forsake our self by allowing our self to believe in the Egoic illusions we were taught by society.

In the religion of my youth I was told you have to earn God’s love by doing stuff; stuff that promoted the Church. This is false. Every blessing from God is a “gift” and there is nothing ever required to receive this, but if you believe what your religious leaders say to be true, you will experience it as true, but not in a way that makes you free but because you believe it’s true. Remember the rule is, “As you believe, so shall it be done unto you, or so shall you experience.” But it still is not true. That’s why they call them “gifts of the spirit.”

We are constantly being blessed with God’s gifts every day of our life. Whatever we focus on is brought into our life. So if you focus on fear, gloom and doom, that’s what you get. You see, “free agency” is one of the laws of he universe and God will never take it away.

If we are bad stewards and bringing forth undesirable things, God allows it, because sooner or later you will see that it is not working and awaken. So learn to bring forth good and wonderful things by focusing on all that is good and then you will see how God was always with you every moment. He never will forsake you. You forsake yourself because you didn’t understand His way of being. You were searching for something you had all the time; you just didn’t know it because your society taught you to be one of the sleep walkers like everyone else.

“Almost everyone you see, everybody you know, and everywhere you go are asleep. Only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant utter amazment.” ~ “Joe Versus the Valcano” movie

"People see God every day. They just don't recognize him." ~ Pearl Bailey

Back to God’s “way of being” and my experience of God.
The problem lies in the fact that God cannot be described. Saint Thomas Aquinas said in his Summa Theologica, “The ultimate knowledge of God is to know that we cannot know God.” We can only approach Him, and in doing so we can see clearly, not the totality of what he is but what he is not. By grace, a higher knowledge of God can be obtained than by natural reason. The totality of God is beyond human comprehension.

In the book A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis wrote, “We cannot know God. Even our very questions are absurd.” It’s like trying to teach a blind man the world of color. You can’t.

In the Sanskrit Teachings this is called “the negative way.” Everything written about God is a clue, a concept, not the real thing. If I describe my experiences of God, you still will not know a thing about God because they are just words and concepts, an indication of God. Not God.

I grew up hearing about God and Jesus my whole life; sang songs about God and read the Bible. But the first time I experienced God I knew for certain this one thing - up until that moment I did not know God. I had concepts of and about God but I did not know him. My concept of God was more like my experience of my authority figures and I thought he was harshly judging me. Why? Because all of my role models were judging me harshly.

God is beyond description. Although you can experience God, to turn around and try to put that experience into words is almost impossible. One thing was clear which was – “God is love,” because the love experience is so profound it cannot be denied. The experience of God’s love is beyond anything that you can experience in this world. God is infinite and God’s love is infinite, and when you have experienced His love it is beyond description; every word you can think of falls short. “God’s love castith out all fear” because in the experience there is no place in you that is not filled with this Devine Love.

I could say God’s love is delicious, and it is; more delicious than anything you have ever tasted. And this is true, but you still don’t know God. Every word I can think of is unable to describe how wonderful the experience is. All I can say is when you have experienced God and his Infinite Love, you will long to experience it again and again and again. Nothing on this earth can compare. And I also understand everything I have said has not taught you a single thing about who God is. It’s just a model, filled with words and concepts but it is not the real thing.


In the Buddist tradition they say, “He who says, does not know; and he who knows, does not say.”

“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

The unnameable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.”

~ The first verse of the Tao ~ From a translation by S. Mitchell

So the concept is not the thing, it’s just an indication of something greater. We wouldn’t look at a picture of cake and ice-cream and try to eat it; this is apparent and it would be silly. On the other hand, I so often see people who have read the Bible and say, “ I know and understand God and Jesus Christ.” This is absurd. The Bible is only a model or an indication of something much more wonderful. It’s just a model, it’s just concepts - not the real thing itself. The model of truth is never the truth itself any more than the blueprints of a house is the house.

“Whenever you are thinking through any concept or ideology, no matter how good it is, you have ceased to think. You might as well be a block of wood or a thinking, talking machine; now that’s not human.”
~ Father Anthony DeMello

Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind. ~ Albert Einstein

So if you can get past the concepts and the models and be open-minded to be taught from on high, then we can learn anew.

“We never argue about the truth. We only argue about our concepts, opinions and judgments.” ~ Father Anthony DeMello

So to learn to use the power that the Divine Universe shares with us is to create good. To learn to love as God does, without conditions, then you will understand there is nothing to be afraid of, all is well. God is in charge and he will never, ever forsake you.


“It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain.”
~ A Course in Miracles

It’s our judgments, it is our prejudices, and it is our attachments that cause us pain. “As you believe, so shall you experience.” So just drop it - not through a force of will but through “awareness” and “understanding.” Allow yourself to realize your judgment doesn’t work for you and there is possibly a better way. And that way is “unconditional love.”


A Native American saying “No Tree is so foolish, to have the branches, that fight amongst its self.

It is quite possible to listen to Gods voice all through out the day without interrupting your regular activities in any way.

The part of your mind in which truth abides is in constant communication with God, whether you are aware of it or not.
It is the other part of your mind that functions in the world and obeys the world’s laws.

It is this part that is constantly distracted disorganized and highly uncertain.

The part that listens to the voice of god is calm, always at rest and wholly certain. It is really the only part there is. The other part is a wild illusion, frantic and distraught, but with out reality of any kind...

Listen deep in to the silence. Be very still and open your mind.

Go past all the raucous shrieks and sick imaginings that cover your real peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sights and sounds of the insane world. You do not live here.

We are trying to reach our real home. We are trying to reach the place where you are truly welcome. We are trying to reach God.
Sit quietly and say Gods Voice speaks to me through out the day, closing your eyes on the world and realizing that you are inviting Gods voice to speak to you. ~ Lesson 49 from A Course in Miracles

Chapter 1

“I love you! Why Don’t You Love You?”
My Introduction to the Divine Universe

In the biblical story of Adam and eve they where innocent and intelligent and full of knowledge, understanding, wisdom, able to name all the animals of the world and they were in paradise.

Living in the ever present full of joy peace and happiness living in the garden of Eden, but upon partaking of ‘ the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” they left paradise and entered in to the ” alone and dreary world.”

And they were “afraid” of being Naked? That’s silly for some one who is wise enough to name all the animals of the world to all of the sudden become afraid of being necked.

Ever since the fall from grace we all have been trapped in our own minds ever since, obsessed with continually evaluating our perceptions & definitions of Good and evil.

And the price we pay is to be stuck in the alone a dreary world of suffering and pain, anguish weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Hell on earth!

We as a world have been searching ever since to find a way back in to paradise, and it is so simple, that the whole world including me has and continues to miss it!

So how can we return to paradise and the peace of mind that we only have fleeting moments of?

How do we obtain this allusive nagging goal that eludes the whole world even though it’s all we truly want?

Stop partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil!
Let me say that again, Stop partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil!

Now even though this is true I’m not saying that the story of Adam and Eve is any thing more then just a profound parable of principal, since through the observation of the earth’s strata we have completely and scientifically proven the evolution of life and we continue to expand this knowledge almost daily.

But it’s still true that the way to return to paradise is to stop partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and return to LOVE!

Return to Forgiveness return to Understanding return to Paradise return to Eden.

As a mostly conscious adult I now know that “My Story” has nothing to do with who I truly am, for the ”I AM” of my true self is something beyond Mind, beyond any story, beyond any experience, and in truth is a Stillness, intelligent, Eternal, Awareness and Understanding, full of the love that has no opposite.

I share my story of misery here now and the illusions that I created to teach through my experiences what is not real.

On the day you where born you started a great and wonderful journey, you left the consciousness of the Devine Universe where all is One and Unconditional love is a constant, to come in to a world of immense diversity of experiences, all of them but an Egoic driven Illusion.
A dominance of mind that is not real, for all that is ultimately real is the Devine Universe of unconditional love, peace and joy, that can only be experienced in the ever present Now and this is your true home.

When You get old and the young life filled form brakes down the true you will still be full of life and will never change, and when you die if you don’t find out before you will be reintroduced to your true self Eternal full of Peace, Love, Intelligent and unchangeable.

This book is dedicated to your personal journey back to Your True Self and Your True Home. If you are like me from time to time you have said to your self this is not how life is supposed to be.

There is a lingering internal memory of our true home calling all of us to return to the stillness that is who we are, but know one in the world of form seam’s to know how.

Those who speak the loudest that they have all the answers, never do, but just more of the same old pretty stories that have no relevance to your life now and your misery and suffering right now.

I needed some one to teach me to escape my self made prison that I didn’t have a clue that I personally made. I don’t want to know how to get to Sesame Street, like Dorothy in the wizard of Oz I just want to find my way back home.


Igmard Gustafson’s “Locked In” - Translated from Swedish
All of my life I spent in a coconut. It was cramped and dark, especially in the morning when I had to shave.

But what pained me most was that I had no way to get in touch with the outside world. If no one out there happened to find the coconut and was nice enough to crack it open then I was doomed to live my life in a coconut and even die in a coconut.

I died in my coconut. A couple of years later they found me shrunk and crumpled inside. “Oh what a shame,” they said. “Only if we could have found him earlier maybe we could have saved him.

Maybe there are more like him.” So they started cracking open every coconut in reach. No use - meaningless, a waste of time. A person who chooses to live in a coconut must be a nut in a million, but they didn't know that I have a brother-in-law who lives in an acorn.


As a child I was loving, kind, understanding, inquisitive and full of life; I had a profound imagination able to see and understand things with out words or definition internally able to see things and go in to it 3 dimensionally understand that which I could not define, I just knew.

People trapped in there own egoic mind didn’t understand how some one could know something with out concepts and definitions so this part of me was ridiculed and I was taught to suppress one of my Devine gifts.

My way of being was very different then typical children like different textures would mystify me like the way sand feels or the bark of a tree or soft grass and smells of flowers.

My favorite smell is damp dust to this day it is a wonderful thing to smell, I live down a dirt road and so my car ventilation system gets filled with dust and when you turn on the Ac and the dust gets wet the smell that comes out to me is delicious wonderful and sublime, I cant get enough of this smell.

I also used to create things in my mind looking at every detail before I did a thing so when I went to make it I would just make what I already saw.

I do this with art all the time. And all of this is wonderful. I also naturally loved people and saw beauty and goodness in every one.
Very different then my mother she saw danger every where and in every thing.

My magical way of being is called dyslexia, having my primary method for learning be kinesthetic, so my approach to learning is through my feelings and touch with out definition I just understand. To me something is not real until I can touch it, smell it, taste it, and feel it.

I also feel whatever emotion is being felt by anyone in my close proximity, being an empath that just came natural; I don’t know why it just is.
When I started to develop my ego it became confusing because I didn’t know how I did it, it was just an understanding beyond definition.

So when I was with some one feeling strong feelings I would feel what they were feeling and I would comment on it this would make them very angry for me to expose there secretes in denial they didn’t want to know them self.

So I started suppress my true nature this after being punished for it and so it went underground the understanding I intuitively knew went away and what was left was I just felt what ever emotion was in my presence and what was a gift became a curse.

Like every one else in the world I started to live in my mind the cold harsh unconscious Mechanism of egoic mind. Striped of my natural intuition, all of the sudden I would find my feelings being hijacked with no apparent ability to change them until I left the persons in my direct proximity.

Then I found all I needed to do was physically leave the presence of the source of those feelings and everything would return to a more palatable form of unconscious egoic mind.

My mother had a strong set of rules and behaviors, one of them were some feelings like anger were bad, some like sex were shameful and some were good and righteous.

And being angry was shameful and bad and wrong a reason to be punished even though anger was where mom was allot of the time, but in strong denial about it.
I now know she truly didn’t know how angry she was. If I expressed anger I was punished and shamed in to denial of it my self.

Good children don’t get angry this caused depression a life long problem for me. Also intuitively I would make a joke and this would transform the energy to a more palatable experience for both of us.

The schools of my day didn’t understand how to teach “special needs” children like me, so I was just passed on to the next grade even though I didn’t learn the curriculum.

Teachers would be very frustrated in trying to teach a dyslexic child; the system just wasn’t set up for this, as it was not understood. Reading was my nightmare! I can’t tell you how many teachers yelled at me, “Pay attention to the words! Sound it out! You’re just not trying!”

And hitting was allowed back then, and it was used. But I was trying. My brain just worked different then most of the other kids.

My brain would mix up the letters and so when I would sound out the word it would come out all wrong. So I became an outcast; ashamed of others like me because I was ashamed of me. Why couldn’t I learn like the other kids?
Although I was dyslexic my mind worked fine, just different then most of the kids I associated with.
So I developed a personal gift to deal with my personal insecurities I became the clown. Not unlike the silly little clown in Bobby Goldsboro’s song see the funny little clown I was laughing on the out side but secretly crying on the inside. song on you Tube

I became aware of the fact that if you where the first to make the joke about yourself then it didn’t hurt as much, Laughter soothed my pain.

My mother was a loner. She was afraid and suspicious of others so her only friends were her immediate family. Mom was also depressed as well as obsessive compulsive; she had certain rituals like checking each door in the house three times at night to make sure they were locked and checking the burners on the stove-top three times to make sure they would not start a fire.

She always doubted her physical interactions so she had to do them multiple times to verify they were real. Mom lived in her head and spent a lot of time daydreaming. Also one of her things was cleanliness, neatness. She kept her self busy always afraid if she stopped other then in reading or daydreaming she would have to deal with the suppressed fears that scared the hell out of her.

I remember mom reining her hands with a terrified look on her face and then she would get really busy to deal with and keep the dragon at bay. My words not hers. Everything had to be clean and organized. She even folded my underwear in my chest of drawers every day. Every drawer and every closet was clean and organized. Every day every bed was made up with hospital corners.

Mom said this was a reaction to growing up in a home that was disorganized. Mom never wanted me bringing friends home into the house; they couldn’t be trusted, and would make messes, so they weren’t welcome.

Also if I brought something home that was considered messy, a clutter, if it had lots of parts it would come up missing when I looked for it the next time. I have accused both my ex-wife and present wife of throwing my stuff away because my mother did it constantly.

We are all products of how we are raised and the conditioned responses are all unconscious. All of these “egoic thinking patterns” are automatically running with little or no control to change then, at least on the level of the mind.

Now a little background about my mother’s environment growing up. When she was born 1924 her mother was grieving the death of two of her previous children. One was still born and another, a boy, died just prior to my mother’s birth so her mother was terrified that my mother would die as well.

Her mother’s fear was so great that mom wouldn’t survive that she lost her milk. As this was before baby formula was an alternative it was a death sentence to a newborn if you didn’t have a wet nurse to feed the child. A neighbor lady filled this need.

Moms father later would tease mom about being the wet nurse’s kid that they adopted. Mom said she was a large German lady who didn’t look a thing like mom, this all just added to moms insecurities, as well mom was a sickly child and came down with whooping cough, a deadly disease back then, and this made her mother even more fearful.

She wouldn’t let my mother out of her sight as she grew older and made her wear thick “long john” underwear all the time. Mom having her first introductions to the world filled with fears they took hold and ran deep it her perceptions of the world. Mom was afraid of every thing.

Mom also went through the great Depression this she carried around her, always afraid the bottom would drop out and she would have nothing. When ever we didn’t eat what was at the dinner table, she would say if you lived during the depression you would eat what you are given.

Needless to say this “fear filled environment” did a real number on my mothers perception of the world making her fearful of everything the root of her insanity.
Mom by all accounts was a good and righteous woman, devoting her life to the raising of her children, we always were fed well, clothed in stylish cloths we never went with out ,and she was constantly striving to make our life fulfilling and complete.

Any faults my mother had been just in her perception of the world and in this she was filled with a crippling fear.

"If you work hard at your job, you can make a living; but if you work hard on yourself, you can make a fortune." ~ Anonymous

Back to me. My youth was spent, a lot of it alone. We learn what we are surrounded with so I had a hard time making new friends, I was also very fearful as a child and much of my adult life as well. It has been only the last few years that I can go out in to the dark night with out fear.

Mom had a lot of problems with natural male behavior, and so did my church. She would talk about how locker room talk was wicked. So, as I look back, I understand why I was always being accused of being Gay, since I was taught that male behavior was bad and female behavior good and righteous. I naturally wanted to be more like females because they where righteous. Ultimately though I was the one who believed I needed to be more like girls.

Also as a child Dad wasn’t around most of the time, he was out of town most of the time working so I didn’t have a male role model to make the connection with my maleness. One of my mother’s favorite scriptures was, “Put off the natural man,” so I spent most of my youth and young adult life not knowing who or what I was, and trying to mold myself into what I thought was supposed to be, a girl.

Most of my friends at school were girls. I couldn’t relate to boys as their way of being was wicked so I always felt in conflict when I was around boys, especially when they would talk about guy things like hunting, sports, fighting and swearing which made it hard to make male friends.

Telling dirty jokes created a torrent in side of me I loved them and felt ashamed for loving them making me work even harder to suppress this nature. Ok, I was Gay, even though I have never been attracted to my same sex! And it’s funny too.

But in truth there would truly not be anything wrong with me being Gay and you are born that way it's not something you can fall in to or catch like a cold.

So I spent most of my time trying to change and mold myself into what I was told to be by my church, my school, my community and my mother. The main message I remember is, “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” with a million reasons why I couldn’t; the biggest reason being, “Because GOD said so.” Needless to say, I was a pretty messed up little kid.

“Inside of me there is something that no one will ever see; some kind of something that I can't as yet define. I drowned it every night with wine, for it's no friend of mine.

Inside of me there's a wild thing pushing to be free. Like some mad maverick that's been walled up in the canyons all these years, feeding only on the fears that drive it downward. Part of me longs to race down to the freedom of the sea.

Inside of me, like a long forgotten lover there, simple as silence. I can’t even feel the sound of something almost real and it's telling me, “Be careful.”

In spite of me there are worlds around me turning round. Things I'll never find and things it's likely that I've never found; but they’re real, and still a gulf between the world and me as wide as wide as my black soul.

Locked up inside in a jail of my making I keep that secret, my own, till it dies all alone.
Inside of me. Inside of me.” ~ McKuen & Rodrego


Growing up in a family with lots of kids always presented the competition for attention and so the one who talked the loudest got the most, kind of like the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

My older brother, Wayne, had a magical mind - lots of ideas of things to explore. I remember one day we tried to dig to China and we dug all day long and by the end of the day we were around four feet deep and we were sure we were almost there! Isn’t that grand to believe you can dig to China!

Oh, the magical mind of the child! But life at home was pretty good, for us kids as long as you stayed outside and we kids had some really fun times. Then when all my older siblings went away to school I was alone most of the time. My younger siblings where three and six years younger then me so I didn’t relate. I wanted to be big and they were small something I didn’t want any thing to do with.


“Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, at first.” ~ Maxwell Malts

Then when I started school my whole life changed for the worse. Because of the teacher’s lack of understanding about my dyslexia and the rules of conduct they would ridicule me constantly, impatiently saying things like,

"Look at the words, it doesn't say that! Pay attention! Stop being so lazy! Listen to me, you idiot! That's stupid! You’re acting retarded!” And all the children would laugh. I would want to die! I didn't know why I couldn't read things right. School to me was hell, pure hell.

"Most teachers waste their time by asking questions which are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning has for its purpose to discover what the pupil knows or is capable of knowing." Albert Einstein
He had the exact same kind of dyslexia I have; also his primary mode of learning was kinesthetic.

He describes his discovery of relativity was obtained by imaginings what it felt like to be riding a light beam across the universe.

Ok, I’m going to go on a little rant here for a minute.
It's sad in the school systems we have created that we teach children to conform to a model of tests and so-called normal standards that none of us fit in. Doing this as children and adults we all feel we need to conform to the “normal” or “popular” way and try to be the same as everyone else. The problem is none of us are exactly the same; we all have unique differences of how we see life and what we enjoy. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were taught to embrace our individuality and to respect diversity instead of conform!

With this system in place we wonder why “peer pressure” in middle school and high-school is such a problem. It seems, if it were the popular thing to jump off a cliff everyone would. Your children are not stupid!

They conform out of habit because they are conditioned to, and this is because the system teaches a militaristic form of behavior modification that harbors mindless conformity and destroys creativity and self awareness.

The school systems teach us how to become part of the system but it doesn’t teach people life skills, of how to live and be happy.

There is a better way coming, and it’s all about “consciousness” and “awareness,” connected to applied information and technology, instead of the mindless memorization of facts and information, where, in the end you have a mind full of information without the ability to form a conscious thought. When all of society lets go of its illusions and fears of life, of change and of diversity, then the whole planet will profoundly change and improve for the better.


"The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity." ~ Rolo May- Man's Search for Himself
Ok, I’m through with my rant.

Back to my self, my old egoic, narcissistic, insane self. To top this off I found out I was one of the shortest kids in my school. My last name is Lyon. The children would say, “You’re too short to be a lion so they called me “Mouse.” I even got so I would answer to “Mouse” when they called me. “Here, Mouse,” “Come here Mousy, Mousy, Mousy.” That’s funny. It’s messed up, but its funny.

In this environment I felt very small, and unable to take control and direct my life. Not having good life-skills, I also found out how children can be very cruel, as they would tease me and mimic what the teacher called me; words like “stupid” and “retarded.” I took it all personal.

Thank God I learned to joke about what they said to me; I would make them laugh and it would be less painful. Very fast I got into the habit of making fun of myself all the time. I also used this on the teachers when they would say things like, “Stop acting retarded and just read it.” I would make goofy sounds and hit my head like if I had cerebral palsy and the other children would laugh at the teacher.

Frustrated, the teachers would go to someone else and leave me alone. Although I often felt out of control of my life's experience, as a child, laughter really did help. It's a powerful release to otherwise difficult feelings. Used as a conscious choice, laughter can bring lightness and a clearer perspective to otherwise painful experiences. And I was funny, really funny.

Tom Hanks in the movie "Punch Line:"
"The reason why I'm so funny and you’re not, is because you’re trying to be funny. To me, everything I talk about is serious and if I didn't laugh I would cry. "

The first time I heard this, I found that it really spoke to me.

My school life became a process of keeping myself from being humiliated by having to read; this also kept me from learning how to read. My mother also tried to help me read and she also didn’t know about dyslexia and so it was just more of the same.

She would get frustrated when I would try to sound out something and it would come out all wrong. Mom would think I wasn’t trying, and just being a smart alack. Then in the fourth grade they sent me to “Special Ed Class” and the kids called it “retard class,” so I took it personal. I took everything personal back then, so it got worse. I felt no one could know this terrible thing about me even though everyone did already.

Fear is a funny thing as it never is satisfied; it always calls for more fear. So I would never associate with children from school at home because I was a loner and an outcast at school. I also never talked about this personal dilemma to my family members. I didn’t understand it myself, I was afraid they would tease me also. I had some pretty messed up ways of thinking back then.

Ok, this next thing is a little depressing but it’s true. In junior high I had a friend named Kenny and he was my best friend at home but not at school. I never questioned this even though he lived just down the street.

When I was at school I never saw Kenny even though we went to the same school. I had gotten used to being pretty close to no one at school. I attracted bullies like ants to sugar and anyone who wanted an easy fight sure to win, I was it. I spent a lot of time running away from fights.

Kenny was a bad kid my childhood Judgment he wanted to try things like drinking alcohol he got a mini Bottle from home once and I Had a cap full of it. It was afoul and I felt guilty for drinking that cap of rum for years.

Kenny also introduced me to masturbation he called it jacking off. We were riding home in the back of the truck coming home from snow-mo-billing he was in one sleeping bag and I in the other sleeping bag he said when your "a man" after stroking your dick for a while it will release a white stuff called sperm.

I wanted to be a man so I stroked it until it swelled up to 3 times the size, I Thought I had damaged it and disappointment nothing happened, no white stuff. Ya like you never did that, and it is funny too. But finely one day several months later it happened and I was a man, I liked being a MAN so I did it all the time, but when the day came that I had a bishop’s interview about it I was masturbating almost every day. It felt so good. When he called it masturbating I didn’t know what he was talking about, he told me it was sinful and shameful, and I should never start.

Too late the cat was out of the bag. So after that when I did masturbate I would try to end as soon as possible because it felt good but the shame poisoned the experience and made me feel guilty during and after. We would also play spin the bottle for a kiss with girls I loved kissing and still do.

Then one day I got off the bus and Kenny was picking on one of the neighborhood boys, a boy named Lee. Lee was in a car accident as a child that damaged his brain and he walked a little funny and was a little slow. On this day Kenny was teasing him, calling him “a retard” and hitting him. I hated what he was doing to him. It made me feel sick inside so I stepped in and told him to stop. thinking because of our friendship he would. Wrong!

In doing so Kenny said, “You're just sticking up for him because you're a retard too. That hurt. He said I know how you go to Special Ed and if you don't like it I'll kick your ass too.” Being confronted with my biggest fear by my supposed best friend made me absolutely furious so I started to fight him.

It was very rare for me to fight and as we were down on the ground wrestling, for just a moment I asked myself, "What if I really am a retard" and it was just like someone unplugged me. I went weak and he kicked my ass. I never associated with Kenny after that. From that time on I felt this weakness (depression) all the time.

At that time in my life I was so unconscious, I didn’t have the ability to forgive and let things go. I would judge people and just think badly of them whenever I saw them. I also spent a lot of my time avoiding or running away from an illusion of perceived danger.

The first time I had a major shift in my life was in 10th grade. My father was experimenting with nutrition and he created and made a kelated mineral product that made me grow a lot - 14 inches. I grew form 4’ 6” to 5’ 9” and for some reason after growing and no longer being one of the shortest kids in school I got picked on a lot more than I was before. I was never taught to stand up to people as I didn’t really have a male role model as a child. Our home was more like a single parent family. Mom was the main role model.

I think being a parent scared dad and he avoided it pretty much most of the time. He left raising the kids pretty much up to mom. Dad wasn’t a “hands on” dad at all. He never went to any of my baseball games; he never sat down and told me what it was to be a man or anything like that.

Dad was most of the time trying to solve scientific problems. He was a problem solver for the people he worked for. This was his passion. Dad’s passion for scientific advancement, he passed on to me. I have always loved learning about new technologies.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. ~ Agatha Christie

So after being picked on more in the tenth grade, I started ditching my 7th period class, the class I got beat up and picked on most. I would just walk home, and after three months of ditching class, they found out and I met with the school principal and he decided I needed to go to another school where no one knew me.

What a gift that was. For the first time in my life I was one of the popular kids and I loved it. But I never felt comfortable being in any group. I was afraid of some groups, like the jocks and “their wicked locker room talk” who had also picked on me in the past.

So instead, I tried to be friends with everyone. Also I didn’t get too close to anybody as they might find out that I couldn’t read. But I did have a favorite male friend and that was Devar.

He was a great friend and we enjoyed doing things together. He was in a rock band and was always trying to get me to be a part of it as a drummer, even though I sucked. We also would go on double dates together and had lots of fun. At the time I didn’t know Devar was Gay and madly in love with me. I was better off that way. I would not have been able to handle that as my society and religion looked at being Gay as evil and disgusting; such cruel and abusive judgment from Christians.

Devar was never inappropriate; he was just a good and loving friend. Besides being Gay is not bad any more than being blond is bad. The writings of the Bible are wrong on this subject. It’s just an incorrect tradition passed down that is false. Devar was the most loving and understanding friend I ever had in my youth.

So, I grew up with a strong sense of personal shame and self-loathing, especially around my inability to learn. In the 12th grade I was tested on reading and it was determined I read on a 5th grade level with pour comprehension.

Just before I graduated from high school my older brother Melvin introduced me to a girlfriend of his named Sandy. She was going to BYU and she invited me to help her with a thing she was involved with called “The Group.” “The Group” was college students having problems with drugs and also unwed mothers, two big taboos in the Mormon culture.

We had a fast and testimony meeting one Sunday and one of the guys from the group who looked like a rock star to me, and was a big Jimmy Hendricks fan, with tattoos said: “I used to be bad, and I was real bad, and now I’m good and I can’t be bad any more.” This sounded cool to me and mysterious and so I remembered it.

After I graduated from high school we moved to Modesto, California. Cool! A whole new group of people to associate with who didn’t know my history. At a young adult’s church meeting, shortly after we moved there, we had a testimony meeting and I got up and said, “I used to be bad and I was real bad, and now that I’m good I can’t be bad any more.” A complete lie, but it accomplished what I wanted. I was “mysterious and cool” to everyone and I was immediately very popular. Christians always want to befriend the protocol son.

Little did I know this little lie I told got back to the bishop of my ward and when I wanted to go on a mission for my church my bishop wouldn’t let me go. So I moved back to Utah with my older sister who was married and tried to go from there. Well, the bishop from California talked to the bishop from Utah about my “testimony lie” and he didn’t want to let me go either. He told me he was inspired by God I was a homosexual, had sex with animals, and some other weird stuff.

At the time I was a virgin (except for the masturbating) and remained so ‘til I got married. I, on the other hand, had forgotten all about my little testimony lie and didn’t understand why they wouldn’t let me go. I felt like a total victim and made up a whole bull shit story why I thought my bishops were persecuting me. The insane ways the Ego dills with disappointment.

Well, my brother-in-law’s mother heard about this and she knew people in high places, and she told the bishop if he didn’t send me she would tell her old mission president and friend, one of the quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and would have him removed as bishop.

So he sent me on a mission to Australia and also sent a letter to my mission president telling him I was probably Gay. The Aussies would call being Gay, a "shirt lifter," a "poofta" a "poof" or a "dunnie boy," all funny terms.

Our life is what our thoughts make of it ~ Marcus Aurelius

I was sent to Australia. What a cool place to be sent, but a real shocker to a naive “green behind the ears” kid from Utah. Then six months into my mission something happened that would change my whole life.

So I was nineteen years old almost 20 and serving on a ministerial mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Sydney, Australia. That’s right, I was a Mormon missionary. I was trying so hard to be the kind of person I thought God wanted me to be, but instead was filled with personal pain and a mountain of self-judgment. I just wasn’t good enough to be representing God thing about naked girls.

My mind was filled with self-judgment, focused on all my flaws; absolutely unworthy to be who I judged I should be. Here I could have been in heaven but instead was in hell, the hell I created with my own mind.
You see I had been posted at Bondi Beech for the past six months and was having problems with thinking impure thoughts (thinking about sex). Seeing girls walk up and down the streets in string bikinis all day long made me quite horny (or “randy,” as the Aussies would say).

I spent many days and hours praying and reading scriptures to take away these feelings but nothing would help. I felt out of control with no relief in sight. Evan though I only masturbated in the shower once a day, I started hating myself for not being able to control my thoughts.

I didn’t know, when you renounce anything you are tied to it. I also didn’t know that at age nineteen I was at my sexual peek and my hormone levels where as high as they would ever be in my life. I didn’t know that back then and my religion didn’t teach me that either. Growing up in Utah, sex was taboo, and you were shamed if it was ever brought up and told you are not supposed to think about sex until you are married!


“Life in Lubbock, Texas, (or Utah) taught me two things: One is that God Love’s you and you’re going to burn in Hell. The other is sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love”(and after you’re married) ~ Butch Hancock

After struggling with this for several months, I finally decided I must be a lost cause and there was no hope for me and my problem. I heard a scripture that said “if you commit a sin in your heart you might as well have done it.” And my church taught me that to commit fornication was next to murder in its level of sin in the eyes of God and they would rather I come home in a box dead then to defile myself and the church by committing fornication. I know it’s a pretty messed up belief.

So on this particular night I decided I was going to ask God to end my life. I had felt his presences before many times and thought he would grant my wish because I couldn’t stop these sexual feelings no matter what I did. I thought I was evil. So I set a time when I knew my companion would be absent for about an hour.

He was in the bathroom every night about an hour and as soon as he left, I knelt down, poured my heart out to God and asked Him to end my life, feeling the pains of a damned soul. I told God I wanted to be a good and faithful servant but was unable to keep thoughts of naked women out of my mind. I didn’t live in a family where sex was talked about.

To my mother, sex was something awful and you didn’t talk about it. My father was a research scientist and wasn’t around much when I grew up as he was out of town most of the time, so I didn’t know I was at the age where all young men have raging hormones.

And just before we left for our country for our mission we had a special meeting with church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple where we where told, “No untruth could be told,” so I believed it. They told us, like I said before, that our parents and our church would rather see us come home in a casket then to defile ourselves and the church in committing fornication, and I felt like I was almost there. I know I just repeated my self but the statement is so bazaar and absurd I just had to repeat it.

While I was praying in the depths of despair, I felt a loving presence, an inner stillness that start in my chest and expanded ‘until it enveloped my whole being, and I was filled with this consciousness of being unconditionally loved and a peace like I had never felt before.

My consciousness expanded and I felt a connection to the whole of life, and my mind stopped its endless ramblings I was so use to. In the stillness I was at absolute peace. All of my feelings of being damned where completely removed and replaced with this glorious feeling of being “unconditionally loved.” This, in and of itself, would have been more than enough to completely let go of my shame, and then I heard a voice.

The “Voice” was not in my ears, or my head; it didn’t make a sound – “It” was an expansion of consciousness, awareness and understanding. I felt it in my heart and it expanded, so my whole being was filled and bathed with its unconditionally, loving, blissful words, when it said: “I love you! Why don’t you Love you?” And I thought, “God loves me? Even with all my impure thoughts?” But I knew it was true, that God loved me, because the experience did not allow any doubt to enter into my mind, in fact it was an absence of mind. A stillness where mind was absent, but awareness was intense enhanced and expanded awareness to take in an endless awareness of now.

Then Spirit said: “I trust you! Why don’t you trust you?” And I was instantly filled with this disputable knowing of God’s trust in me.

And then Spirit said: “I believe in you! Why don’t you believe in you?” and I was filled with this experience of being totally believed in.

And then Spirit said: “I know you, and you are good! Why don’t you know you are good?” And I was filled with this unquestionable experience that I was good.

In this experience my mind ceased it endless ramblings, of judgment and evaluation and all there was, was an inner stillness and awareness that the whole of life had value, not the judgment of good and bad but equal and of equal value and in a very real sense it was all a part of me.

I just sat and cried tears of joy; I was so filled with peace, love, joy and confidence, like I had never known before. I never told my companion. He was my senior companion and was the one who was supposed to be inspired - rules of the church; not for some new “green behind the ears” junior companion.

For the next several months I felt this presence within me all the time, telling me truths and making my day to day life filled with confidence, happiness and joy. Also present was an absence of mind, an absence of the need to judge and evaluate every thing I came in contact with.

Every moment was a wonder and then gone, to be replaced with another moment of bliss. My ego was truly dead, but wanted to be reborn. So it started to cause me to I identify with this experience and think I was some how special and better then my unenlightened companions, but I’m sure he was aware I had had a profound experience. . This absence of mind and intense experience of peace love and joy stayed with me constantly for several months, and every one I came in contact with spirit would say to me this person needs to know I love them.

One day shortly after my awakening, I was out track ting, we came to a door where a woman uncontrollably crying and police came up right behind us and asked us to leave. Spirit said stay, but my senior companion an Elder Parsons from Idaho, said we need to leave, so we did. About 200 feet down the road spirit stopped me dead in my tracks and turned me around and I said we need to go back, and I returned with or with out my companion.

As I was walking back spirit said over and over again she needs to know I love her. When we got back she came to the door and I blurted out God loves you I just needed to tell you this. She broke down and invited us in, and I know she could feel Gods love, and her pain was replaced with peace.

My Ego laid dormant for a time, several months but once my Ego got a foothold, it stepped back in and came back with a vengeance. My mind was no longer still, but a quagmire of endless random thought processes and judgments. Once again I thought I was my mind and felt no connection to the whole of life. My thoughts left the conscious here and now where happiness and peace is and I went unconscious again. My mind was forever in the past or the future where suffering lives. It was “Gone” and I felt alone against the world. I got very sick and was bedridden for a long time.

The past wonderful experience was something I just longed for and I didn’t know how to bring it back. I didn’t know if I would meditate on the present moment I could return to the peace. I didn’t know that my attachment to the experience, now in my past, kept it from returning in the present. I didn’t know That all that offended my soul I made up My mother never said I want you to be a girl, I made that up it was my Illusion, my creation, and so I was always in control, me not any one else, just me.

I didn’t know then that I needed to unlearn the things I had been taught so I could live in the truth of Spirit every day. I didn’t know that my judgments of the world made me not see the wonder of the world. I didn’t know that my attachment to things from the past, and my unwillingness to let go of that attachment kept me stuck, in the mire of longing for something that only lived in the here and now. But I have never since that day doubted ever that God is, or that the Devine Universe loves me. This I can never deny.

“Forget what you’ve been taught so you can remember what you know” ~ Alan Cohan

"The matter that makes up our world doesn’t really work the way we think it works. Underlying everything is a consciousness and intelligent mind; this mind is the metrics to all matter." ~ Max Planck 1944 (He is considered one of the fathers of Quantum Physics)

So my whole life, since that moment, has been the pursuit to learn how to live in this Peace, Love and Joy from God every day. Or more correctly, as I now know, to unlearn what I had been conditioned into by society so I could embrace my natural way of being, the way of my soul.

My mother told me many times when I was a little boy, that one day I was playing with a neighborhood boy and he said to me: “I don’t like you Chucky,” and I said: “I don’t care, I like you anyway.” You see, as a child I intuitively knew how to live in my bliss all the time. I was born knowing that and now at fifty-four I have finally “unlearned” enough to remember and understand the truth I knew as a child.

"Do not believe in the strength of traditions even if they have been held in honor for many generations and in many places; do not believe anything because many people speak of it; do not believe on the strength of sagas of old times; do not believe that which you have yourself imagined, thinking a god has inspired you. Believe nothing which depends only on the authority of your masters or priests. After investigation, believe that which you yourself have tested and found reasonable, and which is for your good and that of others." ~ A Tibetan Buddhist Teaching

So the rest of this book is what I believe and have tested in my personal life to know it is good stuff and it works. So now I am going to ask you to exercise a bit of faith like you did when you where very young; when you knew the truth because it was “in you” and you lived from its magic every day; when every moment was an adventure and joy was your daily pleasure; before you where conditioned to stop being your true self and become part of the society of the walking dead, to live from your head instead of your heart!

So if you can go back in your mind to a moment in time when life was blissful and every moment was complete in and of itself; when you didn’t have to be anywhere because the “ever present now” was complete in and of itself; when you were enthralled to just play without any thoughts of the past or concern for the future! So for a moment, forget what you have been taught, so you can remember what you know!

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ~ Albert Einstein

Now The great and wonderful Commandments of the master teacher, Jesus Christ.

After saying this I don’t intend to get all preachy, religious and self-righteous on you. No! I’m not going to ask you to believe he is the son of God or in the virgin birth or the resurrection, or any other of those religious “Must Beliefs.” Forget about all of it, it doesn’t matter; that’s right, it doesn’t matter.

The only question is: “Does what he taught work?” The master teacher, Jesus, when he was on this earth gave some of the most wonderful teachings ever. They were not commandments like Moses gave, with punishments attached; instead they where positive affirmations, with the promise of, “All that the Father has given to me shall also be yours. It’s yours for the taking!” But no one would listen. Even his apostles didn’t understand. They where looking for some powerful leader who would concur the power structure of their time. They would much rather let someone do it for them. They wanted to remain asleep; to close the door and not try to wake up - just like we do.


"We would rather be ruined than change; we would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die." ~ W. H. Auden from his wonderful book, “Change Your Mind, Change Your World”

Jesus Christ gave simple universal truths like, “Ask and it shall be given, knock and it shall be opened, seek and ye shall find;” simple, straight-forward truths. But the business of religion put them selves between you and the truth to make you believe you needed them to reclaim that which was your birthright.

I’m going to go on a little rant.
So they put the business of religion between you and God and they added conditions to everything Christ gave freely. They took, “Ask and it shall be given to you,” to ask and belong to the right church and do the things we tell you to do and then maybe if you’re good enough you might get some of the crumbs left over from those who we deem worthy.

And so who is worthy? We will tell you. So trust in our judgment and don’t trust in your own intuitive knowing, and never look inside yourself in your heart for God (where your connection to God is!) Look in our rituals and our songs about God and our stories about God and we will give you just enough to keep you coming back and giving us your money.

I am saying here and now, that all the religious rules are hooey. Except to be loving, the only thing Christ said after asking, is to believe it will be so. He also said, “Know that I have given you the power to have everything your heart could ever desire for free.”

God doesn’t need your money, that’s absurd; but the business of religion does. “Come unto our business,” say all religions, “and we will teach you to draw near to God with your lips” but your heart will be closed and afraid to approach God.

We will make you afraid to try anything we don’t recommend for fear of being wrong, and this fear will be your relationship with God. We will teach you to be afraid, very afraid of God. Then we will tell you this is good, to be “God fearing.” (The original term, “God Fearing” in the Bible means: “Respectful, or to hold in honor.” Not to be “afraid of” or fearful.)

In a nutshell, that’s my experience of all organized religions. Yes, all of them. Ok I’m through with my rant.

The bible is a wonderful and inspiring book and is not the word of GOD it was formed by men before and during the counsel of Nicaea in 325 AD and during this time many wonderful books were removed because they were bad for the business. Just because men canonized it and declared it the “word of god” doesn’t make it so.

Any and all holy books like stated by Siddhartha Gautama who became the Buddha is just a finger pointing in the correct direction but religion troughs away the correct intention of the text pointing to truth and worships the finger instead.

Now everything that I am saying about organized religion is in their formations; the creation of its traditions many years ago, not in present day. The religious leaders of today are just keeping with a tradition that was given to them from the past. They are not bad, they’re just deceived by the traditions of their particular form of religion.

They are unconscious for the belief in any model any Ideology is unconscious , and unconsciousness is the source of all that is called evil. And therein are all the problems of society, religion and the world as a whole – “the incorrect traditions passed down from generation to generation.” The Unconscious societal beliefs held on from generation to generation and never questioned is the madness of the world.


“You have nothing to be afraid of but your own mind”. ~ A Course in Miracles

Before we look at the biblical writings of Jesus I would like to state, I am what is called a “Red Letter Christian.” I’m also a Buddhist. What I mean by “red letter” is in the New Testament where they have put all of the quotes of Jesus in red letters. I put a lot of stock in the red letters but the rest of the Old and New Testament I see as a great and wonderful mythology, with many beautiful things but not a perfect text, or the final infallible Word of God. I do not believe a perfect text exists on earth. Everything written by man has man’s flaws of thinking, including my book I am writing now.

Again just because Constantine canonized the Bible during the council of Nisei, doesn’t make it perfect. I believe everything in life should be questioned, and never just accepted.

As the great Eastern Mystics say, “Doubt is a healing Balm; though it burn at first, it will heal you.”

When you find beliefs you have believed all your life no longer work, it can be a very scary thing and at the same time a very good thing; but it is the continued application of awareness and understanding which is the true cornerstone of change.

Changes we force on our self are a form of violence against our self and do not represent real change at all. By changing our behavior we don’t change; our behavior may temporarily change but it is never permanent.

It’s like moving the furniture around or changing your cloths; the surface looks different but under the surface everything is the same. But on the other hand, change that comes about from awareness and understanding; this type of change is instantaneous, easy and permanent.

And this is the true meaning of being “born again,” wherein you have a “new mind.” So doubt has a very positive function, for it releases old beliefs that don’t work any more when you become more mature in your thinking. It’s seeing reality - seeing life as it is.

It’s seeing that under your bed are just dust bunnies and not some evil monster. So it’s not a bad thing to be a “doubting Thomas,” like religion tells you; it’s a good thing to help you wake up to reality.

As the apostle Paul put it, “As a child, I thought as a child, but now I am an adult and have put off childish things.” He also taught that the ultimate purpose of religion was to become obsolete, because when you are directly communicating with God you no longer need the vehicle of religion;

or, as Dr. Wayne Dyer puts it, “Have a Mind open to everything but attached to nothing.” You must be willing to let go of old foolish beliefs when you outgrow them. I also would like to recommend a wonderful text filled with beautiful thoughts.

The text is, A Course in Miracles. I have found it to be in harmony with the original teachings of Jesus and highly beneficial to your personal journey, back to your “True Self.” Also I would like to recommend two books by Eckhart Tolle. They are The power of Now and A New Earth; both profoundly insightful books to connect you to your true source.


To day we go beyond grievances to look upon the miracle instead. We will reverse the way you see allowing sight to stop before we see we will not wait before the shield of hate, but lay it down and gently lift our eyes in silence to behold the son of God.

He weights for you behind your grievances and as you lay them down he will appear in shinning light where each one stood before.

For every grievance is a block to sight, and as it lifts you see the Son of God where he has always been. He stands in light, but you were in the dark. Each grievance made the darkness deeper and you could not see.

Today we will attempt to see Gods Son. ~ A Course in Miracles

Now let’s look at the beautiful messages of love the man Jesus who became the Christ gifted to us two thousand years ago.

Title page

Exercises in Awareness
Spiritual Principles for the Inner Awakening & the Conscious Application of Living Principles

By Charles William Lyon


“Every adversity carries within it a
greater or equivalent benefit.”
~ Napoleon hill

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”
~ Lao Tzu (c. 604-531 B.C.E)

Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fiber of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
~ James Buckham

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances -- it was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at the time, or it was so then, and another day would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Table of contents

Forward
Chapter One – “I Love You. Why don’t You Love You,” My Introduction to The Devine Universe
Chapter Two - To Love God, The First Great Commandment
Chapter Three - To Love Your Neighbor, The Second Great Commandment
Chapter Four ~ Letting go of Judgments
Chapter Five ~ More Love Talk
Chapter Six ~ Say to Your Heart - Peace, be Still
Chapter Seven ~ Let Your Light Shine
Chapter Eight ~ Faith, The Power of the Universe
Chapter Nine ~ The Consciousness of One
Chapter Ten ~ Christ Consciousness
Chapter Eleven ~ The Gift of Forgiveness
Chapter Twelve ~ The Kingdom of Heaven
Chapter Thirteen ~ To Hunger and Thirst After the Truth
Chapter Fourteen ~ Gratitude, The Great Attitude
Chapter Fifteen ~ Living in The Present
Chapter Sixteen ~ Discovering the Divine Inner Child
Chapter Seventeen ~ Know Thyself - Becoming the Quiet Observer
Chapter Eighteen ~ Following Your Bliss ~ page 136
Chapter Nineteen ~ Being Open to Possibilities and Letting Go of Attachments
Chapter Twenty ~ I’m an Ass, You’re an Ass Too
Chapter Twenty-one - My Conclusion’s