Nothing to Lose

            Not for the first time, I'm putting myself out in full sight, for your scrutiny. Here's a strange fact of my life.

Sometimes words, ideas and even whole passages appear in my mind. They don't seem to come from me. They come from somewhere else. 

I know. 

It's kind of hard to accept. 

It wasn't easy for me, either. For a long time I saw this as somewhere between odd and crazy. Even when a prophetic message undeniably came true in my life, I called it coincidence. But  after numerous signs and a whole lot of coincidences, I couldn't deny it any more. 
Sometimes I have thoughts that are not my own. Often, these are concepts that are new to me and sometimes they're difficult for me to grasp. I call them Universal Truth. 

I’ve come across some wonderful teachers in my life, including some who have also professed to have received knowledge that came from beyond their physical being. I'm very grateful to be privy to the gift of Universal Truth in their words. And, at times, I've also been disheartened when I've witnessed a shift in them. Some seem to move from, “I’m offering a possibility” to “I have the answer” and finally to “I am the answer.” 

But I don't believe hearing these truths makes one special. Universal Truth is there for the taking. It's there for anyone who’s listening. 
Sometimes, I’m listening. 
Sometimes the words pass through me, from somewhere beyond to my mind to my fingertips to the keys of my laptop and finally to the world’s shared brain which we refer to as the internet. When this happens, the sensations inside me— tingling awakeness, vibrant flowing energy—carry a potent rightness. Sharing these thoughts brings a rewarding sense of purpose and what seems to me to be a tangible intimate closeness with the Divine. I feel grateful for the messages and share them wherever there’s a willing ear—

Sometimes.

Other times I'm resistant and unwilling to listen.
Doesn't that seem strange? 

For a moment, accept with me the possibility that I actually hear messages that are... divinely given. Shouldn’t I be clamoring to write them down? Wouldn’t you think I’d be putting everything else aside to make certain I don’t lose a syllable?

Why do I find it so hard to stay with something that seems so important?
And even when I do become aware of a bit of this Universal Truth, and then choose to write it out, I sometimes feel the need to add something of my own. I mean, I'm doing it right now! 

Why? 

Why, when I wrote “Water Girl,” didn't I just write the conversation between Ella and her alter-ego - words which came to me in one whole piece - without first writing a thousand words to get there? And when I heard from two sources that the story was a little long, my human ego pulled up rage and grief and blame and fear—a clear sign that I was not on the right track. 

I can see that my human self wants to be able to take the credit. I want the story to be mine.  When someone says, “Wow,” I want to believe that their enthusiasm is directed at me. If I don't add anything to the pieces that seem to come from outside of me, how can I call them mine?

Isn't this the same trap I've seen others fall into? 

I know that's not what I want... but still I feel as if I deserve some recognition. If I write something and give it to the world, I should get something in return. Right? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? 

Something does not seem right, but I don't know what it is... so, in a clear voice I ask the Universe,
"Am I really supposed to give something for nothing?"

And I hear an answer.

You can’t own anything in this physical universe—including approval. Accountability is written on two sides of an archaic coin—acclaim on one side and blame on the other. When you understand there is only one being, you no longer need either.

Okay. I know. I've heard this before. But it's hard to imagine that I can't possess anything... When I try, I feel a great sadness... hopelessness... an intense feeling of emptiness. 

Emptiness is an illusion.

But if I have nothing... isn’t that emptiness? 

If you give someone money, or the shirt off your back, do you still have those things?

No! See... if I give someone what I have then I have less… 

What about when you give someone love?

This stops me. I put down my vigilant, confrontational ego and listen. 

You can’t possess anything in the physical world because you are already completely full of the only thing you need. 

You are made of love. 

You have believed that if you give something to another you have lost something of your own. 

But there is no other and every gift is love. 

Listen. 

Trust. 

Let it flow through you. 

You truly have nothing to lose. 

Evolutionary Soup

(My experience during the eighth Generation One class - an intensive with Barbara Marx Hubbard. We were working on Code 36:

Guide the Metamorphosis of Your Earthly Self with the Coding of Your Universal Self.)

I closed my eyes, noticing the rush of excitement. Only a few times had our group of five attempted this kind of connection. On my own, I’d been a frequent visitor to that space which some called The Field. Making the voyage with others—beyond breath, beyond the darkness of closed eyes—was a relatively new experience. Each time, it seemed to get easier and the joy within greater.

A breath.

Relax

A breath.

Be open

A breath.

Whatever comes is exactly right

Despite my attempts to drop expectations, I found myself watching for the glimmer I’d seen before, and indeed the darkness did seem less absolute.

Another breath. A single blue line… and then another… and then a whole horizontal grid appeared just above my head.

Another breath. The azure web stretched beyond perception. I felt myself rising up, pushing into the blue lines, which folded over and around my head like an intangible net.

As I continued to rise into the grid, I saw it stretch at four other points as spheres rose up nearby. As each sphere stretched into an oblong, the net seemed to stretch and strain as light poured out. In the bright illumination, I saw the faces of the others.  Our five points of light were the angles of a star. The space between us was extremely bright and getting brighter as we continued to rise. Necks, shoulders, arms and bodies pushed up through the grid. By the time my legs and feet emerged, the light was so intense I found myself squinting even though my eyes were still closed.

I could hear the breath of the others. I felt energy all around me. Together, we seemed almost infinitely vast but also I was aware of how tiny I was within the endless Field. I put one hand on my heart, pulling the energy into that place that seemed to hold the physical essence of me, and extended the other hand out towards the other points of light. Powerful waves ran through me and outwards, connecting me to the others. We were five distinct beings and yet we were one.

“There’s movement… just wave after wave of pure love,” came from one point of our star.

Laughter poured forth from another. “It’s so bright!”

A third said, “I’m like a drop of water in this vast ocean—separate, but part of the whole.”

It wasn’t the first time I was reminded of the Five Elements—Water, Fire, Wind, Earth and the Void—and mused to say so and then to explain, “Movement is like Wind. Bright light is like Fire. And the drops of water are of course, Water.”

A little later, I asked, “If you three are Wind, Fire and Water, then who is Earth and who is the Void?”

Our fourth star-point chuckled. “I’m Earth,” he said, definitively.

“Ah,” I said, smiling. “Then I am the void.”

It seemed we’d joined hands across the miles that separated our physical forms. Love, joy, peaceful connection and calm reassurance blended into one emotion as we simply existed together. There was a long pause. In the silence, I thought of the nothingness of the void and the familiar sense of paradox crept in.

The void, which it seems should be nothing at all, holds the promise of everything. A moment before the Big Bang, the Universe would have seemed empty, but within that nothingness was everything that has ever been. In the void, all things are possible.

And then, suddenly, a wave of something else. Something… insistent.

“Does anyone else feel that? A shift? Like a sense of…urgency?”

 “Can you talk a bit more about that?” asked Wind.

“I don’t know… I just had the strangest thought. So strange, but I feel like I should say it. I felt as if I was a simmering broth just waiting for the perfect ingredients to create… something amazing.”

Fire said, “Put all the ingredients together into the void and you’d get… Evolutionary Soup!”

Light and joy and laughter came along with murmurs of  Evolutionary Soup. The time had come to step back from the squint-bright darkness, the sense of urgency, and the immeasurable joy of joining in the Field. That night and the following day, the physical world had many requests of me, but now, in the silence of another evening I wonder at the memory of that lovely blue grid, the infinite star, and the urgency of evolutionary soup.

Unconditional Love

I’ve been reading “The Five Levels of Attachment,” by don Miguel Ruiz, Jr. At the same time, I’ve been working to understand the concept of “unconditional love”.

My understanding of the message from the book is that our attachments to our beliefs get in the way of our following our own, best path. The more strongly we are attached to a belief, the less likely we are to challenge it, even if it becomes almost impossible to make that belief work with what we see around us.

People kill and die because of their beliefs. That belief may be that only their religion is right, that their country is the best, or that their physical body’s shape, size, or color is somehow better than another.

The Dalai Lama, the well-known Tibetan Buddhist teacher, explains the difference between attachment and unconditional love:  “Attachment and love are similar in that both of them draw us to the other person. But in fact, these two emotions are quite different. When we’re attached we’re drawn to someone because he or she meets our needs.[…] On the other hand, the love we’re generating on the Dharma path is unconditional. We simply want others to have happiness and the causes of happiness without any strings attached...” He neither accepts nor denies that unconditional love is possible, but he does explain it quite clearly.

People harm each other because of attachments to a belief that there is a limited way to love. I’d bet on the fact that you know someone who believes it is wrong to love outside of your race, your religion, or to love someone of the same gender. Those same people may tell you that God doesn’t want you to love in the ways they believe are wrong—and they may also tell you that God loves unconditionally. 

Perhaps they explain this as a paradox—that God loves unconditionally, but with a few conditions.

A Yoruba priest, Kalila Borhgini says, “God’s love is unconditional, but God also has expectations and requirements.” She accepts this and, a little later, calls it a paradox.

Baptist Rev. John Piper writes, “There is such a thing as unconditional love in God, but it’s not [...] for everybody. Else everybody would be saved, since they would not have to meet any conditions, not even faith.” What I get from this is that God loves us unconditionally, only if we have faith—which is of course, a condition.

I don’t believe in paradox. My feeling is that when we see something as paradox, it’s because we are seeing part of the equation incorrectly. 

2+3 will never equal 4. No matter how attached I am to the number three, as long as I hold it in that part of the equation, I am going to come up with a paradox because the only thing that logically fits, is another two.

Consider this statement: God is everywhere. 

At first, I took that to mean that God was here with us, all the time—that God was always present, right along with everything else. In time, I considered the possibility that God was neither another dimension superimposed over what we see and feel, nor a presence far away that was somehow aware of everything else.

Maybe God isn't here WITH everything, but AS everything. Maybe God’s presence “everywhere” really means that everything and everyone is God. 

Einstein and other physicists tell us that all matter is actually energy. Slow down energy's vibration and you get what we call matter. This means everything we see, feel, know or imagine is energy. Our thoughts and feelings, our movement through space, and even our bodies. 

Everything is energy. God is everything. Therefore God is energy. This equation makes sense to me. 

Perhaps God slowed down bits of that energy in order to experience what we think of as the physical realm. 

In the Law of Attraction teachings (also called the teachings of Abraham) it says, “Unconditional love is staying in the vibration of Source regardless of the condition.” To me, this says that we can only love unconditionally if we are in alignment with the vibration of the Universe (God). In a way, this is saying the same thing as the Baptist Reverend--that faith(or alignment with God) is a condition of unconditional love. 

One could look at it to mean that only God can love unconditionally, but if we did accept the premise that God is all, then God is us, and we are God and therefore, we should be able to achieve unconditional love.

I will make mistakes and you will make mistakes, yet God is perfect. If we are God, then mistakes do not take away from our perfection. How can that be? 

If I am God and you are God, then the concept of ‘loving thy neighbor as thyself’ has a different flavor. Thy neighbor IS thyself and both of us are God. We are meant to love ourselves and others and God constantly and equally, because they are one and the same and Divine—and therefore perfect. It’s like saying God has unconditional love for us because we are Divine and perfect aspects of God. That equation seems to ring as true as 2+2=4. Both sides are equal and the same. 

Catholic Fr. Vincent Serpa writes, “God does love us unconditionally in that he loves us even in our sins. But he cannot love our sins.” This is the “love the person not their actions” version of “unconditional” love. It represents an attachment to the “good and evil” concept. 

But maybe the way we choose to manipulate the energy around us (the way we choose to live our lives) is not good or bad. Maybe that judgment is irrelevant to God. Maybe God does not have any expectation of how we will use our time in this physical realm, but instead, has a knowledge that all aspects of God will always be aspects of God regardless of how we shift that energy—that no matter what we do, we are still perfect.

We would not put the three in the 2+3=5 equation unless we had a really good reason to believe that the three belonged there. If we were to accept that this paradox of expectations and unconditional love is a faulty equation, what attachment would have caused us to create it?

I think it’s an attachment to conditional love that moves me—and others—create the paradoxical equation. 

In my most rational moments, I don't actually believe God loves one person more than another. I accept that everyone and everything is an aspect of God, and that God loves all aspects of the Universe equally. Therefore, what I do here has nothing to do with how much God loves me.

The first time I considered that idea, I was surprised by a wave of fear. Why would that be a scary thought?

As a small child, I wanted to be loved unconditionally but I learned that love was conditional. I believed my parents were not capable of giving me unconditional love because I was not capable of being "good enough". If I believed unconditional love was possible, I also had to accept that my parents chose not to give it to me. This is harder to accept than to believe there’s an unknowable paradox—which would allow me to never have to look at the situation too closely.

In order to imagine this need for unconditional love being fulfilled, I personified God. I gave God the quality of requiring a condition for love, a quality that actually belonged to my parents. Like many (as my examples above display) I developed an attachment to the belief that "unconditional" love would be given to me if I followed a certain set of rules.

An attachment to this belief has several benefits.

For one thing, I can solve the greatest dilemma of my childhood. With God, I can finally be "good enough" to receive “unconditional” love. 

But also, by believing that God’s unconditional love actually has some conditions, it gives me an illusion of power. If I do “God’s will” then surely God will love me more. I will become one of the chosen, the beloved, the saved—whatever name you’d like—by fulfilling the conditions imposed by my belief system.

If I give up the attachment to the concept that I gain God’s love by following certain rules, does that mean I have to believe I can’t gain God’s love?

Yes. That's true. I can’t gain God’s love because I already have it. We can't ever lose it.

If we have to follow rules in order not to lose God’s love, we live fear-driven lives. There is constantly the possibility that I might lose the love I need, so my actions are driven by the set of imposed rules in my belief-system.

If I truly accept that God's love is unconditional, then I am no longer driven by fear of losing that love. It is that fear that seems to hold us to the rules of society—the things our society has decided are "moral” or “right”. Without that fear-driven base, It seems I would no longer be governed by the laws of man. I would be free to act exactly as I'm called to act. The moral "dilemma" would not exist. 

Our attachment to the concept of "good and evil" may be the hardest one to release. How many paradoxes would be wiped out of existence if we saw that this is really a societal concept, not an actual law of the universe? We would not have to hold ourselves (mankind) to a different standard as the rest of nature, for one. We would not have to judge ourselves or others harshly for "making mistakes", for another. We all know we are going to "make mistakes" yet we live in resentment, shame and guilt. 

If we were going to release our attachment to societal morals. We would have to raise our children in an entirely different way. When a toddler first experienced rage and struck out to show it, we would not tell him what he was doing was wrong. Instead, we would teach him that everything and everyone IS God, just as he is, and that when he strikes out against the world, he is striking out against himself. 

Of course he would not understand this as a toddler, but neither does a toddler understand “wrong”. We drive that into children until they believe it and then expect them to accept the "paradox" that God loves unconditionally—with some conditions.