My Story

Chapter 10: Traveling Evangelist

In 1993 I was traveling around the country speaking various spiritual topics. In Portland, Oregon there is an open area called Pioneer Courthouse Square that has a perfect amphitheater for speaking and performing.

I watched the lunch crowds for a week or so and saw only a few musicians playing here. So one day I decided to talk about building forums in public places so that we can bring people together. I was quickly told by a police officer that public speaking here was not allowed, unless I was playing music. I reminded the police officer about the Bill of Rights and Freedom of Speech. He told me that this 'public square' was not under those laws because it was leased to a private company who could then control who used the square.

I was angered and thought that they were only trying to silence those of us who would question their judgement and authority. I told the police officer that tomorrow I would challenge that authority would deny me my right of freedom of speech.

The next day at noon I was there and so were a dozen or so police officers. I waited until there was a crowd of about 300 people (the usual lunchtime crowd) and I started talking about the lack of freedom of speech in America. The police came and warned me that I would be arrested if I did not stop so I told the audience that I was going to be arrested right here in front of them just to prove that we do not have the freedom of speech in America any more.

I was arrested, handcuffed and taken to the city jail. (While I was being arrested there were a few people who started to object but the majority just sat and watched.) I spent 5 hours in the city jail before being released.

Eventually the charges were dropped as long as I no longer tried to return to the Pioneer Courthouse Square area for one year. I also found out that the mayor had pushed for this situation because she was offended by the fundamentalist Christians who came out there and preached to the people.

From that point on I started to realize that the real problem we had to deal with use our lack of willingness to listen to one another. But winter was coming and it was time to head south.

I was in LA where you do not go to find inner peace. I knew this woman who was very troubled mostly because she was trying to save everybody else and in the process losing herself. She was so troubled that she tried to commit suicide. After spend several weeks in the hospital mental ward (where she apparently talked about me quite a bit) she called me and asked if I could come take her home.

So I went to the hospital to pick her up. I was waiting in the inner hall of the mental ward for quite some time and actually feeling quite impatient. Apparently the staff was very hesitant about releasing this woman. She was out in the hall near me also waiting for the staff's permission to leave the secured area of the mental ward. I then decided to change myself and the quality of my experience in that moment. I changed my intention from one of picking up this friend to one of appreciating my life experiences.

In doing so I started to breathe deeply with each in breath bring in appreciation and light and each out breathe letting out the tension and resistance. As I did this I consciously expanded my sense of peace and appreciation to those around me and in the hospital.

My friend, as crazy as she might be some times, is very sensitive and she immediately sensed something was happening. She later wrote to me about this experience: ". . .remember the time in LA when you came to get me from the hospital.  I will never forget what I saw you do.  It took only seconds of something in your eyes that turned that doctor around in a full 180 degree circle as he reached out his hand to shake yours.  Had you been there before when they were talking about you in the most negative way.  They were not going to release me to you.  With your "power of intention" things changed instantly."

I remember that quote from Jesus: "And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it." (Matthew 10:13) I really experienced bring my peace upon this 'house' or hospital that day. And I have experienced this many times since then. This is not something that is unique to me, as I have experienced this many times with other skillful people. We all have the opportunity to do this but most people are like me when I was younger, I did not know that it was available and/or how to do it.

It all happens just with intention. If you desire peace then will it within yourself and share that will (or intention) only with those around you. Then watch as the demeanor changes.

You can even do this with animals. Animals and children seem more in tune to our demeanor than most adults. I wish I could remember to do this more often.

While in Austin for part of the winter I would go to the University of Texas campus and speak out a little bit. They do not like public speaking there the way that other universities do so I had to watch where and when I spoke out.

Texas is conservative. (Duh!) Even in Austin and on the campus where there would normally be frowned up, conservatism is popular. All the political groups were conservative as were the Christian and Jewish groups.

I was in the phase of questioning some of the religious groups attitudes that I saw as unhealthy. I could see that the more conservative a group was the more faithless they were. They also made material things more important. This included the flesh of our bodies and fetuses. The conservatives hated a lot.

When I would talk to conservative Christians they would almost always quote scriptures from the teachings of the apostles and disciples. I never heard them quote Jesus. As I had already noticed the apostles and disciples were the blind leading the blind and all these kids had fallen into the pit with them. The proof was their fear and hatred.

I could see how the faithless of the teachings of the apostles and disciples was the leavening of the Pharisees and Sadducees that Jesus warned people about. (Matthew 16:6). The Pharisees and Sadducees where the faithless conservatives of Jesus' day.

When talking to these conservatives I noticed they were either to afraid or to lazy to question some of this faithless teachings. And I could see why they would be.

In their culture they were very much into family and community. If you start to question the foundation of beliefs that your family and community are based on then you will be shaking that foundation. Since people want stability they would frown on your questioning (as they did mine.) Frowning on it would put it politely, they would reject you from your family and community.

Now, of course, Jesus recommend that people leave their families and communities (Matthew 19:29, Mark 10:29) so that they could get free from the bondage of their ways of thinking. But these kids (and they eventually become adults with this attitude) get their goodness from their relationships. The task of questioning something so foundational as their religion was just too much of a challenge for them. Maybe if they had left their community (Texas in this case) and gone to school a long distance away they might have been more open to other ways of thinking. I was beating a dead horse talking to these conservative religious people. They were trapped in their delusions and were not ready to get out of them.

To be honest, I must recognize that most of these conservatives are pretty comfortable in their existence. Because they focus so much on the material (mammon) they tend to have enough money. Life for them was pretty good. Not great and far from perfect, but they were comfortable in mediocrity. There was so much more than a mediocre but their minds had not been stretched or challenged to look beyond their beliefs to maybe see something much better. Since they were not really hurting I could accept their condition and felt a peace with not confronting them too much.

I did notice that the conservatives tended toward violence. I could see that this was because they bottled up passions with their limited beliefs, rules and laws. Like a pressure cooker with the release valve blocked they will eventually exploded. It does not take much seeking to see examples of conservatives violence.

Since Austin is also know as a liberal town, at least liberal compared to the rest of Texas, I met many so called liberals here. Boulder is also considered a liberal town, at least compared to the rest of Colorado. But I noticed that the liberals have a lot of commonness with the conservatives. Liberal tend to be left wing conservatives. They both hate a lot, they just hate different things. Liberals, or left wing conservatives, put their values in the environment and employment or economic security. Right wing conservatives put their values in family and the opportunity to make lots of money. For conservatives they use money to ease the pain of their fears and hatred. Liberals use community and nature to ease their pain from their fears and hatred.

They are both haters and both are either to lazy or cowardly to question their beliefs. Both groups tend to live their whole lives as an out-of-body experience. They are really in their minds.

I started to think about this. These people have their limiting beliefs and their values. We live in a democracy where they can vote. They can therefore impose their limiting beliefs, fears and values upon me and the rest of us. Therefore, it is my duty to confront them if for no other reason than self preservation. Thank God for democracy. I guess that is why we created it, to force us to get off our lazy and/or cowardly butts and go out and challenge those still trapped in their minds.

To be fair to the left wing conservatives (liberals) they tend to be healthier than the right wing conservatives.

This set me on a quest to understand what causes the cancer called conservatism. I could see that diet, pollution, crowed living and over population all cause tension in our bodies. This tension creates fear which is at the heart of conservatism. It is a holistic issue and I was not ready to take on that issue yet.

Once, when I was talking on campus I said something that upset a young Jewish woman. She had screamed at me that she was going to report me to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) .

So I went to the rabbi to ask him what the ADL was. He asked me to tell him what I had said to the crowd that so upset the woman, so I told him that I had been challenging some of the Jewish attitudes that I felt hurt the Jewish people.

We were standing together in the center of his office and I can still remember him taking a couple of steps back as I told him what I had said. He exclaimed that she should have been angry with me for what I said.

With a puzzled look on my face, I told him I did not understand. Was he encouraging this woman to be angry; anger being one of the seven 'deadly' sins. If so, then he was encouraging this Jewish woman to commit suicide, which is anti-Semitism. I informed the rabbi that I had been talking about how the Jewish people were being encouraged to murder themselves with their anger and that it was killing them. So I was more on the side of the Jewish people than he was.

This rabbi had the intelligence to see that I was more right than he was and the integrity to admit it to me. I was thoroughly impressed by his integrity. It took a lot of courage to be that honest. I have so rarely seen that in any member of the clergy.

I had another encounter with a Jewish guy this time that also was illuminating. I was giving a talk about overcoming fear. During the talk I mentioned how I saw people being conditioned to be fearful by their religious leaders and used the example of the rabbi above.

This young Jewish guy also that that I was being anti-Semitic. He got so angry that he started to leave the room. Instead of confronting his behavior I used it to demonstrate to the rest of the audience just how he was reacting from his programming. I mentioned that it was not his fault that he was programmed to abuse himself emotionally and that compassion for him and others like him was called for. While I was talking ABOUT this guy and not AT him he stopped from leaving and just listened. I was not confronting him or even his tradition, I was just talking about the conditions that made him what he was. This seemed to defuse the situation and he sat down. Later, after the talk he came up to me and said that he appreciated my insight into his conditioning.

My insight was that talking about people and why they are what they are instead of engaging them worked a lot better. I would get another chance to do this real soon.

While in Austin I was again examining my ways of thinking and looking at their affect on the quality of my life experience. I started thinking about Jesus and how, at times, he identified with God. Well, I thought, if it is good enough for Jesus it is good enough for me.

I AM GOD.

So what does it mean to be God. And more importantly, what is the affect of thinking like that on the quality of my life experience. I wanted to look beyond the fact that those still in the darkness will hate me for saying something like this, just as they hated Jesus and tried to kill him after he said it.

So I not only thought about this but started writing a whole book about it. It was titled Be God Now. Here are some excepts from it.

Be God Now

As God, I am perfect and I am the creator of everything that is. Being perfect I can not create something that is not perfect. (I recognize that as a human thinking I am God that I will not be able to see everything all the time, or at least not be about to understand what I see.) Jesus thought that he and his Father were one. How did that effect the quality of his life experience.

In this way of thinking I think that Jim Freedom is a finite being, but "I" am an infinite being that existed before Jim Freedom and will exist after he is gone. Thinking this way frees my mind from worry about death and what will happen to "me" when I die. Since I will not die, death is not an issue nor is what will happen to me. I will not reincarnate nor go to heaven or hell.

As God I can not sin so guilt is not part of my life.

As God I am in infinite being without bounds. That means that I do not end here and you begin there. "I" encompass you. Am in just another you and you are just another me. I do unto you as I would want done unto me because I am you. This Golden Rule is the root of all laws (legit laws at least.)

Jim Freedom and all of life and all of the manifest world are but a figment of my imagination. This world is only here for my entertainment, for the joy of it.

When I meditate I experience that I can actually feel what other people are feeling, including feeling their thoughts. I seem to expand out to include them. They become me. We are one. In fact, I can even feel what plants are feeling. I become all sentient beings. This is what I see atonement as; at-one-ment will all beings.

I see that the Bible is trying to get us to accept this idea that we are God and that all beings are part of us. Of course, it is difficult for primitive people to accept something that is not obvious or apparent.

The affect (not effect) is that I am more able to enjoy and even love this world and all it creation. I no longer feel as strong attachment to material things so when they go away, as all material things do, I no longer feel as big as loss. Without the sense of loss I have no need for the concept of evil, for evil can only exist if I am attached to that which is being lost.

I also feel that I am part of all beings so I have more compassion for them. I care about them because I am them. Loving one another is no problem. I still see us, all of us, as stupid or unconscious most of the time, but we are awakening and I can appreciate that.

Overall, I see that thinking I am God has it advantages. But sometimes I like to think I am not God. When I am not God I can experience the deep emotional valleys that attachment to material things take us to. When I am in the deepest, darkest valley and all seems hopeless I know the depths of Hell. Then I can awaken up and remember that I am God and all this is just for the joy of it. I detach and raise above the valley to the highest mountains where the view is GREAT! The deeper the valley the higher the mountain and the greater the view. This distance between the bottom of the valley and the top of the mountain is the depth of the richness of my experience.

All of this is just thought, reality is not relevant. How thinking like this affects the quality of my experience is relevant. Having this way of thinking only improves the quality of my life.

I recognize that for most religious people this is a blasphemes way of thinking, as it was when Jesus told the religious people around him that he thought like this (John 10:30). Only those still in the dark would think that anything said could be blasphemous. Those still in the dark make all sorts of things more important than loving what life offers.

I got the idea for this way of thinking from Jesus, for I thought that if it is good enough for him that it is good enough for me. And he was right, it does work. It is sad that more people are not open to Godliness. It is sad that they choose the ungodly way of thinking, which is they are not God. It is sad that they have been convinced to see this world as ugly and that they live a life trapped in that ugliness.

One of the aspects of being God is omnipotence or all powerful. As Jesus said, "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed ... nothing will be impossible to you." (Matthew 17:20) If nothing is impossible to you then you are all powerful.

Another aspect of being God is omniscience or all knowingness. As Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: " (Matthew 7:7) If you can seek and find then all knowledge is available to you.

And of course, there is the most obvious statement of them all, Jesus said, "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? " (John 10:34). So if there is but one God (Mark 12:29) and we are all gods then can it be denied that we are the one God? Well, at least that was Jesus' logic when he used these quotes to squelch the fervor of the faithless conservatives of his time.

When I look at Jesus as both a teacher and an example I see him encouraging us all to think and be like him. He was trying to tell us that we are God. When I was researching for this book, Be God Now, I noticed lots of other places in the Bible that reinforce this idea too.

As God we created these human beings so that we can experience life directly. We wanted to feel what life has to offer. As humans we want to feel and we are most attracted to feeling appreciation, joy and love but all feelings are part of the life experience.

I can experience myself as God, so I experience Godliness. The religious person says that we are not God, so they experience not-Godliness or ungodliness. If you ask yourself which experience you would rather have Godliness or ungodliness I suspect that if you have the courage to be honest you will say Godliness.

So why not think of yourself as God?

If you are God then are not here to be served, you are here to serve. Jesus told his followers, "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also." (John 8:19:). He also said that he came to serve, not be served. (Luke 22:27) "I am among you as one who serves." So God is there to serve humanity, not humanity there to serve God. If you are God then you are a servant of humanity, or what Jesus called a "Son of Man."

There are a lot of hints in the Bible that tries to tell us to think like Jesus or to be God. It just depends on where you have ears to hear or not. If you have been programmed all your life to not see these hints then you will miss them. But if you are open minded and look then you will see them.

The writers of the Bible were to faithless to tell the truth straight out. They did not think it would work. These writers think that if people start to think they are God and can not do something wrong then they will run amok. These writers can not see that this running amok may be the quickest way for humanity to see that they really are God, which means they are one another. So they should do unto others as you would want done unto yourself BECAUSE THEY ARE YOU. We may need to all be the prodigal sons and daughters and go against God before we can come home and really appreciate our connectedness.

To Be Perfect

When we are conscious of our intent we recognize that what we want is to experience life as beautiful and perfect. What we want is the experience of Perfection. What we want is to experience beauty. That is available if we are open to it. For beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I have been able to adjust my mind so that I can see this world as beautiful and perfect. Therefore I can experience this world at beautiful and perfect. The quality of my life experience is beautiful and perfect.

Of course, we have learned how to see this world as less than perfect. In fact, we have learned this lesson very well. And, there is value to seeing the world as less than perfect as long as we can see a way to improve it. With this less than perfect perception we are motivated to change things. It gives us passion and vitality without which we would feel dead or depressed. We feel depressed when we see the world as less than perfect but see no way to improve it, or that it is hopelessly imperfect.

The option to see this world as imperfect is available to me to and I choose it when I want the passion and desire that motivates me and gives me vitality. Since perfect means whole and complete, lacking nothing, a life without lack is a life without the whole and complete experience.

Most people are trapped in seeing the world as imperfect. They do not have the choice to see the world as perfect so they never can sit back and relax, rest and enjoy the perfection of creation. They can never experience perfection. They can never see creation as beautiful. (Nor can they see the creator as beautiful and perfect.) The are trapped in the ugliness and they never get the full richness that life offers. And that is sad to me when it is available to anybody who is open to it.

There is nothing you have to do to be perfect. It is the doing that keeps you from experiencing your perfection.

My next stop on my tour of schools to talk at was the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. There I found that the school encouraged free speech and I was warmly accepted. Even the Christians seemed to tolerate me. But one incident there sticks out in my mind.

Once a week there were these three Christian guys who would come into the free speech are and preach hell fire and damnation to the students. They would all wear these bright red polyester sport coats. These guys were obviously not that bright. Even their language was dull.

So the smarter students would heckle them and sometimes they would get into near fights. After watching this for a couple of weeks I felt it was time to speak out.

So I got between the red coats and the students and started to question the students. I asked them if they would heckle a blind person who walked by. Or would they ridicule a person in a wheel chair because they could not walk. So why then would they ridicule some people who are obviously not as privileged as they are by getting to go to school were they could develop their intellectual skills. You students have had the privilege of an opportunity to develop your intellectual ability to see through the delusions that these guys are still trapped in their beliefs with.

I said that these guys are actually screaming out to these students to help them overcome the delusions that they are trapped in that cause them to fear so much of what life offers. And I did not see anyone who seemed to care about other people as much as these red coats seemed to. These guys had the courage to be honest, were willing to come here with all the ridicule and still offer what little they have to you rich and privileged students.

The effect of this speech was wonderful. The students stopped the heckling and ridiculing and started to talk with the red coats. As the red coats were leaving they came up to me and thanked me. They said that they may not have agreed with what I said but appreciate my appreciation of what they were trying to do.

Everybody won. I felt pretty good about myself that day. I felt I did have something to offer people.

After Gainesville I felt that I wanted to reach out to more people than I could as I currently was. I guess you can say that I was getting greedy for I wanted more.

I had plenty of money right now. I had invested what money I had so that my return on my investment was greater than my expenditures. But I wanted more.

Greed was seeping in my consciousness, even if that greed was in the desire to serve others. So I devised a plan to return to Boulder and start investing (or should I say speculating) in the stock market to make enough money to by a radio station.

I went back to Boulder and did speculate in the stock market and did effectively lose my nest egg. And in the process I had lost both my desire to reach out to people as well as my confidence.

I could see that it was a rebuilding time for me. I wanted to find a better way to reach out to people but also a way that worked for me. If I was going to practice what I preached, like self love first, then I would have to find a way to reach out that was in line with loving myself. But how...

America has not temples. It has to place that people can go to be close to God or where they can congregate who want to openly talk about being close to God. We have churches, but churches have walls, doors and locks. God has not walls, doors or locks on his place. Churches are for the ungodly. The doors and locks are to get out God. If God is infinite then that which locks out anything is anti-God.

Around this time I went to Montana to visit my mother and her husband. They were very into their pastor so I would attend to see why they liked the pastor so much. One time I heard him lecture for over an hour on why he was so important to the congregation, or why a pastor was so important. This reminded me of some of the gurus who taught the same crap, just to build their image up among the gullible and make them indispensable to their followers. It was good for business.

My mother and step father are pretty gullible and seemed to worship this pastor, but it bothered me. On the surface they seemed happy with the situation so who was I to say anything about it. But I did and it causes friction between my mother and I. The pastor was teaching them to lie to themselves and each other.

One day I went in to talk to the pastor in his office. I happen to mention that I was God and this upset him very much. I was kind of confused since he had been a pastor for over twenty five years. I would have thought that he had read the Gospels in that time, but he had not apparently. I quoted to him John 10:34, "Ye are gods? " He had never heard this line so he looked it up. As soon as he read it (proving me right) he immediately went into telling my I did not understand it. This is coming from a guy who only ten seconds before had never even heard of this line. So much for integrity.

These false teachers are like doctors who only make a living off of sick people. They want you to be sick and needy, that is how they get their power. If you are sick they make you better, at least temporarily. If you are not sick then you do not need them and they can not pay for their BMW.

At this time my mother found out that she had cancer of the female parts. The cancer was the product of her doctor prescribing a drug for her symptoms of menopause that caused the cancer. The doctor made his money and my mom got cancer. Pretty good deal.

Anyway, when I questioned her dependency on these people she just gets upset at me. I would say, "I am more on your side then you are." But she did not see it that way.

I would see this same type of situation with lots of gurus from both the eastern and western traditions. The gurus, clergy, doctors and the sorts all made a living off of people gullible enough to believe they needed these people. Some, of course, do offer something to people. Others only offer enough to get people hooked. I do not know what to do about it.

I was a perfect example of somebody who did not need a guru, teacher, pastor, savior, priest, or anybody for me to get free. Many people did help me on my journey but I did not need anybody.

Religious tyranny happens when people have not been encouraged to develop the ability to discern what is real and what is false. So they are gullible enough to believe in faithless doctrines that create fear in their hearts or terrorize them. with this fear they are willing to do the will of the religious authorities.

My health insurance is my Four Ss. I eat a good diet, get plenty of fresh air and clean water, lots of exercise, think good thoughts and have regular physicals. In the Stillness I listen to my body and let it tell me were I am not treating it nicely. I listen to the body and it can tell me about problems long before I need to go to a doctor or health practitioner. But just in case I get a physical every year or so.

I think that Siddhartha and Jesus had/have a lot to offer humanity, but I also see that they were just human beings like the rest of us and that they made some choices that could be improved upon. In their time they were great teachers and the choices they made those thousands of years ago were the best ones they could have made at the time. The people around them who carried on their message were only capable of carry on just so much of the message, for they could not understand the implications of the teachings.

So for many years I have been looking beyond their teaching to a greater truth, a simpler and more profound truth then they could offer. I wanted to put what I had learned in simple, non esoteric or confusing terms.

Jesus said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father." (John 14:12)

So I had this impression that I wanted to continue on where Jesus left off. Jesus started a process that was far from finished. I saw it that it was his job to just plant some seeds and be an icon. Then it was my job to cultivate that seeds. Most of the western world knows of Jesus and at least pays lip service to him, but they do not understand what he was about. (If they understood what he was about they would be equals to him, but they do not even think that is possible.)

So my job was to use their idolatry of Jesus as a hook into their hearts and minds. To do this I had to more then just understand what he was about, I have to live it. And I have to be able to explain it in modern terms, transcending the primitive language that Jesus used. I had to go beyond Jesus and Siddhartha to the present and update the language and understanding that they started with.

Siddhartha offered peace with a little compassion. Jesus offered love and passion with a little peace. But for a bird to fly it can not just rely on one wing or the other. Both wings have to do their job equally or they bird can not fly. That means that we must understand and be able to use both the skills of passion and peace, motion and repose. We have to be comfortable with both aspects of life in order to find the fullness that we are looking for. The east knows how to be peaceful, the west knows how to be passionate. My job is to merge the too skills and show people not just how to do both, but WHY they should be open to and interested in both.

I see people in America who have studied the eastern traditions and are very comfortable with peacefulness, but they are afraid of passion. I also see people who can know passion but look upon stillness as death and therefore can not find the peace they are looking for.

I did not know how to achieve this. I had tried everything I knew with no success. So I gave up which turned out to be just what the doctor ordered.

If one is so inspired they can know God greater than Jesus knew God.

There comes a time to go beyond our concepts of God, beyond the immature concept of a personal god. This is what Siddhartha was trying to do when he tried to drop that primitive concept of God and just go beyond it. All the baggage that God has create a lot of major distractions on our road to Perfection.

This takes us beyond believing to know the Ultimate Reality. Although Jesus may have talked about or encouraged people to believe it was in a primitive time for a more primitive people. I feel it is time to go way beyond believing in or even knowing God. It is time to drop God and just Know Thyself.

We will someday go beyond the images of what God, Christ, Buddha or what-have-you are in our minds. These concepts are only steeping stones something that we really want.

I feel energized after conflict. If the conflict is motivated by caring for others then even if the person or people resist my input and there is some sort of conflict, I feel energized. It is probably just fear or excitement from the conflict, but it feels good. If I am in a conflict that is not motivated by caring or love then it does not feel good. I find that this going into conflict motivated out of compassion and love for others feels really good. It takes me to an experience that is far beyond the experience of ecstasy. I feel energized in love. I feel excited and highly motivated. I feel I have lots of clarity. I feel a sense of release.

I see this as a product of confronting the lie of our limitations. I feel I am pushing the boundaries outward. I am breaking down the walls that entrap my people; humanity.

The excitement can also come from the fear of the engagement. Like the fear or excitement of a roller coaster ride. Yet, there is a sense of something far beyond motivating me or calling me that gives me an inner peace with the process. There is definitely a fear of death associated with confrontation or conflict. When I first allowed myself to confront, challenge or stimulate others in a way that produced conflict I was insensitive to the injury that was happening. The others would sometimes get so injured they would get violent. Now, I try to feel their bodies to get in touch with something they are not in touch with.

Many times I was able to feel the other persons body better than they were. I could tell them they were going to get made when they felt what their bodies were telling them. They were hurt but not aware of it. I could feel their hurt and knew they would become aware of it in the near future.

One time a told a woman I knew that she was going to get angry in twenty minutes, and sure enough in twenty minutes she was angry.

It seems funny sometime how I feel so 'right on' when I have the courage to be honest. It feels so good.

I once unexpectedly lost a tooth. Now that is not a big loss but I felt like I had lost a child. I had to go off by myself and mourn the loss. Every once and a while I loose my health and the thought comes that I am going to die. This helps me remember just how much I appreciate and value life. The very sense of appreciation helps be get my health back.

I loose friends all the time. They feel they can no longer handle my honesty, my words. I mourn the loss of these friends. Moreover, I mourn the fear that they live in. They are not afraid of me, they are afraid of themselves and their reaction to what life is offering. They are trapped living with somebody who is constantly abusing them. The loss of this love, of their light is painful and a rich part of my life.

Loss is something that is natural and a part of life. Loss is one of the hardest things to learn to appreciate. The fear of loss is horrendous; it creates a lot of limits to the quality of our life experience.

That is why all great teachers have encouraged people to simplify our lives. For when we simplify our lives we let go of our attachments to material thing, including the flesh people. As Jesus said, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matthew 6:19)

Yet, part of the richness of life is embracing things of the world: family, friends, possessions, etc. So loss will be a relative part of life. When there is the experience of loss we loose the experience of perfection, of the light; of the joy that life can offer. Still, if we can go deep into our experience of loss we will feel our appreciation, joy and love for that which is lost.

For life to be perfect it must be whole and complete, lacking nothing. This includes the experience of loss. For us to find Perfection we will learn to embrace the pain of loss as part of the whole. To do this we go deep into the pain of loss and feel the appreciation, joy and love that motivated our attachment in the first place. The pain of loss takes us into the deep emotional valley, and we will come out of it. When we do we will go back to the top of the mountain. From the top of the mountain we will have a great view. The deeper the valley, the higher the mountain, the greater the view and the richer the life experience.

In the valley the soil is rich, and so is life. The problem is that we sometimes get stuck in the bogs of the valley. When we get stuck in the darkness of the bogs of the valley we can get comfortable or at least learn to tolerate this dark existence. In this case we get afraid of coming out of the darkness for fear of our guilt about allowing ourselves to stay there so long. We become afraid of ourselves. We become afraid to go out and live life.

However, once we have perspective, once we can see the big picture, we see that it is all ok. We can let go of our fear of loss. We can let go of our fear of the valleys. We know that we will not be trapped in the valley. We know that it will go back to being good again. With perspective we can see that it is ok to love and lose and to love again.

It is open our mind again that frees us to have the loss, to allow ourselves to become attached and to loose that which we have become attached.

I have had many friends or acquaintances who have tried to encourage me to be polite and quiet instead of being open and honest. When I have pointed out their self abusive behaviors or their self deceptions this has angered them. It seems these people are looking for a saint and not a sage. Everybody I knew wanted to stay in their unconscious state. They were not interested in becoming empowered to improve the quality of their life experience. They just seemed to want comfort, security and safety. That is not the kind of person I am. I want to perfect myself. I want to wisdom and insight.

The saint is a person who conforms to a prescribed standard of morality, usually prescribed by some institution or group of people. A saint is one that serves the will of people, not the will of God. Jesus was NOT a saint, he was more of a sage and a prophet. Jesus also cared enough to challenge the dominate paradigm of thinking that was not healthy for people, not conform to it as the saint does. A saint serve people. A sage serves humanity.

How can one care about people who do not even care about themselves? I feel that we tell the world our value by the value we show for ourselves. If we do not respect ourselves then nobody will respect us. If we do not seek to improve our lot then nobody will help us.

The kind of people who want us to be saints are the kind of people that want us to lie to them.

I value my enemies more than my friends because my enemies will show me my weaknesses by trying to exploit them while my friends will try to protect me from the truth of my weaknesses.

I noticed that I just stopped caring about people. Since I did not care about them I would not speak up when I saw them causing themselves suffering. I became silent. Many people found this period for me as very good for them. they liked the new me. They liked that I quit caring so much and quit confronting them on their self abusive behavior.

I thought they liked being asleep. They were just like people who hate the alarm clock that wakes them up in the morning. If you do not like why you are getting up in the morning then you will not like the alarm clock that wakes you up.

I yearned for people who wanted to be awake. But I would not admit that I knew how to find them. I did know what I had to do but I was to lazy or maybe even cowardly to actually find out. I knew I needed to focus my effort. I knew that I needed to write a book like this, but I did not have confidence in my ability to write. It seemed to daunting of a task to undertake.

But the people that I was around liked being asleep. They thought that humanity was stupid and evil. They did not want to wake up.

So I went to sleep myself. I quit caring about people. I quit confronting their self abusive behaviors. I quit challenging their ways of thinking. I died to the spirit of love.

What the caterpillar sees as the end of the world (death in the cocoon) the master sees as the beginning of a butterfly. I was dying. I was entering the cocoon again.

Not long after my enlightenment experience I had a vision that I would live for only twelve years after that enlightenment. I saw that I would have to suffer for those twelve years just as Jesus had to suffer for his twelve hours on the cross, then my suffering would be done.

In this vision I saw that there would be a window of opportunity for me. As the realization that all is not real I manifested in my being I would loose the desire to reach out to others. I would loose the passion to break through their resistance or confront the darkness that is so popular today.

By 1999 I was getting frustrated with my efforts to reach out to people and was looking for how the end would come. I had very little apprehension about the coming end but enough to start to question my assumptions about my vision. After meditating on it I became open to the possibility that the end did not mean I would die only that I would go through a transformation. It could mean the end of an era.

I started to have a strong desire arose to be in Macchu Picchu, Peru for the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999. I went to South America in December of 1999 with the full expectation of not returning. Yet, I was open to radical change in my life. When I came back from South America I was again open to changing how I thought and how I behaved in society. I was ready to change everything I could think of about myself, my attitudes and behavior just to see what would happen.

I started to see that meditation, at least the kind of meditation I was doing, was designed at helping me find peace, not passion. If I care about something too much I would get very passionate. This passion, if held too long, would become a disease within me. Since peace is the opposite of passion and there can be no real caring with out passion, my meditations was what I saw was killing my ability to care.

Of course, I could say I cared about other people, but my actions would speak much louder than my words. I was not motivated to do anything for other people. I was not willing to risk anything for other people.

I blamed this on my over use of meditation to squeal any pain or hurt I might feel. Since compassion has an element of passion in it, and passion means to suffer, when I squealed my suffering or hurt I was killing my compassion. This made me feel dead inside.

My meditations seemed to be directed toward artificial feelings of bliss. I was just practicing bliss and not actually feeling blissful. I was not able to appreciate what life was offering because I was not engaged with life.

I needed to make a major change. I felt a desire to get off my lazy and cowardly but and do something, anything, but just sit there and meditate.

Therefore, I consciously decided to stop meditating. I wanted to allow myself to go wherever I had to go (emotionally) to move me where I really wanted to go. My mind was the one that wanted to meditate, but the rest of me wanted something else. I needed to get extreme again to feel what I was really feeling. Meditation was not allowing me to be extreme, it was keeping me in the "middle way." Siddhartha's middle way sucked, at least for me at this time. It was time to get passionate again. It was time to get into the 'real' world.

I was broke. I needed to make some money and since I did not know of a way to do that except get a job I got a job. But I could not get a full time job because I was still attached to laziness, or being simple and easy and relaxed and mellow. So I could only find part-time and low paying jobs.

That did not work, so I started looking for a 'real' job. I had never worked in a corporation before, never working with a large group of people, never worked in a cubicle, so that is where I wanted to go. I wanted to know how most of Americans lived and worked.

I cut my hair and got a real job in a software company. Ok, so the high tech companies are not real America, they are liberal America, but there were sure lots of conservative Americans working there. At least as conservative as I wanted to fully expose myself to.

Working and seeing how people in corporations and cubicles are dying in their service to the almighty dollar and their gluttonous ways, I could feel my passion starting to rise again. I could see how their gluttonous ways was killing their ability to feel or care even about themselves let alone others. This created a sense of conservatism in us, we were conserving what little we could feel for ourselves so we could not care about others. But I could see what was happening to me. I knew that I would not be able to do this for to long before going to sleep.

I decided to quit and return again to the free life on my fiftieth birthday.

It is funny how being focused on the petty little problems of corporate life can narrow our minds down and make us not care about other people. We have our own troubles to worry about. You have to worry about your problems. To hell with the fact that we are walking all over you to solve our petty little problems. Our petty little problems are important because we need faster computers, more DVDs and CDs, more toys to play with, bigger cars and generally just more of everything to distract us from the emptiness of our narrowly focused lives. Greed was making us miserable so we need more things to distract us from the misery.

I knew I would have to confront this unconsciousness, but did not, do not, now how. I did know that I had to experience it first hand to have a chance at understanding it.

We get into our little worlds of corporations but do not see or care how our efforts or just our taxes are used to hurt other peoples that we can maintain our little worlds. Our taxes are used to satisfy our greedy little needs of over consumption and gluttony. We need to have control of the world because we are so afraid of losing our precious little lifestyles. We do not want to see this. We want to close our minds to this and have our governments protect us from the truth of our abusive lifestyles.

I had just been the corporate world among common Americans for a month when September 11^th hit. I was very moved by the events of this day. At first I was excited and pleased. I was excited because I thought that now America and the western world was going to wake up to the suffering of the rest of the world. I was pleased because people were more alive that day than any day I had seen since the Oklahoma City bombing. Then I was terribly saddened by the instant fear and hatred that I saw rise up around me. I was deeply saddened by this reaction of Americans. They reacted not out of compassion for those who would be hurting so much that they would want to do something like this. They acted out of fear for themselves.

As it is written, fear is the power of the darkness. When we submit to fear or serve our fears we are serving the dark side. If we are afraid of terrorist and create all sorts of defenses or attack our enemies then we are serving our fears.

Those who want to create a paradise of this world are of the dark side. Those who want to make this world a better place, who want power in this world to make it closer to their concept of paradise are of the dark side.

It was the beliefs of the terrorist that motivated them to fly the planes into the building. It was religion, a system of beliefs, that was behind their suffering and the suffering of their people. Until we as a society realize that our beliefs are behind most of our suffering then we will not get free from terror or terrorism.

Such is the way of the terrorist. Such is the way of the religious.

Those of the light would say, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you." (Matthew 5:44) Love the terrorist. Do good to those hard hearted religious people who hate you. This is the way of those of the light.

The darkness would preach security, defense, attack, destroy and dominate the enemy.

Those who want to see this world for what it is and to appreciate, enjoy and love it AS IT IS are of the light. Those who want to share that vision of appreciation, joy and love are of the light.

After September 11, 2001 I would fantasized what it would be like to be a terrorist. I could feel what it is like to fly a plane into a building knowing that I am not just killing myself by maybe thousands of other people. Or I could imagine myself blowing a truck bomb up next to a government building knowing that I might kill dozens of people including some children. I could feel the pain of anger and hatred that would motivate me to kill myself. I wanted to get out of the pain by whatever means I could, including suicide. But I wanted to do more than commit suicide, I wanted to bring attention to the systems that produced this hell in me. I wanted to wake up the world to the disease of hatred that infected me and to tell the world that we are all one so you can not ignore me. if you ignore me long enough I will come and wake you up. I am suffering and I need your help to get out. I will do anything I can to wake you up to the suffering of me and my people.

I could feel the pain of those terrorist and how it must have hurt to be them. I can imagine the conservatives reading this whose heart is not open to others and who has no vision or ability to see that what happens to others effects everybody. I can imagine their anger and possible hatred of me for bring up these thoughts. I can feel the pain in the conservative just as I can feel the pain in the terrorist. For all the terrorist ARE conservatives who have just reacted their boiling point.

It is only through compassion and caring about people that we can understand them. My compassion for the conservative or terrorist is why I am writing this book, to help them see that the limited beliefs that cause their pain and suffering or sense of entrapment in that pain and suffering is the root of your misery.

Just as it was with the Branch Dividians in Waco, Texas. We saw how the religious were brutalizing themselves and one another. But we did nothing to confront the system that created these terrorist except murder them. We are only waiting until the next group surfaces and attacks somebody before we do something. This is reactionaryism, not proactivism. A reactionary is marked by, or favoring reaction to events. Proactive relates to acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, changes or events.

These religious people are living in the dark caves of their minds where they brutalize themselves emotionally with their limiting and fear producing beliefs.

I was hopeful that America and the rest of the western world would wake up to this systematic abuse that was going on, but we did not. First their was the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Then , two days later, the drama of the Branch Dividians started. America could not see the commonality of religion between these two events so we did nothing about it. That is why September 11, 2001 had to happen. And many other future events like this will have to happen until we can see the disease that beliefs are and confront this cancer.

We will never be done with terrorism until we address these problems. All other attempted solutions will only be Band-Aids that cover up the real problem.

People do not want to hear what I have written above. It would require them to care and caring hurts. They see no way out of hurting it they start.

I have found a way out and I am only motivated to share that way with anyone who is awake enough to want it.

People who are terrorized by events like September 11, 2001 are very materialistic. They store there treasures here on earth. So terrorists are just showing them that. They are just showing these materialistic people how they have turned their back on God and the teachings of Jesus. As Jesus said, you can have but one master, God or mammon. Those terrorized by Sept 11^th have shown that they serve mammon instead of God. It they had served God then they would have seen that the terrorist was hurting and would have done good to those who had done them harm. As Jesus said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you." (Matthew 5:44)

Revelation of John 11:7: "And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that ascends from the bottomless pit will make war upon them and conquer them and kill them."

Can not the conservatives and the religious see that they have become this 'beast' that makes war upon people, conquers them and kills them. Liberals do not make war, this is the sole domain of the conservatives.

Conservatives and religious people are the Beast that John warned people about in Revelations. They are nothing better than robots or animals that have been programmed to be what they are to think what they do. They have not raised above that programming. They have not cut the strings of their human puppet masters. They have not transcended their beliefs, which are their programming.

As long as we believe that separation is real we will always have terrorism and terrorist. For the terrorist are there to wake us up to the falseness of separation and our identification as separate beings.

Quitting the job was not enough to kill the infections of greed that I got there. I wanted to make money and make it the easy way. Working forty hours a week so that I could buy anything I wanted was not going to work for me. I wanted it easier than that.

Working in a cubicle occupies your time but not your mind and your heart. If was going to really get into the world I had to get fully into the greediness of the world. I had to become consumed with greed. I had to have the desire for making easy money on my mind twenty four hours a day. And I had to feel the pain of that consumption.

Corporate life gave me a little bit of a nest egg so after quitting my job I got into day trading futures. If you do not know what futures are then look it up, but I can tell you that it does not take a long time to lose your nest egg. If you are not really sharp about what you are doing then it can go pretty quick. It took me several months to lose my limit. I had set myself a limit because I knew in my heart this was not what I was suppose to be doing. But I wanted to try and I wanted to get this desire out of my mind. I had to be the prodigal son and go astray before I would appreciate coming back home. Since I did not really fear the financial loss then I was free to fully get into my greed.

I am really glad that I was free enough to fully get into my stupidity and feel the pain that in involves. If I had been more timid I would not have gotten into it fully and felt the pain enough to motivated me to break free. Thank God I do not care about my 'retirement' or my future. Thank God that I am free enough to go for the gusto of what life offers, even if what it is offering is stupidity. If I am free enough to go into it then I will be free enough to get out of it.

Ok, so maybe this should be titled being more stupid, because as you have seen above, I can be pretty stupid. But being a bigot is pretty stupid, so in the interest of full disclosure I want to say that I can be pretty stupid sometime and that is ok with me. I do want to be aware of when I am stupid but I want to allow myself to be stupid sometimes. It adds to the life experience. Part of the whole life experience is stupidity. What I want to demonstrate is that I can love myself even when I am stupid. If I can do that then so can you.

I also want to give others, such as in the below example my brother, the opportunity to 'show me up' and catch me in my stupidity. If I am most of the time right then people will fall into a habit of not questioning me. That would not be healthy for them or for me. We need to be constantly awake and always questioning to stay awake.

From my journal: Thursday, March 04, 2004 8:29 PM

I am a bigot and I am honest enough to admit to myself this and that it is an unhealthy attitude.

The other day my brother asked me to go to a movie with him. He even offered to pay my way. I said sure until he said that he wanted to see this new Mel Gibson movie "The Passion of Christ". I said that it was just a stupid movie and that only those stupid religious people wanted to see it. My brother immediately got angry with me and called me a bigot. It took me a few hours before I could admit that he was right, I was bigoted against those stupid religious people.

I mentioned this to a new friend of mine and she thought that it was alright to be bigoted toward religious people. I said that bigotry was never alright no matter who you felt superior to; stupid people, religious people, white people, black people, gay or straight people, and so on. It doesn't just hurt the rejected people, it hurts me when I am bigoted.

I keep remembering that line that says beauty is in the eye of the beholder (and so is ugliness.) It does not benefit me to see something as ugly, for when I do I have an ugly experience. And when I think of the dumb Christians getting all excited about the testament to brutality of primitive people that the "Passion" is, then I have an ugly experience, and I do not want ugly experiences.

So after watching the movie I came out of the theater thinking that this movie was a testament to the stupidity of religious people, then and now. They were not just stupid, they were heartless, insensitive barbarians.

So I had and ugly experience with this movie, and that was dumb on my part. But I think there is a value in judging the movie and the religious people who enjoyed it as being stupid. I think there is a value in judgement; judgement is good. It benefits people. Religious people need more judgement because it wakes them up to their stupidity. I need more judgement like the judgement of my brother who called me a bigot. His judgement woke me up to my stupidity.

The judgement does not hurt people, it is our reaction to the judgement that awakens or harms us. Words do not hurt people, people's reactions to words cause injury. That is the essence of Jesus' story, or at least the part of the story that "The Passion of Christ" tells. That is why Jesus was killed because he upset the religious people with his words. Jesus' words so upset the religious people that they conspired with the state to have him killed.

It is amazing how these religious people, the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, the Buddhist, the Hindus have not learned that it is just a game of words and ideas and concepts. They fight over these words and they kill one another just because of words.

All Jesus ever did was bear witness to the truth of the religious people's own conditioned emotional self-abusive behavior.

The people where not/are not afraid of the words, they are afraid of THEIR REACTIONS to those words or ideas. Even today, in America, where we believe that we have the freedom of speech, the freedom to stand up and say what we want, we really do not have that freedom or right. I was arrested for exercising that 'right' because people were unable to deal with the idea of somebody speaking their mind. All over this country people run and hide from people speaking their truth. We call it judgement, hate, racist, sexist, anti-Semitic speech and we seek to silence those who speak. Our reason for wanting them silenced is because they show us were we are conditioned to abuse ourselves emotionally.

Where I was arrested, Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon, they had made it illegal to speak because the 'liberal' mayor of the city did not like the fundamentalist religious preachers preaching (verbally assaulting) the public. So they figured a way to get around the constitution by leasing the square to a private corporation who then was able to restrict access to anyone they did not like.

Why do we want to encourage extremist to speak out, you may ask? Because what they are really doing is waving a flag saying they need help. They feel trapped in the dark cave of their minds and they want help getting out. Racism, sexism, and hate speech and the like are just a call for help. But if we silence them we are those who need the help the most. The politically correct people are silencing those who most need our help.

Do you remember back in the late 1980's and early 1990's when there were several mass murders. People who walk into a McDonalds and just start shooting. Or they would go into their post office and start shooting. Inevitably the paper would say that those who know them would say they were the silent, quiet types. They never expected this. These people where never encouraged to speak out so that we would know they were having problems BEFORE they went 'postal'. They held their pain to themselves until it got to be so much that they 'popped'. Like a pressure cooker with the heat turned up and the safety value stopped up.

We should be encouraging all these people to speak out, not silencing them. We should make people responsible for their reactions to the words and not make the speakers responsible for other people's reaction to their words.

In theory we believe we are not responsible for other people's behaviors but in practice we do believe they piss us off.

So I am pissed at the stupid religious people and I am blaming them for my discomfort. How do I change my attitude? Well, I have been here before and I know how to get out of it. What I did before when I had so much animosity built up inside of me to someone or some group is my Four Ss.

My life now seems to be about sharing what I have found and finding new challenges to love. But I also recognize that this body is human and tends to want to go to sleep now and then. When I go asleep I go back into the negativity, I see things as ugly, bad, wrong or evil. So I want to find others who want to be awake and are willing to wake me up when I go asleep.

I am back to meditating again. Now, when I meditate, I usually start with just getting into my body and feeling everything at one time. When I am comfortable just feeling, without thinking or reacting to what I am feeling, then I will start expanding outward. First to the room, then the building, then the city, then the state, then the country, then to feeling the whole planet. When I expand out and feel something like the planet I am not interested in particulars of what is going on now, I am trying to feel the hearts or soul of humanity. I am trying to feel the deep pains and desires of all of life. Usually, I do not actually feel anything, or at least I am not aware of it in the cognitive or conscious mind. Yet, I know from experience that when I return to the cognitive or conscious mind thoughts or impressions will come to me that seem to have been subtly placed in my consciousness.

Quite often after this type of meditation I get back into some sort of fantasy that puts me in touch with the pain of humanity. This produces a passion and inspiration within me. I then feel alive, awake and motivated.

I can see that is a big reason why people like me teach is to find or create people who are awake enough to keep them awake. So teachers have even said that is what they are looking for.

Jesus sure could have used somebody who was at least partially awake to wake him when he fell asleep. Those around him could not wake themselves up let alone wake others up. (See Mat 26:36)

Siddhartha talked about sangha or the fellowship of those who are also seeking to awaken or stay awake. His personal method was the Four Noble Truths.

Since I can never rely on anyone to wake me when I go asleep I create my Four Ss to wake myself up. But I would sure like the company of those who want to be awake and who care enough to want to wake up others.

It is alright to be stupid. It is alright to go out and make mistakes. This gives other people the opportunity to shine their light and wake you or show you were you are making a mistake. This is a team effort. If we do not have the courage to make mistakes or be stupid then we are not open to purifying ourselves.

It is even good to be extremely stupid so that we push people to the place where they feel they have to overcome their fear and say something. They have to care.

Once people confront us with our stupidity then we can demonstrate the integrity and courage to be honest by admitting our unconsciousness. When we can say that you are more righteous than I am or that you have greater clarity than I do then we are demonstrating honesty and integrity.

But I have to remember that I am still human. I do still resist when somebody tells me I am not awake or that I am doing something stupid. My resistance is natural and part of being human. Just as the body resists the light of the sun and I get a sunburn, the mind resists the light of the truth and I get burned or angry. Today, I do not get angry very often but I do resist the light of truth once and a while.

The hard part about being conscious is to remember to be conscious. The hard part about being awake is to stay awake. That is why we create so many systems or rituals to try to keep ourselves awake. I created the Four Ss to remind myself to stay awake, or at least how to reawaken when I have gone sleep. I am writing this book as a method of reminding myself of what I have experienced and to share that with others. I also read other people's stories so that I can remember what I have forgotten.

I feel that my purpose now is to go forth and shine my light; to evangelize the possibility that life can be perfect if we are open to it.

It seems to me that our purpose in life to shine our light. If we do not shine our light then the world will live in eternal darkness. If we do not push back the darkness then the darkness will grow.

The fear that is conservatism can only exist if we are afraid to question the darkness. If we fear the questions then the darkness will reign. Fear only leads to violence and destruction.

I feel I am just like everybody else, I do not want to see violence, destruction and wretchedness. I can now see that we are our own worst enemy. We create more problems for ourselves by our unfounded fears then life can create for us naturally. The unfounded fears are based on ignorance or unknowingness. That is why I feel that education or shining the light is the solution to people's misery.

The only way that the darkness will be overcome is if I first overcome it within myself and then shine my light.

If people do not overcome the darkness within themselves, open their hearts to the rest of humanity and evangelize with their truth and light, then the darkness will overtake the world. This evangelizing the light is the spirit called Christ. We can all become Christs. We can all be equal to or greater than Jesus in our desire and ability to shine that light.

When our hearts are fully open we will be driven to reach out to all humanity. We will be driven to by our feeling of their pain to help elevate that pain.

Before we can open our hearts we have to first remove the log from our own eyes, that we will better be able to see the splinter in others eyes. We first have to overcome the root delusions in our own mind that cause us to see this world as ugly, bad, wrong or evil.

Beyond the Four Skills

In order to be evangelist for the light I had to go beyond the Four Basic Skills. So I developed two advanced skills, Shine and Sorrowful Heart.

All spiritual traditions have the Four Basic Skills in some form or other. Only a few have the two Advanced Skills of Shining and Sorrowful Heart.

Shining and sorrowful heart give us compassion, which is an element of love. These are basic skills of expanding our love.

Suns of God

When we all have clarity then we can shine our lights like Suns of God. (Not Sons of God).

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Matthew 5:16:

Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear. Matthew 13:43:

For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man. Matthew 24:27:

Being a Christ

The spirit is that which inspires or motivates somebody. Jesus was motivated out of his love for humanity to confront the delusions that caused them to fear life. He tried to confront our systematic indoctrination of deception and attachment in material things.

The immature person thinks that a Messiah or Christ is a person who will come and destroy all their worldly enemies. For the primitive Jewish person the Messiah was suppose to be somebody like King David who slew his enemies. The primitive or immature person still thinks this way. They want somebody ELSE to do for them what they must do for themselves. That want a Savior to save them.

But we are our own worst enemy. Nobody can save us from ourselves. We and only we can do that for ourselves. Nobody can die for our mistakes or sins. If we over eat then we die for our gluttony, one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Jesus tried to wake people us to their unconscious behaviors or limiting beliefs. AND, he wanted to demonstrate that if somebody can get free then anybody can get free. He got free so everybody could get free. If we know that it is possible to get free then even if we do not get free we at least do not feel as trapped as if we believed we could never get free.

Anybody who is also motivated to wake people us to their limiting beliefs also has the spirit of Christ in them. They are a Christ. Anybody who care enough about other, particularly humanity at large, and is willing to take the heat of their resistance when they are exposed to honesty is a Christ.

I am a Christ. That is what motivates me. You may call it a Christ Complex, I just call it consciousness. I feel and I hurt when I see people trapped in their delusions and the misery they cause. I hurt even more when I see society reinforcing these delusions.

I want to see an army of Christs confronting the delusions and demonstrating the truth and freedom it brings.

To be a Christ is to be a Champions for the World. A champion for the world is an advocate for humanity. We plead the case of our hearts, of humanity's heart, to humanity to remind them of what they have forgotten. We are on their side. We are more on their side then they are. We want to demonstrate vitality and aliveness. We want to demonstrated fearlessness. We want to show the world that nothing is impossible to us.

In our perfection we will allow ourselves to be imperfect. We will allow ourselves to we afraid, to be sad, to be hurt, to die. We are champions of humanity so we will be human. We will go asleep and we will wake up.

The challenge is to say awake and not start to believe that the world needs us, to not get into the delusion that we need to save the world. Jesus made that mistake for us and we can benefit from his error. We do not need to relearn that mistake. We do not come to judge or save the world, we come to shine our light on the world. We are the light of the world.

A Buddha was a step in the evolution of our imagination of which a Christ is a further step. But was more of a sage than an evangelist. Siddhartha saw many things that helped us better understand who to operate the human instrument. He talked about compassion but did not demonstrate the passion part of compassion. Jesus did demonstrate this passion part of compassion. He showed us that compassion is part of love and that having passion is part of where we as a species what to evolve toward.

Now it is time to further evolve the image of where we want to go. Now it is time to further expand our possibilities for human evolution and to evangelize that vision for humanity. That is my mission and my purpose in life now.

Before we can feel the pain of humanity we have to have the skills in handling that pain. If we do not then we will be willing to sacrifice ourselves, to commit suicide if we must, just to get away from the pain that we have taken on. In our pain we will become deluded into believing it is real and that we need to save the world. So we need to first remove the log from our own eyes before we can be Christs or Champions of the World.

Jesus' example of a Christ is a good start but as I have shown above there is much room for improvement. We can and will do better. I can and am doing better. And anybody who is so inspired can and will do better than I will do.

A Christ is one who comforts the heart instead of the flesh. A Christ is one who helps people get free from the fears that are in their heart. A Christ addresses the discomforts we have in our hearts instead of in our bodies.

Jesus was a Christ because he served the heart while Saints like Mother Theresa served the flesh, or help people find comfort in their bodies. Christs address the roots of people's fears and saints reinforce the beliefs that cause the fears. A Christ addresses a deeper, more profound pain.

 

Titles

(or Creating Community)

Community happens we people are able to communicate their commonness. If we are afraid to be honest with one another then we are afraid of finding our commonness. Without commonness there will be no community. We want community.

When there is community there is communication, talking and communing. The discussion is what makes the community. Just a people gather around a campfire to appreciate the light and the warmth, so to do people gather around a good conversation to appreciate the light and warmth.

I am very interested in working toward a time when people are no longer afraid of words, concepts and ideas. When they are free from fear of communication then we will have no need for wars or social conflict.

Good conversation can expose our dogmas that keep us from heaven.

I am interested in finding other people who want to know perfect unconditional love. Anything but Perfect, Unconditional Love is mediocrity.

I want to gather those who want to be more than human, who want to be Gods and Goddesses. Jesus showed the way and we can be more than he was. I want to gather those who care about humanity and the direction it is headed in enough to get free themselves so that they can help others to get free.

You are on God's Team when you wake up and realize that you are a god. There is but one God and you are part of that God. We are all equal except in our own minds. We are all working together as a team to wake each other up and to remind each other that we are perfect, eternal and infinite beings. We are here to enjoy and love life.

We are here to wake up the not-god people, the anti-God people, the religious. These are the people who still think of themselves as separate from one another and from God.

As a plant grows it reaches outward toward the sun's light. As we grow we reach outward toward the light of sensitivity and experience. As a plant dies it is drawn toward the earth, it falls down. As we begin to die we are drawn to the world and material things.

The habit of focusing our attention onto material things creates a narrowing of awareness and a sense of isolation and loneliness. Material things are inanimate objects (including thoughts and ideas.)

I have had periods of seeking material wellbeing and the accompanying loneliness.

The power of inertia and gravity, the heaviness of materialism, make us heavy and destroys our will to explore life. It destroys the spirit within us that motivates us to ask, seek and knock.

We get programmed to believe that when we get some material thing that we will be happier because of this thing. We are lead to believe that things make us happy. So we make things and gathering things important.

From childhood we are programmed to believe that things make us happy. As adults we still think that we will not be happy until we get that new car, boat, house or spouse. We keep seeking love in all the wrong places, like outside of us.

The more a person or society is deluded into believing that things make them happy the more materialistic they will be. The more materialistic they are the more barbaric and violent they will be.

Materialism includes the attachment to people. If we think that people make us happy then we are deluding ourselves. For people come and go, as all things do. People do not give us love or joy. We do in our reaction to people.

This is not to say that we should never get attached to people or things, I am only saying that it will take us into the valley of darkness. We will begin to fear the loss that is inevitable and we will close down our heart.

This attachment to material things is destroying the very earth we live on. Because be believe that things make us happy we want more things. This leads to extravagant materialism and excessive consumerism. To produce all this things we rape the earth and ourselves in our efforts to make enough money to buy all the things we want that we believe will make us happy.

This also destroys our health in our decadent lifestyles and gluttonous behaviors. This destroys our ability to appreciate, enjoy and love what life offers. With the quality of our lives being destroyed we return to what we think is the basics, materialism. This material includes family.

Spiritualism Materialism

Whenever we make something sacred we are practicing spiritual materialism. When we make things important like shrines, images of people, crystals, buildings or places.

When we dress a certain way to make ourselves look like we are spiritual. When we wear jewelry or anything to try to impress people we are being very materialist.

The beginning spiritual seeker may find things helpful to remind them of certain principles or levels of consciousness, but if the object becomes more important than the consciousness it is support to remind you of then you have lost site of the object.

I love the story of the Buddhist monks who create large, beautiful mandalas but just laying out colored sand on the floor. After maybe weeks of work on these mandalas they admire their work for a few days and then sweep of the sand. Western people who are conditioned to being very materialistic tend to overreact to this casual attitude toward their beautiful work.

The Buddhist monks know that it is in the effort that the beauty is experienced, not in the object itself.

As long of people remember that all this spiritual materialism is for beginners, that it is only a stepping stone and that you will hopefully outgrow it very soon and let it go.

I have always had problems with the language used to point at what I might call spiritual health. Even the word spiritual is ambiguous or vague. So I came up with the idea of using the term Profound Health, which is for body, mind and spirit. This is a health that is deep or extending far below the surface.

The word health means the condition of being sound in body, mind and spirit. Yet, health only implies a freedom from disease or pain. What I want to talk about is something that goes beyond just being free from negativity. I want to talk about something that greater than neutral or equanimity. I want to talk about the Kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana, Eden or Perfection. I want to talk about something that is better than Good.

I like the terms Ultimate Health or Transcendent Health. Whatever term used I was attempting to transcend the limitation of the language that has been used for thousands of years. The language has become polluted with connotations, concepts and ideas that are misleading.

I want to get into a more practical understanding and practices. I am tired of the mental masturbation that philosophy, theology, ways of thinking or ways of looking at the past and the future are.

Profound is starts with being healthy within and moving outward. First we start with our attitudes and mental health. Then we move on to emotional, physical and spiritual health. From there we move on to social, financial, environmental and political health. We want to be health in all aspects of our being.

This is the process or steps to getting to Heaven, knowing God, Enlightenment, Self-Realization, Liberation, Eden, Atonement or what ever you want to call it. What we fear the most is the unknown so the spiritual process is making ourselves comfortable with ambiguity or the unknown so we do not contract down and create a lot of tension and misery in our lives.

Believing

If you do not believe that it is possible then you will not seek. If you do not seek you will not find. Believing is only the beginning. Believing is going to school.

If one does not believe that life can be better then it will not get better. If one believes in Heaven and God then they are open to find Heaven and God. Without believing it you are not open to it. You do not only have to believe that God and Heaven exist, you also have to believe you can experience or know them.

This would be like believing somebody who tells you there is an apple tree with lots of fruit on it just over the hill. If you are hungry you might believe him or her. If not, then you might just ignore the message. If you choose to believe that there is an apple tree with fruit on it over the hill and you are hungry then you fear of starving may subside. But you will still be hungry. You have only started.

I believed it was possible to find what Siddhartha and Jesus found. That got me interested and it gave me some hope. I was so miserable in my life that I was open to the idea of something better than the hell I was experiencing. My emotional pain was what motivated me to believe Siddhartha and Jesus.

Seeking

Seeking is getting up off your lazy and/or cowardly ass and actually doing something to find what you believe is possible. Of course, doing something is not necessarily moving any muscles in your body. It is seeking to understand the process then applying that understanding.

This would be like starting on the journey over the hill to find the apple tree with fruit on it. The start of this journey might include asking more accurate directions to where the tree is at. If you do seek and do not find you might give up and believe that the tree is not there. You might need to go back to the person who told you about the tree and getting better directions. If you are lazy or cowardly then you will probably not take this step.

I had no idea of even what I wanted let alone how to get there. So I started asking questions of anybody who side they knew.

Spirituality

In seeking the first thing a person should do is to understand the question; what are they seeking? In all science the first step is understanding the question.

Spirituality is seeking to understand that which motivates or inspires you to seek. What is the spirit behind your seeking? What do YOU want? You will start with some concepts of what you want. Here you try to imagine or actually feel what it would feel like to be in Heaven. This is not what it would look like outside of you. This is what it would feel like within you. What do I want from what I am looking for?

Then, what is it that is keeping me from finding what I am looking for?

This would be like feeling the hunger you have to motivates you to seek the apple tree with fruit on it. The more you feel the pain of the hunger the more you will be motivated to continue with the seeking.

When I got tired of all the vague concepts and ideas of the goal was and how get there then I started to ask myself what I wanted. Pleasure, not quite. Peace, yea, but... I wanted Goodness, Eternal Goodness. I wanted perfect unconditional love. I also looked to the opposite of what I was looking for to get a better grasp on what I was looking for. What is pain? What is war? What is evil? What is creating my sense of not goodness in my life?

Words, of course, do not get you there. I had to find a feeling beyond the words. What is it that motivates me to seek Heaven or God. What do I want out of God?

I wanted to actually feel what it was that I was looking for, not just have some vague concept or idea. I wanted every cell of my body to actually feel the desire for what I was desiring.

Then I had to further ask myself, what is it that is keeping me from actually feeling or knowing what I want? What is keeping me from having this permanently? The imagined what it was that I wanted but it was only imagination. I wanted the real thing. It is not real if it is not permanent.

Seeing

When you realize what it is you want you will 'see' the goal. Seeing is realizing. You have not reached Heaven you have just seen Heaven. If you reach out to touch that which you think you want and do not realize it then you probably were not seeing what you really want. You can see the truth that will set you free but you have to experienced that truth yet.

This is seeing the way to Heaven. This is understanding how to get there.

This would be like getting over the hill and actually seeing the apple tree with fruit on it. You will probably start salivating at the thought of eating an apple.

Knowing

You know God. You know who you really are. You are God. You are Perfect, as the Father in Heaven is Perfect, because you are the Father in Heaven. You and God are one.

All the beliefs, concepts or ideas that you created to get here are going. They were on the rungs of the ladder that you used to reach the height. You no longer need them. In order to get here you had to realize the truth behind each of the beliefs, concepts or ideas that you had along the way.

You have reached up and taken an apple and now you are eating that apple. The apple tastes good.

Manifesting Heaven

You may think you are done, but you still have to chop wood and carry water. Just waking up to the reality of Heaven does not mean you will stay there all the time. You still have all your old ways of thinking, your old beliefs, false concepts and ideas that were based on the false assumptions. You will probably want to purify your ways of thinking so that you can return to Heaven whenever you want. Normal life and the hell it offers is a nice place to visit for it is dramatic and exciting to go there. But you want to know how to get back to Heaven easily.

Also, since you recognize and actually experience yourself as infinite you recognize that all the rest of the people out there are you. So manifesting Heaven will have something to do with waking the rest of you up, the other people who are you.